Jean Nicolet

Jean Nicolet (Nicollet), Sieur de Belleborne (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ nikɔlɛ]; 1598 – 29 October 1642) was a French coureur des bois noted for exploring Lake Michigan, Mackinac Island, Green Bay, and being the first European to set foot in what is now the U.S. state of Wisconsin.

Nicolet (Nicollet) was born in Cherbourg, France, in the late 1590s, the son of Thomas Nicollet, who was "messenger ordinary of the King between Paris and Cherbourg", and Marguerite de Lamer. They were members of the Roman Catholic Church. He was a known friend of Samuel de Champlain and Étienne Brule, and was attracted to Canada to participate in Champlain's plan to train young French men as explorers and traders by having them live among Native Americans, at a time when the French were setting up fur trading under the Compagnie des Marchands.^[1]

In 1618, Nicolet immigrated to Quebec as a clerk to train as an interpreter for the Compagnie des Marchands, a trading monopoly owned by members of the French aristocracy. As an employee, Jean Nicolet was a faithful supporter of the Ancien Régime.

To learn the language of the First Nations, Nicolet was sent to live with the Algonquins on an island, a friendly settlement located along the important Ottawa River fur trade route. Upon his return to Quebec in 1620, he was assigned to live among the Odawa and Algonquin people in the Lake Nipissing region. During his nine-year stay, he ran a store and traded with the native peoples in the area.^[1]

He had a relationship with a Nipissing woman,^[2][3] and they had a daughter, whom he named Euphrosine-Madeleine Nicolet. When Nicolet returned to Quebec, he brought his daughter Euphrosine with him to educate her among the French. On July 19, 1629, when Quebec fell to the Kirke brothers who took control for England, Jean Nicolet fled to the safety of the Huron country. He worked from there against English interests until the French were restored to power. After Canada was restored to France he married Marguerite Couillard. Marguerite, the daughter of leading Quebec settler Guillaume Couillard and his wife Marie-Guillemette Hébert, was also the goddaughter of Champlain. The couple were residents of Trois-Rivières in later life, where they raised children.^[4]

In July 1634, Nicolet left Trois-Rivières, Quebec, and traveled west into the Great Lakes. He was sent, likely by Champlain, to make peace in the conflict between French-allied native tribes and the Ho-Chunk. Nicolet landed on the shore of Green Bay, likely in September of that year, the first European to do so. Stepping off the boat, he donned a silk robe and fired two pistols which he held in each hand; Barthélemy Vimont wrote that "the women and children fled at the sight of a man who carried thunder in both hands". Traditionally, it has been said that Nicolet's landing took place at Red Banks, a Ho-Chunk village near the modern city of Green Bay, Wisconsin. However, historian Patrick J. Jung points out that the Ho-Chunk village likely did not exist in 1634, and argues that Nicolet's diplomatic mission makes him more likely to have landed at Menekaunee, the main settlement of the neutral Menominee, near present-day Marinette, Wisconsin.^[5]

Nicolet's journals do not survive, and the only contemporary sources describing his 1634 voyage are brief summaries written by Paul Le Jeune and Barthélemy Vimont several years later. Due to the lack of primary sources, many speculative stories and myths about Nicolet's journey have been repeated for centuries without evidence. For instance, it is often claimed that Nicolet's purpose was to find the mythical Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean, rather than to conduct diplomacy. According to these stories, his silk robe was supposedly of Chinese import, and he wore it because he expected to reach China at the western end of Green Bay. Part of this theory relies on the name given to the Ho-Chunk by the Potawatomi, Winnebago, meaning "bad-smelling water". Le Jeune wrote that natives used this term to refer to both oceanic saltwater and foul smells in freshwater lakes. However, there is no contemporary evidence for the claim that Nicolet believed the "bad-smelling water" could be the gateway to the Pacific.^[5]

Others claim that Nicolet continued traveling up the Fox River, possibly reaching Portage and entering the Mississippi River watershed. Le Jeune wrote that Nicolet had knowledge of the Illinois Confederation, suggesting that he could have traveled south through what is now Wisconsin into Illinois. However, Vimont wrote that Nicolet immediately returned to Huronia after the peace conference was finished, and Nicolet could have gathered knowledge of the Illinois from the natives he met at Green Bay rather than by traveling there himself. Nicolet certainly had returned to Trois-Rivières by December 1635, according to Le Jeune, but may have arrived earlier than that.^[5]

On October 29, 1642, Jean Nicolet drowned after his boat capsized just off of Quebec City in Saint Lawrence River. He was either 43 or 44 years old. His body was never found.

• Town of Nicolet, Quebec is named after him.
• Nicolet Area Technical College in Rhinelander, Wisconsin bears his name.
• Nicolet High School in suburban Milwaukee was named after him.
• In 1950, a statue of him was erected and is now located at Wequiock Falls County Park, about 10 miles northeast of Green Bay and a mile from where it is believed he landed.^[6][7]
• Nicolet's landing at Red Banks is commemorated by a 1910 mural at the Neville Public Museum in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
• In 1906, the Jean Nicolet Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution was organized.^[8]
• Nicolet National Bank bears his name.
• Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin bears his name.
• Nicolet Beach in Peninsula State Park, Wisconsin, bears his name.
• Nicollet Avenue in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, bears his name.
• There is a high school named after him in Nicolet, Quebec. L'École Secondaire Jean-Nicolet opened in 1968.
• A Liberty ship was launched and named after Jean Nicolet in 1943.^[9]

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
• The Canadian Encyclopedia - Jean Nicollet de Belleborne Archived 2009-08-25 at the Wayback Machine
• Jean Nicollet de Belleborne (French) Archived 2009-08-21 at the Wayback Machine
• "MHS Resources: History in Winnipeg Streets"

• Brook, Timothy (1998), The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China, Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-22154-0

Jacques Gagnon, Jean Nicollet, Interprète et commis de traite, Montréal, Les Éditions Histoire Québec, 2022, 149 p.