One of the most popular public beaches on an Iron County lake is Pentoga Park. The public beach, playground, and camping site are located on a former indigenous Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) settlement. The village was on the southeast shore of Gichi-zaaga’igan, meaning “big lake”, today known as Chicagon Lake, a corrupted form of the original Ojibwe name. When European settlers came to the area and set up mining towns, the local Ojibwe had peaceful trading relations with them. I think it was because there were never a lot of Ojibwe in the area, one account I read estimated 5,000 in the entire Upper Peninsula. Ojibwe Headman Meshkawaanagonebi, known as Chief John Edwards to area residents, abandoned the land in 1891 and left with his wife, Pentoga, to the Lac Vieux Desert reservation across the border in Wisconsin. The county purchased the land in 1924 and set up the park to preserve the burial grounds.
All that is left of the Ojibwe village is the graveyard. Ojibwe culture buried their dead and placed a wooden shelter over the grave to protect from the elements and keep animals out. The bodies were wrapped in birch bark along with their most prized possessions. The shelter had a small door and a family totem. They placed the door towards the west, the direction the Ojibwe thought Bangishimog, or heaven, was located. I like that idea of heaven being towards the setting sun!
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