He was born in Saint-Germain-Laval, near Lyon, France, and first visited New France in 1674. In September 1678, he left Montreal for Lake Superior, spending the winter near Sault Sainte Marie and reaching the western end of the lake in the fall of the following year where he concluded peace talks between the Saulteur and Sioux nations. Lured by native stories of the Western or Vermilion Sea (likely Salt Lake, Utah), he reached the Mississippi River via the Sainte Croix River in 1680 and then headed back to Fort Michilimackinac, where he heard that jealous Quebec merchants and the intendantJacques Duchesneau de La Doussinière et d'Ambault were slandering him. He was forced to return to Montreal and then France in 1681 to defend himself against false accusations of treason, returning the following year.
He subsequently established fortifications to defend French interests at Fort Caministigoyan at the mouth of the Kaministiquia River, the site of the city of Thunder Bay, Ontario, and at Fort Saint-Joseph between Lake Erie and Huron.
Unveiled on November 5, 1965, the nine-foot high sculpture of duLuth graces the entrance to the Tweed Museum of Art on a column of Minnesota granite, overlooking Ordean Court on the campus of the University of Minnesota Duluth.
True to duLuth’s role as a mediator between the Lake Superior Ojibwe and the trade interests of the French government, Lipchitz costumed him in an Indian jacket, French Louis XIV plumed hat and peruke (wig), a sword at his side and a rolled document in hand.
Sieur duLuth stands as an important late work in which the artist has synthesized fact and myth, as well as Cubistic abstraction and naturalism.
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