Eau Claire, Duluth, L'Anse, Fond du Lac,
Rivière aux Voleurs (TRF), Ste-Croix, St-Paul,
Sault Ste Marie, Au Train, Duluth, Marquette,
Click on the town's name for more on it's history and relationship with French explorers
Thief River Falls takes its name from a geographic feature, the falls of the Red Lake River at its confluence with the Thief River. The name of the river is a loose translation of the Ojibwe phrase, Gimood-akiwi ziibi, literally, the "Stolen-land river" or "Thieving Land river," which originated when a band of Dakota Indians occupied a secret encampment along the river, hence "stealing" the land, before being discovered and routed by the neighboring Ojibwe.[4] In the Treaty of Old Crossing of 1863, the Moose Dung's Indian Reservation was established on the west bank of the Thief River, at its confluence with Red Lake River. This Indian Reservation was dissolved in 1904 and their population incorporated as part of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa. The Falls marked the limit of navigability of the Red Lake River, where the eponymous townsite was established in 1887 and later incorporated as a city in 1896. Before the reduction of the Red Lake Indian Reservation to its present size, the former boundaries, in part, went from Upper Rice Lake south of Bagley, Minnesota, to the mouth of Thief River and then continuing up Thief River; portion of northbound U.S. Route 59 leading into Thief River Falls follows this former boundary line.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thief_River_Falls,_Minnesota#History
"Eau Claire" is the singular form of the original French name, "Eaux Claires", meaning "Clear Waters", for the Eau Claire River. According to local legend, the river was so named because early French explorers journeying down the rain-muddied Chippewa River, happened upon the Eau Claire River, excitedly exclaiming "Voici l'eau claire!" ("Here [is] clear water!"), the city motto, which appears on the city seal.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eau_Claire,_Wisconsin
by Clorissa Swingen
What was so important about the vast lands just west of Lake
Michigan? The territory now known as Wisconsin played several roles and we can
now witness their effects. The origins of cities vary from starting out as
trading headquarters, or even smaller yet, posts, to missionary sites, and even
some logging industries. But even before those times, there was something here
that kept several American Indian tribes in the vicinity, the animal known as
the beaver. This aspect is very important to understand. The beaver dominated
the trading industry for almost two centuries. Trading between the French and
French-Canadians and then later with the English, was quite frequent among the
Algonquian and Sioux tribes.
As early as 1634, Jean Nicolet, a French Canadian set foot upon
Wisconsin land to please his curiosity of this strange land and people. Jean
Nicolet did not travel all of the way to current day Fond du Lac, but many did.
This man started a trend that would last a very long time, even into the 19th
century.
Source and more on: http://www.uwgb.edu/wisfrench/study/research/fondlac.htm
In French, L'Anse roughly translates as "the cove," a reference to its location at the base of the Keweenaw Peninsula. French explorers sighted the location of L'Anse in the 17th century. The village of L'Anse was founded in early 1871 when Jacob Houghton, chief engineer for the Houghton and Ontonagon Railroad, arrived to plat a preliminary route from the eastern end of Lake Michigamme to the head of the Keweenaw Bay. The village was to become a port and house numerous stamping mills for the nearby iron ore mines.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Anse,_Michigan
The land around Marquette was known to French missionaries of the early 17th century and the trappers of the early 19th century. Development of the area did not begin, however, until 1844, when William Burt and Jacob Houghton (the brother of geologist Douglass Houghton) discovered iron deposits near Teal Lake west of Marquette. In 1845, Jackson Mining Company, the first organized mining company in the region, was formed. The village of Marquette began on September 14, 1849, with the formation of a second iron concern, the Marquette Iron Company. Three men participated in organizing the firm: Robert J. Graveraet, who had prospected the region for ore; Edward Clark, agent for Waterman A. Fisher of Worcester, Massachusetts, who financed the company, and Amos Rogers Harlow. The village was at first called New Worcester, with Harlow as the first postmaster. On August 21, 1850, the name was changed to honor Jacques Marquette, the French Jesuit missionary who had explored the region.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquette,_Michigan#History
The community sits at the foot of the Au Train River, where it empties into the Au Train Bay of Lake Superior. Its name derived from the French word for "dragging," in reference to travelers being able to drag their canoes along both the river and shore. The area was a landmark for local Native Americans, as the river mouth was the end point of a portage trail between Lake Michigan and Lake Superior.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Au_Train,_Michigan
In 1659, Pierre Esprit Radisson and Médard Chouart des Groseilliers went searching for furs in the Lake Superior region, and visited the area that became today’s Duluth. Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut, the city's namesake, arrived in 1679 to settle rivalries between two Indian nations, the Dakota and the Ojibwa, and to advance fur trading missions in the area. His work allowed for this to occur, with the Ojibwa becoming middlemen between the French and the Dakota. As a result, the area prospered, and as early as 1692, the Hudson's Bay Company set up a small post at Fond du Lac.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duluth,_Minnesota#History
Sault Ste. Marie is a city in and the county seat of Chippewa County in the U.S. state of Michigan.[1] Founded as a mission in 1668 by Father Jacques Marquette, Sault Ste. Marie is the oldest European settlement in the Midwest.[2]. A fur trading settlement soon grew up at this crossroads on both banks of the river, making the area the center of the 3,000-mile fur trade route extending west from Montreal to the Sault, then to the country north of Lake Superior.[3]
The town was split into two in 1797, when the Upper Peninsula was transferred from the province of Upper Canada to the United States.
The city draws its name from the nearby rapids, originally named Les Saults de Sainte-Marie. Sault is an archaic French word for "waterfall" or "rapids".
In modern French, the words chutes and rapides are now used to convey those two meanings. The word sault survives almost exclusively in geographic names dating from the 17th century. (See also Long Sault, Ontario, and Grand Falls/Grand-Sault, New Brunswick, two other place names where sault carries this meaning.)
Another theory is that Sault is derived from an archaic French word for "jump" (current verb sauter). It could have referred to the area where ships would have to "jump" the St. Marys rapids by being brought ashore and portaged around the rapids before being put back in the water.
Fur traders, explorers, and missionaries came to the area for the fort's protection. Many of the settlers were French Canadians and lived nearby. However, as a whiskey trade flourished, military officers banned settlers from the fort-controlled lands. Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant, a retired fur trader-turned-bootlegger who particularly irritated officials,[20] set up his tavern, the Pig's Eye, near present-day Lambert's Landing.[15] By the early 1840s, the community had become important as a trading center and a destination for settlers heading west. Locals called the area Pig's Eye (French: L'Oeil du Cochon) or Pig's Eye Landing after Parrant's popular tavern.[20]
In 1841, Father Lucien Galtier was sent to minister to the Catholic French Canadians and established a chapel on the bluffs above Lambert's Landing named for his favorite saint, Paul the Apostle.[21][22] Galtier intended for the settlement to adopt the name Saint Paul in honor of the new chapel
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Paul,_Minnesota#History
Father Louis Hennepin wrote in 1683, from information probably provided by Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut: "There is another River which falls ... into the Meschasipi ... We named it The River of the Grave, or Mausoleum, because the Savages buried there one of their Men ... who was bitten by a Rattlesnake." In the original French, this is translated as "Rivière Tombeaux".[1]
Jean-Baptiste Franquelin's 1688 map recorded a "Fort St. Croix" on the upper reaches of the river[2][3]. The name "Rivière de Sainte-Croix" was applied to the river sometime in 1688 or 1689[4], and this more auspicious name supplanted Father Hennepin's earler designation.
On Carte de la Louisiane et du cours du Mississippi (1718) by Guillaume Delisle and on A Map of North America (1768) by John Blair, the St. Croix River—more specifically what was then known as the east branch of the St. Croix River (known today as the Namekagon River)—is shown as the Ouasisacadeba, a French representation of the Dakota name for the St. Croix River
The first Europeans to arrive in the area were Sieur du Lhut and his men in the fall and winter of 1679-1680. For the next eighty years the area was primarily under French influence, and the fur trade grew throughout the first half of the 18th century, with beaver pelts as the prize trade good. After the end of the French and Indian War in 1760, British traders entered the area, and grew in numbers and influence with the help of the powerful North West Company.[9]
