Louis Armand, Baron de Lahontan (9 June 1666 – prior to 1716) serves in the French military in Canada where he travels extensively in the Wisconsin and Minnesota region and the upper Mississippi Valley.
Upon his return to Europe, he writes an enormously popular travelogue.
In it, he embellishes his knowledge of the geography of the Great Lakes region and creates several fictions.
The immense popularity of the book results in his distorted cartography being accepted by several eminent cartographers who incorporate the "Lahontan" concepts into most of the maps of the 18th century.