Rural Northern Michigan’s summer cottages and lake life are famous, but less well known is its French history, which appears in remote and unexpected places. The impact of French culture in Northern Michigan can be seen as early as the mid-1600s when Father Marquette and Louis Joliet ventured through the area, soon followed by French-Canadian voyageurs seeking trade with Native Americans.
The 17th century saw the Mackinac Straits become an important center for the fur trade, a strategic military post, and a rendezvous location. Conventional wisdom tells us that the French-era ended with the coming of the British and the Americans. But that’s not the full story.
Michigan’s early French-Canadian communities in places like St. Ignace and Sault Ste. Marie were already deeply rooted when the British flag began to fly over the straits. But local residents, including some families formed of French-Canadian men and Native American women, remained. Their descendants share a unique heritage to this day. A second wave of French-Canadians arrived in Michigan during the lumber era, Catholic French-speakers who formed new ethnic enclaves. Along with the older communities, these communities sometimes became known as Frenchtowns.
A short drive from the Straits of Mackinac, three such Frenchtowns once existed. They were founded over the course of 250 years, populated by three unique groups of French-Canadian settlers: Onaway, a small town in Presque Isle County, had a Frenchtown beginning around the turn of the 20th century, Vide Poche or ‘Veepush’ is found in Mackinac County, and Little Canada sits in central Cheboygan county.
Vide Poche, locally known as Veepush, is near where Father Jacques Marquette founded a Jesuit mission in 1671. He is buried close by. Veepush is a small warren of streets named for early residents (Lajoie, Antoine, Morneau, and Paquin) leading from the highway down to the shoreline facing Mackinac Island. French for “empty pocket”, it is an uncommon place name in North America.
It is unclear when it became known as Veepush, but it may have gained the moniker after the closure of Fort de Baude in 1681. Trappers and traders who remained when the fort closed formed the fledgling community of St. Ignace, which was later eclipsed by Fort Michilimackinac.
The name was well-established by the late 1800s. A news story from February 4, 1893 noted that “There has been sixteen dances in ‘Veepush’ this week and there are to be 23 more before next Wednesday.” These were probably dances held for Mardi Gras, French fêtes in advance of Ash Wednesday, which fell on February 15 that year.
South across the Straits of Mackinac in Cheboygan county, another French-Canadian settlement arose in the mid-to-late 1800s. Little Canada was a small settlement of migrants from Montreal, who arrived from Green Bay, Wisconsin. According to an article by Audrey Casari in the Cheboygan Tribune, these eighteen families were dissatisfied with life in Green Bay and moved to Cheboygan county in 1880 setting up farms and working in the lumber industry.
Local businesses advertised their wares to the Cheboygan French-speaking community in Michigan’s French-language newspapers of the day. French-Canadian customs took root, such as a marriage tradition called the charivari. This custom later became the basis of the Sturgeon Shivaree on Black Lake.
French-Canadians took part in local civic affairs and were passionate about French-Canadian life. The Cheboygan area had an active chapter of the Societé St. Jean-Baptiste, a French-Canadian nationalist organization based in Montreal. This movement sought to unite French-Canadians throughout North America, promote the French language, and instill cultural pride.
Today along Little Canada Road, St. Antoine Road, and Bourdeaux Road mailboxes still bear some French names. According to the U.S. Census data, Cheboygan County remains home to one of the largest concentrations of people who claim French-Canadian heritage in the state.
Just across the county line in Presque Isle County, another French-Canadian community arose around the turn of the 20th century. Part of Onaway came to be known as Frenchtown around 1900. In the early part of the 20th century, mills and factories brought migrants from French-Canadian communities near Windsor and Detroit. Their settlement was concentrated in a part of town where the most obvious physical feature is a lowland area with a creek running through it, reminiscent of life along the shores of Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River.
Numerous French-Canadian families lived in Frenchtown. My grandfather’s family moved there around 1902. They had moved north from River Rouge along with an extended family network hailing from the villages of Pointe aux Roches, Belle Rivière, and Tecumseh, Ontario on Lake St. Clair. They were sometimes known as ‘Muskrat French’ a term used in reference to Detroit area French-Canadians.
According to the U.S, census approximately 25 French-Canadian families lived in Frenchtown in 1910, comprising over 160 men, women and children. A small minority spoke only French. Onaway’s Frenchtown lasted only a few decades and today it is Frenchtown in name only. An informal commemorative display in Frenchtown can be seen on the cottage of a seasonal resident. A few houses remain in a landscape overgrown with old apple trees and lilac bushes.
Vide Poche, Little Canada, and Frenchtown represent three settlements, three eras, and three unique expressions of the French heritage in the Great Lakes. Yet these are place names that you won’t find on any map. Their memory and stories are passed on by descendants of the original pioneers or by people who live there today.
You would be hard pressed to find a Québécois nationalist living in Little Canada, or a French speaker in Vide Poche. Onaway’s Frenchtown offers little more than small reminders of a distant past where the fiddle music of my grandfather Sam and his brother Louis, and their Detroit French patois, could be heard in their family homes.
Yet French-Canadian neighborhoods such as these, found from Monroe to Iron Mountain, are part of Michigan culture, places that tell us of our ancestors and their lives.
James LaForest is a contributing writer for Michigan Enjoyer.
