By Larry B. Massie

This article first appeared in the July/August 1995 issue of Michigan History. 

Harriet Martineau gazed in excitement from the deck of the Milwaukee as the schooner tacked across the Straits of Mackinac en route to the island known to Michigan's native peoples as Michilimackinac. It was the evening of 4 July 1836 and the sophisticated, thirty-four-year-old British author tempered her disappointment at missing the Independence Day festivities at the fort whose whitewashed bulwarks dominated the island's heights with the sights that followed:

The island looked enchanting as we approached, as I think it always must, though we had the advantage of seeing it first steeped in the most golden sunshine that ever hallowed lake or shore. The colours were up on all the little vessels in the harbour. The national flag streamed from the garrison. The soldiers thronged the walls of the barracks; half-breed boys were paddling about in their little canoes, in the transparent waters the half-French, half-Indian population of the place were all abroad in their best. An Indian lodge was on the shore, and a picturesque dark group stood beside it. The cows were coming down the steep green slopes to the milking. Nothing could be more bright and Joyous.

Martineau recorded her impressions of Mackinac Island in Society in American, published after her return to England in 1837. That title and her Retrospect of Western Travel, also based on her American experiences, became best sellers, although her censorious treatment of aspects of frontier culture did little to endear her with American readers. She lavished on Michigan, however, and Mackinac Island, in particular, nothing but praise for their pristine beauty.

Martineau was one of a fascinating circle of female authors, including some of the most gifted and popular of their age, who recorded impressions of Michigan in the 1830s and 1840s. A surprisingly large proportion of these writers found their way to Mackinac Island, which by then had already become a mecca for a growing number of Great Lakes tourists. The vivid scenes they preserved offer intimate glimpses into the island's past.

Probably the earliest description of the island based on actual observation to be recorded in book form by a woman occurs in Juliette Kinzie's Wau-Bun: The "Early Days" in the Northwest. Although not published until 1856, the volume contains Kinzie's classic accounts of her life on the Illinois and Wisconsin frontier in 1830-33, including a narrative of her voyage from Detroit to Green Bay, with a stopover at Mackinac Island in 1830.

John Kinzie, Indian agent at Fort Winnegabo, located east of present-day Portage, Wisconsin, had married Juliette Magill at her home in New Hartford, New York, in August 1830. Escorting his bride to her new home at the fort, the two climbed aboard the Henry Clay at Detroit on a dark, rainy evening in September. The vessel, a state-of-the-art craft, part of the Lake Erie Steamboat Line fleet, splashed northward, weathering a storm off Thunder Bay, and docked at the Mackinac Island pier at nine o'clock the next evening. That night the Kinzies enjoyed the hospitality of Robert and Elizabeth Stuart. A long-time friend of Kinzie, Stuart had joined John Jacob Astor's fur-trading empire in 1810 and had served as agent of Astor's American Fury Company, at Mackinac since 1819.

As Juliette Kinzie observed following a visit to the Mission Church and school operated by the Reverend William Ferry and his wife Amanda:
These were the palmy days of Mackinac. As the headquarters of the American Fur Company and the entire port of the whole North West all the trade in supplies and goods on the one hand, and in furs, and products of the Indian country on the other, was in the hands of the parent establishment or its numerous outposts scattered along Lakes Superior and Michigan, the Mississippi, or through still more distant regions….It was no unusual thing, at this period, to see a hundred or more canoes of Indians at once approaching the island, laden with their articles of traffic; and if to these we add the squadrons of large Mackinac boats constantly arriving from the outposts, with the furs, peltries and buffalo robes collected by the distant traders, some idea may be formed of the extensive operations and important position of the American Fur Company, as well as the vast circle of human beings either immediately or remotely connected with it.

Following their inspection of the Mission House and the newly constructed Mission Church, the Kinzies hastened to finish their tour of the village. Kinzie noted the residence of Madam LaFramboise, a wealthy and influential leader of the local metis community, who continued operating her husband's fur-trading enterprise following his murder in 1807; the Indian Agency House, "with its luxuries of piazza and gardens," sprawled at the foot of the cliff surmounted by the fort and the "collection of rickety, primitive looking buildings," occupied by the officials of the American Fur Company. Following a luncheon with Dr. and Mrs. David Mitchell, another notable island family and long-time friends of Kinzie, the newlyweds hurried aboard the Henry Clay.

As the ship steamed out of the little harbor, Kinzie enjoyed one final breathtaking view. "The sloping beach with the scattered wigwams, and the canoes drawn up here and there-the irregular, quaint-looking houses-the white walls of the fort, and beyond one eminence still more lofty, crowned with the remains of old Fort Holmes."

Glancing down into the crystal-clear water, she saw fish gliding beneath her and objects lying on the sandy bottom, perfectly visible in fifty feet of water. "I could hardly wonder," Kinzie quipped, "at the enthusiastic lady who exclaimed: 'Oh, I could wish to be drowned in these pure, beautiful waters!'"

In 1830 the appearance of a steamship in the Straits of Mackinac was a rare event. The Henry Clay had deviated from its regular Buffalo-to-Detroit run specifically to carry government officials and others bound for Indian treaty negotiations at Green Bay, Wisconsin. But by the summer of 1836, when Harriet Martineau visited the island, a growing fleet of steamers and sailing vessels routinely plied the northern waters.

Nevertheless, Martineau narrowly missed the opportunity to see Mackinac Island. Despite a jolting stagecoach ride from Detroit to Chicago along the abominable Chicago Military Road, she intended to return over an even worse stretch farther to the north, the Territorial Road. In Chicago she learned that a severe rainstorm had rendered that road impassable The Milwaukee, scheduled to leave the following day for Detroit, offered an obvious answer to the dilemma. Six days of sailing brought her to Mackinac Island.

To Martineau's dismay, the captain intended to remain at Mackinac only long enough to unload his cargo; passengers would not be allowed ashore. Refusing to accept the "dreadful idea that we might be carried away from this paradise, without having set foot on it," Martineau, with the assistance of a fellow passenger, referred to only as Mr. D (most probably Michael Dousman, a well-known fur trader and long-time resident of the island), hatched a scheme. The fur trader would insist that his cargo of pelts not be unloaded until morning and his workers, he assured Martineau, would do so "with the utmost possible slowness," gaining her time for a brief look at the island. A friend communicated Martineau's plight to the fort commander, Colonel George M. Brooks, and he and his family graciously agreed to rendezvous with her at 5:00 A.M. for a hurried tour of the island.

Martineau described the charming ramble she enjoyed, beginning at the slope behind the fort:

We wound about in a vast shrubbery, with ripe strawberries underfoot, wild flowers all around, and scattered knolls and opening vistas tempting curiosity in every direction. "Now run up," said the commandant, as we arrived at the foot of one of these knolls. I did so, and was almost struck backwards by what I saw. Below me was the Natural Bridge of Mackinac of which I had heard frequent mention. It is a limestone arch, about one hundred and fifty feet high in the center, with a span of fifty feet: one pillar resting on a rocky projection in the lake, the other on the hill. We viewed it from above, so that the horizon line of the lake fell behind the bridge, and the blue expanse of waters filled the entire arch. Birch and ash grew around the bases of the pillars, and shrubbery tufted the sides and dangled from the bridge. The soft rich hues in which the whole was dressed seemed borrowed from the autumn sky.

But even the breathtaking view of Arch Rock paled to that which she observed from the site of Fort Holmes. It moved her to biblical hyperbole:
I can compare it to nothing but to what Noah might have seen, the first bright morning after the deluge. Such a cluster of little paradises rising out of such a congregation of waters, I can hardly fancy to have been seen elsewhere. The capacity of the human eye seems here suddenly enlarged, as if it could see to the verge of the watery creation. Blue, level waters appear to expand for thousands of miles in every direction; wholly unlike any aspect of the sea. Cloud shadows, and specks of white vessels, at rare intervals, alone diversify it. Bowery islands rise out of it; bowery promontories stretch down into it; while at one's feet lies the melting beauty which one almost fears will vanish in its softness before one's eyes; the beauty of the shadowy dells and sunny mounds, with browsing cattle, and springing fruit and flowers. Thus and no otherwise, would I fain think did the world emerge from the flood.

Martineau had enough time left to enjoy with Colonel Brooks a fine breakfast rarely encountered on the frontier of "rich cream, new bread and butter, fresh lake trout and a pile of snow-white eggs." However, when she asked about the climate, Brooks hinted that Mackinac Island was not quite as Edenlike as her few short hours there led her to believe. "We have nine months winter, and three months cold weather," he told her.

Martineau bid farewell to her host and family and boarded the Milwaukee, whose captain, looking grave over the delay his headstrong passenger had cost him, sailed from the harbor at about 9:00 A.M. As the island receded she felt delight "at having the possession of its singular imagery for life "mingled with the sorrow of leaving it. She wrote, "I could not have believed how deeply it is to regret a place, after so brief an acquaintance with it.

A year later, in July 1837, another cultivated British writer arrived on Mackinac Island. Anna Jameson, a beautiful Irish redhead, had embarked on a tour to the north country, in part to escape the torments of an unhappy marriage to a cold-hearted Toronto judge. She enjoyed a pleasant two-day voyage from Detroit to Mackinac on the steamer Thomas Jefferson. Her distinguished fellow travelers included the Reverend Samuel A. McCoskry, bishop of the Episcopal diocese of the new state of Michigan, veteran frontier fighter General Hugh Brady and one of Daniel Webster's sons, either Daniel Fletcher or Edward. Hastily deposited on the wharf as the steamer churned out of the harbor, Jameson found the only full-fledged hotel there completely full. Fortunately, she secured lodging with Indian agent Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and his family. Jameson soon forged a warm friendship with Schoolcraft's wife, Jane, and later accompanied her on a canoe trip to visit her Chippewa relatives in Sault Ste. Marie.

During her nearly week-long sojourn on the island, Jameson toured Arch Rock, Skull Cave and Fort Mackinac, and attended a Sunday service at the Old Mission Church. But she was most interested by the many Indians encamped on the beach. These Ottawa, Chippewa, Potawatomi, Winnebago and Menominee families had made their annual pilgrimage to the island to receive treaty payments. Jameson preserved a skillfully crafted portrait of the colorful camp in her travel narrative Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, published in three volumes in 1838:

There were more than one hundred wigwams, and round each of these lurked several ill-looking, half-starved, yelping dogs. The women were busied about their children, or making fires and cooking, or pounding Indian corn in a primitive sort of mortar, formed of part of a tree hollowed out, with a heavy rude pestle which they moved up and down as if churning. The dress of the men was very various-the cotton shirt, blue or scarlet coat; were most general; but many had no shirt nor vest, merely the clothe leggings, and a blanket thrown round them as drapery; the faces of several being most grotesquely painted. The dress of the women was more uniform; a cotton shirt, and cloth leggings and moccasins, and a dark blue blanket. Necklaces, sliver armlets, silver earrings, and circular plates of silver fastened on the breast, were the usual ornaments of both sexes. There may be a general equality of rank among the Indians; but there is evidently all that inequality of conditions which difference of character and intellect might naturally produce; there were rich wigwams and poor wigwams; whole families ragged, meager and squalid, and others gay with dress and ornaments, fat and well-favored.

Jameson grew to appreciate Indian culture. She like the Indians and they liked her, christening her The Fair English Chieftainess on Mackinac Island and, following her shooting on the Sault rapids in a birch-bark canoe, Woman of the Bright Foam. She devoted 225 pages of her Winter Studies to detailed and sympathetic descriptions of her experiences among the Indians at Mackinac Island and Sault Ste. Marie. 

Those who would recapture this era of Mackinac's past are fortunate that such a gifted and sensitive writer spent time there. But because she dared to defy the incipient Victorian society's mores by traveling unchaperoned to the northern frontier, Jameson was censured by another female writer who visited Mackinac three years later.

Eliza Steele, a prim and proper author of religious books, admonished the female readers of her travel narrative A Summer Journey in the West against committing error such as Jameson had, "which the very witchery of her genius would blind you." Steele sniffed, "However passionate a desire you may entertain for the picturesque, I hope you may never leave the protection of your friends and wander in search of it alone."

In early 1840 Steele had embarked, properly protected, from her home in New York City on a four-thousand-mile tour through the Great Lakes. On July 4 her steamer, the Constellation, approached Mackinac Island, just as the fort's cannon boomed out its midday salute in honor of the national holiday.

Steele enjoyed an afternoon's ramble about the island, viewing Arch Rock, the old French buildings in the village and the fort. She met the fort commander and Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and family. Steele's impressions of the Indians she encountered differed radically from Jameson's. 

Upon the beach a party of Indians had just landed,, and we stood while they tood down their blanket sail, and hauled their birch bark canoe about twenty feet long, upon the shore. These are the Menominees or wild rice eaters, the ugliest Indians I had ever seen-also Winebagoes, with dark skin, low foreheads and shaggy hair, and have no pretentious to dress.

Steele was no more impressed with Indian music. As the Constellation pulled away from the island that afternoon, she observed,

Upon the shore sat a group of unearthly beings, one of whom struck several taps upon a sort of drum, accompanied by the others in what sounded like a wolf recitative-at the end of this all united in a yell which dyed away over the lake, much in the style of a howling blast accompanied by the shrieks of a drowning traveler.

While the prudish Steele perceived Mackinac Island's colorful sights and sounds as ugliness and shrieks, other interpreted them with greater toleration. In August 1843 Margaret Sarah Fuller arrived for a stay on the island. She encountered nearly two thousand Indians encamped along the beach and the descriptions she recorded in Summer on the Lakes (1844) offer a more sympathetic treatment of Indian culture.
Fuller was one of the most distinguished literary women of her era. Her credentials included being a friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, a member of the transcendentalist circle and editor of that movement's literary journal The Dial, a critic for Horace Greeley's New York Tribune and a prominent advocate for various reforms, including women's rights. Fuller penned vibrant landscapes of Arch Rock, Sugar Loaf, Fort Mackinac, the view from Fort Holmes and especially the Indians-while deftly inserting her feminist viewpoint:

On the other side, along the fair curving beach, below the white houses scattered on the declivity, clustered the Indian lodges, with their amber-brown matting so soft and bright of hue in the late afternoon sun. The first afternoon I was there, looking down from a near height, I felt that I never wished to see a more fascinating picture. It was an hour of the deepest serenity; bright blue and gold, with rich shadows. Every moment the sunlight fell more mellow. The Indians were grouped and scattered among the lodges, the women preparing food, in the kettle or frying pan, over the many small fires, the children, half naked, wild as little goblins, were playing both in and out of the water. Here and there lounged a young girl, with a baby at her back, whose bright eyes glanced, as if born into a world of courage and of joy, instead of ignominious servitude and slow decay. Some girls were cutting wood, a little from me, talking and laughing in the low musical tone, so charming in the Indian women. Many bark canoes were upturned upon the beach, and by that light, of almost the same amber as the lodges, others coming in, their square sails set, and with almost arrowy speed, though heavily laden with dusky forms, and all the apparatus of their household. It was a scene of ideal loveliness, and these wild forms adorned it, as looking so much at home in it.

Fuller stayed on the island nine days, spending much of her time with the Indians. From her observations, she became convinced that the Indian women occupied "a lower place than women among the nations of European civilization." While saddened by the wretched state many Indians had been reduced to by traders' whiskey and missionaries' zeal to eradicate their native culture, she felt her experiences had acquainted her with the soul of the Indian race and "there was a greatness, unique and precious, which he who does not feel will never duly appreciate the majesty of nature in the American continent."

Fuller took a side trip to Sault Ste. Marie, where she emulated Jameson's earlier feat of shooting the rapids in a canoe. Returning to Mackinac Island for several more days, she watched the Indians depart, not as pleasant a sight as their arrival. Furthermore, she noted,

They left behind, on all the shore, the blemishes of their stay,--old rags, dried boughs, fragments of food, the marks of their fires, Nature likes to cover up and gloss over spots and scars, but it would take her some time to restore that beach to the state it was before they came.

A generation would pass before another coterie of female writers fell under Mackinac Island's spell. In 1870 Constance Fenimore Woolson published the first of many articles, short stories and novels about island life. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, she was joined in her literary efforts at mining the island's history, legends and romantic beauty by Mary Hartwell Catherwood, Lorena M. Page, Grace Franks Kane and others.

Today, thousands of tourists come each year to enjoy spectacular sunsets and sunrises, climb the steps to Fort Mackinac, sit for a spell in the quaint pews of the Old Mission Church, gaze through Arch Rock, contemplate Sugar Loaf, imagine the horror of Alexander Henry awaking in Skull Cave and savor many of the same attractions that Harriet Martineau, Juliette Kinzie, Anna Jameson, Eliza Steele and Margaret Sarah Fuller marveled at more than a century and a half ago. And of those who really get to know the island many would agree with Martineau that it remains "the wildest and tenderest piece of beauty that I have yet seen on God's earth."

Larry Massie is an author of numerous books and articles on Michigan history and a frequent contributor to Michigan History.

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