Sturgeon Bay, Wis. (November 22, 2021) – The Door County Maritime Speaker Series is proud to welcome Dr. Patrick J. Jung, professor at Milwaukee School of Engineering, for the December 2nd presentation, sponsored by Door County Medical Center.
Dr. Jung will discuss his historical and archaeological research into the early French period in the western Great Lakes, which has revolutionized our understanding of both the French explorers and missionaries who penetrated the region and the Native people who resided there.
In the case of Jean Nicolet, his journey to Green Bay has been substantially recast by more thorough and careful research into the original documents that record his journey. Historians today reject the notions proffered a century ago that he landed at Red Banks on Green Bay, or at the entrance to Lake Winnebago at Menasha. Instead, the historical evidence suggests he landed on the western shore of Green Bay, likely at Marinette in 1634. The travels of Father Jacques Marquette are far better documented, and there exists no doubt that he plied the waters of Sturgeon Bay during his journey to the Illinois River in 1674.
The span of forty years that separated these two journeys witnessed a dramatic shift in the human geography of the western Great Lakes and the Door Peninsula in particular. In Nicolet’s day, the Puans, the ancestors of the later Ho-Chunk people, occupied the Door Peninsula and spoke a dialect of the Chiwere Siouan language family. Shortly thereafter, the Puans became engaged in a cataclysmic series of wars with nearby Algonquian speaking societies, particularly the tribes of the Illinois Confederacy. More than ninety percent of the Puans died in these conflicts, and the remnants reorganized as the Ho-Chunk Nation. By Marquette’s time, Algonquian peoples dominated the Green Bay region, particularly the Potawatomis, who would later migrate south toward Manitowoc, Sheboygan, Milwaukee, and Chicago.
This talk will cover the recent historical and archaeological discoveries that are redefining our understanding of the western Great Lakes in the seventeenth century.
The DCMM Maritime Speaker Series offers an assortment of monthly programs – from historical topics to current issues affecting the Great Lakes and the economy that relies on them. The Door County Medical Center Maritime Speaker Series programs are held the first Thursday of each month, October through May, beginning at 7pm, on the second floor of the Museum in Sturgeon Bay, as well as online. There is no costs to attend; we suggest donation of a non-perishable food item, or if watching online, we ask you to donate to your local food pantry.
Visit www.dcmm.org/maritime-speaker-series for more information and to register for the online presentation.
Additional support for the Door County Medical Center Maritime Speaker Series is provided by Foremost Resorts, The Lodge at Leathem Smith, Westwood Shores and the Sister Bay Bowl.
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