The Northernmost Point of Lake Michigan/The North Shore of Lake Michigan

The northernmost point of Lake Michigan is about one mile west of here. In 1805 Congress used that point to mark the western boundary of the new Territory of Michigan. Everything farther west remained Indiana Territory until 1818, when the Michigan Territory boundary was pushed west to the Mississippi River. For the Odawa and Ojibwe, whose villages had been strategically located along the shore from St. Ignace to Big Bay de Noc for centuries, such boundaries were of little importance. Their livelihoods depended on fishing, trade, and travel along Lake Michigan’s shores and beyond. Fishing was of primary importance as it sustained both their lives and their economies. The North Shore of Lake Michigan The Odawa and Ojibwe who were party to the 1836 Treaty of Washington ceded this area to the United States. However, they did not give up their rights to fish on the Great Lakes and hunt on the ceded lands. Here, they continued their lives with steady, gradual change until the 1880s. At that time, the natural ports of such places as Naubinway began to serve the Upper Peninsula’s timber industry and draw more European-American residents. After the decline of logging, fishing remained an economic driver, and the sovereign tribes sought to preserve the fishing rights that were guaranteed in the 1836 treaty. In 1979 federal courts recognized those rights, and in 1985 Michigan and the affected tribes negotiated their first consent decree governing tribal and commercial fishing rights in the Great Lakes.