Arrival of the First Europeans

The first European to visit Wisconsin may have been interpreter Etienne Brule (ca. 1592-1632). In 1622 or 1623 he traveled around Lake Superior, but the account of his trip was only written down from hearsay after his death by Gabriel Sagard-Theodat. Unique information about Wisconsin also appears on Samuel de Champlain's map of New France published in 1632 -- two years before Jean Nicolet reached Wisconsin, and is presumed to have come to Champlain from Brule. We give both documents here so you can decide for yourself whether you think Brule was the first European to set eyes on our state.

Most scholars agree that another of Champlain's interpreters, Jean Nicolet (1598-1642), did in fact reach Wisconsin and that he landed at Red Banks, near Green Bay, in 1634 (though some argue that he landed on the Lake Superior shore). You can read the only contemporary French account of his trip in our American Journeys digital collection, linked below. We also give here the Ho-Chunk and Menominee sides of the story as they were preserved in their oral traditions.

Brule and Nicolet had both been sent west by Samuel de Champlain to see if a water route to the Pacific existed. They didn't find one, of course, but they did find a very rich source of furs, on which the French authorities could turn a handsome profit -- if the furs could be brought to Montreal and shipped back to France. Although they were eager to export furs, the French were prevented from doing so until the Iroquois attacks of the mid-seventeenth century had ceased.

Thus, more than twenty years elapsed after Nicolet's landing in 1634 before the first traders finally appeared in Wisconsin. These were the Sieur de Groseilliers (1618-1684) and his teenage brother-in-law, Pierre Radisson (1636-1710), who spent 1654-1656 in Green Bay and 1659-1660 in the Chequamegon region on Lake Superior. On their second voyage, Radisson and Groseilliers built the first French fort in Wisconsin near Ashland though they nearly starved to death on the headwaters of the Chippewa River.

Radisson and Groseilliers brought back to Montreal not only furs but also news of a great river flowing south. This inspired the explorer René Robert Cavelier La Salle to send teenage interpreter Louis Joliet and Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette to investigate. News of Marquette and Joliet's famous 1673 trip to the Mississippi River inspired many other explorers, traders, and missionaries to come to Wisconsin in the seventeenth century, including LaSalle, Duluth, Tonti, and Hennepin.

[Sources: Wyman, Mark. The Wisconsin Frontier (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, c1998). Kellogg, Louise Phelps. The French Regime in Wisconsin and the Northwest (Madison : State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1925). The History of Wisconsin: volume 1, From Exploration to Statehood by Alice E. Smith. (Madison, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1973)]

Original Documents and Other Primary Sources

	The Menominee recall meeting Europeans for the first time.
	Father Marquette's diary of his 1673 trip with Joliet
	The Ho-Chunk recall meeting Europeans for the first time.
	Mining in the lead region, 1670-1829
	Two traders nearly starve in the northwoods during the winter of 1659-60.
	Marquette and Joliet's 1673 voyage is leaked to the world.
	A young interpreter skirts the shores of Lake Superior about 1622.
	A priest journeys to a Wisconsin village of exiled Hurons in 1661.
	The history and traditions of the Chippewa Valley
	An 1875 history of the Chippewa Valley
	Report on the Menominee at Termination, 1958
	A primer of the Mohawk language, 1777
	A local historian chats about Prairie du Chien (vol. 1)
	A local historian chats about Prairie du Chien (vol. 2)
	Nicolet's 1634 landfall in Wisconsin (1904)
	Joliet is interviewed on his trip down the Mississippi in 1673.
	The Wisconsin portion of Champlain's 1632 map.
	The first map of the entire Mississippi River, published in 1681.
	Fr. Marquette's hand-drawn map of his 1673 journey with Louis Joliet.