explorer, fur trader, b. Artois, France. By 1679 he was in Canada as a servant for the Jesuits. He subsequently became a fur trader and was fined for being a coureur de bois. Le Sueur negotiated successfully with the Sioux to keep peace with the Chippewas, and in 1693, built a fort on Madeline Island to check intertribal war. In 1695 he built a fort on Prairie Island in the Mississippi River to keep the Bois Brule- St. Croix route open. Interested in copper and lead mining, he worked what he thought was a copper deposit in Minnesota, but the ore proved to be worthless. Dict. Amer. Biog.; Colls. State Hist. Soc. Wis., 16 (1902); L. P. Kellogg, French Regime in Wis. . . . (Madison, 1925); W. W. Folwell, Hist. of Minn. (4 vols., St. Paul, 1921-1930).

View an account of Le Sueur's trip of 1700 at Wisconsin Historical Collections.

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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]