You are standing at the "turning Point" for the Bayfield Waterfront Walk and across the water is a place of significance where "turning points" in history occurred. Madeline Island, or "Mooningwanekaaning Minis," the "place of the gold-breasted wood-pecker," is an ancient native settlement. The Anishinaabe (Ojibwa or Chippewa) lived there well before white explorers started arriving in the 1600s. Madeline became a center for the fur trade for a century and a half. The Treaties of 1842 and 1854 were negotiated at LaPointe on Madeline Island.
"Mooningwanekaaning-minis served as the southern capital of the Anishinaabe nation that stretched among four American states and three Canadian provinces. Ten millennia ago, people walked and canoed the lands surrounding the island, fished the waters and lived in reverence. They had hands, not paws, but they existed as part of a larger community that included relatives with fins, paws, wings, hooves and roots." Winona LaDuke, Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg
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