Early One February Morning at Little Girl’s Point

Early One February Morning (2), photo by siskokid

Jim caught a gorgeous sunrise last February on the shore of Lake Superior at Little Girl’s Point. The article Legendary Little Girl’s Point from the Ironwood Daily Globe says it is located about 21 miles north of Ironwood and was used by the Chippewas for fishing, hunting and a camping place during trips to the Porcupine Mountains. As to the name:

According to Burnham, Mary Amoose (Little Bee), an unusually intelligent Chippewa woman of Bad River, told Burnham the story of the lost girl of Little Girl’s Point as she had often heard it told by her grandmother more than a half century ago.

She told Burham how a party of hunters returning from a trip to the Crouching Porcupine rounding the point of land now known as Little Girl’s Point, thought they saw the form of a girl among the trees. She was clad in green. The hunters, thinking that it was some girl that had become lost, beached their canoes, but on climbing the steep shore, only caught one or two glimpses of the green girl, who glided further back among the stately pines, and vanished.

Burham said he was interested in this story for it gave the name to Little Girl’s Point, and it was told to him by this Chippewa woman, much as it had been told to Henry R. Schoolcraft, the historian, and discoverer of the source of the Mississippi River. Burnham said the story was told to Schoolcraft by his half-breed wife, Julia (Jane) Johnson, granddaughter of the great chief Waubojeeg, who lived on the mainland near where Bayfield now stands.

I can’t tell if the “unusually intelligent” is sexist or racist, but there is a lot of interesting historical information to be found if you read on. The article is housed on the Gogebic Range City Directories which looks to be a treasure trove of historical information about the region that includes Michigan’s northwestern corner and Wisconsin’s northeastern.

Check it out bigger and see more in Jim’s Little Girl’s Point slideshow.

There’s more history (and more ice) on Michigan in Pictures.