The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1909-07-14
THE NEXT WHITE EXPLORERS OF THIS
STATE.

/
STATE.
Duluth and Hennepin were in Min.
nesota twenty years later, on the st.
Croix and the Mississippi and at
Mile Laos, but they made no explor-
alton of the Minnesota valley.
LESUEUR'S MINING ON THE BLUE
EARTH RIVER.
Radisson's narratives remained
unpublished and almost unknown to
historians more than two centuries,
until 1885, so that the first publica-
ton Of explorations of this river
whence our state is named was from
reports and journals of LIE Sueur
and his carpenter, Penicaut, narrat-
ing the expedition in the year 100
for mining supposed copper ore
on the Blue Earth river few miles
southwest of Mankato.
Pierre Charles lie Sueur was born
in 1857, of parents who had emigrat-
ed to Canada from Artois, France.
He came to the Mississippi, probab-
ly with Nicolas Aerrot, by way of
the Wisconsin river, as we learn
from La Harpe. in 1858. his age be-
then twenty-siX years. The remain
ing years of the century, excepting
expeditions for the sale of furs in
Montreal and absence in voyages to
France, he spent principally in the
country of the Sioux, called by
themselves the Dakotas.
Sailing to France in 1886, LIE Sueur
took some of the blue or green earth
which he had obtained from the
Blue Earth river, and L'Huilier, one
of the kings officers, essayed it. The
next year LIE Sueur was commits
stoned to open mines in the region
which is now Minnesota. But dis
asters and obstacles deferred him
from this project until three years
later, when, having come from a
second visit in France, with thirty
miners, to Biloxi, near the mouth
of the Mississippi, he assembled this
river in the year 100, using a sail
ing and rowing vessel and two
canoes.
Coming forward along the Mime
sofa river. he reached the Blue
Earth on the last day of September.
Half of the party built and fortified
camp, which was named Fort
L'Huillier, situated beside the Blue
Earth river league from its mouth
and near the junction of its tribu-
tary, the LIE Sueur river 1t was in
the we'll watered, partly timbered,
but mostly prairie district of Blue
Earth county, which Joseph N.
Nicollet, two-thirds of a century ago
called the Undine Region. Others
of the party went to hunt buffaloes,
of which four hundred were killed,
skinned, quartered and placed on
scaffolds in the fort, to be frozen
and thus kept as the principal pro-
visions for tho Uintar
In April, 17O1, LIE Sueur's party
mined, according to the relation of
Penicaut. one of the number, more
than 10000 pounds Of the supposed
ore. They selected 1000 pounds of
it, which LIE Sueur ordered to be
carried to the fort and brought
away on his return. Leaving a
garrison at the fort, he again navi-
gated nearly the whole length of the
Mississippi and arrived at the Gulf
of Mexico in February. 1902. Theme
with Iberville, the governor of
Louisiana, who was cousin of LIE
Sueur's wife, he sailed for France
on April Both, taking the ore, Of
which, however, nothing more is
known. It was a peculiar dark
green shade, which outcrops in the
bluffs of the Blue Earth river, or
perhaps an equally remarkable blue
earth of the same vicinity, which the
Sioux used as pigment, in either
case worthless as a source of copper
or any metallic product.
The exact sites Of LIE Sueur's fort
and mine have been identified, five
years ago, by Thomas Hughes of
Mankato, as presented by him in
paper read before the Minnesota
Historical Society.
LIE Sueur surpassed any other man
during the hundred years of French