The Meeting Place

The Meeting Place. Main Street, Crow Wing — Self-Guiding Trail. , This ''confluence'', or flowing together, of the Mississippi and Crow Wing rivers provide [sic] a prime opportunity for people, too, to come together. Both this bank and Crow Wing Island across the river have been camping and meeting places for hundreds of years, perhaps even thousands of years. Grassland openings in this area of pine and hardwood forest provided habitat for game, which in turn attracted Indian hunters and trappers. Ojibwe oral tradition, recorded by historian William Warren, tells of the legendary Ojibwe hunter No-Ka harvesting buffalo, elk and deer all in one day's hunt at the mouth of the Crow Wing in the 1700s. Warren also recorded the Ojibwe story of a major battle with a raiding party of Dakota warriors that occurred here in 1768. The ''Battle of Crow Wing'', the story states, was of major significant in securing this as Ojibwe territory. French fur traders under Joseph Marin and Joseph LaVerendrye may have frequented Crow Wing as early as the 1750s. Well-known traders James McGill, Jean Baptiste Perrault and Gabriel Attina camped and did business here in the late 1700s. Also trading at Crow Wing in the 1800s were Allan Morrison, Benjamin Baker, William Aitkin and Clement Beaulieu. By the middle of the 19th century this trading location known as Crow Wing had grown to become the best-known community in Central Minnesota.