Background
The exact date and place of birth of Simon-Francois Daumont de Saint-Lusson is unknown.
The exact date and place of birth of Simon-Francois Daumont de Saint-Lusson is unknown.
There is no record about his education.
St. Lusson went to Canada in 1663 with the Commissioner Gaudais-Dupont. The next year he received a grant of land and thereafter acted as agent for the intendant Jean Talon. In 1668 he asked permission to return to France, probably with Talon, and came back with him to New France in 1670.
In his second term of service (1670 - 73) Talon made extensive plans for enlarging New France and for exploring the interior of the continent of North America. Consequently, when news reached him in the year of his return of the discovery of copper on Lake Superior and of new alliances with the tribes around the upper Great Lakes, he determined to send an expedition, headed by St. Lusson, to take formal possession of this distant territory for the king of France and explore for mines near Lake Superior.
It was October 1670 before the flotilla got under way. This was late for an expedition to so distant a destination, and St. Lusson was forced to camp with his men on the north shore of Lake Huron, spending the winter in hunting excursions. Early in the spring he sent Nicolas Perrot to Green Bay to summon the chiefs of the tribes there to the ceremony, while he himself proceeded to Sault Ste. Marie, where there was a Jesuit mission.
On June 14 the pageant of annexation took place. Aided by the Jesuit missionaries, St. Lusson marched in state from the mission house and, in the presence of representatives from fourteen different tribes, performed a feudal ceremony of taking possession in the name of Louis XIV of all land "discovered and to be discovered. " With the chanting of Latin hymns, the raising of a cross and the arms of France, and an oration to the Indians, the ceremony was concluded.
He later advanced into the Lake Superior region but found no mines. After his return to Quebec he served in Acadia and then went to France, where at Dieppe in May 1672 he sold a ship for Talon and sent gifts to the king of a young moose, a fox, and wild geese from Canada. Probably he went back the next year to Canada, where a son was christened in June 1673.
Since his wife, Marguerite Berin, remarried in 1675, it is supposed that he died in 1674.
Quotes from others about the person
Indeed on the 12 May M. Dudouyt wrote from Paris: “Saint-Lusson is making ready to go back to Canada without knowing what he will do there. I am likewise afraid that he will be what he was before. ”
Marie: “his behaviour on that undertaking was so disorderly, to say nothing stronger, ” wrote La Potherie, “that I will content myself with reporting that he was dispatched to Acadia to be sent back to France. ”
He was married to Marguerite Berin, who married Julien Bouin on 2 July 1675; at that date Saint-Lusson was still alive, and moreover Marguerite Berrin was never the widow of Julien Bouin, who survived her and married again in July 1684. Finally, Saint-Lusson is said to have had a son, christened Jean-Baptiste, in June 1673.
