Lake Superior. Lake Superior in central North America is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area and the third-largest by volume, holding 10% of the world's surface fresh water.
The northern and westernmost of the Great Lakes of North America, it straddles the Canada-United States border with the province of Ontario to the north, and the states of Minnesota to the northwest and Wisconsin and Michigan to the south. It drains into Lake Huron via St. Marys River, then through the lower Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence River and the Atlantic Ocean.
The Ojibwe name for the lake is gichi-gami, meaning great sea. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote this name as Gitche Gumee in the poem The Song of Hiawatha, as did Gordon Lightfoot in his song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
According to other sources, the full Ojibwe name is Ojibwe Gichigami or Anishinaabe Gichigami. The 1878 dictionary by Father Frederic Baraga, the first one written for the Ojibway language, gives the Ojibwe name as Otchipwe-kitchi-gami.
In the 17th century, the first French explorers approached the great inland sea by way of the Ottawa River and Lake Huron; they referred to their discovery as le lac superieur. Some 17th-century Jesuit missionaries referred to it as Lac Tracy. After taking control of the region from the French in the 1760s following their defeat in the French and Indian War, the British anglicized
The northern and westernmost of the Great Lakes of North America, it straddles the Canada-United States border with the province of Ontario to the north, and the states of Minnesota to the northwest and Wisconsin and Michigan to the south. It drains into Lake Huron via St. Marys River, then through the lower Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence River and the Atlantic Ocean.
The Ojibwe name for the lake is gichi-gami, meaning great sea. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote this name as Gitche Gumee in the poem The Song of Hiawatha, as did Gordon Lightfoot in his song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
According to other sources, the full Ojibwe name is Ojibwe Gichigami or Anishinaabe Gichigami. The 1878 dictionary by Father Frederic Baraga, the first one written for the Ojibway language, gives the Ojibwe name as Otchipwe-kitchi-gami.
In the 17th century, the first French explorers approached the great inland sea by way of the Ottawa River and Lake Huron; they referred to their discovery as le lac superieur. Some 17th-century Jesuit missionaries referred to it as Lac Tracy. After taking control of the region from the French in the 1760s following their defeat in the French and Indian War, the British anglicized
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