[JOLIET AND MARQUETTE].
"Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war."
In Louis Joliet,[1] Talon, the intendant,[2] found the man he wanted. Joliet promised to see the mouth of the Mississippi before he came back to give an account of himself, and being already a veteran explorer, no less was expected of him than that he would keep his word.
We remember that exploration and conversion were now always to go hand in hand. One of the Jesuit missionaries at the Lakes was therefore named by his superior to go along with Joliet. This was Father James Marquette. Father Marquette was then in charge of the mission at Michilimackinac, where Joliet found him impatiently expecting his coming, for ever since Marquette had heard the Indians talk about the great river, the wish to make a pilgrimage to it had lain next his heart. He prayed the Virgin to obtain for him this boon, and his prayer had been granted at last. Marquette had also heard of the Missouri, and the natives who dwelt in prodigious numbers along its banks. All these things he was anxious to see with his own eyes in order to know how far the truth would agree with what had been told him. He was impatient to carry the gospel among all these lost tribes, to whom he felt himself called by special appointment of Heaven.
The explorers set out from Mackinac[3] in May, 1673, in two canoes. They were seven men in all. Coasting Lake Michigan[4] till they came to Green Bay, they entered Fox River, crossed Lake Winnebago, and on the 7th of June reached the Mascoutin Village, where to Marquette's great joy a cross[5] was standing unharmed among the wigwams to signify that Christians had already been there.
They had now reached the farthest limit of previous exploration. So far as known no traveller had gone beyond this spot.
MARQUETTE'S MAP.
At this place the explorers took Indian guides. Setting out again on the 10th, they forced the canoes slowly along through shallow waters, choked with wild rice, which grew so tall about them as almost to meet above their heads, till they could go no farther. Then lifting the canoes from the water, the explorers bore them on their shoulders across the prairie to the Wisconsin, upon which they again launched them.