After the destruction of the Huron missions, it was difficult enough for some years to keep life in the struggling colony of New France; and it was not until the King had taken Canada in hand, had sent out soldiers and settlers, had commissioned Tracy and Courcelles to curb the Iroquois, and the Intendant, Talon, to introduce order and system, that progress was made in exploring and opening up the West. The promoters of exploration were Talon himself, before he returned to France; and subsequently the Governor, Frontenac; the Sulpician and Jesuit missionaries, especially the latter; and laymen adventurers, the foremost of whom was Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. La Salle's name is for all time connected with the Mississippi, but Joliet and Marquette were before him in reaching the main river.
| Joliet and Marquette. |
Of these two companions in travel, Louis Joliet was a layman, though connected with the Jesuits by early training. Born in Canada, he had been sent by Talon to look for copper by Lake Superior, and was subsequently picked out to discover the mysterious river. Jacques Marquette was a Jesuit priest, of the earlier and purer type—a saintly man, humble and single in mind, who early wore his life away in labouring for his faith. He had come out from France in 1666, and about the year 1668 was sent as a missionary to the upper lakes. On the shores of Lake Superior he ministered to Huron and Ottawa refugees at the mission of St. Esprit, where he heard from Illinois visitors of the great river, and from which point, though he knew it not, one feeder of the Mississippi, the St. Croix river, is at no great distance. A Sioux raid broke up the mission, and with the retreating Hurons he established himself at Michillimackinac, where, about 1670, he founded the mission of St. Ignace. About the same time, a mission was also established at the head of Green Bay, and from this point the two travellers, at the end of May, 1673, went forward to the Mississippi.
| They reach the Mississippi. |
The course up the Fox river and across Lake Winnebago had already been taken by other missionaries, who had not, however, gone as far as the Wisconsin. That river was now reached, and on June 17 it carried the explorers' canoes out into the Mississippi. Down stream they went, past the mouths of the Illinois, the Missouri, and the Ohio, until they came to the confluence of the Arkansas river. There they turned, assured in their own minds that the outlet of the Mississippi was in the Gulf of Mexico—not, as had been supposed, in the Gulf of California—and fearing lest, if they lost their lives at the hands of Indians or of Spaniards,2 the tale of their discovery might be lost also. They came back by way of the Illinois and Des Plaines rivers, made the portage to Lake Michigan, and reached Green Bay at the end of September, having made known to white men the great river of the West.
2 The lower Mississippi had long been known to the Spaniards.
| Their return. Marquette's second journey and death. |
Joliet went back to Quebec to report to the Governor, losing all his papers by the way in the rapids of Lachine. He lived to visit Hudson Bay and the coasts of Labrador. Marquette, in broken health, stayed rather more than a year at the Green Bay mission. Then, in the winter of 1674-5, accompanied by two French voyageurs, he revisited the Illinois river, carrying for the last time his message of Christianity to savages, who heard him gladly, and followed him back, a dying man, as far as Lake Michigan. In the month of May he embarked on the lake, making for Michillimackinac; but, as he went, the end came, and he was put on shore to die. His companions buried him at the lonely spot where he died, but at a later date his bones were brought to Michillimackinac by Indians who had loved him well, and were laid to rest with all reverence in the chapel of his own mission.
| La Salle. His Seigniory at Lachine. |
Marquette, like David Livingstone at a later date, was a missionary explorer. He was carried forward by a faith which could remove mountains. La Salle was cast in another mould. His gift was not religious enthusiasm, but the set purpose of a resolute, masterful man, who made a life-study of his subject. He was born at Rouen, the birthplace of much western enterprise, and went to Canada in the same year as Marquette, the year 1666. An elder brother, who was a Sulpician priest, had gone out before him; and from the Sulpicians, as feudal lords of the island of Montreal, La Salle obtained a grant of the Seigniory of Lachine, eight miles higher up the river than Montreal itself. Here he laid out a settlement, but, as the name 'La Chine' testifies,3 his mind was set on finding a route to China and the East, and in 1669 he gave up his grant, receiving compensation for improvements, and spent what little money he had in beginning his work of discovery.