In history there are two "discoveries of the Mississippi"; the lower
waters were discovered by the Spanish explorer, De Soto (April, 1541);
and the upper waters, by Frenchmen from Canada or New France. Nothing
came of De Soto's discovery for over a hundred years, for the Spaniards
had no love for exploration that gave no promise of mines of precious
metals, and it is to the French that we give chief credit for finding
the Mississippi; for their discovery immediately led the way to a
general knowledge of the geography and the savages of the great valley,
and to settlements there by whites.
It is seldom safe to say who was the first man to discover anything, be
it in geography, in science, or in the arts; generally, we can tell only
who it was that made the first record of the discovery. Now it is quite
possible that Frenchmen may have wandered into the Upper Mississippi
valley before Radisson and Groseilliers appeared in Wisconsin (1654);
but, if they did, we do not know of it. It is still a matter of dispute
whether the "great river" described in Radisson's journal was the
Mississippi; some writers think that it was, and that to him and to
Groseilliers belongs the honor of the first-recorded discovery. Then,
again, there are some who think that in 1670 the famous fur trader La
Salle was upon the Mississippi; but that is a mere guess, and honors
cannot be awarded upon guesswork. We do know, however, that in 1673
Joliet and Marquette set out for the very purpose of finding the
Mississippi, and succeeded; and that upon their return they wrote
reports of their trip and made maps of the country. Having thus opened
the door, as it were, white men were thereafter frequent travelers on
the broad waterway. Hence it is idle to discuss possible previous
visits; to Joliet and Marquette are due the credit of regular,
premeditated discovery.
Louis Joliet, who led this celebrated expedition, was at the time but
twenty-eight years old. He was born in Quebec, had been educated at the
Jesuit college there, and early in life became a fur trader. He learned
several Indian languages, and made numerous long journeys into the
wilderness, and, like Jean Nicolet before him, was regarded by the
officers and the missionaries at Quebec as a man well fitted for the
life of an explorer. In 1671 he went with Saint Lusson, one of the
officials of New France, to Sault Ste. Marie. St. Lusson made peace with
the Indians of the Northwest, and, in the name of the king of France,
took possession of all the country bordering on the upper Great Lakes.
Upon returning to Quebec, Joliet met the famous Count Frontenac, but
recently arrived from Paris, where he had been appointed as governor of
New France. Frontenac was curious to know more about the Mississippi
River, especially whether it flowed into the Pacific Ocean, or the
"Southern Sea" as it was then called in Europe. In looking about for a
man to head an expedition to the great river, he could hear of no one
better prepared for such service than Joliet.
In those early days, no exploring party was complete without a priest;
the conversion of the savages to Christianity was quite as important, in
the eyes of the king, as the development of the fur trade. Father
Jacques Marquette, then thirty-six years of age, was the Jesuit
missionary at Point St. Ignace, on the Straits of Mackinac. When Joliet
reached that outpost, after a long and weary canoe voyage up the now
familiar Ottawa River and Georgian Bay route, he delivered orders to
Marquette to join his party. Joliet was a favorite with his old
instructors, the Jesuits, so that the two young men were well pleased
with being united upon this project, Joliet to attend to the worldly
affairs of the expedition, and Marquette to the religious. Both of them
had had long training in the hard life of the wilderness, and
understood Indian character and habits as well as any men in New France.
It was upon the 17th of May, 1673, that the two explorers, in high
spirits, set forth from Marquette's little mission at Point Ignace. Five
French boatmen paddled their two canoes, and did most of the heavy work
of the journey, carrying the boats and cargoes around rapids, or along
portage trails from one river to another. Marquette says in his journal:
"Our joy at being chosen for this expedition roused our courage, and
sweetened the labor of paddling from morning to night."
The course they took was, no doubt, that followed through nearly two
hundred years thereafter by persons journeying in canoes from Mackinac
to Green Bay. They paddled along the northern shores of Lake Michigan
and Green Bay, until they could cross over through the stormy water
known as "Death's Door," to the islands beyond the Door county
peninsula; and then crept down the east shore of Green Bay, under the
lee of the high banks.
They seem to have made good time, for on the 7th of June they reached
the village of the Mascoutins, on the south shore of Fox River, near
where Berlin now is, the same village, it will be remembered, where
Nicolet, Radisson, and Allouez had already been entertained. We do not
know upon what day our two explorers had reached De Pere, where the
Jesuit mission was established, but they probably stayed among their
friends there for some days, before going up the Fox.
In his journal, the good missionary described nearly everything he saw,
with much detail. The Menominee Indians interested him greatly; he calls
them "the People of the Wild Oats," and tells how they gather the grain
of these wild oats (or wild rice), by "shaking the ears, on their right
and left, into the canoe as they advance" through the swamps. Then they
take the grain to the land, strip it of much of the chaff, and "dry it
in the smoke on a wooden lattice, under which they keep up a small fire
for several days. When the oats are well dried, they put them in a skin
of the form of a bag, which is then forced into a hole made on purpose
in the ground; then they tread it out, so long and so well, that the
grain being freed from the chaff is easily winnowed; after which they
reduce it to meal." There are still to be seen, on the shores of Lake
Koshkonong, and several other Wisconsin lakes and rivers, the shallow,
bowl-like holes used by the Indians in threshing this grain, as
described by Marquette two and a quarter centuries ago.
The Mascoutin village also claims much attention in the missionary's
diary. The Mascoutins themselves are rude, he says; so also are the
Kickapoos, many of whom live with them. At this village are also many
Miami Indians, who had fled from their homes in Indiana and Ohio,
through fear of the fierce Iroquois of New York. These Miamis are,
Marquette tells us, superior to the Wisconsin Indians, being "more
civil, liberal, and better made; they wear two long earlocks, which give
them a good appearance," and are brave, docile, and devout, listening
carefully to the missionaries who have visited them. The Father also
describes the site of the village: "I felt no little pleasure in
beholding the position of this town; the view is beautiful and very
picturesque, for from the eminence on which it is perched, the eye
discovers on every side prairies spreading away beyond its reach,
interspersed with thickets or groves of lofty trees. The soil is very
good, producing much corn; the Indians gather also quantities of plums
and grapes, from which good wine could be made, if they chose. As bark
for cabins is rare in this country, they use rushes, which serve them
for walls and roof, but which are no great shelter against the wind, and
still less against the rain when it falls in torrents. The advantage of
this kind of cabins is that they can roll them up, and carry them easily
where they like in hunting-time."
Above the Mascoutin village, the Fox begins to narrow, being hemmed in,
and often choked, by broad swamps of reeds and wild oats. The canoe
traveler who does not know the channel, is sometimes in danger of
missing it, and getting entangled in the maze of bayous. Two Miami
guides were therefore obtained from their hosts, and on the 10th of June
the travelers set off for the southwest, "in the sight of a great crowd,
who could not wonder enough to see seven Frenchmen alone in two canoes,
dare to undertake so strange and so hazardous an expedition." The guides
safely conducted them to the place where is now situated the city of
Portage, helped them over the swampy plain of a mile and a half in
width, and, after seeing them embarked upon the broad waters of the
Wisconsin River, left them "alone in an unknown country, in the hands of
Providence."
The broad valley of the Wisconsin presents a far different appearance
from that of the peacefully flowing Upper Fox, with its outlying marshes
of reeds, and its numerous lakes. The Wisconsin, or Meskousing, as
Marquette writes it, is flanked by ranges of bold, heavily wooded
bluffs, which are furrowed with romantic ravines, while the channel is,
at low water, studded with islands and sand bars, and in times of flood
spreads to a great width. Marquette himself describes it thus: "It is
very broad, with a sandy bottom, forming many shallows, which render
navigation very difficult. It is full of vine-clad islets. On the banks
appear fertile lands diversified with wood, prairie, and hill. Here you
find oaks, walnut, whitewood, and another kind of tree with branches
armed with long thorns. We saw no small game or fish, but deer and moose
in considerable numbers." About ninety miles below Portage, they thought
that they discovered an iron mine.
At last, on the 17th of June, they swiftly glided through the
picturesque delta of the Wisconsin, near Prairie du Chien, and found
themselves upon the Mississippi, grateful that after so long and
tiresome a journey they had found the object of their search. Joliet's
instructions were, however, to ascertain whether the great stream flowed
into the "Southern Sea"; so they journeyed as far down as the mouth of
the Arkansas. There they gathered information from the Indians which
led them to believe that the river emptied into the Gulf of Mexico; thus
the old riddle of the supposed waterway through the heart of the North
American continent was left unsolved.
In returning, Joliet and Marquette came up the Illinois River, and
reached Lake Michigan by portaging over to the Chicago River. They were
back at the Jesuit mission at De Pere, in September. Marquette having
fallen ill, Joliet was obliged to return to Quebec alone, leaving the
missionary to spend the winter with his Wisconsin friends. When almost
within sight of the French settlement at Montreal, at the mouth of the
Ottawa River, poor Joliet lost all his papers in the dangerous Lachine
rapids, and could make only a verbal report to the government. He later
prepared a map of his route, with great care, and forwarded that to
France; it is one of the best maps of the interior parts of North
America made in the seventeenth century. Joliet, as the leader of the
expedition, had hoped to receive, either in office or lands, substantial
rewards for his great discoveries; but there were now new officials at
Quebec, with whom he had little influence, and the recompense of this
brave spirit was small. Others reaped what advantages there were in the
opening of the Mississippi valley to the fur trade.
On the other hand, the unworldly priest who was his friend and
companion, and who neither desired nor needed special recognition for
what he had done, has, all unconsciously, won most of the glory of this
brilliant enterprise. Under the rules of the Jesuit order, each
missionary in New France was obliged to forward to his superior at
Quebec, once each year, a written journal of his doings. Marquette
prepared his report at leisure during the winter, while at De Pere, and
in the spring sent it down to Quebec, by an Indian who was going thither
to trade with the whites. Accompanying it was a crudely drawn but fairly
accurate map of the Mississippi basin. The journal and map arrived
safely, but for some reason neither was then printed; indeed, they
remained almost unknown to the world for a hundred and seventy-nine
years, being at last published in 1852. Marquette never learned the fate
of either Joliet's elaborate records or his own simple story of the
expedition, for he died in May, 1675, on the eastern shore of Lake
Michigan, worn out by disease and by excessive labors in behalf of the
Indians.
By the time Marquette's journal was finally published, Joliet had been
well-nigh forgotten; and to Marquette, because his journal was the only
one printed, is given the chief credit in nearly every American history.
The legislature of Wisconsin has placed a beautiful marble statue of the
gentle Marquette, as the discoverer of the Mississippi, in the capitol
in Washington; whereas the name of his sturdy chief is perpetuated only
in the principal prison city of Illinois.