Mishipeshu, the Great Lynx Beneath the Waves

Long before lighthouses, lumber barons, and ghost ships — the people of the Great Lakes knew that something powerful lived in the deep cold water of Lake Superior. The Anishinaabe peoples (the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi) tell of Mishipeshu, the Great Lynx, or underwater panther.

Picture a creature with the head and paws of an enormous cat, its body armored in scales, with sharp spikes running down its back and a long, whipping tail. Some say parts of it gleam with copper. When it growls, the sound is the roar of rapids and storms. Mishipeshu rules the underworld of the water, and it is the guardian of the great deposits of copper in the Lake Superior country — the same copper that the U.P.’s mines would one day chase. To take that copper without respect was to provoke the panther’s fury.

There’s an old account, recorded by a Jesuit missionary named Claude Dablon, of four men who paddled out to gather copper from the creature’s home. The moment their canoe touched the water, a great voice boomed across the lake, accusing them of stealing. Mishipeshu rose against them, and only one man made it back to shore — alive just long enough to tell what had happened. To this day, many Anishinaabe consider it wrong to take copper from the lake, and offer tobacco to the water for safe passage.

Unlike many spooky campfire tales, this isn’t an invention — it’s a living spiritual tradition, thousands of years old, that deserves to be told with respect. But it is also, undeniably, the oldest and grandest “something in the water” story the Great Lakes have. When a sudden squall turns Superior black and furious in the space of minutes, you might remember who’s said to be down there, guarding his treasure.