cop.<^
NE-SAW-IE-WON
A TALE OF
.R'f^ATERS THAT RUN DOWN
FROM LAKE SUPERIOR TO THE SEA
HELEN M. MARTIN
it
GREAT LAKES
REGION
LIBRARY OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
IN MEMORY OF
STEWART S. HOWE
JOURNALISM CLASS OF 1928
STEWART S. HOWE FOUNDATION
551.31
M364n
cop. ?.■
I .H.S.
NE-SAW-JE-WON
SPECIAL EDITION
For Private Distribution
Copyright, 1939, by
M. D. Harbaugh
Printed in the United States of America by
The William Feather Company
Cleveland, Ohio
as the Ottawas say
A Tale of
THE WATERS THAT RUN DOWN
FROM LAKE SUPERIOR TO THE SEA
by
HELEN M. MARTIN
To Dr. Frank Leverett and to the NLemory of
Mr. Frank B. Taylor:
Through nearly half a century Dr. Leverett and Mr. Taylor
explored and deciphered the records made by the continental
glaciers during the Ice Age. Front their studies was revealed
the fascinating history of the Great Lakes. They travelled,
mainly on foot, thousands of miles along the glacial moraines
and over the beaches, shores and beds of the ancient lakes,
measuring, recording and mapping as they went. They em-
bodied their observations and conclusions in many scientific
publications. Their ivork and their lives have been an inspira-
tion to other geologists who have folloived their footsteps and
to many students ivho absorbed, in their lecture halls, the
interesting story of glaciation. Much of this tale — NE-SAW-
JE-WON, of ^^the waters that run down from Lake Superior
to the sea'' — is draivn from their classic volume, ''The
Pleistocene of Michigan and Indiana and the History of the
Great Lakes'' and from Dr. Leverett' s ''Moraines and Shore
Lines of the Lake Superior Region" — publications of the
United States Geological Survey.
^ //n. rOREWORD
^
s" with which this
lake bit into the old Algonquin beaches where they had been
cut as cliffs. In the area where the beaches are horizontal the
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70
THE NIPISSING GREAT LAKES
?holo by Michigan Deptrlment of Conieritliom
PLATE 7.— CASTLE ROCK, ST. IGNACE, MICHIGAN
A REMNANT OF THE NIPISSING SHORE.
Nipissing beach is ten to twelve feet below the Algonquin,
but northward from the hinge line — extending from Great
Bend, Ontario, to Manistee, Michigan — they become widely
separated, until at Mackinac Island they are more than 175
feet apart, and over 360 feet separates them at Sault Ste. Marie.
In the Huron and Michigan basins the Nipissing beaches have
been lifted from the horizontal position along the same hinge
line as the Algonquin, but in the Superior basin they seem to
have a hinge of their own. Like the Algonquin beaches, the
Nipissing have also been destroyed in many places by the
work of the modern lakes — notably along the east side of the
Thumb north of Port Huron, along the east coast of Lake
Huron, and on both sides of Lake Michigan. Elsewhere they
are very pronounced, paralleling the present shore at no great
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NE-SAW-JE-WON
Photo by Michigan Department of Conservation
PLATE 8.— THE "FORTRESS" OF THE PICTURED ROCKS
NEAR MUNISING, MICHIGAN, ON LAKE SUPERIOR; NIPISSING AND MODERN
KM. ililliMBft.i*!'-»iM«ij mi'i' the rim of the old Cambrian sand-
stone "bowl," which crosses the river at the falls mu\ rapids
of the St. Mary's. So recently did this separation take place
77
NE-SAW-JE-WO N
that the river has accompHshed little gorge-cutting and little
destruction of the rapids.
The Modern Great Lakes
When all the waters had ceased to flow through the North
Bay outlet and all finally poured southward to Lake
Erie, the present stage of the Great Lakes was begun. These
lakes, like their glacial ancestors, are building beaches, mak-
ing shore cliffs, cutting caves and arches in rocky headlands,
and deepening fjords — as along Isle Royale and Les Cheneaux.
In other places they are straightening shores by building bars
and spits across the bays, creating — as did Lake Nipissing
along the Lake Michigan coast — small lakes barred from the
large lake by dune-capped sand bars. Sands from their shores
are being piled by the wind high in dunes. Dunes along Lake
Michigan are as high as, if not the highest dunes in the world.
In places like the Sleeping Bear — on the Point of that name
on the northwestern coast of the Southern Peninsula of Michi-
gan— the dunes are perched atop the bordering moraine; in
other places they bury the Algonquin and Nipissing shores.
Down-cutting of the outlets continues, so that beaches lower
than the Nipissing have been made by the modern lakes. One
of these beaches, which is fairly strong and can be traced
around the lakes, is called the Algoma beach, from the place
where it was first noticed on North Channel of Lake Huron.
The connecting rivers of the Great Lakes also have had an
interesting and complicated history, as they developed with
the changing lakes. In order of age (in the present arrange-
ment of the lake-river system) these rivers are St. Clair, De-
troit, Niagara, Nipigon, St. Lawrence and St. Mary's. Nipi-
gon River is the largest tributary of Lake Superior and in its
lower course flows across the dry bed of old Lake Nipigon,
once the most northerly bay of Lake Algonquin. So many
78
THE MODERN GREAT LAKES
features of the Great Lakes are unique, it is not surprising; to
lind that the delta of St. Clair River is most unusual, for it
is built by a stream flowing from one lake into another.
Earlier in the story we found that this river had to cut across
the Port Huron moraine, south of Port Huron, in order to
carry the waters of the glacial lakes. Thus the present river
acquired some tools which had been left in the channel when
the former stream became sluggish or disappeared. These, in
small amount, the present river has ground up, carried into
Lake St. Clair, and dropped when the current was slackened
in the quiet waters of the lake. The delta has been increased
in size — principally after all the morainic materials were car-
ried away — by sediments which have been washed by storm
waves from the Lake Huron shores. In the narrow southern
part of Lake Huron waves are cutting material from the
Canadian shore; the coarse material is deposited on the Cana-
dian side at Point Edward, but the finer is being carried by the
river to the American side, building the delta — the famous
St. Clair flats — farther out into Lake St. Clair.
The narrow part of Detroit River, between Belle Island
and Delray, is the part of its channel cut across the moraine
which separated the Erie and the Huron ice lobes and which
for a time held the waters of Lake St. Clair at a higher level.
At first the river flowed across the moraine in several chan-
nels, but eventually it deepened the present channel opposite
Detroit and drew all the overflow from Lake St. Clair through
one channel. Then for a time the river widened, as far
south as Crosse Isle, into small Lake Rouge which existed long
enough to build a distinct beach. Many of the older cottages
on Grosse Isle are built on the Rouge beach. South of Wyan-
dotte the river once entered Lake Erie through many chan-
nels or distributaries, and probably built a delta of the ma-
terials it washed from the broad flat moraine which it crosses
at Trenton. But lifting of the lake level has submerged the
delta front, and deepening of the river has drawn the water
79
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R i: V 1 1: w AN I) iM s and lake beds be-
came the fertile gardens of agriculture. And not the least of
their significance, the shores of these lakes offer some of the
most magnificent scener>' in the world.
81
NE-SAW-JE-WON
What of the future? Lakes are but ephemeral features of
any landscape. The Great Lakes, like all others, are doomed
to extinction. Slowly they are filling, slowly their outlets are
being lowered, and eventually they will be drained; but as
long as the rock sill at Buffalo holds — or until Niagara River
cuts back to Lake Erie — the upper lakes will remain as lakes.
Measurements of Niagara Falls since 1827 show that the
Horseshoe Falls are cutting back at the average rate of four
to five feet each year and no longer have the smooth horseshoe
curve at their crest which gave them their name. Until St.
Mary's River cuts through the Cambrian sandstone sill at the
rapids, Lake Superior will be held in its basin twenty feet above
Lake Huron. But when these rock barriers have been cut away,
the lakes will shrink in their basins and once again will become
a great river system. Then the records of these lakes also will
be shown by the beaches and shores they have made.
For a long time the land has been fairly stable; but occa-
sional slight earthquakes, the deepening of the waters on the
southern shores of the lakes, the withdrawal of water from the
northern shores — exposing the lake bottoms, and other evi-
dences, all show that uphf t has not ceased. Measurements indi-
cate that the North American continent is rising at the rate of
about one inch every ten years for each 100 miles north of the
Whittlesey hinge line. Will it rise high enough to spill the
lakes over the limestone sill at Chicago, which is only eight
feet above Lake Michigan, and return the flow to the Gulf of
Mexico ? Has the glacial period passed or are we in an inter-
glacial stage? Will the ice return and destroy all the evidences
by which this story is told? If this happens it will be so far in
the future — so many thousand of years — that another civili-
zation will write the story.
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