 Various tribes of primarily Ojibwa Native Americans inhabited the region when the first white settlers began to arrive in the middle of the 19th century to attempt farming.The thin soils and short, cool summers made traditional farming difficult, and the region remained sparsely settled until the 1880s, when lumber interests began exploiting the region's vast tracts of white pine forests.The waterway provided an excellent means of transporting logs down to sawmills located along the way.