Petosegay: The Man This Town Is Named For

This town carries the name of a man born around seventeen eighty-seven, an Odawa merchant and fur trader whose name was Petosegay. In the Odawa language it is often translated as rising sun, or light that is coming, and he was also known as Biidassige. His father was a French fur trader named Antoine Carre, and his mother was the daughter of an Odawa chief, so he grew up bridging two worlds.

He was baptized and took the name Ignatius Petosega. As a young man he moved his family to the southern shore of Little Traverse Bay, where he and his sons acquired land from the federal government, much of it the very ground the modern city now stands on. He prospered as a trader and was widely respected.

In the eighteen seventies, when settlers along Bear Creek organized their growing village, they named it Petoskey in his honor, an anglicized spelling of Biidassige. He lived a remarkably long life and died in eighteen eighty-five, said to be nearly one hundred years old. His name now marks the city, a state park, and the famous fossil stone found on his former lands.