Comments on: The River - Miniature Golf & Family Fun in Glen Arbor

By: Andrew McFarlane

Andrew McFarlane — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:58:46 +0000

Hey Ed & Sally, after consideration, our judges have decided to award you BOTH the prize (and to penalize the questioner for a bad question!).

By: Ed Hahnenberg

Ed Hahnenberg — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:34:21 +0000

One last comment...to assume that Charlevoix SAW the Sleeping Bear in 1721 would require more research. In 1720 he journeyed to America to explore the West and visit the Jesuit missions. Voyaging up the St. Lawrence, through the Great Lakes, and along the Illinois River, he reached the Mississippi and descended it to New Orleans. After a shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico he returned to France. In 1744 he issued his Histoire de la Nouvelle France (tr., 6 vol., 1900), which in a valuable appendix contains a detailed journal of his trip, the only full description of the interior of America in the first third of the 18th cent.

By: Ed Hahnenberg

Ed Hahnenberg — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:14:02 +0000

Your question goes from the singular to the plural...bad grammar. Perhaps an invalid question? My answers are the reverse. Two European explorers saw the Bear first and one several decades later is given credit for noting what the Bear had been referred to prior to 1721.

By: Ed Hahnenberg

Ed Hahnenberg — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:07:30 +0000

Correction to submission 3: "Although the French missionaries Pierre Porteret and Jacques Laragilier saw the Sleeping Bear FIRST in 1675, the first recorded name in French of the Sleeping Bear was "L'ours qui dort" found in Pierre Franscois Xavier Charlevoix's journal in 1721. So, the name's origin in French dates almost 50 years after the first Europeans visited the Sleeping Bear area.

By: Ed Hahnenberg

Ed Hahnenberg — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:02:33 +0000

Although the French missionaries Pierre Porteret and Jacques Largilier saw the Sleeping Bear FIRST in 167, in 1721, Jesuit historian-explorer Pierre Franscois Xavier Charlevoix described a large dune along Lake Michigan's Eastern shore as a "kind of bush" shaped like a reclining animal. His journal said "The French call it L'ours qui dort (the sleeping bear).

By: Sally Guzowski

Sally Guzowski — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:30:20 +0000

Pierre Franscois Xavier Charlevoix
1721
"L'ours qui dort"

By: Ed Hahnenberg

Ed Hahnenberg — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:05:21 +0000

The first white man known to have visited Michigan's Lower Peninsula was trapper-explorer Adrien Jolliet, who came to the peninsula's eastern shores in 1669. Fur trappers may have preceded him, but it was in 1675 that the first Europeans were recorded to have seen the Sleeping Bear area. They were Pierre Porteret and Jacques Largilier, attendants of Father Jacques Marquette. I have no idea what they called the sleeping bear in French.