The Legend of Sleeping Bear

According to a legend of the native Anishinaabek people, a mother bear and her two cubs were driven by forest fires from what is now Wisconsin and forced to swim across Lake Michigan. When the mother bear reached the Michigan shore, she turned to discover that her cubs had vanished. The Great Spirit was so touched by her plight that he allowed her to fall asleep there, creating Sleeping Bear Dune, and raised the two cubs to the surface of the lake where they became the two Manitou Islands.