History
Prior to European exploration, the area of Lac Courte Oreilles was inhabited by the Ojibwa Indians. The first known visit by Europeans to the area was around 1660. Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers travelled from Chequamegon Bay on Lake Superior southward through the area in 1659 and stayed for a period at an Indian village on a lake that has been identified as Lac Courte Oreilles.
Jonathan Carver passed through the area in 1767 travelling north from the Mississippi River up the Chippewa River. He reported staying at the Indian village on Lac Courte Oreilles (he referred to it as Ottowaw Lakes) from June 22 through 29, 1767. He described the village as being on either side of a channel between two lakes which he referred to as the Ottowaw Lakes. He then travelled to the St. Croix River (by way of Grindstone Lake, Windigo Lake, the Namekagon Portage, and the Namekagon River) and thence northward to Lake Superior. In describing their visit to the Lac Courte Oreilles Indian village, the journals of Carver and another member of the expedition (James Stanley Goddard) state that they were the first white people to have visited the area. This claim would be contrary to the speculation described above that Radisson and Groseilliers visited the village in about 1660, more than one hundred years before.
The area was later visited by Henry Schoolcraft in 1831 who described the trip from the Namekagon River to Lac Courte Oreilles by way of the Namekagon Portage, Windigo Lake, and Grindstone Lake. Schoolcraft visited the Indian village on Lac Courte Oreilles and described it as being located at the outlet of the lake. From Carver's and Schoolcraft's descriptions, it appears that the Indian village was located on either side of the channel between Lac Courte Oreilles and Little Lac Courte Oreilles.
Lac Courte Oreilles and this village were well known to traders and explorers of the time and the village was one of the larger Indian settlements in the area. Schoolcraft listed its population as 504 persons in the statistical report arising out of his 1832 exploration to the sources of the Mississippi River, one of the largest Indian settlements in the region. The village's importance may have arisen from Lac Courte Oreilles's strategic place on the route between its location in the Chippewa River watershed over to the St. Croix River watershed. The latter watershed was reached from Lac Courte Oreilles by travelling north and west through Grindstone Lake, Windigo Lake, and over the Namekagon Portage to the Namekagon River in the St. Croix River watershed.
The Sawyer County Historical Society Website contains an interesting article regarding early "fishing clubs" that were located on Lac Courte Oreilles around the turn of the 20th Century."
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