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Mackinac County

Three hundred and fifty years ago, the area that encompasses Mackinac County was the scene of the European arrival in America's Midwest. It became the cradle of history at a time when the French controlled or claimed most of the region east of the Mississippi River from Louisiana to Lake Superior, known as New France. A stream of French explorers, adventurers, missionaries and fur traders venturing into an unknown wilderness, landed on its beaches. But the French found Michilimackinac, they did not establish it.

Mackinac County derives its name from the Michilimackinac Indian tribe. Michilimackinac ("place of the big wounded person" or "place of the big lame person") is a name applied, at various times, to Mackinac island, to the village on this island, to the village and fort at Pt St Ignace on the opposite mainland, and, at an early period, to a considerable extent of territory in the upper part of the lower peninsula of Michigan. It is itself derived from the name of a supposed extinct Algonquian tribe, the Mishinimaki or Mishinimakinagog.

According to legend, the Mishinimaki formerly had their headquarters at Mackinac island, but occupied all of the adjacent territory in Michigan. They are said to have had more than thirty villages. However, in retaliation for an invasion of the Mohawk country they were destroyed by the Iroquois.

This must have occurred prior to the occupancy of the country by the Chippewa on their first appearance in this region. A few were still there in 1671, but by 1744 none of them remained. When the Chippewas appeared in this section they made Michilimackinac Island one of their chief centers, and it retained its importance over a long period of time. In 1761 their village was said to contain one hundred warriors.

In 1827 the Catholic part of the inhabitants, numbering about 150, separated from the others, forming a new village near the old one. When the Hurons were driven west by the Iroquois they settled on Mackinac island. where they built a village some time after 1650. Soon after they removed to the Noquet islands in Green bay, but returned about 1670 and settled in a new village on the adjacent mainland, where the Jesuits had Just established the mission of St Ignace. After this the Hurons settled near the mission the fugitive Ottawa also settled in a village on the island where Nouvel established the mission of St Francis Borgia among them in 1677, and when the Hurons removed to Detroit, about 1702, the Ottawa and Chippewa continued to live at Michilimackinac.

Mackinac County was originally laid out under the name of Michilimackinac in 1818.

Early Mackinac County comprised most the territory of Michigan and much of Wisconsin. As the years passed and people began to inhabit these areas, the size of the county eventually evolved into the permanent boundaries established today.

Most visitors and residents of the Upper Peninsula will visit Mackinac Island at least once.

Location has determined much of Mackinac Island's history. In prehistoric times, not long after the retreat of the last glacier, aboriginal natives stood on the mainland shore, looked out over the Straits between two newly formed great lakes and saw an island with unusually high bluffs. When they explored it, they marveled at its unusual natural limestone formations, and buried their dead in the island's caves.

French-Canadian courieur de bois Jean Nicolet is believed to be the first white man to see Mackinac during his explorations on behalf of Samuel de Champlain, governor of Canada, in 1634.

The Jesuit Jacques Marquette preached to the Straits Indians in 1671 and soon after the area became the most important French western fur trade site. After the British acquired the Straits following the French and Indian War, the English Major Patrick Sinclair chose those high bluffs for the site of his Fort Mackinac in 1780.

The Americans never threatened the British fort during the American Revolution and following the revolution obtained the Straits area by treaty. However, problems with the British in nearby Canada led to the War of 1812. In July of 1812 a British force landed secretly on the far north end of Mackinac Island and forced the United States to surrender Fort Mackinac in the first engagement of that conflict.

In 1814 the Americans attempted to regain the Island by also approaching from the north, but failed to defeat the British who in the meantime had fortified the high ground behind Fort Mackinac. The British and Americans fought the battle in the vicinity of the present day site of the Wawashkamo Golf Course. The British fortification was renamed Fort Holmes in honor of Major Andrew Hunter Holmes, a young American officer who died in the conflict. In 1815 the Island was restored once again to the Americans by treaty.

After the War of 1812 Mackinac Island became the center of John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company. For the next thirty years the German immigrant provided beaver pelts for the beaver hats so favored by contemporary Jane Austen's dashing young men.

Today, Mackinac Island is a theme park where transportation is limited to horse and buggy, bicycle, or pedestrian. Fort Mackinac has been restored, and is a popular island destination.

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