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Grand Rapids is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 197,800. It is the county seat of Kent County, Michigan.[3] It is the second largest city in the state and one of the principal cities in West Michigan. Over 2,000 years ago, people associated with the Hopewell culture occupied the Grand River Valley. Around 1700 A.D., the Ottawa Indians moved into the area and founded several villages along the Grand River.

The Grand Rapids area was first settled by Europeans near the start of the 19th century by missionaries and fur traders. They generally lived in reasonable peace alongside the Ottawa tribespeople, with whom they traded their European metal and textile goods for fur pelts. Joseph and Madeline La Framboise established the first Indian/European trading post in West Michigan, and in present Grand Rapids, on the banks of the Grand River near what is now Ada. After the death of her husband in 1806, Madeline La Framboise carried on, expanding fur trading posts to the west and north. La Framboise, whose ancestry was a mix of French and Indian, later merged her successful operations with the American Fur Company. She retired, at age 41, to Mackinac Island. The first permanent white settler in the Grand Rapids area was a Baptist minister named Isaac McCoy who arrived in 1825.