JEAN NICOLLET, LOUIS JOLIET, AND FATHER JACQUES MARQUETTE
THE DISCOVERERS OF THE MISSISSIPPI
Jean Nicollet's Voyage on the Wisconsin.--Louis Joliet and Jacques
Marquette are sent by Count Frontenac to follow the Course of the
Mississippi.--On the Wisconsin.--The "Great Water" reached.--Hospitably
entertained in an Indian Camp.--An Invaluable Gift.--The Mouth of the
Missouri and the Mouth of the Ohio passed.--The Outlet of the Arkansas
reached.--Hardships of the Return Voyage.--Death of Marquette.--Joliet's
Mishap.
A notable _coureur de bois_ (a French-Canadian wood-ranger) was Jean
Nicollet. He had lived for years among the savages and had become
thoroughly Indian in his habits. He was sent by the French Governor,
about 1638, as an ambassador to the Winnebagoes, west of Lake Michigan.
He had heard among his Indian friends of a strange people without hair or
beard who came from beyond the Great Water to trade with the Indians on
the Lakes. Who could these beardless men be but Chinese or Japanese?
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So fully possessed was he by this idea that, in order to make a suitable
appearance before the Orientals whom he expected to meet, he took along
with him a robe of heavy Chinese silk, embroidered with birds and
flowers. When he neared the Winnebago town, he sent a messenger ahead to
announce his coming, and, having put on his gorgeous robe, followed him
on the scene. Never did a circus, making its grand entry into a village
in all the glory of gilded chariots and brass band, inspire deeper awe
than this primitive ambassador, with his flaming robe and a pair of
pistols which he fired continually. His pale face, the first that the
Winnebagoes had ever seen, gave them a sense of something unearthly. The
squaws and the children fled into the woods, shrieking that it was a
manitou (spirit) armed with thunder and lightning. The warriors,
however, stood their ground bravely and entertained him with a feast of
one hundred and twenty beaver.[1]
But if Nicollet did not succeed in opening relations with Cathay and
Cipango (China and {171} Japan), he did something else that entitles him
to be commemorated among the Pathfinders. He ascended Fox River to its
head-waters, crossed the little divide that separates the waters flowing
into the Lakes from those that empty into the Gulf of Mexico, and
launched his canoe on the Wisconsin, the first white man, so far as we
know, who floated on one of the upper tributaries of the mighty river.
This was just about one hundred years after Soto had crossed it in its
lower course. On his return, he reported that he had followed the river
until he came within three days of the sea. Undoubtedly he misunderstood
his Indian guides. The "Great Water" of which they spoke was almost
certainly the Mississippi, for that is what the name means.
The first undoubted exploration of the mighty river took place
thirty-five years later. It was made by two men who combined the two
aspects of Jesuit activity, the spiritual and the worldly. Louis Joliet
was born in Canada, of French parents. He was educated by the Jesuits,
and was all his life devoted to them. He was an intelligent merchant,
practical and courageous. No better man could have been chosen for the
work assigned him.
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His companion in this undertaking was a Jesuit priest, Jacques Marquette,
who was a fine example of the noblest qualities ever exhibited by his
order. He was settled as a missionary at Michillimackinac, on Mackinaw
Strait, when Joliet came to him from Quebec with orders from Count
Frontenac to go with him to seek and explore the Mississippi.
On May 17, 1673, in very simple fashion, in two birch-bark canoes, with
five white _voyageurs_ and a moderate supply of smoked meat and Indian
corn, the two travelers set out to solve a perplexing problem, by tracing
the course of the great river. Their only guide was a crude map based on
scraps of information which they had gathered. Besides Marquette's
journal, by a happy chance we have that of Jonathan Carver, who traveled
over the same route nearly a hundred years later. From him we get much
useful and interesting information.
At the first, the explorers' course lay westward, along the northern
shore of Lake Michigan and into Green Bay. The Menomonie, or Wild-rice
Indians, one of the western branches of the Algonquin family, wished to
dissuade them from going further. They told of ferocious tribes, {173}
who would put them to death without provocation, and of frightful
monsters (alligators) which would devour them and their canoes. The
voyagers thanked them and pushed on, up Fox River and across Lake
Winnebago.
At the approach to the lake are the Winnebago Rapids, which necessitate a
portage, or "carry." Our voyagers do not mention having any trouble
here. But, at a later time, according to a tradition related by Dr. R.
G. Thwaites, this was the scene of a tragic affair. When the growing
fur-trade made this route very important, the Fox Indians living here
made a good thing out of carrying goods over the trail and helping the
empty boats over the rapids. They eventually became obnoxious by taking
toll from passing traders. Thereupon the Governor of New France sent a
certain Captain Marin to chastise them. He came up the Fox River with a
large party of _voyageurs_ and half-breeds on snow-shoes, surprised the
natives in their village, and slaughtered them by hundreds.
At another time the same man led a summer expedition against the Foxes.
He kept his armed men lying down in the boats and covered with oilcloth
like goods. Hundreds of red-skins {174} were squatting on the beach,
awaiting the coming of the flotilla. The canoes ranged up along the
shore. Then, at a signal, the coverings were thrown off, and a rain of
bullets was poured into the defenceless savages, while a swivel-gun mowed
down the victims of this brutality. Hundreds were slaughtered, it is
said.
On to the lower Fox River their course led the explorers. This brought
them into the country of the Miamis, the Mascoutins, once a powerful
tribe, now extinct, and the Kickapoos, all Algonquins of the West.
A council was held, and the Indians readily granted their request for
guides to show them the way to the Wisconsin. Through the tortuous and
blind course of the little river, among lakes and marshes, they would
have had great difficulty in making their way unaided.[2]
When they came to the portage, where now stands the city of Portage,[3]
with its short canal {175} connecting the two rivers, they carried their
canoes across, and launched their little barks on the Wisconsin. Down
this river they would float to the great mysterious stream that would
carry them they knew not whither, perhaps to the Sea of Virginia (the
Atlantic), perhaps to the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps to the Vermilion Sea
(the Gulf of California).
Whether they would ever return from the dim, undiscovered country into
which they were venturing, who could say? It seems amazing that one
hundred and thirty years after Soto had crossed the great river,
intelligent Frenchmen were ignorant even of its outlet. It shows how
successfully Spain had suppressed knowledge of the territory which she
claimed.
Down the quiet waters of the Wisconsin the voyagers glided, passing the
thrifty villages of the Sacs and Foxes, then a powerful people, now
almost extinct. On June 17, exactly one month from the day of their
starting, their canoes {176} shot out into a rapid current, here a mile
wide, and with joy beyond expression, as Marquette writes, they knew that
they had achieved the first part of their undertaking. They had reached
the "Great Water."
What would have been the feelings of these unassuming voyagers, if they
could have looked down the dim vista of time, and have seen the people of
a great and prosperous commonwealth (Wisconsin), on June 17, 1873,
celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of their achievement!
Strange sights unfolded themselves, as they made their way down the
mighty stream and looked on shores that no eyes of a white man had ever
beheld. What magnificent solitudes! Only think of it--more than a
fortnight without seeing a human being!
They used always extreme caution, as well they might, in view of the
tales that had been told them of ferocious savages roaming that region.
They went ashore in the evening, cooked and ate their supper, and then
pushed out and anchored in the stream, keeping a man on watch till
morning.
After more than two weeks of this solitary voyaging, one day they saw a
well-trodden path {177} that led to the adjacent prairie. Joliet and
Marquette determined to follow it, leaving the canoes in charge of their
men. After a walk of some miles inland, they came to an Indian village,
with two others in sight. They advanced with beating hearts. What was
their reception to be? When they were near enough to hear voices in the
wigwams, they stood out in the open and shouted to attract attention. A
great commotion ensued, and the inmates swarmed out. Then, to their
intense relief, four chiefs advanced deliberately, holding aloft two
calumets, or peace-pipes. They wore French cloth, from which it was
evident that they traded with the French. These people proved to belong
to the great Illinois tribe, the very people some of whom had met
Marquette at his mission-station and had begged him, as he says, "to
bring them the word of God."
Now, after the pipe of peace had been duly smoked, he had the
long-desired opportunity of delivering the message of salvation. He did
not fail to add some words about the power and glory of Onontio (Count
Frontenac). The head chief replied in a flowery speech, after the most
approved fashion of Indian oratory, assuring his {178} guests that their
presence made his tobacco sweeter, the river calmer, the sky more serene,
and the earth more beautiful. He further showed his friendship by giving
them a boy as a slave and, best of all, a calumet, or peace-pipe,[4]
which was to serve as a commendation to the goodwill of other Indians.
Invaluable the voyagers found it.
The friendly chief also represented very strongly the danger of going
further down the {179} Great Water and vainly tried to dissuade them.
Feasting followed. After various courses, a dainty dish of boiled dog
was served, then one of fat buffalo, much to the Frenchmen's relief.
Throughout this entertainment the master of ceremonies fed the guests as
if they had been infants, removing fish-bones with his fingers and
blowing on hot morsels to cool them, before putting them into their
mouths. This was the very pink of Indian courtesy.
The two Frenchmen spent the night with their dusky friends and the next
day were escorted to their canoes by several hundreds of them. This
first encounter with Indians of the Mississippi Valley on their own soil
seems to have taken place not far from the site of Keokuk.
The voyagers' next sensation was experienced after passing the mouth of
the Illinois River. Immediately above the site of the city of Alton, the
flat face of a high rock was painted, in the highest style of Indian art,
with representations of two horrible monsters, to which the natives were
wont to make sacrifices as they passed on the river. The sight of them
caused in the pious Frenchmen a feeling that they were in the Devil's
country, for to Christians of the seventeenth century heathen {180} gods
were not mere creatures of the imagination, but living beings, demons,
high captains in Satan's great army.
Soon the voyagers were made to fear for their safety by a mighty torrent
of yellow mud surging athwart the blue current of the Mississippi,
sweeping down logs and uprooting trees, and dashing their light canoes
like leaves on an angry brook. They were passing the mouth of the
Missouri. A few days later they crossed the outlet of the Ohio,
"Beautiful River," as the Iroquois name means.
All the time it was growing hotter. The picturesque shores of the upper
river had given place to dense canebrakes, and swarms of mosquitoes
pestered them day and night. Now they had a note of danger in meeting
some Indians who evidently were in communication with Europeans, for they
had guns and carried their powder in small bottles of thick glass. These
Europeans could be none other than the Spaniards to the southward, of
whom it behooved the Frenchmen to beware, if they did not wish to pull an
oar in a galley or swing a pick in a silver-mine. Still there was a
satisfaction in the thought that, having left one civilization thousands
of miles behind them, {181} they had passed through the wilderness to the
edge of another. These Indians readily responded to the appeal of the
Frenchmen's calumet, invited them ashore, and feasted them.
On toward the ocean, which they were falsely told was distant only ten
days' journey, the voyagers sped, passing the point at which, one hundred
and thirty-three years earlier, Soto, with the remnant of his army, had
crossed the mighty river in whose bed his bones were destined to rest.
Above the mouth of the Arkansas they were for a time in deadly peril from
Indians. These were of the Mitchigamea tribe, who, with the Chickasaws
and others of the Muskoki family, fought the Spaniards so valiantly.
Canoes were putting out above and below, to cut off the explorers'
retreat, while some young warriors on the shore were hastily stringing
their bows, all animated doubtless by bitter memories of white men
inherited from Soto's time. Once more the calumet saved its bearers.
Marquette all the while held it aloft, and some of the elders, responding
to its silent appeal, succeeded in restraining the fiery young men. The
strangers were invited ashore, feasted, as usual, and entertained over
night. They had some misgivings, but did not {182} dare refuse these
hospitalities; and no harm befell them.
The next stage of their journey brought them to a village just opposite
the mouth of the Arkansas River. Here they were received in great state
by the Arkansas Indians, notice of their coming having been sent ahead by
their new friends. There was the usual speechmaking, accompanied by
interminable feasting, in which a roasted dog held the place of honor.
There was a young Indian who spoke Illinois well, and through him
Marquette was able to preach, as well as to gain information about the
river below. He was told that the shores were infested by fierce savages
armed with guns.
By this time it was evident that nothing was to be gained by going
further. The explorers had ascertained beyond dispute that the
Mississippi emptied its waters, not directly into the Atlantic, or into
the Pacific, but into the Gulf of Mexico. If they went further, they ran
the risk of being killed by Indians or falling into the hands of
Spaniards. In either case the result of their discovery would be lost.
Therefore they resolved to return to Canada. Just two months from their
starting and one month from their {183} discovery of the Great Water they
began their return.
Their route was a different one from the original, for on reaching the
mouth of the Illinois River they entered and ascended it. On the way,
they stopped at a famous village of the Illinois tribe called Kaskaskia.
Thence they were guided by a band of young warriors through the route up
the Des Plaines River and across the portage to Lake Michigan. Coasting
its shore, they reached Green Bay, after an absence of four months.
Thus ended a memorable voyage. The travelers had paddled their canoes
more than two thousand, five hundred miles, had explored two of the three
routes leading into the Mississippi, and had followed the Great Water
itself to within seven hundred miles of the ocean. They had settled one
of the knotty geographical points of their day, that of the river's
outlet. All this they had done in hourly peril of their lives. Though
they experienced no actual violence, there was no time at which they were
not in danger.
In the end the voyage cost Marquette his life, for its hardships and
exposures planted in his system the germs of a disease from which he
{184} never fully recovered, and from which he died, two years later, on
the shore of Lake Michigan.
Joliet met with a peculiar misfortune. At the Lachine Rapids, just above
Montreal, almost at the very end of his voyage of thousands of miles, his
canoe was upset, two men and his little Indian boy were drowned, and his
box of papers, including his precious journal, was lost. Undoubtedly his
daily record of the voyage would have been very valuable, for he was a
man of scholarship as well as of practical ability. But its accidental
loss gave the greater fame to Marquette, whose account was printed. In
recent years, however, he has been recognized as an equal partner with
the noble priest in the great achievement.
[1] These Winnebagoes were the most eastern branch of the great
Dakota-Sioux family. Their ancestors were the builders, it is believed,
of the Wisconsin mounds.
[2] Carver says, "It is with difficulty that canoes can pass through the
obstructions they meet with from the rice-stalks. This river is the
greatest resort for wild fowl that I met with in the whole course of my
travels; frequently the sun would be obscured by them for some minutes
together."
[3] This spot has a remarkable interest as the place where, within a very
short distance, rise the waters that flow away to the eastward, through
the Great Lakes, into the North Atlantic, and those that now southward to
the Mississippi and the Gulf. It is, however, according to Carver, most
uninviting in appearance, "a morass overgrown with a kind of long grass,
the rest of it a plain, with some few oak and pine trees growing thereon.
I observed here," he says, "a great number of rattlesnakes."
[4] The following description of this very important article is taken
from Father Hennepin:
"This Calumet is the most mysterious Thing in the World among the Savages
of the Continent of the Northern America: for it is used in all their
most important Transactions. However, it is nothing else but a large
Tobacco-pipe made of Red, Black, or White Marble: The Head is finely
polished, and the Quill, which is commonly two Foot and a half long, is
made of a pretty strong Reed, or Cane, adorned with Feathers of all
Colours, interlaced with Locks of Women's Hair. They tie to it two wings
of the most curious Birds they find, which makes their Calumet not unlike
Mercury's Wand.
"A Pipe, such as I have described it, is a Pass and Safe Conduct amongst
all the Allies of the Nation who has given it; for the Savages are
generally persuaded that a great Misfortune would befal 'em, if they
violated the Publick Faith of the Calumet."
The French never wearied of extolling the wonderful influence of this
symbol of brotherhood. Says Father Gravier, writing of his voyage down
the Mississippi, in 1700: "No such honor is paid to the crowns and
sceptres of kings as they pay to it. It seems to be the God of peace and
war, the arbiter of life and death."
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