Noquest
The Noquet ( no-KAY; also spelled Nocquet, Noque, or Noc among others) were a tribe of Native Americans who lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. They spoke their own language in the Algonquian family, and are attested to have been most closely related to, and subsequently absorbed by, the Menominee people.
Whilst never sustaining a large population, the Noquet were once among the foremost nations in the Upper Peninsula, and made contact with many of the first Europeans to set foot in what are now the territories of Michigan and Wisconsin. Their name lives on in various places they inhabited throughout the peninsula, including Big Bay de Noc, Little Bay de Noc, and Bay de Noc Township (the Rapid River and Dead River were formerly named the Noquet and Noquemanon Rivers, respectively); in addition to Lake Noquebay in northern Wisconsin. The tribe's name is a French phonetic transcription of their endonym, derived from a Proto-Algonquian phrase meaning 'bear claw' or 'bear foot'.
A cumulation of multiple factors, primarily assimilation into the Menominee and other neighboring tribes, resulted in the extinction of the Noquet as a distinct political entity by the early 19th century, with no Native Americans today who individually or collectively identify as Noquet.
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