The Marquette and Joliet Expedition

One thing was made plain to their perceptions: the Mississippi afforded no passage to the East Indian seas.

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

Arrived at the Lower Wisconsin they embarked and glided down the stream, which led the travelers through a solitude; they remarking that the levels around them presented an unbroken expanse of luxuriant herbage or forests of lofty trees. Their progress was slow, for it was not till the tenth day that they attained the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi. But the goal was surely, if tardily, attained. They were now floating on the bosom of the “Father of Waters,” a fact they at once felt assured of, and fairly committed themselves to the course of the doubled current. This event constituted an epoch in American annals.

“The two canoes,” says Bancroft, “with sails outspread under a new sky, sped their way, impelled by favoring breezes, along the surface of the calm and majestic ocean tributary. At one time the French adventurers glided along sand-banks, the resting-places of innumerable aquatic birds; at others they passed around wooded islands in midflood; and otherwhiles, again, their course lay through the vast plains of Illinois and Iowa, covered with magnificent woods or dotted with clumps of bush scattered about limitless prairie lands.”

It was not till the voyagers had descended sixty leagues of the great stream that they discovered any signs of the presence of man; but at length, observing on the right bank of the river a foot-track, they followed it for six miles, and arrived at a horde (bourgade), situated on a river called by the natives Moingona, an appellation afterward corrupted into “Rivière des Moines.” Seeing no one, the visitors hollowed lustily, and four old men answered the call, bearing in hand the calumet of peace. “We are Illinois,” said the Indians: “you are our fellow-men; we bid you welcome.” They had never before seen any whites, but had heard mention of the French, and long wished to form an alliance with them against the Iroquois, whose hostile excursions extended even to their country. They were glad to hear from Joliet that the colonists had lately chastised those whom no others could vanquish, and feasted the visitors, to manifest their gratitude as well as respect. The chief of the tribe, with some hundreds of his warriors, escorted the party to their canoes; and, as a mark of parting esteem, he presented a calumet, ornamented with feathers of various colors; a safe-conduct this, held inviolable among the aborigines.

The voyagers, again on their way, were forewarned of the confluence of the Missouri with the main stream, by the noise of its discharging waters. Forty leagues lower, they reached the influx of the Ohio, in the territory of the Chouanows. By degrees the region they traversed changed its aspect. Instead of vast prairies, the voyagers only saw thick forests around them, inhabited by savages whose language was to them unknown. In quitting the southern line of the Ohio, they left the Algonquin family of aborigines behind, and had come upon a region of nomads, the Chickasaw nation being here denizens of the forest. The Dacotas, or Sioux, frequented the riverain lands, in the southern region watered by the great flood. Thus interpreters were needed by the natives, who wished to parley from either bank of the Mississippi, each speaking one of two mother-tongues, both distinct from those of the Hurons and Algonquins, much of the latter being familiar to Joliet and others of the party.

Continuing their descent, the confluence of the Arkansas with the Mississippi was attained. The voyagers were now under the thirty-third parallel of north latitude, at a point of the river-course reported to have been previously reached, from the opposite direction, by the celebrated Spanish mariner De Soto. Here the Illinois chief’s present stood the party in good stead, for on exhibiting his ornate calumet they were treated with profuse kindness. Bread, made of maize, was offered by the chief of the horde located at the mouth of the Arkansas River. Hatchet-heads of steel, in use by the natives, gave intimation that they traded with Europeans, and that the Spanish settlements on the Bay of Mexico were probably not far off. The waxing summer heats, too, gave natural corroboration to the same inferences. The party had now, in fact, attained to a region without a winter, unless as such be reckoned that part of its year known as “the rainy season.”

It now became expedient to call a halt, for the stored provisions were beginning to fail, and chance supplies could not be depended upon in such a wilderness as the bold adventurers had already traversed; and they were still more uncertain as to what treatment they might receive from savage populations if they proceeded farther. One thing was made plain to their perceptions: the Mississippi afforded no passage to the East Indian seas. They rightly concluded, also, that it found its sea outlet in the Bay of Mexico, not the Pacific Ocean. They had therefore now done enough to entitle them to the grateful thanks of their compatriots, and for the names of their two leaders to take a permanent place in the annals of geographical discovery.

The task of ascending the great river must have been arduous, and the return voyage protracted. Arrived at the point where it is joined by the Illinois, they left it for that stream, which, ascending for a part of its lower course, Père Marquette elected to remain with the natives of tribes located near to its banks; while M. Joliet, with the rest of the party, passed overland to Chicago. Thence he proceeded to Québec, and reported his proceedings to the Governor, M. Talon at that time being in France. This duty he had to perform orally, having lost all his papers when shooting the rapids of the St. Lawrence, above Montreal. He afterward drew up a written report, with a tracing of his route, from memory.

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