A.D. 800, the Lake Michigan region eventually became home to Late Woodland Indians. Early fur traders, coureur-de-bois, and explorers from France encountered their descendants: the Menominee, Chippewa (Ojibwa), Ottawa, Potawatomi, Sauk, Fox, Winnebago, and Miami. It is believed that the French explorer Jean Nicolet was the first non-Native American to reach Lake Michigan in 1634 or 1638. First European encounter In 1634, the Menominee and Ho-Chunk people (along with a band of Potawatomi who had recently moved into Wisconsin) witnessed the French explorer Jean Nicolet's approach and landing. Red Banks, near the present-day city of Green Bay, Wisconsin, later developed in this area. Nicolet, looking for a Northwest Passage to China, hoped to find and impress the Chinese. As the canoe approached the shore, Nicolet put on a silk Chinese ceremonial robe, stood up in the middle of the canoe and shot off two pistols. Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix, a French Catholic clergyman, professor, historian, author and explorer, kept a detailed journal of his travels through Wisconsin and Louisiana. In 1721 he came upon the Menominee, whom he referred to as Malhomines ("peuples d'avoines" or Wild Oat Indians), which the French had adapted from an Ojibwe term: After we had advanced five or six leagues, we found ourselves abreast of a little island, which lies near the western side of the bay, and which concealed from our view, the mouth of a river, on which stands the village of the Malhomines Indians, called by our French "peuples d'avoines" or Wild Oat Indians, probably from their living chiefly on this sort of grain. The whole nation consists only of this village, and that too not very numerous. 'Tis really great pity, they being the finest and handsomest men in all Canada. They are even of a larger stature than the Potawatomi. I have been assured that they had the same original and nearly the same languages with the Noquets, and the Indians at the Falls. 19th century Initially neutral during the War of 1812, the Menominee later became allied with the British and Canadians, whom they helped defeat American forces trying to recapture Fort Mackinac in the Battle of Mackinac Island. During the ensuing decades, the Menominee were pressured by encroachment of new European-American settlers in the area. Settlers first arrived in Michigan, where lumbering on the Upper Peninsula and resource extraction attracted workers. By mid-century, encroachment by new settlers