"Indian Encampment, Whitefish Island"

Baawaating, a natural meeting place. Called Baawaating (place of the rapids) in Anishinaabemowin, the St. Marys River rapids and its abundant resources attracted Indigenous peoples from around the Great Lakes and beyond.

This watercolour painting by William Armstrong, originally titled Indian Encampment, Whitefish Island, depicts two traditional Anishinaabe structures situated on Whitefish Island. One is a conical-shaped wigwam and the other is a longhouse. Both are made of poles and covered with birchbark panels. A woman stirs a pot over a fire on the left side, while a man dressed in a white capot sits on a rock in the foreground. In the background there is a birchbark canoe resting on the ground.

William Armstrong immigrated to Canada from Ireland in 1851 and settled in Toronto. Trained as a civil engineer and artist, he travelled through the upper Great Lakes to Thunder Bay several times between 1859 and the early 1870s, sketching and painting Indigenous encampments, landscapes, the waning fur trade and growing industrial development of what would become northern Ontario.