Wisconsin Family History Research From Ancestry.com Wiki This
entry was originally written by Dawn M. Knauft and Carol L. Maki
in Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources. History
of Wisconsin Called the “fairest portion of the Great West,”
Wisconsin was first observed by Europeans in 1634. Late that
summer a young but seasoned voyageur, Jean Nicolet, sent by New
France administration in Canada, arrived at Red Banks on the
Green Bay of Lake Michigan. He explored the area and returned to
Canada to explain to Samuel de Champlain that he had not found
the passage to China. In the spring and summer of 1673, Louis
Joliet, a cartographer and explorer, Father Jacques Marquette,
and five others made a journey that would greatly expand the
French knowledge of this territory. The course of their canoes
was guided by two Miami-nation guides down the Fox, Wisconsin,
and Mississippi rivers. They traversed the Mississippi south to
a Quapaw village near the present boundary of Arkansas and
Louisiana. Nicolas Perro