1.3: Jean Nicolet, the Negotiator of New France

Jean Nicolet is generally not the first name that comes to mind as a key player with regard to the topic of French colonization of North America; that honor generally belongs to Samuel de Champlain.  However, Nicolet lived among numerous Indigenous nations, learned their languages and customs, and travelled with his Huron companions on the Great Lakes, landing west of Lake Michigan.  However, the details of Nicolet's adventure, along with the motivations for this journey,  have been misinterpreted for centuries, leading to a misunderstanding as to its true significance.  To explore French designs on North America with respect to how they differed from those of England and Spain, as well as a case study in deconstructing beliefs long accepted as fact, episode three of History: Beyond the Textbook explores Jean Nicolet: the Negotiator of New France.

Key People
Jean Nicolet, French interpreter
Samuel de Champlain, French explorer

Key Events
Establishment of New France

The third season of History: Beyond the Textbook focuses on the stories of individuals who shaped "America's Crucial Years" of 1783-1790, and runs from October 8-December 24. Catch up on Season One, "America's Colonial Era," and Season Two, "America's Revolution," wherever you listen to your podcasts!

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Transcript

Along Highway 57, near the Bay of Green Bay, sits a county park with a fairly serene waterfall: Wequiock Falls.  Located in one of the northernmost parts of Brown County, Wisconsin, the county that includes the city of Green Bay, this park also includes two items of historical significance: Wisconsin State Historical Marker 62, referring to a site that was allegedly known as “Red Banks,” and a statue of an individual associated with this site.  That individual is Frenchman Jean Nicolet, and Marker 62, put up in 1957,  indicates that Nicolet landed at “Red Banks” on the orders of Samuel de Champlain, Governor of “New France.”  He was to meet the local Native Americans, identified as “People of the Sea” on the marker, make peace with them, and bring them into an alliance with France.  Marker 62 mentions, as do multiple images depicting this event, that Nicolet half expected that this journey would end in East Asia, so he wore fine silk robes, impressed the Natives with his guns, and that his journey ultimately led to fur traders interested in beaver pelts following in his wake.  This story, accepted as fact and retold to scores of schoolchildren, myself included, has been called into question given recent scholarship and re-examination of primary documents, along with a cross-examination that includes archaeological evidence.  Our story includes an appearance by explorer Jacques Cartier, significant support from the aforementioned Champlain, and of course, scores of indigenous peoples who acted as friends…and foes.  All of this will serve to help us understand how the Great Lakes emerged as a crucial trade route in European North America, why the French settled further west than their English counterparts, and why their relations with Native Americans differed so greatly from said counterparts. In today’s episode of History: Beyond the Textbook, we’ll examine French exploration of North America  using the experiences of the negotiator of New France: Jean Nicolet.

Act One: New France

So far, we have explored Spanish efforts to colonize North America through the lens of ruthless conquistador Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, and English efforts through the lens of Pamunkey war chief Opechancanough.  But what of the efforts of France, England’s natural enemy and Spain’s kindred spiritual brethren?  We’ll start with a very short prologue: in the early 1540’s, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V declined to prevent France from establishing a colony.  So, what does this mean?  Well, it means that the Spanish would not officially stand in the way of France exploring and setting up their own colonies in the Western Hemisphere.  Remember, Spain got the jump start on colonization in 1492, and established a firm foothold in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean.  As such, the French understood that declining to prevent colonization was certainly different than endorsing colonization, so the French decided to hedge their bets north…way farther north than their Catholic brethren.  This proposed colony was to take root along the St. Lawrence River, in modern-day Canada, and the Spanish had already judged that this region would probably not bring in much of a profit.  Like most explorers roaming North America during this time, Jacques Cartier centered his journey on attempting to find the fabled “Northwest Passage” that would link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  To sum it up…he didn’t find it, many of his men didn;t survive, and he failed to establish positive relations with the indigenous populace.  France would not attempt serious colonization for about another six decades.

Subsequent attempts at colonization, as well as the birth and maturation of the land that became “New France,” are primarily the efforts of Samuel de Champlain.  Born in the trading town of Brouage in western France circa 1570, Champlain’s father was a seaman who eventually obtained the rank of captain, and even acquired property, so young Champlain’s life was defined by the sea.  A seasoned soldier, Champlain also gained the favor of French King Henri IV, who was very keen on establishing a strong French presence in North America.  When his formal fighting days ended, Champlain began his life’s work of carrying out this vision, mostly in the Canadian frontier.  In his lifetime, he crossed the Atlantic over 25 times, and ensured that all on board safely completed their passage.  At various points, Champlain was recalled to France because a new individual assumed command of the business end of New France and wanted another man in charge.  There was even a period in the late 1620’s when the British assumed control of New France by force, but it eventually fell back into French hands.  Above all else, several items stand out as goals Champlain had for this land: one was religious toleration, as he had participated in religious wars back in France and understood their destructive nature.  He made sure to provide quarter to Catholics and Protestants alike and desired toleration above all else.  Another was private land ownership, as early settlers figured out quickly that the land would yield much more when tended to by those who had a clear stake in it, although expanding the fur trade would prove to be the most profitable venture in Canada, and minimal land was initially needed to suit the needs of French colonizers.  The final desire was to establish positive relations with the Native peoples as they were necessary for assistance with the fur trade, as well as protection.  Champlain even went as far as to assist a party of Montagnais warriors in an attack on a fortified position of the Mohawk, a member of the Five Nations in modern-day upstate New York.  Victorious in combat, this actually helped bring peace to the region for several decades, and allowed Champlain to pursue his dream of an integrated, prosperous society through diplomacy.  

On the diplomatic front, Champlain would rely on a cadre of what were called “truchements,” or interpreters.  These were young French men were sent to live among indigenous tribes to become immersed in the language and culture.  There were some who lived for a short time and returned, while there were others who stayed and took Native wives.  Étienne Btûlé is one of the more well-known of these truchments; he lived among the Algonquin and literally took up their ways, journeyed to at least four of the Great Lakes and might have even been the first European to visit Lake Superior.  He disappeared for three years when he went to live among the Susquehanna, and most likely explored the regions of the Ohio and Potomac River Valleys during that time, and eventually made his way back to Paris where he married a Native woman.  He eventually decided to join the British marauders who snatched Canada from French hands in the late 1620’s, and Champlain never forgave him for that.  He was so disliked that, when he was killed by the Huron, the French didn’t even mount retribution.  Not all truchments lived as colorful of a life as Brûlé, but his journeys and accomplishments allow us to understand the adventures undertaken by Jean Nicolet.

Act Two: Who was Nicolet?

As we examine just exactly who Nicolet was, one thing that stands out is, similar to his superior, Champlain, a lack of written records exist to explain his early life.  We know that he was born in Normandy, that region of modern-day northern France where thousands of Allied soldiers landed as part of D-Day during World War II, in 1598.  His Roman Catholic parents were Thomas, a royal postal carrier whose route traversed Cherbourg in Normandy and Paris, and Marguerite, who was also known as Marie in some sources.  He also had at least two brothers, both of whom spent time in New France, and two sisters, perhaps more, but the record is sparse on further familial details. The occupation of Nicolet’s father meant that his family was neither the landed elite of the traditional “Ancien Régime,” nor were they landless peasants that made up the vast majority of the population of Henri IV’s kingdom.  Even though the concept of a “middle class” would not prevail until the Industrial Revolution, this is the equivalent of where Nicolet landed…and this affluence translated to Nicolet’s ability to read and write, so he would have received an excellent education, furthering his qualifications to serve as a trunchment.   

Nicolet crossed the Atlantic and landed in New France in 1619, first setting foot on North American soil in the same year that, down in Jamestown, representative government and the foundations of chattel slavery were taking shape.  He lived among the Allumette Algonquin, learned their language and culture, and was even said to have been accepted into their lodges and councils.  He moved to live among the Nipissing in 1620 and stayed there for eight to nine years, living with a Nipissing woman during this time and fathering a daughter with her.  When the British technically controlled Quebec from 1629-1632, Nicolet stayed in the western regions of the colony and lived among the Huron for at least part of the time because he was proficient in their language.  He returned to Quebec proper in 1632 to help the French establish trade relations with the Natives, and Champlain returned the following year.  Here was a man who had lived among at least three indigenous nations where he not only learned their language and culture, but  earned a fair amount of respect in the process from all sides.  He was judged to be the perfect man for the next voyage of diplomacy that would bring another indigenous nation into the fold as trading partners of the French.

Act Three: Great Lakes Mission

By the early 1630’s, Nicolet established himself as a phenomenal linguist and communicator, and was entrusted with a special mission: to travel west, make contact with Native Amercians known to reside in these lands, and establish cordial relations with them.  Piecing this journey together has challenged scholars over the centuries given that the only primary sources that mention this mission come from two Jesuit accounts written about two years apart in the 1640’s, and both devote only two pages to the mission itself.  Written in the annually published Relations, these accounts do not make it abundantly clear where he went because specific names for places are not used.  Jesuit Bartholémy Vimont mentions that he was supposed to go on a mission to meet the “People of the Sea,” also known as the Puans, the ancestors of today’s Ho-Chunk Nation.  Once contact was made, he was to “arrange a peace between them and the Hurons.”  The phrase “Hurons” does refer to a specific nation of indigenous peoples, but also could have been a type of catch-all phrase that was meant to include all who were part of the Jesuits’ mission of conversion.  “Puan” is a French translation of the Algonquin phrase “WInnebago,” which the French pronounced “Baye des Puans,” or “bay of stinkards.”  The translation may refer to disdain for the people, or the fact that the water was algae-filled (or “green”) and smelled awful.  Either way, this name for the people is what gave the Bay of Green Bay, as well as the city that is the oldest in Wisconsin, its name.  

This journey is commonly believed to have taken place in 1634, although various scholars have proposed that it took place in 1633 (we will use the 1634 date).  It is highly likely that Champlain himself gave the order for Nicolet to partake in this expedition, but we may never know for certain.  One Jesuit account makes it clear that Nicolet began in Huron-controlled lands and traversed the northernmost reaches of Lake Huron.  From there, accounts vary as to where Nicolet’s party went, but the most common explanation is that, once he reached the outskirts of Lake Huron, his party passed into what is now Lake Michigan via the Straits of Mackinac and continued to hug the shores of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula while entering the Bay of Green Bay (this included passing through what Europeans eventually nicknamed “Death’s Door,” giving the county name to the peninsula that has been referred to as the “Cape Cod of the Midwest”).  For reasons we will examine in Act Four, the accepted explanation has been that Nicolet eventually landed at the site known as Red Banks on the Bay of Green Bay, exchanged gifts, negotiated a treaty between his Huron companions and the Puans, and maybe journeyed down what is now the Fox River.  However, a more recent explanation is that Nicolet’s party made landfall just south of Little Bay de Noc in the Upper Peninsula and, with the assistance of Menominee envoys, walked south to Grand Village in what is now Marinette, Wisconsin, while carrying gifts on a stick to announce his peaceful intentions.  He and his party hid their canoes to guarantee that they would have transportation for a return voyage; remember, Nicolet was there to help broker a treaty between his Huron companions and the Puan, who weren’t exactly on the best of terms.  Once in the Grand Village, Nicolet donned a fancy cape befitting his social status and position  and participated in a council attended by 4-5,000 as news of his appearance traveled fast.  With the negotiations concluded, Nicolet returned from whence he came and did not explore the area in further detail, although he did inquire about the tribes of the region by talking to his hosts.

Those same Jesuit sources that refer to his mission mention Nicolet as arriving in Trois-Rivières in December 1635 and he ended up serving in the same capacity that he always had: interpreter and negotiator.  Specifically, he dealt with the Algonquin-speaking peoples who came to trade at the settlement.  The French had recently fortified their position at this location, and Jesuit missionaries constructed a mission to better serve the indigenous population.  Nicolet formed significant friendships with these Jesuits to the point where he provided linguistic assistance and shared the information he had acquired during his travels as he accompanied Jesuits on missions of conversion.  Two of Nicolet’s brothers joined him during his time at Trois-Rivières, and he married Marguerite Couillard two years after his return from his Great Lakes mission. His diplomatic experience also came in handy in the early 1640’s when the Five Nations, armed by the Dutch, began to resurrect the hostilities with France’s allies that Champlain had helped quell a generation earlier.  Nicolet met the 350 Mohawks that arrived at Trois-Rivières in June 1641, but the meeting was a disaster when both sides fired at the other.  Nicolet’s life came to an end in October 1642; he was summoned to Quebec to serve in an official position, but was tasked with escorting an Iroquois prisoner along the St. Lawrence River back to Trois-Rivières.  Their boat sailed into the rough waters of a violent storm, and five of the six men on board drowned, Nicolet included.  The survivor, François Berchereau de Chavigny, claimed that Nicolet’s last words implored him to save himself because Nicolet could not swim.  The cold waters make hypothermia a more likely explanation, but the man who traversed two of the Great Lakes and served New France admirably as a interpreter and negotiator was dead by his early 40’s.

Act Four: Legacy

By now, we understand the inner workings of New France, the nature of Nicolet’s presence, and what we believe actually occurred on his journey that resulted in a meeting with the Puans in the western region of the Great Lakes.  So, why has Nicolet’s voyage, if it indeed makes its way into textbooks, been misconstrued as a “journey of discovery” in which Nicolet was using the Great Lakes as a conduit to reach the fabled “Northwest Passage” to East Asia, going so far as to wear a robe of fine Chinese silk when he mistakenly believed that the western shores of Lake Michigan were the terminus of this passage?  The most famous images of Nicolet’s landfall, including a 1907 painting entitled The Landfall of Jean Nicolet and Franz Edward Rohrbeck’s 1910 mural play on these perceptions.  Much recent scholarship on the subject comes to us courtesy of Patrick Jung, a professor at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, who in turn acknowledges the research of Dr. Nancy Lurie, a former anthropologist at the Milwaukee Public Library.  Their findings reveal much not only about the history of Nicolet, but how events that have been mythologized as historical “truths” often fail to hold up when multiple pieces of evidence are more closely scrutinized.  

So, why has the belief persisted that Nicolet landed at what was called “Red Banks” in modern-day Green Bay?  Asserting that Nicolet most likely ended up at the Great Village of the Menominee near what is today the border of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin is not as common as the contention that Nicolet simply made landfall in Green Bay.  It begs the question of where this belief came from, and why it endures.  Attempting to answer this requires an acknowledgement that, beginning in the late 1800’s, Nicolet’s adventure came to the forefront as an example of European excellence and tenacity in the origin story of the United States.  His status as the first white man to reach the shores of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin has been passed down through the generations, as our introduction made very clear.  The aforementioned mural painted in 1910 by Franz Edward Rohrbeck still looms over the Brown County Courthouse in Green Bay; it shows Nicolet making his landfall at “Red Banks,” draped in a magnificent silk robe and firing his two guns, or “thundersticks,” into the air.  The robe was meant to signify that he had reached China and expected to meet the emperor, and the guns were for show..  This mural also depicts the natives who encountered him as surprised at best, and outright scared at worst.  

Numerous scholars and historians ascertained that Nicolet made landfall in Green Bay, but this is also undergoing scrutiny; the Puans certainly lived along the Bay, and Roman Catholic historian John Gimlay Shea was the first to claim that Nicolet landed in Green Bay.  Arthur C. Neville, two-term Green Bay mayor, and founder of the Green Bay Historical Society, advanced the theory of the landing at Red Banks because the Puans lived there at the time; this claim was not only repeated throughout the past century, but led him into a dispute with businessman and scholar Publius V. Lawson, who claimed that Nicolet actually made it to an island on Lake Winnebago, which is about a 45 minute drive south of Green Bay.  This explains why there are two markers commemorating Nicolet’s landfall: the aforementioned Red Banks marker, and one on Doty Island in Lake Winnebago.  As for the long, flowing robe made of Chinese silk Nicolet is depicted as wearing, as though he expects to be greeted by the Ming emperor himself?  The historical record describes Nicolet’s attire as “a grand robe of China damask, all strewn with flowers and birds of many colors.”The phrase “China damask” refers to its initial introduction into Europe via the city of Damascus, and was manufactured in France since about the mid-1400’s.  French designers tended to adorn their material with floral designs, among other things, and the silk-laden attire that Nicolet wore would more likely have been a cape.  Such capes were fashionable among the French elite, and a man of Nicolet’s status would have wanted to visually flaunt his position,  Like most items regarding Nicolet’s voyage, nineteenth-century historians interpreted the original French to mean that Nicolet was wearing a grand robe in anticipation of his landfall in China.  Both are likely incorrect.

So, if Nicolet’s voyage was a blimp on the radar, why would it, and his life story, merit such focus?  The misconstrued nature of his story reveals much about ourselves: our desire to link our own existence with the “glorious past.”  Our habit of attempting to find that link, despite evidence that may exist to the contrary.  And the reality that stories that become unquestioned and accepted as tangible “fact” may not always hold up when the primary sources chronicling such items are reinterpreted along with new archaeological evidence.  The concept of “revisionism” within the history discipline certainly applies when such new evidence is presented, and we must always be careful to understand phrases from primary sources in the context of the ir own time to ensure that as little as possible becomes “lost in translation.”

However, it would be foolish to assume that Nicolet’s sole legacy is to remind us to “fact-check” our sources.  Nicolet’s mission was one of many that occurred along the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes region.  Rather than convert and enslave the indigenous populace, like the Spanish, or resort to violence when conversion didn’t work, like the English, the French sought a different path.  Diplomacy was the name of the game, and although they would have preferred that the Native population take up Christianity, the French were willing to “live and let live” for the greater purposes of trade and alliances.  Remember, Nicolet married not only a French woman with whom he had children, but also had a Nissiping wife with whom he had a daughter.  This daughter was representative of the vision of New France outlined by Nicolet’s boss, Samuel de Champlain: a world in which the French and Native Americans would not only tolerate one another, but they would co-exist and create a new society.  This is precisely what occurred, as Nicolet’s daughter Madeline-Euphorsine was one of hundreds, and now millions, of Metis that fused cultural elements of two worlds and truly made up a “New World.”  This, perhaps, is the legacy of Nicolet that belongs on a marker for all to see.

Join us next week on History: Beyond the Textbook as we explore the legendary Pilgrims and the establishment of Plymouth through the lens of Stephen Hopkins, the only settler on the Mayflower who had already crossed the Atlantic, and who connects Plymouth with the earlier settlement at Jamestown.