Who Were the Noquet?

[A version of this story ran in the November 2021 Marquette Monthly]

Relatively little is known about the history of the Noquet, a Native people that once lived between Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. Information about this group is sparse and contradictory. The Noquet are alternatively presented as a vanished tribe or a subgroup of Ojibwe. Both assertions have merit, but in more complicated ways than might first be assumed.

Early sources describe the Noquet as a small group separate from but allied with their Ojibwe and Menominee neighbors in the 1600s. All three spoke related Algonquian languages. The Noquet language was closest to Menominee.

As part of the wider Anishinaabe culture along with the Odawa and Potawatomi, Ojibwe tradition foregrounds the fact that they came to the Great Lakes from the northeast Atlantic coast, around the Gulf of St. Lawrence. This gradual movement of Anishinaabe people began by 900 CE. Large Ojibwe populations were present in the Lake Superior region by the time of first contact with the French in the early 1600s.

In contrast, the Menominee, who are not Anishinaabe, identify with the ancient copper mining inhabitants of the Upper Peninsula, were present in their Great Lakes territory for 1,000 years before European contact, and possibly have been in Michigan and Wisconsin for 5,000 years. The Noquet presence in the Upper Peninsula also seems to have predated the arrival of significant Anishinaabe populations. Jesuit missionary Claude Dablon (1618-1697) described the Noquet as original inhabitants of the southern shore of Lake Superior.

The word Noquet lives on in Upper Peninsula place names and local culture. One ancient name for the Dead River in Marquette County was the Noquemanon River, the word meaning ‘the berry patch of the Noquet.’ Native people in the northern Great Lakes traditionally moved throughout the year to take advantage of seasonal food resources. The Noquet probably lived along the southern shore of Lake Superior in the summer, harvesting blueberries as a dietary staple. The far more numerous Ojibwe seem to have recognized the Noquet right to make use of territory in the area of the Dead River for this purpose. 

A nonprofit organization founded in 2001 called Noquemanon Trail Network (NTN) maintains an extensive, popular non-motorized trail complex in the central Upper Peninsula. The group hosts an annual ski race called the Noquemanon Ski Marathon, colloquially shortened to the Noque. The race has gained national prestige, drawing racers from all over the United States. Few participants know the deeper origin of the event’s name.

The names of Big Bay de Noc and Little Bay de Noc in Delta County, Michigan also derive from the word Noquet. This part of the southern Upper Peninsula of Michigan north of Green Bay was considered the homeland of the Noquet people by French missionaries and explorers. A trail network between Little Bay de Noc and the shore of Lake Superior near Grand Island allowed the Noquet to move between their winter and summer territories. They also periodically inhabited islands at the mouth of Green Bay, sometimes known as the Noquet Islands, the largest of which is Washington Island. By the 1650s, these islands were dominated by the Potawatomi, one of the three main branches of Anishinaabe.

The Burnt Bluff Cultural Site, a series of rock shelters and caves with ancient pictographs along Lake Michigan near Fayette in Delta County, is arguably the most notable archaeological feature within the territory associated with the Noquet. Unfortunately for our understanding of this site, generations of curious spelunkers have badly damaged the pictographs. Part of Fayette Historic State Park, this intriguing archaeological site is now closed to the public.

The most impressive feature of the Burnt Bluff complex, Spider Cave or Spider Man Cave, named for a distinctive pictograph, is considered to have been the site of magical rituals during the Middle Woodland period, dating back to about 2,400 years before present, or around 600 CE. While we do not know who painted the pictographs at Burnt Bluff or performed rituals at Spider Man Cave, it was possibly used by ancestors of the Noquet people French explorers and priests encountered in the 1600s.

Some scholars think Spider Man Cave was used as a site for the performance of rituals associated with the Midewiwin or Grand Medicine Society, a spiritual movement that spread among various Native peoples of the Great Lakes. Members of secret Midewiwin societies were initiated in a series of ceremonies and traditional teachings. Noquet involvement in Midewiwin rites would have given them a meaningful religious connection with their Ojibwe neighbors.

Noquet and Ojibwe cultures seem to have shared another important feature. The word Noquet meant something akin to ‘bear’s foot,’ a term associated with the Ojibwe Bear clan. Many Algonquian-speaking cultures divided society into clans, called doodem as a singular noun in the Ojibwe language, each represented by an animal, bird, fish, or mythical creature. It may be that the Noquet had a similar clan system to that of the Ojibwe, and that the Bear clan was prominent in Noquet society. Clans tended to perform specific rituals, potentially giving Ojibwe and Noquet Bear clan members a sense of shared identity.

By the first decades of the 1700s, the Noquet population was greatly reduced, perhaps due to disease or war. By the time Jesuit Pierre Francois Charlevoix (1682-1761) visited the Great Lakes in 1721, only a few Noquet families remained. The Noquet are normally thought to have been absorbed by either the Menominee or the Ojibwe. The reality is that some Noquet people married into Menominee families, and others merged with Ojibwe families.

Wisconsin-based trader Augustin Grignon (1780-1860), grandson of famous French and Odawa military officer Charles Michel de Langlade (1729-1801) and husband to a French and Menominee wife, insisted that the Noquet were part of Menominee society. Grignon was correct, at least in a sense. By his time, Noquet remaining in the Lake Michigan area had married into Menominee families, neighbors who shared a similar language and history.

However, Noquet people living along Lake Superior married into Ojibwe families, who possibly had similar clan structures and religious beliefs. As Marquette author Tyler Tichelaar pointed out in his 2020 book Kawbawgam, Mah-je-ge-zhik (died circa 1857) and Madosh (circa 1800-1880), central Upper Peninsula Ojibwe leaders around the time of American settlement, were descended from Noquet ancestors.

It is important to keep memory of the Noquet alive. Future research into this nearly forgotten cultural group may reveal details about how patterns of intermarriage and assimilation shaped Native identities during the large historical migration from the Atlantic coast to the Great Lakes. As the Noquet case seems to indicate, cultural factors such as mutual language intelligibility, shared participation in regional religious movements, and similar clan structures allowed numerically smaller groups to merge into larger societies. This may argue in favor of foregrounding specific family histories in understanding the Native past of the Great Lakes.

Adam Berger