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The Manitou Islands sit in the middle of northern Lake Michigan, approximately 15 miles off the coast of Michigan. They are part of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and administered/managed by the National Park Service.
See the interactive Google Map at the bottom of the post!
Three key facts about this map
“Manitou” refers to a spirit or supernatural force
Many Native American communities used the word “Manitou” to reference a spiritual or life force that deserves reverence – the term is used frequently in Algonquian languages across North America. There are many other geographic landmarks that use the name “Manitou” (or derivations) primarily in areas like Southern Canada, Michigan and Wisconsin where communities speaking Algonquian languages live.
According to legend, the Manitou Islands represent baby bears that lost their mother
The Manitou Islands have a sad origin story. According to legend, the bear named Mishe Mokwa and her two bear cubs were escaping a forest fire in present-day Wisconsin. The three bears swam across Lake Michigan, but only the mother successfully reached the opposite shore – her two cubs drowned and created the Manitou Islands 🙁 .
Legend says that the great spirit, Manitou, covered the cubs with sand and created the Manitou Islands. Meanwhile, Mishe Mokwa lies and waits for her cubs to reach the shore, represented by the great Sleeping Bear Dunes that overlook the two islands from the mainland.
There is a former Nazi warship shipwrecked on the southern shore of South Manitou Island
The stretch of water surrounding the islands is treacherous – there are more than 50 shipwreck sites dating back to the 1830s. One of these shipwrecks is the SS Francisco Morazán – a former Nazi cargo ship originally called Arcadia.
The ship was captured by the British in 1945 and subsequently transferred between multiple countries before eventually operating as a cargo vessel in the US, often transporting goods between Chicago, Montreal, Miami and across the Atlantic to ports like Rotterdam. The ship ran aground in 1960 on a sandy shoal about 300 ft. from South Manitou Island during foggy weather (as seen in the Google Map below).
Additional links and sources
- Legend of Mishe Mokwa and the origin of the islands (link, published in 2012)
- History of the islands from the NPS (link)
- Information on the shipwreck of SS Francisco Morazan (link, published in 2006)
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