The first Europeans in Wisconsin were French explorers. The record of the French excursions date to 1534 when Jacques Cartier staked claim for King Frances I of France and entered the mouth of the St. Lawrence River from the Atlantic.
It would be another 90 years before future explorers would reach Lake Superior and Green Bay in Lake Michigan in the “Pays d’en haut“, or the Upper Country.
From 1609-1616, Samuel de Champlain established Quebec as a trading community on the St. Lawrence River in the colony of New France. Champlain explored the Ottawa River, the French River to Georgian Bay and Lake Huron, and thereafter across southern Ontario to Lake Ontario.
While in New France, he allied with the indigenous Hurons, Algonquins and Montaignais peoples against the Iroquois.
Later, as governor of New France, Champlain commissioned interpreters Etienne Brûlé (1621) and Jean Nicolet (1634) to seek a water route to the Pacific existed. Both attained a fluency in the Huron language, and each reached the rapids at Sault Ste. Marie.
Nicollet landed his watercraft at Red Banks near Green Bay and made contact with the Ho Chunk people in Wisconsin. Neither Brûlé nor Nicollet found the route to the Pacific, but they learned about profitable sources of fur from the inhabitants. Trade for pelts would soon begin in earnest, exchanged for practical metal objects like knives, axes and cookware, and later for weapons, ammunition, blankets and porcelain jewelry beads.
Pierre Radisson and the Sieur de Groseilliers traced these predecessor routes to Green Bay in 1659 and the next year to the Chequamegon Bay region on Lake Superior for the purpose of fur trade.
On this second voyage, Radisson and Groseilliers built a fort near Ashland and wintered on Lac Court Oreilles in northwest Wisconsin 60-miles inland. It’s possible their route employed the Flambeau Trail from Lake Superior to the headwaters of the Chippewa River.
Radisson and Groseilliers returned to Quebec with furs plus news culled from the indigenous cultures of a “great river flowing south” through North America. The interpreter Louis Joliet and Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette were sent to investigate. The writings of Marquette and Joliet’s 1673 trip to the Mississippi River inspired future explorers, traders and missionaries to come to Wisconsin, and expanded the boundaries of New France to a 4,000-mile network of waterway trade routes.
Sources:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Content.aspx?dsNav=N:4294963828-4294963805&dsRecordDetails=R:CS388
http:// www.historymuseum.ca/virtual-museum-of-new-france/the-explorers/