Noquet

A Michigan Historical Marker mentioning the Noquet at Little Bay de Noc
Total population
No longer exists as a distinct tribe
Regions with significant populations
United States (Upper Peninsula of Michigan)
Languages
Noquet (extinct)
Religion
Indigenous religion
Related ethnic groups
Menominee, Ojibwe, Odawa

The Noquet (/ˈnoʊkeɪ/, also spelled Nocquet, Noque, or Noc among others)^[a] were a group of Native Americans who lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.^[4] They spoke their own language in the Algonquian family, and are believed^[who?] to have been most closely related to, and subsequently absorbed by, the Menominee people.^[2][5]

Their name lives on in various places they inhabited throughout the peninsula, including Big Bay de Noc, Little Bay de Noc, Bay de Noc Township, and the Noquemanon River (today known as the Dead River), in addition to Lake Noquebay in northern Wisconsin.^[1][2][4][6] The group's name is believed^[who?] to have come from a Proto-Algonquian phrase meaning 'bear claw' or 'bear foot'.^[2][3][4][7] As of the 1800s, there remain no Native Americans who are recognized or identified as Noquet, either individually or collectively.^[2]

The ancestors of the Noquet are believed to have inhabited the central Upper Peninsula for at least two thousand years. If it is to be believed that the Noquet and Menominee were closely related, their most recent common ancestor was likely the Late Woodland Indians who lived on the western banks of Lake Michigan, with the Noquet's ancestors arriving in the Upper Peninsula ostensibly as early as 3000 BCE.^[6]

A complex trail network between Little Bay de Noc and the shore of Lake Superior near the modern city of Munising allowed the Noquet to move between their winter and summer territories.^[3] They lived along the shores of Lake Superior in modern Marquette County and Alger County during the summer, harvesting wild blueberries and cultivating wild rice as part of their diet.^[6] They also periodically inhabited the Potawatomi Islands off the coast of the Garden Peninsula in Lake Michigan's Green Bay, formerly known as the Noquet Islands. These include Summer Island, St. Martin Island, and the largest being Washington Island. However, this archipelago would be dominated by the distantly related and eponymous Potawatomi by 1650, one of the three main branches of Anishinaabe, with whom they maintained friendly relations. Like the Menominee, the Noquet territory may have extended past the current Michigan border into mainland Wisconsin, but this remains speculative.^[8]

The Spider Cave, an archeological site with ancient petroglyphs on the shores of Big Bay de Noc in Delta County, is arguably the most notable archaeological feature within the territory associated with the Noquet, as their ancestors were the first known people inhabiting this site, believed to have arrived in the immediate area thousands of years before present.^[6] Indeed, the artifacts found at the site, including arrowheads, returned a date of about 600 CE. The pictographs have since been damaged by spelunkers and exposure to the elements, and the area is now closed off to the public as part of Fayette Historic State Park.^[9]

Presque Isle Park in the city of Marquette is believed to be a historic burial ground for the Noquet. The Anishinaabe referred to this area as Gichi-namebini-ziibing.

In the early 1630s, Jean Nicolet recounted interactions with a group of Indians now theorized to be the Noquet near the mouth of the Menominee River, which today forms the border between Michigan and Wisconsin.^[10] Later Jesuit missionaries of the time would attest to the presence of Noquet villages at the head of what is now called Little Bay de Noc, near the modern settlement of Rapid River in Delta County. By 1659, the tribe would be attached to the mission of St. Michael, alongside the Menominee and Potawatomi.^[4][7] Decades later, fellow European explorer Jacques Marquette mentioned the Noquet as a small clan of Algonquian Indians numbering about 150. 17th-century Jesuit missionary and founder of Sault Ste. Marie, Claude Dablon, described the Noquet as the original inhabitants of the southern shore of Lake Superior, whose presence predated the arrival of prominent Anishinaabe tribes in their historic territory by potentially hundreds or thousands of years.^[6] In September of 1698, fellow French Jesuit Jean-François Buisson de Saint-Cosme documented the Noquet as one of the primary tribes inhabiting the shores of Green Bay.^[2]

While exploring the Great Lakes in 1721, Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix noted that only a few Noquet families remained. He additionally wrote in 1761, "I have been assured that [the Menominee] had the same original and nearly the same languages with the Noquet and the Indians at the Falls."^[10] This statement brought further validity to the group's ties with the Menominee. 19th-century Wisconsin-based trader Augustin Grignon (1780-1860), grandson of the famous French and Odawa military officer Charles Michel de Langlade, insisted that the Noquet were part of Menominee society by his time.^[6]

One of the only documented descendants of the Noquet was an Ojibwe chief named Marji Gesick (also spelled Matji-gigig, Mah-je-ge-zhik or Man-je-ki-jik), who helped lead white immigrant miners to plentiful iron deposits along the coast of Lake Superior and in the city of Ishpeming.^[3][6] His name has now been lent to an annual bike race in Marquette County — the Marji Gesick Mountain Bike Race. Gesick would die sometime between 1857 and 1862.^[6]

Little else is known about the Noquet today, and it is to be assumed that they were gradually integrated into the Menominee (and potentially the Ojibwe) nation throughout the 18th century, as a consequence of their territories overlapping, their deep linguistic and cultural ties, inter-tribal marriages, and a dwindling population due to disease.^[1][6][7]