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Among the books and papers at the Alpena County Library, two recorders of history share stories of the naming of the bay south of Partridge Point in Alpena.
David Oliver -- a surveyor sent to Northeast Michigan in the late 1830s to ready the region for an incoming wave of land ownership -- met and interacted with Chief Mich-e-ke-wis, a Chippewa head of a small band of indigenous people, according to Don La Barre, head of Special Collections at the library.
Mich-e-ke-wis, "who wasn't all that stoked that [Oliver] was up here," La Barre said, may have been 100 years old at the time, full of stories of the Civil War and the War of 1812.
One origin story of the bay's name comes from Oliver, who claims that the chief's daughter, named Na-o-tayke-zhick-co-quay, ran away "with the fleetness of the antelope" from a fisherman who frightened her as she fished through the ice on the bay in 1850 or 1851.
The fisherman told Oliver about the encounter, and Oliver dubbed the bay with the name by which it is currently known, he says in his history of the area, published in 1903.
The daughter ran to the nearby peninsula, where Mich-e-ke-wis then camped, Oliver reported. Native residents called the point Aw-pe-na-sing -- translated to Partridge Point -- from which the name of Alpena was probably derived, Oliver believed.
The city should properly spell its name "Awpena," Oliver added. The current spelling, if rendered into English, would translate to, "not quite a partridge," he said.
A second version of the bay's naming comes from Robert Haltiner, seen as an authority on Alpena-area history, including that of Native Americans in the area.
Acknowledging Oliver's story as one told by white men, Haltiner also shared what he called the "Red People's version" of the bay's naming.
According to that version, a Native American maiden named Birdsong lost the love of her life, the brave Standing Bear, when a storm swept across the bay, capsizing Standing Bear's canoe.
The woman wept for months at the shore of the bay, Haltiner narrated, until she disappeared, reunited for eternity with her lost love by the Spirit of the Lakes.
History is rich with multiple versions, told from multiple perspectives, La Barre said.
"It's interesting, seeing all these different stories," the historian said. "Who's to say one is better than the other?"