Wills Northwoods Inn

Wills Northwoods Inn was founded in 1991 by descendants of William Wheeler. Will Wheeler was born in 1847 at Odanah (near Ashland, Wisconsin) in what was then known as the Northwest Territory. His parents, Leonard and Harriet Wheeler, were Congregational missionaries to the Ojibwa Indians who settled on Madeline Island, one of the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior. A few years later, the Wheelers founded the town of Odanah, where their son Will was born. Leonard Wheeler was an early advocate of Native American rights, consistently opposing efforts by the federal government to remove the Ojibwas from their tribal lands in northern Wisconsin to land west of the Mississippi. During the winter of 1849, Leonard Wheeler walked 250 miles through the snow from Odanah to Sparta, Wisconsin to catch a train to Washington DC, where he successfully opposed an effort to relocate an Ojibwa tribe from their lands on Lac Court Oreilles near Hayward. Will Wheeler grew up with the Ojibwa at Odanah, a...