Andrea Erat, an Accounting major, considered the Manitou legend. Hemingway’s first known short story (written for his high school paper) took this Ojibway legend as its subject. The original story is available in Constance Cappel’s Hemingway in Michigan.  

The legend captured the youthful Hemingway’s imagination at a time when he saw first hand the cultural, social, and economic dislocation of the northern Michigan Ottawas and Ojibways. In addition to what he learned from the people he met in the Horton Bay area, for decades from 1900 on, Chicago news included stories about Native Americans pressing their claims to Chicago lakefront property.

At the same time he met the reality of Native Americans in northern Michigan, the young Hemingway encountered the idealized versions of Native Americans ready made for tourist consumption. The family attended the Hiawatha play; there also is an early photograph of the family wearing headdresses purchased near the Petoskey train station.