The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald had some nice lyrics
It opened….
“The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy”
The Chippewa/Ojibwa were the tribes that lived around Gitche Gumee, which is what Lake Superior was called for hundreds, or thousands of years before the white settlers.
The lake never gives up the dead, because the water is so cold that bodies don’t float, they sink to the bottom. What lies on the bottom is generally well preserved, because the cold water inhibits bacteria that causes decay.
Gitche Gumee is also at the beginning of Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha” from 1855…..
“On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
Of the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood Nokomis, the old woman,
Pointing with her finger westward,
O'er the water pointing westward,
To the purple clouds of sunset.……”