Jesuit priest Claude Jean Allouez has made a missionary tour of the western missions from 1667 through 1669, serving initially as a missionary to the Potawatomi in Wisconsin.

The next year he was with the Mesquakie, establishing St. Mark's Mission, and founding the mission of St. James among the Miami and Mascouten, finally returning to Green Bay later that year.

Upon arrival in Quebec in 1658, Allouez had immediately begun a study of the Wyandot and Anishinaabe languages to prepare himself for work as a missionary among the native tribes along the St. Lawrence River for three years.

He was from 1660 the superior of the mission at Trois-Rivières, Quebec until 1663 when Bishop François de Laval, the first bishop of New France, named Allouez vicar general of a part of the diocese of Quebec that is now the central region of the United States.

Claude-Jean Allouez is a principal speaker at the ceremony that formally declares the Northwest Territory subject to the King of France in 1671, and in this year establishes the St. Francis Xavier Mission at the last set of rapids on the Fox River before entering the Bay of Green Bay.

The site is known as Rapides Des Pères (rapids of the fathers) which will become modern day De Pere, Wisconsin.

The Nipissing, an aboriginal people of Ojibwa and Algonquin descent who have lived in the area of Lake Nipissing in the Canadian province of Ontario for about nine thousand four hundred years, are known in history by many names, but are generally considered part of the Anishinaabe peoples, a grouping which includes the Odawas, Ojibwe and Algonquins.

This broad heritage is likely the result of the Nipissings living at the crossroads between two watersheds, and are key to trade to the East, West, North and South of Lake Nipissing.

This watershed divide will later be portaged extensively by the French in accessing the Great Lakes by canoe from settlements around Montreal.

To the west, their trade routes extend as far as Lake Nipigon and their Ojibwa neighbors, and to the north as far James Bay where they trade with the Cree.

Their trade network to the east extends as far as present day Quebec City.

The Hurons had lived nearby to the South, and there is archaeological evidence that the Nipissings have integrated some Huron styles and techniques in their pottery.

They obtain food primarily through hunting, fishing, and gathering although their extensive trading likely allows them to supplement their diets with corn, beans and squash as well.

Certainly the land in the lake valleys would have supported some horticulture.

The trade routes that had been under the Nipissings' control had become increasingly desirable during the early colonial period, as the French proved a large market for the inland pelts.

As a result, the Iroquois had executed military campaigns against the Huron and, by 1647, the Nipissing had regrouped in the Lake Nipigon area.

The Nipissing nonetheless continued to use their historical trade routes, but at greater risk to themselves.

Claude-Jean Allouez visited the Nipissings at Lake Nipigon 1667, but in 1671 he reports that the Nipissing have returned to Lake Nipissing.

After returning to Lake Nipissing, some of the Nipissings relocate to the missions at Trois-Rivières, Quebec and Oka, Quebec.

Claude-Jean Allouez had spent the winter of 1669-70 at Green Bay, preaching to the Potawatomi, Menominee, Sauk, Meskwaki (Foxes,) and Winnebago, whom he had found commingled there. (The map of 1681 accompanying Marquette's Journal notes a Winnebago village near the north end of Lake Winnebago.)

The Winnebago have been known to Europeans since 1634, when the French explorer Jean Nicollet found them in Wisconsin, on Green Bay, at which time they probably extended to Lake Winnebago.

At this period they were found wedged in by Central Algonquian tribes, particularly by the Sauk, the Meskwaki, and the Menominee.

To the west they are in intimate contact with a kindred tribe, the Iowa, who in turn are neighbors of the Otoe and Missouri.

These four tribes—the Winnebago, Iowa, Otoe, and Missouri—speak dialects naturally intelligible to one another, and show many cultural similarities.

On the other hand, the Winnebago show many cultural similarities with their Central Algonquian neighbors, particularly in all that pertains to material culture and art, and this double influence, that from their Siouan neighbors and that from their Algonquian neighbors, must be borne in mind in any attempt to understand properly the Winnebago culture.

A Jesuit Mission is established in the area in 1671.

It is stated in the Jesuit Relation for 1671 (42, 1858) that the Winnebago had always dwelt in the Green Bay region and, at a very early date, they had been almost entirely destroyed by the Illinois, but all captives had at last been allowed to return and form a tribe again.