Jean Nicollet

[Jay Edward (deceased)]

Jean Nicollet

 

1598-1642

 
Born: 1598 in Cherbourg, France

Died: 1642 in Sillery,  Canada

Occupation: Explorer

 
 
  Jean Nicollet was a Frenchman who lived among the Native Americans of what is now Ontario and was the first European to travel through the Great Lakes to the states of Wisconsin and Illinois.
 
  BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

  Jean Nicollet was born in the French port of Cherbourg in the province of Normandy, the son of a postman. He went to Canada in 1618 in the employ of one of the French trading companies that was developing the fur trade with Native Americans. It was intended that he would live among them long enough to learn their language so that he could serve as an interpreter for his employers.
  Nicollet went with Samuel de Champlain up the St. Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers to a place called Allumette Island in the middle of the Ottawa. He stayed there for two years and learned the Huron and Algonkin languages as well as the customs of those tribes. He was accepted into their society and served as a negotiator in their dealings with the Iroquois tribes, who were enemies of the Hurons as well as the French.
 
  In 1620 Nicollet returned to Quebec and was then sent out to live among the Nipissing tribe who lived along the lake of the same name and to direct their fur trade to the French. He stayed there for nine years. In 1629 Quebec was captured briefly by the English, and Nicollet took refuge among his friends the Hurons.
 
  Nicollet returned to Quebec in 1633 and was then sent out on an important mission. The tribe that lived along the shores of Green Bay in the present-day state of Wisconsin were not friendly with the Algonkins, and it was feared that they would direct their trade to the English. Nicollet was sent out to deal with these people, known in English as the Winnebagoes. It was also thought that by following the Great Lakes he might also find the route to China, so he set off wearing a Chinese robe embroidered with flowers and birds.
 
  Nicollet left Quebec in mid-July 1634 and traveled up the Ottawa River and then to Lake Nipissing and down the French River to Lake Huron then to the straits of Michilimackinac, Lake Michigan, and into Green Bay. He was the first European to follow this route, which was to become the main route for French fur traders to the west. One of the great scenes of North American exploration is Nicollet coming ashore in Green Bay dressed in his flowery Chinese robe. Nicollet overawed the tribesmen with his elaborate costume and was able to conclude a treaty of peace with them. He did some exploring in the area along the Wisconsin and Illinois Rivers.
 
  After his return to Canada in the fall of 1635, Nicollet became a respected merchant of the town of Trois-Rivières. He was drowned in 1642 in a boating accident near the town of Sillery, now a suburb of Quebec City.

FURTHER READINGS
 

• Jesuit Relations. 23.      Burrows, 1898. Edited by Reuben G. Thwaites.
  
• Kellogg, Louise P. Early Narratives of the Northwest, 1634-1699.      Scribner's, 1917.
  
• Sagard, Gabriel. The Long Journey to the Country of the Hurons.      The Champlain Society, 1939. Translated and edited by George M. Wrong.
  
• Butterfield, C. W. History of the Discovery of the Northwest by      Jean Nicollet, with a Sketch of His Life. 1881.
  
• Kellogg, Louise P. The French Régime in Wisconsin and the Northwest . University of Wisconsin Press, 1925. Reprint, New York: Cooper Square      Publishers, 1968.
  
• Dictionary of Canadian Biography. 1. University       of Toronto Press,      1967.

[rusty]

he travelled through some of the most beautiful country ,the good lord ever created.