After Marquette and Jolliet’s trip, there was little documented presence of French or French Canadians in what is now Iowa until the late 18th century. One exception was Nicolas Perrot, who came to Canada in 1660 and served as interpreter along with participating in the fur trade. Perrot was one of the first French people to encounter the Native people west of the Great Lakes, around the same time as Marquette and Jolliet were making their trip down the Mississippi. He was assigned as interpreter to Simon-François Daumont de Saint-Lusson as the latter searched for copper mines and explored the region of Lake Superior in the name of France. Later, Perrot founded Fort Saint-Nicolas at the junction of the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers (where Marquette and Jolliet had entered the Mississippi, near present-day Prairie du Chien) and claimed for France territory that is today Wisconsin and points west, including territory that is today Iowa.
It is likely that French fur traders and coureurs de bois (those traders who didn’t bother to get French government approval for their fur trade activities) ventured into Iowa, but we do not have records of their presence. In the mid-1730s, however, Iowa played a role in the conflict, known as the Fox Wars, between the French and the Fox or Meskwaki people. Nicolas-Joseph de Noyelles de Fleurimont, an officer in the French colonial troops, was put in charge of a campaign in the war against the Foxes, departing from Montreal in August 1734. Noyelles stopped to pick up Native Huron, Potawatomi, and Kickapoo allies at Detroit and at Ouiatenon on the Wabash River in Indiana, but the complicated flow of Native alliances caused many of the Natives to drop out of the campaign as they moved west.
Noyelles thus arrived in Iowa, aiming to attack Sauk and Fox villages, with a much-reduced force in February 1735. The French and their allies finally encountered the Sauks and Foxes, who had built a strong encampment on the Des Moines River, and the ensuing battle was inconclusive. In the negotiations between Noyelles and the Foxes that followed, Noyelles was unable to make any progress, and he retreated east, leaving the French goals unfulfilled.
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