Pierre-Charles Le Sueur

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Pierre-Charles Le Sueur (c.1657born in Artois, France; died17 July 1704 at Havana, Cuba) was a French fur trader and explorer in North America.

Le Sueur came to Canada with the Jesuits to their mission at Sault Ste Marie, but very soon he turned himself to fur trade and became acoureur des bois. Around 1683, he received some samples of bluish clay from the middle reaches of a tributary of the Mississippi and took it back to France to be analyzed. A chemist, L'Huillier, deemed it to be copper ore. Le Sueur returned to New France to order to mine this ore, but was waylayed by, among other things, a prison term for overreaching his trade privileges.He was present at the formal assertion of French sovereignty of Canada, declared in 1689 by Nicholas Perrot at Green Bay. Eventually, however, he was given a royal commission to open a copper mine (although some suggested he was more interested in "mining furs"). In 1699, he was with the group that ascended the Mississippi Riverfrom Biloxi to the "country of the Nadouessioux", stopping to overwinter at Isle Pelee or Fort Perrot above Lake Pepin. He went upstream as far as the Falls of St. Anthony. After trading with the local Dakota bands (the Mdewankantons, Wahpetons and Wahpekutes) in the area, in the spring of 1700 he and a group of 20 men went further up the river known to the native population as "minisota", or "cloud reflected water" and continued to the Blue Earth River, where they built Fort L’Huillier. (Named for the chemist who declared it to be copper ore Farmer-general [[Alexandre L’Huillier]). They overwintered at Fort L'Huillier, trading furs and other merchandise with the local Indian bands. They found the prairies full of bison, and learned to subsist largely on a meat diet. In May of 1701, Le Sueur left a garrison of men at the fort and accompanied a large quantity of the blue earth (Dakota language: "mah kato") back to Fort Mobile for further analysis, which revealed that it was not copper and thus worthless. Fort L'Huillier was attacked by Sac and Fox Indians and abandoned by 1702. Le Sueur served as a local magistrate in what is now Alabama, before dying in 1704. He never saw the Minnesota country again, though a city and county in Minnesota were named in his honor. The city of Mankato and Blue Earth county of which it is the seat, were named for the Dakota "blue earth" that Le Sueur had mined nearby. The supposed site of Fort L'Huillier is marked with a signpost along US Highway 169 south of Mankato.