As long as 4,000 years ago, nomadic native tribes of the Great Lakes Basin area and beyond had made the annual trip to the area of, what is now called, Whitefish Island. The island lay in the centre of the great rapids, at the mouth of Lake Superior, and the turbulent waters were teeming with whitefish. The fish were so plentiful there that the natives named them Attikamak or "caribou of the water" and their abundance encouraged the development of both a seasonal and a permanent settlement. This settlement came to be known as Bawating, meaning "A river beaten to spray" in Ojibwe, and natives from as far away as James Bay to the Mississippi valley came to fish and trade.
The Ojibwe became the dominant tribe of the area and Bawating remained a stable seasonal and permanent Native settlement over the many generations until the first contact with European explorers, specifically
French missionaries, which renamed the site
Sault de Sainte Marie in 1669. Together the Native and European settlement represents the oldest continual community in North America.
