During the 16th century and the early part of the 17th, the coast of Maine attracted various explorers, among them Giovanni da Verrazano (1524), Esteban Gomez (1525), Bartholomew Gosnold (1602), Martin Pring (1603), Pierre du Guast, Sieur De Monts (1604), George Weymouth (1605), and John Smith (1614), who explored and mapped the coast and gave to the country the name New England; but no permanent English settlement was established within what are now the borders of the state until some time between 1623 and 1629.
Under the protection of the French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau, sieur de Mauvissiere, Bruno passed over in 1583 to England, where he resided for about two years.
He started in 1248 with a gallant company, which contained his three brothers and the sieur de Joinville, his biographer; and after wintering in Cyprus he directed his army in the spring of 1249 against Egypt.
At Sault Sainte Marie in 1671, before representatives of fourteen Indian nations, the Sieur de St Lusson read a proclamation asserting the French claim to all the territory in the region of the 'Great Lakes.
The first settlement was made here in 1830; and the place which was named in honour of the explorer, Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was chartered as a city in 1852 and rechartered in 1876.
Other members of the family who attained distinction in the same branch of learning were the two sons of Denis GodefroiDenis (1653-1719), also an historian, and Jean, sieur d'Aumont (1656-1732), who edited the letters of Louis XII., the memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, of Castelnau and Pierre de l'Estoire, and left some useful material for the history of the Low Countries; Jean Baptiste Achille Godefroy, sieur de Maillart (1697-1759), and Denis Joseph Godefroy, sieur de Maillart (1740-1819), son and grandson of Jean Godefroy, who were both officials at Lille, and left valuable historical documents which have remained in MS.
A small company had been accustomed to meet in the lodging of the sieur de la Ferriere in Paris near the Pre-auxCleres.
Twenty years later Pierre Esprit, Sieur de Radisson, and Medard Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers, started (16J4) from Quebec, crossed Lakes Huron and Michigan, wintered in Wisconsin, ascended the Fox, crossed to the Wisconsin and possibly reached the Mississippi river eighteen years before Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet.
In 1673 a French expedition organized in Canada under Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet sailed down the Mississippi to the mouth of the Arkansas, and nine years later (1682) Rene Robert Cavelier, sieur de la Salle, reached the mouth of the river, took formal possession of the country which it drains, and named it Louisiana in honour of Louis XIV.
In 1679 Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut (Duluth), as agent for a company of Canadian merchants which sought to establish trading posts on the Lakes, explored the country from the head of Lake Superior to Mille Lacs and planted the arms of Louis XIV.