Background
Joseph Nicolas Nicollet was born on July 24, 1786 in Cluses, France of poor parents and passed his early years as a herdsman on the slopes of the Alps.
Joseph Nicolas Nicollet was born on July 24, 1786 in Cluses, France of poor parents and passed his early years as a herdsman on the slopes of the Alps.
A priest of the locality, having discovered that the boy was very intelligent, taught him to read and secured for him a scholarship in the college at Cluses. There he proved to be a mathematical prodigy and at the age of nineteen was teaching at Chambéry.
Nicollet went to Paris, where he was naturalized and in 1817 became secretary and librarian at the Observatory, working with Pierre Simon Laplace. In 1821 he discovered a comet in the constellation of Pegasus. The next year he was made astronomical assistant at the bureau of longitude and was sent to measure an arc of latitude in southern France.
He became professor of mathematics at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, for which he wrote Cours de Mathématique . .. l'Usage de la Marine.
Having become involved in speculations in the Bourse during the Revolution of 1830, he determined to emigrate to the United States, where he had been invited to visit.
Arriving in 1832 at New Orleans, he sought first the regions of the former French occupation. At St. Louis he became intimate with the Chouteau family, members of which encouraged his plans for exploration.
His first expedition occurred in 1836, when he ascended the Mississippi in the attempt to find its source. On July 26 he arrived at Fort Snelling, where he was cordially welcomed by the officers and encouraged in his purpose to continue to the headwaters of the Mississippi. Two months later he returned to Fort Snelling having had many adventures among the Chippewa, especially those of Leech Lake, whose chief he persuaded to accompany him to the fort. On September 29, 1836, the Indian agent at the fort wrote Governor Dodge of Wisconsin: "Mr. Nicollet who has just returned from the sources of the Mississippi found the Chippewa of Leech Lake in great excitement; his situation was critical and unpleasant" (Indian Office files, Washington). The explorer spent the winter with the officers at the fort and the next year was invited by Secretary Poinsett to visit Washington.
In 1838 he headed an official expedition for a survey of the upper Missouri. On this occasion he was accompanied by Lieutenant John C. Frémont, who joined him at St. Louis.
Notwithstanding a slight physical frame, unsuited to the hardships of exploration, Nicollet's eager spirit urged him to continue his adventures. In 1839 he made a second survey up the Missouri in the steamboat Antelope, reaching Fort Pierre in seventy days. From this point he rode northward across the plains towards the sources of the Red River of the North, exploring as far as Devil's Lake in North Dakota. Upon his return to Washington he devoted his time to the preparation of a map of the region northwest of the Mississippi, dwelling with Ferdinand R. Hassler, chief of the Coast Survey. He prepared also Report Intended to Illustrate a Map of the Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi (1843), published by the government after its author's death, which occurred at Washington.
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(In 1838 and 1839 French scientist Joseph N. Nicollet led ...)
Nicollet was an urbane, polished gentleman, with a superior mind. He was a musician as well as a mathematician and was a great favorite in social circles, particularly in New Orleans and St. Louis, where he felt at home among the residents of French descent. The Western states are indebted to him for his early surveys and his enthusiastic descriptions of primitive conditions.
