Early French Explorers of the Interior

The most celebrated of such were Champlain, Nicolet, Perrot, Joliet, La Salle, and La Verendrye.

Continuing La Salle Explores Length of Mississippi River,
our selection from Histoire du Canada by François Xavier Garneau published in 1848. The selection is presented in seven easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in La Salle Explores Length of Mississippi River.

Time: 1673-1682
Place: Mouth of the Mississippi River

Such devotedness, at once heroic and humble, could not but confound worldly philosophy, while it has gained for the members of the order the admiration of many Protestants. Thus we have the candid testimony of Bancroft, the able historian of the English plantations in this continent, that “The annals of missionary labors are inseparably connected with the origin of all the establishments of French America. Not a cape was doubled nor a stream discovered that a Jesuit did not show the way.”

On the other hand, there were instances where secular explorers, seeking to illustrate their names by great discoveries or to enrich themselves by traffic, opened a way for the after-labors of the missionary. The most celebrated of such were Champlain, Nicolet, Perrot, Joliet, La Salle, and La Verendrye.

In regions south of the St. Lawrence, Père Druillettes was the first European who passed overland from that river to the eastern Atlantic seaboard, ascending the Chaudifere and descending the Kennebec in 1646. He did good service to the colony by preserving for it the amity of that brave nation, the only one which the Iroquois were slow to attack.

In another direction, the traffickers and missionaries, constantly moving onward toward the sources of the St. Lawrence, had reached the upper extremity of Lake Huron. Pères Brébeuf, Daniel, Lalemant, Jogues, and Raimbault founded in the regions around its waters the Christianized settlements (villages) of St. Joseph, St. Michel, St. Ignace, and Ste. Marie. The last-named, seated at the point where Lake Huron communicates with Lake Erie, was long the central point of the northwestern missions.

In 1639 Jean Nicholet, following the course of a river flowing out of Lake Michigan at Green Bay, was led within three days’ navigation of “the Great Water,” such was the distinctive name the aborigines gave to the Mississippi. In 1671 the relics of the Huron tribes, tired of wandering from forest to forest, settled down in Michilimackinac, at the end of Lake Superior, under the care of Père Marquette, who thus became the earliest founder of a European settlement in Michigan. The natives of the vicinity were of the Algonquin race; but the French called them Sauteurs, from their being near to Sault Ste. Marie.

Between the years 1635 and 1647 communication with the region was little attempted, the hostile feeling of the Iroquois making the navigation of Lake Ontario perilous to adventurers, and obliging them to pass to and from the western mission field by the valley of the Ottawa. The Neuters’ territory, visited by Champlain, and the southern lakeboard of Erie beyond Buffalo, were as yet almost unknown.

The new impulse which had been given to Canada by Colbert and Talon began to bear fruit. Commerce revived, immigration increased, and the aborigines, dominated by the genius of civilization, feared and respected everywhere the power of France. Perrot, a famous explorer, was the first European who reached the end of Lake Michigan and the Miâmis country, where deputies from all the native tribes of the regions irrigated by the head waters of the Mississippi, the sources of the Red River and the St. Lawrence, responded to his call to meet him at the Sault Ste. Marie, From one discovery to another, as so many successive stages in a journey, the French attained a certainty that “the Great Water” did exist, and they could, in advance, trace its probable course. It appeared certain, from the recent search made for it in northerly and eastern directions, that its waters, so voluminous as the natives asserted, must at last find their sea-vent either in the Bay of Mexico or in the Pacific Ocean. Talon, who took a strong interest in the subject, during his intendancy recommended Captain Poulet, a skillful mariner of Dieppe, to verify the passage from sea to sea, through the Straits of Magellan.

He induced M. de Frontenac to send M. Joliet into the region where the great stream, yet unseen, must take its rise; and follow its course, if found, till its waters reached the sea. The person thus employed on a mission which interested everyone at the time was a man of talent, educated in the Jesuits’ College of Québec, probably in view of entering the Church, but who had gone into the peltry trade. He had travelled much in the countries around Lake Superior and gained great experience of the natives, especially those of the Ottawa tribes. M. Joliet and Père Marquette set out together in the year 1673. The latter, who had lived among the Potowatami Indians as a missionary, and gained their affections, was forewarned by them of the perils, they alleged, which would beset his steps in so daring an enterprise, admonishing him and his companion that the people of the farther countries would allow no stranger to pass through them; that travelers were always pillaged at the least; that the great river swarmed with monsters who devoured men,* and that the climate was so hot that human flesh could not endure it.

[* There was some foundation for this report, as alligators abounded, at that time, in the lower waters of the river.]

Having progressed to the farthest horde, over the Fox River, where Père Allouez was known, and the most extrem point yet touched by any European, the adventurers found the people of the divers tribes living together in harmony; viz., the Kikapoos, Mascoutins, and Miâmis. They accorded the strangers a kind reception and furnished guides to direct the party, which was composed of nine persons in all — Joliet, Marquette, with five other whites, and two natives. On June 10th they set out, bearing two light canoes on their shoulders for crossing the narrow portage which separates the Fox River from that of Wisconsin, where the latter, after following a southerly, takes a western, course. Here their Indian guides left them, fearing to go farther.

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