Jean Nicolet
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Jean Nicolet (Nicollet), Sieur de Belleborne 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.
1910 painting of Jean Nicolet's 1634 arrival in Wisconsin
1909 plaque commemorating Jean Nicolet's landing near Red Bank, Wisconsin.
A statue of Nicolet, built in 1951, is located in Wequiock Falls County Park in Brown County, Wisconsin.
Coureur des bois
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A coureur des bois or coureur de bois were independent entrepreneurial French Canadian traders who travelled in New France and the interior of North America, usually to trade with First Nations peoples by exchanging various European items for furs. Some learned the trades and practices of the indigenous peoples.
Coureur de bois, a woodcut by Arthur Heming (1870–1940)
A coureur des bois in the painting La Vérendrye at the Lake of the Woods, circa 1900–1930
Depiction of Samuel de Champlain (1574–1635) by Theophile Hamel (1870)
Radisson & Groseillers Established the Fur Trade in the Great North West, 1662, by Archibald Bruce Stapleton (1917–1950)