Did Jean Nicollet Land at Kewaunee?

Monday, June 9, 2014

   According to a founder of the Kewaunee County Historical Society, it is debatable whether Jean Nicollet de Belleborne, (Jean Nicolet) landed at Red Banks while searching for a western sea to China. 

   George W. Wing was skeptical of the claim that Nicollet reached Red Banks, near Green Bay, on a voyage to meet the People of the Sea.  Wing was not alone in questioning the accuracy of various aspects of the legend of Nicollet’s voyage.

   Nicollet was born in France around 1598.  A Roman Catholic and friend of Samuel de Champlain (the founder of New France at Quebec), Nicollet immigrated to Canada in 1618 to work as an Indian agent and clerk.  He lived among Algonquin people to learn their language and set up fur trading for a French company.  Jean Nicollet became proficient as an interpreter and mediator.

   Nicollet was chosen by Champlain to lead an expedition.  Exactly where Nicollet traveled is unknown as no personal account exists.  Only through a series of reports called Jesuit Relations, filed by missionaries, was anything known of Nicollet’s exploration.  Six years after the voyage, in 1642, the same year that Nicollet drowned on the St. Lawrence River, a Jesuit priest named Father Vimont wrote a brief description of Nicollet’s travels.

   Various assumptions were made about the purpose of Nicollet’s expedition:  to locate a fabled Northwest Passage to China; to secure land for New France or; to establish missions.  The real purpose, as written by Vimont, was to meet with the People of the Sea to negotiate a peace agreement with the Huron Indians believing that friendly relations would help further the fur trade.

   It is generally accepted and corroborated by research conducted by a Canadian named Benjamin Sulte from church registers and other documents that the voyage occurred in 1634 making Nicollet the first European to explore what would become Wisconsin.

   Upon arriving at his destination, Nicollet wore robes of bright damask and carried thunder in his hands--two pistols--which frightened and amazed the Indians and commanded their respect.

   More than 200 years later, around 1852, the secretary of the Wisconsin Historical Society identified the Winnebago Indians to be the People of the Sea.  This formed the basis for claiming that Nicolet landed in the Red Banks area.  Wing contended that this identification was inaccurate.  Wing wrote, “Nowhere in Vimont’s story or in any other story has Nicollet stated that the people he came among were Masoutin (Masouten or Winnabago).”  Wing stated that the people Nicollet was in search of were those who lived on the shores of the Great Lake (Lake Michigan), the Pottawottamie (Potawatomi), not the Winnebago.  The Winnebago lived in the interior of Wisconsin or in very small numbers at Red Banks.

   Potentially, languages may have confused the issue of identification.  The word Poutouatami (Potawatomi) was sometimes abbreviated to the word Poux and confused with the word Puant, meaning Winnebago.  Wing believed that where Nicollet landed and whom he encountered could have been confused by misinterpreting the language.

   Wing reasoned that knowledge of Indian canoe travel supported his theory about where Nicollet landed.  From the Ottawa River, Nicollet canoed to Michilimackinac at the northern end of Lake Michigan and traveled with his Huron Indian guides south along the western shore of Lake Michigan.  Wing wrote, in “frail craft, made of birch bark, light and difficult of navigation on disturbed waters…they never ventured in open water at much more than a stone’s throw from the shore,…”  That means moving from island to island and then to the mainland of the Door Peninsula, the longest distance between shores would not have exceeded six miles.  If they had crossed to the west shores of Green Bay it “would have meant a voyage of thirty miles in almost open water--an unthinkable proposition to an Indian canoeman."

   Then, Wing explained, traveling two days journey on the shore of Lake Michigan, about sixty miles from their landing place, they came to the center of the Pottawottamie village, “Ke-wau-nee-yak”—Kewaunee—where Nicollet encountered natives in great numbers.

   Future French explorers continued a relationship with the Pottawottamie.  When Frenchman Pierre Radisson came after Nicollet, it was by invitation of the Pottawottami and just 24 years after Nicollet’s voyage.  This, Wing contended, demonstrates that the Pottawottami were travelers to Huron country. 

   Radisson wrote that while meeting with the Pottawottami, they went together to visit the Winnebago and that Winnebago Indians had never seen men with beards or guns before.  Wing reasoned that if Nicollet had encountered 4,000-5,000 of the Winnebago tribe just 24 years before and had feasted with them and had appeared to them in a bright China robe with thunder in his hands and traveled among them, it most likely would have been known to these Winnebago Indians.

   Wing further asserted that Frenchmen Father Jean Claude Allouez who followed Nicollet in 1669 and Father Jacques Marquette in 1673 both fostered relationships with the Pottawottami.  Allouez and Marquette were followed by La Salle and Hennepin in 1679 who found the Pottawottami on the entire western lakeshore.

   Publius V. Lawson, a historian and first mayor of Menasha, who studied Nicollet’s voyage thoroughly and wrote prolifically on history of the Fox River Valley, stated that it was the Pottawottami that were first seen in 1634 by Nicollet and that the tribe became masters of the fur trade traffic on the shores of Lake Michigan.

   Essentially, Wing’s argument was that neither Green Bay nor Red Banks was ever a center of Pottawottamie habitation but the lakeshore was their settlement in great numbers and had been for six hundred years.  So, he deduced, it was likely that Nicollet landed on the shore of Lake Michigan, not at Red Banks in Green Bay.

   Wing conceded that Nicollet may have voyaged some distance up the Fox River at some point afterwards.  A part of the story says Nicollet may have traveled up the Fox River to a beaver feast on Doty Island at the outlet of Lake Winnebago.  But, Vimont's brief description doesn't say if Nicolet explored any further up the Fox River.    

   George W. Wing reasoned that being able to talk in the Algonquin language, Nicollet could have learned from the Pottawottami, an Algonquin tribe, about territory south on the Fox River.  It was not likely Nicollet could have learned from the Winnebago who spoke a Siouxian dialect few white men ever mastered.

   Vimont wrote, “After the peace was concluded…(Nicollet) returned to the Hurons.”  Because Nicollet did no further exploration on that voyage and no written documentation remains, perhaps we can never know if George W. Wing was correct and the Jean Nicollet statue should rightfully stand at Kewaunee.