Fort Saint Antoine

Fort Saint Antoine was a seventeenth-century French fort in Wisconsin.

The fort was founded in 1686 by Nicholas Perrot and a group of Canadiens.

Perrot's expedition
In the fall of 1685, Perrot and his men arrived at Trempealeau Mountain by canoe. There, Perrot and his men built a protective shelter in preparation for winter. Several weeks earlier they had left La Baye and crossed Wisconsin via the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers to reach the Mississippi Valley.

The purpose of this expedition was to establish alliances with the Ioway and Dakota Indians in order to expand French interests in the fur trade market. Although Perrot's venture was not the first French excursion into the upper Mississippi Valley, his was the first attempt to establish a foothold in this region.

Founding of Fort Saint Antoine
In the spring of 1686 the Trempealeau site was abandoned for a more advantageous location along Lake Pepin where Perrot built Fort Saint Antoine. Over the next thirty-five years French economic fortunes in the upper Mississippi Valley waxed and waned. It was not until 1731, and the end of the Fox Indian Wars, that the French under the command of René Godefroy, sieur de Linctot returned to Trempealeau and established another trading post.