Jean-Baptiste-Louis Franquelin was a French fur trader in what was called “New Canada” in the late 17th century. He was appointed in the 1670s as the colony’s first cartographer, and in 1688, the same year the above map was published, he was promoted to “royal hydographer” by King Louis XIV.
To the best of my knowledge, this map is the first time the St. Croix appeared on a European map. It was well-known to Indigenous people for millennia before the French arrived, but this is the first map published that references the river.
It’s safe to say that Franquelin probably never visited the St. Croix River region, and his grasp of the geography was limited. I’m still not sure what all the different rivers and places are supposed to represent; it seems to show the St. Croix entering the Mississippi above St. Anthony Falls, for one thing.
Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Luth, who was the first known European to travel the length of the St. Croix in 1679 or 1680, and in 1683 returned to build a fur trading post on what is now called Upper St. Croix Lake in Solon Springs, Wisconsin. It is that “Fort St. Croix” that appears on Franquelin’s map.
A sad footnote is that Franquelin left New Canada in 1692 to return to France. His wife and 10 children were supposed to follow him the next year but drowned in a shipwreck off the coast of Quebec. Franquelin never returned to North America.
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