In that year, he was sent off to learn Algonquin on Allumettes Isles, in the Ottawa valley, to become an interpreter. He was supposedly the only Frenchman and lived Algonquin style, winning their confidence, being named captain of a band of 400 men to negotiate with the Iroquois.
Later he was sent to the Nipissing country, where he stayed for about eight or nine years. In 1624, he became official interpreter of New France. He then became commissioner for the Companie des Cents Associés in 1633, and was promptly sent to discover. He founded, in 1634, the post of Trois-Rivières, then moving on to Huronia (Georgian Bay area, Ontario), which had been frequented by Brulé earlier.
Jean Nicolet is the first European in a quest towards the West. when people think of the West, they think of cowboys, or the pioneers of the 1900s, in Canada's case, but the truth is that the westward exploration was beginning as early as the 1630s when the King of France asked Champlain to begin explorations to the West, in hopes of finding China. Since Champlain was old, it was up to Jean Nicolet.
He travelled up the Rivière des Outaouais (Ottawa River) and across to the present site of Sault-Sainte-Marie. He followed the coast of what is now Michigan and became the first European to enter the waters of a new Great Lake, the Michigan, although called "Lac des Illinois." He continued south until he entered a bay he nammed "Baie des Puants" (Green Bay). He learned that a people known as the Winnebagos lived nearby. Winnebagos means those who live by the sea and Nicolet thought that they were probably Oriental and so he dressed in Chinese traditional clothes.
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