The island was long home to an Odawa settlement and previous indigenous cultures before European colonization began in the 17th century.

[5] Andrew Blackbird, an official interpreter for the U.S. government and son of an Odawa chief, said the island was known locally after a tribe that had lived there.

The Menominee traditionally lived in a large territory of 10 million acres (40,000 km2) extending from Wisconsin to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Historic references include one by Father Frederic Baraga, a Slovenian missionary priest in Michigan, who in his 1878 dictionary wrote: Mishinimakinago; pl.-g.—This name is given to some strange Indians (according to the sayings of the Otchipwes [Ojibwe]), who are rowing through the woods, and who are sometimes heard shooting, but never seen.

One winter the Mi-shi-ne-macki naw-go on Mackinac Island were almost entirely annihilated by the Seneca people from western New York, who were one of the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.

They reportedly arrived in 1654 with a large party of Huron and Ottawa heading to Three Rivers; another visitor was an adventurer making a canoe voyage in 1665.

The Jesuit priest Claude Dablon founded a mission for the Native Americans on Mackinac Island in 1670, and stayed over the winter of 1670–71.

The British took control of the Straits after the French and Indian War and Major Patrick Sinclair chose the bluffs of the island for Fort Mackinac in 1780.

[16][13] The Jesuit Relations (1671) contains a long description of Mackinac Island: its fisheries, its phenomena of wind and tide, and the tribes who, now and in the past, have made it their abode.

"[17]The Relations also indicate the tremendous strategic importance of Michilimackinac/Mackinac Island as "the central point for all travel on the upper Great Lakes, and for a vast extent of wilderness and half-settled country beyond" to First Nations and Europeans (prior to the arrival of railroads).

However, Britain kept forces in the Great Lakes area until after 1794, when the Jay Treaty between the nations established U.S. sovereignty over the Northwest Territory.

[24] As a Military Lodge associated with the British 84th Regiment of Foot (Royal Highland Emigrants) St. John’s #15 meetings were held at the newly constructed Fort Mackinac in one of the rooms in the Officers Stone Quarters[25] and also in the upper part of the West Blockhouse.

[13] John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company was centered on Mackinac Island after the War of 1812 and exported beaver pelts for 30 years.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, commercial fishing for common whitefish and lake trout began to replace the fur trade as the island's primary industry.

As sport fishing became more popular in the 1880s, hotels and restaurants accommodated tourists coming by train or lake boat from Detroit.

[16] Between 1795 and 1815, a network of Métis settlements and trading posts was established throughout what is now the U.S. states of Michigan and Wisconsin and to a lesser extent in Illinois and Indiana.

The Métis have generally not organized as an ethnic or political group in the United States as they have in Canada, where they had armed confrontations in an effort to secure a homeland.

Hotels, restaurants, bars and retail shops hire hundreds of seasonal workers to accommodate the tens of thousands of visitors that visit the island between May 1st and October 31.

The bedrock strata that underlie the island are much older, dating to Late Silurian and Early Devonian time, about 400 to 420 million years ago.

[41] Mackinac Island contains a wide variety of terrain, including fields, marshes, bogs, coastline, boreal forest, and limestone formations.

[51] As it is separated from the mainland by 3 miles (4.8 km) of water, few large mammals inhabit the island, except those that traverse the ice during the winter months.

Rabbits, fox, raccoons, otters, mink, gray and red squirrels, and chipmunks are all common, as are the occasional beaver and coyote.

[53] The island is frequented by migratory birds on their trips between their summer and winter habitats, as it lies on a major migration route.

[54] Eagles and hawks are abundant in April and May, while smaller birds such as yellow warblers, American redstart, and indigo bunting are more common in early summer.

Flowering plants and wildflowers are abundant, including trillium, lady slippers, forget-me-nots, violets, trout lily, spring beauty, hepatica, buttercups, and hawkweeds in the forests and orchids, fringed gentian, butter-and-eggs, and jack-in-the-pulpit along the shoreline.

[57] The island can be reached by private boat, by ferry, by small aircraft and, in the winter, by snowmobile over an ice bridge.

Mackinac Island has the only example of northern French rustic architecture in the United States, and one of few survivors in North America.

[65] Mackinac Island is home to many cultural events, including an annual show of American art from the Masco collection of 19th-century works at the Grand Hotel.

It originally started when Native Americans began collecting maple sugar but in the 1800s the Murdick family created the first real candy store.

Scouts raise and lower twenty-seven flags on the island, serve as guides, and complete volunteer service projects during their stay.