French naval officer, prospector, b. Canada. He served forty years in the French navy, and advanced to the rank of captain. After be-coming commandant at La Pointe on Madeline Island in 1727, he learned of the Lake Superior copper mines, and in 1733 received French permission to work them. He operated the first sailing vessel on Lake Superior and built up the settlement at La Pointe in 1739. French mining experts reported favorably on the copper deposits, but La Ronde's hopes of great profits as the first practical miner in the Lake Superior region were dashed by the outbreak of the Sioux-Chippewa war in 1740. Dict. Amer. Biog.; Macalester College Contributions (St. Paul, 1890) 1 ser., no. 7; Coils. State Hist. Soc. Wis., 17 (1906); L. P. Kellogg, French Regime in Wis. . . . (Madison, 1925).

View La Ronde's memoir at Wisconsin Historical Collections.

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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]