The Marquette Stone Is Really Cooper

By Paul Peterson, For The Mining Gazette
SKANEE — It’s a story with all the ingredients of a good mystery novel.There’s a famous Jesuit priest. Hostilities between warringIndian tribes. A noted author. And a slab of copper that could be worth a large sum of money, or at the very least, an important historical find.That’s the tale of the Marquette Stone, a saga that has evoked the interest of historians and treasure hunters alike for nearly a century.It all started in the year 1672 when famed missionary Father Jacques Marquette was on a journey between his mission at Ashland, Wis. and his home base in St. Ignace. Father Marquette, one of the first Jesuits to travel in the upper Midwest, often visited in the L’Anse area to spread the gospel to the Ojibwa Indians living there. He was traveling through the area at the time. On this particular summer day, Marquette and his party were warned by local Indians of the presence of a war party of Sioux in the area.
The Ojibwas were often at war with the Sioux, who were located in Minnesota at the time. In fact, the two tribes met in several large battles, including one at the mouth of the Ontonagon River. The story has it that the Marquette party reportedly stopped near what is now known as Chink’s Creek for a short rest. What the party left there would be the grist of a legend that remains to this day. The story fast forwards to the summer of 1921 when a 16-year-old trapper by the name of Ed Koski is setting his traps in the headwaters of the Huron River. In a tape-recorded interview many years later, Koski told of traveling up a small creek on a very hot day and finding a large copper slab with writing inscribed on it. Wiping away the moss and dirt that had accumulated on it, he saw three French names written on the slab, including Marquette’s. Koski assumed the slab, which measured approximately three feet in length and was nearly two feet wide, marked the burial spot of Marquette. He recalled other writing on the stone, but thought it was in Latin. If his estimates were correct, the slab would have weighed more than 120 pounds. It was propped up as if to indicate a grave marker.
Koski’s theory of a grave proved to be incorrect because Father Marquette died in 1675 and was buried near St. Ignace. The story is taken up in 1922 when a local logger by the name of James Leatherby offered to take author James Oliver Curwood to the site of the copper slab. Whether Leatherby learned of the stone’s location from Koski is not known Curwood, the author of the Kazan series and other adventures stories, owned a cabin in the Huron Mountains that had been built by Leatherby. On this day, he was on a picnic with his two daughters, Leatherby and a young Skanee man by the name of Rex Erickson. The party was near a local landmark called the Hog’s Back. Erickson would later say that he volunteered to stay with the two girls because he had a crush on Curwood’s oldest daughter.
“Leatherby told Curwood it would be a tough journey over rugged terrain, so he didn’t mind me staying back,” Erickson said in a 1973 interview. “It was a decision I would regret long afterwards.” He recalled Leatherby and Curwood being gone for nearly two hours and saying little after returning from their trip. Within a few years, the two men would take the secret of the copper slab’s location to their graves. Curwood, a physical fitness buff, died in 1927 at the age of 49. Leatherby died in 1936 at the age of 86. And a later effort to bring Ed Koski back to search for it would turn disastrous. Father Jacques Marquette was one of the more famous Jesuit priests in early America. He and fellow explorer Louis Jolliet were the first white men to discover the Mississippi River. A county and city in Michigan and a university in Wisconsin bear his name today.
But Marquette may also have left behind a mysterious copper slab during a journey across the Upper Peninsula in the summer of 1672. The most obvious question regarding the location of the so-called Marquette Stone is why Ed Koski never returned to it. Koski was a 16-year old trapper when he stumbled across the copper slab in 1921. But he was a logger for most of his life, according to noted U.P. historian Fred Rydholm in his book, “Superior Heartland.”
Heavy drinking and an auto accident in 1950 had left Koski in bad physical shape. By the time he returned to the area in 1964 to see if he could locate the stone, the area had changed drastically. The area contained virgin forests when Koski first saw the stone in 1921. But heavy logging in the area had removed many of the landmarks.
Rydholm, who has made several trips in an effort to locate the copper slab, believed Koski’s story. “In my estimation, the copper slab story was just too good to be made up,” Rydholm wrote. “Ed knew little or nothing of Marquette’s life.” On the 1964 trip to the area with Rydholm, Koski suffered some kind of heart attack, with severe chest pains and shortness of breath. Unable to get much help from the ailing Koski, the trip proved fruitless. Koski recovered from the bout and accompanied Rydholm on another trip to the area in 1965. But the expedition again turned up nothing. Rydholm went on to write that he believed the copper slab was likely located on a larger stream than Chink’s Creek, and that a beaver dam may have been built over where it had been located. Brian Jentoft of L’Anse, whose late father Alf often searched for the stone, doesn’t disagree with that theory.“There are three or four creeks up there where it might have been,” he said. “And beaver dams have been built on some of those streams.”
Koski died in 1985 at a nursing home in Iron River. The late Rex Erickson, who passed up the chance to go with James Leatherby and author James Oliver Curwood to the site in 1922, also attempted to find the location. “I looked for it on a couple of occasions, but the logging operations had changed the landscape so much,” said Erickson in a 1973 interview. Alf Jentoft made three trips in an effort to find the copper slab. Brian Jentoft has also made two expeditions to the area. He believes the copper slab is still there. “Everything in the story he (Koski) told made sense,” he said. “It was documented that Marquette was in the area during the time when the message was inscribed.” In addition to the Rydholm and Jentoft search efforts, the August Rautiola family of Ontonagon reportedly has been there on at least two occasions searching for the elusive artifact. Marquette often visited the area to spread the word of the gospel to the Ojibwa Indians living in the area. In the summer of 1672, he reportedly was on his way back to St. Ignace from Ashland, Wis. when news of the presence of a Sioux war party in the area was relayed to him.
It has been speculated by historians that the party stopped for a short rest near the headwaters of the Big Huron River. It was at that time the message was inscribed on the stone. “My Dad believed that one of the members of the Marquette party had died and that a memorial was put up in his honor,” said Jentoft. “It would have had to have been a very prominent member of the party, but not Marquette.” The value of the copper slab, which probably weighed in excess of 120 pounds, can’t be assessed. Historically, it might be invaluable. “To find something like that would be of great interest to many historical institutions,” Jentoft said. “I don’t know if you could really put a price tag on it.” Like Marquette, whose final resting place is a matter of much conjecture, the copper slab remains one of the enduring mysteries of the upper Midwest.

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