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Jean Nicolet

Since Columbus discovered the new world in 1492 the Spaniards sought the treasures of America and a new route to the far east. The English established their claim on the eastern seaboard and the French further north where they found the St. Lawrence seaway which led to the vast interior of the North American continent. In 1620 Etienne Brule with the help of friendly Indians paddled his canoe through the Great Lakes to the St. Mary's river, Lake Superior and to the land that was to become Michigan.

Samuel de Champlain, French governor of Canada, had heard from natives of a "people of the sea" who dwelt in the "land of the stinking water." Believing that the "stinking water" might be salt water, he was eager to explore new routes to the west. A few years later in 1634 Jean Nicolet passed through the Straits of Mackinac on his way to "the land of the stinking water" which he assumed to be the Pacific Ocean. What he found; however, were only a few Indian tribes that camped along the shore of the westernmost Lake Michigan. But the trail was blazed and in the 17th century the French government sent settlers to the new world who traded with the Indians for their beaver pelts and Catholic Jesuit missionaries who sought to save their souls.

This artist's depiction of Nicolet's introduction to the Native Americans appears in Edwin O. Wood's Historic Mackinac published in 1918.