A Bit of History
European exploration of the region began with French Canadian voyageurs in the seventeenth century, followed by French missionaries and French fur traders. French Canadian explorer Jean Nicolet was the first recorded entrant into the region, landing in 1634 at the site of Green Bay, Wisconsin, today (although Étienne Brűlé is stated by some sources as having explored Lake Superior and possibly inland Wisconsin in 1622). The French exercised control from widely separated posts throughout the region they claimed as New France. France ceded the territory to the Kingdom of Great Britain in the Treaty of Paris (1763), which ended the French and Indian Wars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Territory
The French Lead the Way: c. 1500-1763
France took the lead in colonizing the Upper Midwest region. From the early sixteenth century on, French soldiers, missionaries and fur traders left their slight mark upon the St. Lawrence valley, the upper Great Lakes and points west. For the early French explorers, the more continent they discovered the more their hopes were frustrated. They had hoped that the vast St. Lawrence-Great Lakes waterway was part of a Northwest Passage to the wealth of the Orient... ... The French presence was asserted by a network of forts, trading posts and missions dotting the lake and river routes traversing the continental interior. By the middle of the eighteenth century, settled populations were beginning to take hold at Detroit and Green Bay and in what was called the Illinois country. The settlements had a distinctive shape; like those long established in the Quebec area, they were defined by their dependence upon riverine commerce. They were thickly clustered along the river's edge, on long and thin lots running back into the nearby hinterland....
...The French remained influential in the upper Great Lakes region as long as the region made its living from the fur trade. By the third decade of the nineteenth century, the flood of incoming American farmers overwhelmed the fur trade and the slight but extensive French presence. The French presence, like the Indian presence, persists in regional place names (e.g., Prairie du Chien, in Wisconsin, or Lac qui Parle, in Minnesota).
More On: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/umhtml/umessay3.html
and on: http://detroit1701.org/Fort%20Michilimackinac%20Marker.html
