Jean Nicolet - Arrival at Quebec

Arrival At Quebec

In 1618, Nicolet immigrated to Quebec as a clerk to train as an interpreter for the Compagnie des Marchands, a trading monopoly owned by members of the French aristocracy. As an employee, Jean Nicolet was a faithful supporter of the Ancien Régime.

To learn the language of the First Nations, Nicolet was assigned to live with the Algonquins on Allumette Island, a friendly settlement located along the important fur trade route on the Ottawa River. Nicolet returned to Quebec in 1635. He was assigned to the Lake Nipissing area, where he spent more than eight years among the Nipissing First Nation. He ran a store and traded with the various indigenous people in the area.

He had a relationship with Jeanne Nipissing (une sauvagesse de Nipissing, meaning "a Nipissing Indian woman"), a Nipissing native, and they had a daughter, whom he named Madeleine Euphrosine Nicolet. (Mixed-race descendants would eventually be called Métis; many intermarried, and the men specialized in trapping and trading. They eventually formed an ethnic group recognized today among the First Nations.) When Nicolet returned to Quebec, he brought his daughter Madeleine with him to educate her among the French. On July 19, 1629, when Quebec fell to the Kirke brothers who took control for England, Jean Nicolet fled with his daughter to the safety of the Huron country. He worked from there against English interests until the French were restored to power.