The Wolf's Head: Writing Lake Superior

John Abbott is a professor of history at Laurentian University’s Algoma University College. He is the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste Marie and The History of Fort St. Joseph.

It was in elementary school, where the social studies curriculum
stresses the concrete, animate, and dramatic, that Peter Unwin was
encouraged to envision Lake Superior as a wolf’s head. The image and
its associated mystique stuck with him, impelling him to write this
book, a sustained sardonic commentary on the conventional wisdom
concerning some of the region’s people and events.

Aboriginal people who retained their traditional integrity come off
well in these pages. Those, like Jane Schoolcraft, who went “white”
and were admired by generations of Caucasian commentators, do not.
Historical giants such as Henry Schoolcraft and Bishop Frederic Baraga
really had feet of clay. The former was a “cold, absent, and
increasingly racist husband,” obsessed by the effort of employing his
modest intellectual gifts to create a scholarly reputation of
international importance. He shirked his responsibilities as Indian
Agent and cheated the government in submitting his accounts. He, like
Baraga, was a religious fanatic, though in the fanaticism department
Baraga was a special case. For him, all that mattered was the body count
of heathens saved through baptism.

In similar fashion, Unwin re-examines Radisson’s adventures, the
grotesque project to extract the Ontonagon copper boulder from its
wilderness confines, Silver Islet’s fabled mine, the lake fishery, and
the Edmund Fitzgerald saga. The author’s angle is sometimes quirky,
often iconoclastic, and always thought-provoking. The book is a good
read, recommended for those who have sufficient knowledge of the
region’s history to recognize when Unwin goes over the top.