Map of Indian Reservation on Pigeon River and Lake Superior, Minnesota (Emerson, 1858)

The General Land Office survey of the Grand Portage reservation, certified at the Surveyor General’s Office in St. Paul by Charles L. Emerson on 9 October 1858: the land the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Ojibwe) kept under the treaty of La Pointe in 1854. It is bounded by the Pigeon River on the north and Lake Superior on the south; on the east by a line run N 29° W from Hat Point to the Pigeon, and on the west by the Reservation River and a line run N 29° W from the lakes at its head, both lines with their mile posts, chainages and compass variations; the contents are given as 41,046.39 acres. Two routes run inland from the head of Grand Portage Bay: the Grand Portage, the Ojibwe carrying place around the falls and rapids of the lower Pigeon long before the fur trade made it famous, to the river above the falls; and a double-line “Indian Trail” west to the inland lakes, with an “Indian Sugar Camp” beside its western end. The Pigeon is drawn with its rapids, a 45-foot fall (Partridge Falls) with its own short portage, and the mouth of the Arrow River; hills are hachured along the river and on Hat Point. This is the file’s second sheet, an uncoloured drawing of the same plat without the title, the certificate and the names of the village, the bay and the lake that the signed first sheet carries.

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