Food production is becoming a significant contributor to the economy of the Western Upper Peninsula. But food production is not new to the region and in fact, commercial farming began before copper and iron mining did. Historical record indicates that farming began among the Ojibwa in the region in the late 1830s, introduced by the Methodist Missionaries assigned to the region.

In 1832, Henry R. Schoolcraft and Lieut. James Allen conducted what was called the Schoolcraft and Allen Expedition to the North-West Indians. Allen’s report to the Secretary of War, published in April, 1834, included his concern for the condition and welfare of the Ojibwa in the face of the collapsing fur trade.

“It will be perceived that the condition of the Chippewa Indians is rapidly approaching a crisis,” Allen wrote, “when their increased population and decreased resources must bring upon them great calamities, unless a considerable change is previously effected in their mean of subsistence and mode of life.”

Although large amounts of the lands they owned were generally poor, Allen reported, there is land enough of the richest quality for sustainable agriculture, in fact, he wrote, agricultural potential could support ten times their population.

“But they have not any where sought a living from agriculture,” Allen reported, “and in parts where the soil is richest, the (Ojibwa) most in need, they have been the least attentive to this means of supplying their wants;

Although the Ojibwa did not practice traditional agriculture as the Native Americans to the south, they are usually classified as hunters and gatherers. However it is important to study their economic lifestyle for a better appreciation of it. They had developed complex cottage industries and following a prescribed pattern for gathering their foodstuffs.

Writing for Rural Insights, in 2020, historian and author Russell Magnaghi, in his article The Central Upper Peninsula’s Native Americans, Part two, stated that although the Ojibwa did not practice traditional agriculture as the Native Americans to the south, they are usually classified as hunter-gatherers. The three most important vegetable materials, he continued, were maple sugar, wild rice, and a variety of berries, of which blueberries were the most dominant.

Magnaghi went on to write of the Catholic and Methodist missions on the west and east shores of Keweenaw Bay.

“Here the missionaries had introduced farming,” he wrote, “and in the gardens were found root crops: beets, peas, turnips and all-important potatoes.”

According to historical documents, the farm was started by Methodist missionary William H. Brockway in 1838 or 1839, six to seven years before the first mining company began operations in the region.

In his memoir, Lights and Shades of Missionary Life, Missionary and author John Pitezel wrote:

“There was much hard work done on the farm by brother Brockway and Indians hired by him for this purpose, in clearing, fencing, plowing, planting, and cultivating crops.”

Pitezel was transferred to the Kewanenon, near L’Anse, from Sault Ste. Marie in 1844. He wrote of the first year there in his memoir, including:

“Brother Brown had raised and stored away about fifty bushels of excellent potatoes, and left some fine turnips in the ground, which, with our scanty supplies, and the unusually hard winter which was just at hand, afforded us great relief, and enabled us to feed many hungry persons, who looked to us when other sources failed.”

Pitezel wrote that in 1845, the garden had produced an abundance of vegetables. The potato crop had yielded a surplus, and in 1846, he took them in a large boat to the mine location at Eagle River and sold them for $45 in gold.

“This was the first surplus the mission had produced,” he wrote.

The farm at the Ojibwa mission near L’Anse is the first productive farm in the western U.P. that found its way into the historical record. The second farm to be recorded was that of Daniel Cash, on the bank of the Ontonagon River.