Michigan Paddling Legends: Hugh Heward — The Journey That Became a Michigan Tradition
By Brad De Young
The Kayaker’s Journal / West Michigan Kayaking Club
Long before Michigan had highways, road signs, bridges or modern towns, its rivers were the highways.
They were transportation corridors through an enormous landscape of forests, wetlands, lakes and wilderness. Canoes were not recreational equipment. They were vehicles. Rivers were routes. And a journey across Michigan could mean weeks of paddling, portaging, navigating unfamiliar waterways and sleeping wherever the day’s travel ended.
In the spring of 1790, British fur trader Hugh Heward set out from Detroit on one of the most remarkable canoe journeys in Michigan’s history.
His objective was ambitious: find a practical water route across the Lower Peninsula toward Lake Michigan and ultimately continue toward the Illinois Country.
What followed was an expedition through a landscape that would be almost impossible for most modern travelers to comprehend.
There were no paved roads.
No GPS.
No weather radar.
No cell phones.
No emergency services.
No vehicle waiting at the next access point.
There was only the canoe, the river, the wilderness, the supplies they could carry and the knowledge of the people who already understood the land.
More than two centuries later, Heward’s journey would become the inspiration for one of Michigan’s legendary endurance paddles: the Hugh Heward Challenge.
Michigan in 1790
To understand Hugh Heward’s journey, it helps to forget the Michigan we know today.
There was no Lansing.
There was no Grand Rapids.
There was no Grand Haven as we know it.
There were no interstate highways crossing the state, no modern bridges spanning the Grand River and no road network connecting communities.
Much of Michigan was forest.
Waterways were among the most efficient transportation corridors available.
For Indigenous peoples, these waterways had been transportation networks for generations. Rivers and lakes connected communities, hunting grounds, fishing areas and trading routes.
European and Canadian fur traders increasingly relied on those same waterways.
Detroit was an important trading center, but reaching the western Great Lakes and the Illinois Country required a long journey around Lake Huron and through the Straits of Mackinac.
Heward was looking for another possibility.
A shortcut.
Instead of going around Michigan, could a traveler cross it?
His proposed route was essentially:
Detroit → Lake Erie → Huron River → interior waterways → Grand River → Lake Michigan → Chicago → Illinois Country
Written on a modern map, it looks surprisingly simple.
In 1790, it was anything but.
The Journey Begins
Heward’s surviving journal provides an extraordinary window into the expedition.
On March 24, 1790, he departed Detroit with a crew of French-Canadian engagés—experienced workers and voyageurs who accompanied him.
Even the beginning of the expedition wasn’t particularly smooth.
Heward discovered that a keg of pork had been left behind.
Today, forgetting something on a trip might mean turning around in the car.
For Heward, recovering the missing food meant work.
He and one of his companions went back for the supplies, borrowed another canoe to cross the river and eventually returned with the heavy keg.
It is a small detail, but it tells us a great deal about eighteenth-century travel.
There was no supply vehicle.
No grocery store.
No backup equipment.
No easy resupply.
If something important was left behind, the expedition had a decision to make:
Go back—or go without it.
Food and equipment were not conveniences.
They were survival.
A Shortcut Through the Wilderness
The expedition continued toward the Huron River and began working westward.
But Heward wasn’t simply following a marked water trail.
He was attempting to piece together a route through an unfamiliar landscape.
The party encountered smaller waterways, confusing junctions, portages and stretches where the route wasn’t obvious.
At times, they depended upon information from Indigenous people who knew the country.
That local knowledge was enormously important.
The waterways that could appear confusing or disconnected to a European traveler were part of a much older transportation network.
Heward was essentially attempting to connect pieces of that network into a practical route for the fur trade.
The Portage
Eventually, the expedition reached the watershed divide between waterways flowing toward Lake Erie and those flowing toward Lake Michigan.
This was one of the defining moments of the journey.
The canoe could no longer simply follow the water.
The travelers had to leave the river.
They had to carry their canoe and supplies overland.
For modern paddlers, the word portage can sound almost romantic.
In 1790, it was work.
Imagine carrying a birch-bark canoe through an undeveloped Michigan landscape.
Now add food.
Equipment.
Trade goods.
Personal belongings.
And everything else needed for an expedition lasting weeks.
There was no maintained trail waiting for them.
No road.
No parking lot.
No shuttle.
Once they reached the next waterway, they put the canoe back into the water and continued.
And when the next portage appeared, they did it again.
Finding the Grand River
Eventually, Heward’s route connected with the Grand River system.
This was the breakthrough.
The Grand offered a natural westward highway toward Lake Michigan.
Heward and his crew followed the river downstream.
Today, thousands of paddlers know portions of the Grand River as a recreational waterway.
But the Grand River Heward encountered was dramatically different.
There were no modern dams controlling the river.
No city parks.
No paved riverwalks.
No boat launches.
No bridges appearing every few miles.
No houses lining the banks.
The surrounding country was largely wilderness.
The river itself was the road.
Hugh Heward and the Future Lansing
One of the most fascinating portions of Heward’s journey is his passage through what is now the Lansing area.
On April 24, 1790, Heward and his crew traveled down the Grand River through a landscape where the city of Lansing would not exist for decades.
There was no capital.
No downtown.
No streets.
No buildings.
The landscape was wilderness.
Heward’s journal provides an early written account of travel through this section of Michigan.
And this particular date would eventually become one of the most important dates in the modern Hugh Heward story.
The Day That Became Legendary
Heward’s April 24 journal entry describes an exceptionally demanding day.
The expedition had already been traveling for weeks.
The canoes needed repairs.
The crew stopped to work on them, using gum to seal and repair the birch bark.
Then they continued downstream.
There were rapids.
Islands.
Faster water.
Obstacles.
Changing river conditions.
And miles to cover.
The river wasn’t a smooth conveyor belt.
The crew had to work with it.
They had to navigate it.
And they had to keep moving.
The distance covered that day has fascinated historians and paddlers for generations.
Heward’s account suggested an extraordinary day’s travel—roughly 50 miles on the Grand River.
Modern paddlers eventually began asking a remarkable question:
Could we do it too?
That question became the foundation for the modern Hugh Heward Challenge.
The Legend of the Chase
One of the most dramatic stories associated with the Hugh Heward Challenge is the idea that Heward and his crew were racing down the Grand River to escape pursuing Indigenous warriors.
The story has become part of the lore surrounding the challenge.
But the historical record deserves careful treatment.
Heward’s journal clearly documents encounters with Indigenous people during the journey. On April 23, for example, he recorded encountering a group of approximately a dozen people and later described additional people approaching.
But the surviving journal does not provide a simple account stating that Heward spent April 24 fleeing a pursuing group down the Grand River.
The dramatic chase appears to be part of the later interpretation and storytelling surrounding the expedition.
That doesn’t make Heward’s journey less remarkable.
In many ways, the actual story is even more fascinating.
Heward wasn’t participating in a race.
He wasn’t trying to establish an endurance record.
He wasn’t following a marked course.
He was a fur trader attempting to establish a practical route across Michigan.
He was navigating unfamiliar country with limited information, relying on his crew, his equipment, the river and the knowledge of people who understood the landscape.
That was adventure in its most basic form.
A River Without Dams
Modern paddlers may have difficulty imagining the Grand River Heward saw.
Today’s Grand River is shaped by dams, reservoirs, development and infrastructure.
Heward encountered a river with different flows, different obstacles and different characteristics.
His journal describes rapids, islands and strong currents.
The river was an active transportation route rather than a recreational backdrop.
For a modern paddler, a rapid may be an exciting feature on an afternoon trip.
For Heward, a difficult rapid could affect the safety and progress of the entire expedition.
A damaged canoe wasn’t simply an inconvenience.
It could threaten the journey itself.
The River Becomes the Road
As Heward continued west, the Grand became the central highway of the expedition.
His journal records observations about the landscape and the people he encountered.
He noted forests.
Pines.
Oak and hickory.
Wetlands.
Islands.
Rapids.
Tributaries.
Camps.
Cabins.
And changing conditions along the river.
The journal reads almost like an expedition field notebook.
For modern paddlers, those observations are fascinating because they provide glimpses of what the Grand River corridor looked like more than 230 years ago.
Imagine sitting in a modern kayak and traveling the same river corridor.
The landscape might look familiar.
But the experience would be completely different.
Sturgeon on the Grand
As the expedition approached the western end of Michigan, another memorable part of the story unfolded.
On April 27, 1790, Heward and his party continued downstream toward Lake Michigan.
They obtained sturgeon.
The enormous fish were an important food resource for people living and traveling along the Great Lakes waterways.
Heward continued down the Grand.
The river became larger.
Pines surrounded portions of the waterway.
Meadows and smaller lakes appeared along the route.
And eventually, after weeks of travel, the expedition reached the mouth of the Grand River.
They had crossed the Lower Peninsula.
The location would eventually become Grand Haven.
But Heward saw no modern harbor town.
No waterfront restaurants.
No boardwalk.
No paved streets.
He saw the river meeting Lake Michigan.
A Night at the Mouth of the Grand
Near the mouth of the Grand River, Heward encountered Charles Langlade, a prominent fur trader associated with the area.
The meeting provides another fascinating glimpse into the practical realities of eighteenth-century travel.
Heward needed supplies.
He especially needed gum for repairing his canoe.
He obtained what he needed through trade.
Food and supplies changed hands.
Corn and other provisions were exchanged.
There was no sporting-goods store where Heward could simply buy a replacement canoe part.
His canoe had to be maintained with materials available in the environment and through the trading relationships available along the route.
For an expedition traveler, the canoe wasn’t just transportation.
The canoe was the lifeline.
Into Lake Michigan
Reaching Lake Michigan did not mean the journey was over.
It was only the end of the Michigan crossing.
Heward continued along the Lake Michigan shoreline toward Chicago.
From there, his route connected with the Chicago River, an overland portage and the Des Plaines River before continuing toward the Illinois River system.
Historical accounts also connect Heward with Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, the prominent trader whose home and trading establishment stood near the mouth of the Chicago River.
Heward’s journal provides an important early written record associated with Point du Sable and the Chicago area.
The expedition continued to operate through trade, transportation and improvisation.
Food had to be obtained.
Boats had to be maintained.
Supplies had to be managed.
Routes had to be found.
The expedition had to keep moving.
When the Water Became Dangerous
The journey became increasingly difficult beyond Chicago.
The expedition encountered challenging sections of the waterway system and had to negotiate portages.
At one point, the conditions were difficult enough that some members of the party were unwilling to continue through a particularly hazardous section.
Heward continued.
His party also relied upon assistance from Indigenous people who understood the waterways and landscape.
Historical accounts describe Heward and companions receiving help carrying boats and cargo across a portage, with payment made in gunpowder.
That small detail reveals something important about travel during the period.
There was no standardized transportation service.
No official portage crew.
No shuttle.
No emergency response.
Travel depended upon relationships, trade and local knowledge.
The Man Behind the Journey
Hugh Heward wasn’t attempting to become a famous explorer.
He was a fur trader.
His journey was connected to the practical business of moving people and goods through the Great Lakes region.
He was looking for a transportation route.
That makes his journey especially interesting.
He wasn’t trying to prove that someone could paddle 50 miles in a day.
He wasn’t trying to establish an endurance record.
He was solving a problem.
How do you get people and goods from one part of the Great Lakes region to another?
His answer was the water.
And his journey created a historical record that modern paddlers can still follow.
Two Hundred Years Later
For generations, Heward’s journey remained primarily a historical account.
Then Michigan historian and topologist Jim Woodruff became fascinated by the route.
Woodruff studied Heward’s journal, historical maps and geography to reconstruct the expedition.
The question was simple:
Could Heward’s journey actually be done?
Legendary Michigan paddler Verlen Kruger became involved in retracing the route.
The historic journey was brought back to life.
What had once been a fur trader’s expedition became a modern paddling challenge.
The Hugh Heward Challenge
The modern Hugh Heward Challenge grew from that effort.
The centerpiece is the remarkable section of the Grand River associated with Heward’s April 24 journey.
Modern paddlers attempt to cover approximately 50 miles of river in a day.
Think about that for a moment.
Fifty miles.
In a kayak or canoe.
In one day.
And then consider what Heward was doing.
His canoe was loaded with supplies.
The river was unfamiliar.
The landscape was undeveloped.
The equipment was primitive by modern standards.
There were no modern navigation tools.
Yet he and his crew kept moving.
Modern paddlers have every technological advantage Heward lacked.
We have:
- Lightweight boats
- Modern paddles
- PFDs
- Technical clothing
- GPS
- Detailed maps
- Weather forecasts
- Cell phones
- Emergency communication
- Roads and access points
And still, when the paddle hits the water, the river makes the rules.
What Modern Paddlers Share With Heward
The equipment is different.
The world is different.
The river is different.
But there is something remarkably familiar about the experience.
The next bend still has to be paddled.
The weather can still change.
The current still pushes against the boat.
Fatigue still arrives.
Equipment can still fail.
Navigation still matters.
And the miles still have to be earned.
That’s the connection between Hugh Heward and today’s expedition paddlers.
The technology changed.
The adventure didn’t.
Imagine Paddling Michigan in 1790
Imagine launching in March.
The air is cold.
The water is even colder.
Your clothing isn’t modern technical gear.
There is no dry suit.
No waterproof phone.
No satellite communicator.
No emergency beacon.
No vehicle following behind.
Your food is packed into the canoe.
Your equipment is limited to what you can carry.
You are traveling through a landscape where the towns and roads of modern Michigan don’t exist.
Ahead is an unfamiliar river.
Somewhere ahead is a watershed divide.
Eventually you’ll have to leave the water, carry everything overland and find another waterway.
Then you launch again.
And paddle.
That was Hugh Heward’s Michigan.
The Rivers Have Changed
There is another reason Heward’s story matters.
Michigan’s rivers aren’t frozen in time.
They have changed dramatically since 1790.
Dams have been built.
Dams have been removed.
Channels have been altered.
Communities have grown.
Forests have been cleared and replanted.
Roads and bridges have crossed waterways.
Wetlands have changed.
Riverbanks have been developed.
And some rivers that once served as transportation highways are now primarily recreational destinations.
When we paddle a river today, we aren’t necessarily seeing the same river Heward saw.
But we are traveling through the same geographic landscape.
That connection is powerful.
History From the Seat of a Kayak
There is something different about learning history from the water.
You begin to notice things that don’t stand out from a highway.
A tributary.
An old river terrace.
A portage route.
A historic settlement.
A bend in the river.
An island.
A stretch of shoreline.
A location where two waterways come together.
The landscape begins to tell its own story.
And when you realize that someone traveled the same corridor more than two centuries ago, the river feels different.
You aren’t simply paddling.
You’re following a historical route.
From History to Tradition
The Hugh Heward Challenge represents something unusual in modern outdoor recreation.
It takes a historical journey and turns it into a physical experience.
Instead of simply reading about Heward’s expedition, paddlers can follow portions of his route.
They can experience the distance.
The current.
The fatigue.
The weather.
The river.
The uncertainty.
Of course, modern paddlers aren’t reproducing the expedition exactly.
We have modern equipment and modern safety systems.
But we can experience something Heward understood very well:
Traveling across Michigan under your own power is hard work.
And that’s exactly what makes it rewarding.
A Legacy Worth Continuing
Michigan has thousands of miles of rivers and an extraordinary Great Lakes shoreline.
Those waterways aren’t simply recreational resources.
They are part of Michigan’s history.
They were transportation corridors.
They connected Indigenous communities.
They supported trade.
They carried people and goods.
They helped shape settlements and economies.
And they continue to define the landscape we call home.
Hugh Heward’s journey reminds us that these rivers have stories.
Some are written in books.
Some are preserved in journals.
Some survive as local legends.
And some are best understood by getting on the water and traveling the route yourself.
The Next Bend
More than two centuries ago, Hugh Heward climbed into a birch-bark canoe and headed west.
He didn’t have a modern map.
He didn’t have GPS.
He couldn’t check the weather forecast.
He couldn’t call for help.
He couldn’t look up the nearest access point.
He couldn’t simply turn onto a highway and drive around an obstacle.
He had a destination.
A crew.
A canoe.
Supplies.
And a river.
And he kept moving.
Today, we paddle with dramatically better equipment and vastly more information.
But the feeling of adventure remains.
The current still moves.
The weather still changes.
Rapids still demand respect.
The miles still have to be earned.
And around every bend is another piece of Michigan waiting to be discovered.
Perhaps that is the greatest legacy of Hugh Heward.
Not simply the distance he traveled.
Not simply the route he crossed.
But the idea that Michigan can be understood by experiencing it from the water.
From Detroit to the Grand River.
From the Grand to Lake Michigan.
From history to modern adventure.
The journey continues.
Hugh Heward’s Michigan Legacy
The surviving journal of Hugh Heward gives us something extraordinarily rare: a detailed record of an eighteenth-century journey through Michigan’s interior.
It allows modern paddlers to look backward through time and imagine the rivers before roads, bridges, dams and cities transformed the landscape.
And thanks to the work of historians, researchers and legendary paddlers such as Jim Woodruff and Verlen Kruger, Heward’s journey didn’t remain trapped in an old journal.
It became a route.
It became a challenge.
It became a tradition.
And it became another reason for generations of paddlers to explore Michigan.
At The Kayaker’s Journal / West Michigan Kayaking Club, that’s the kind of history we want to tell.
Because sometimes the best way to understand Michigan isn’t from behind a desk.
It’s from the seat of a kayak.
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The Kayaker’s Journal
Stories, history, guides, gear, adventures and the people who continue to explore Michigan’s waterways.
By Brad De Young
The Kayaker’s Journal / West Michigan Kayaking Club
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If you want, I can also turn this into a more magazine-style “Michigan Paddling Legends” feature with a stronger opening hook, pull quotes, “Did You Know?” boxes, a Hugh Heward timeline, and a “Follow His Route Today” section for the Kayaker’s Journal.