Within a few years there has been produced a map which seems to have been made by Joliet immediately after his return to Montreal. This would make it the earliest map of the Mississippi based on actual knowledge, and the first of a series accredited to Joliet. It is called Nouvelle découverte de plusieurs nations dans la Nouvelle France en l’année 1673 et 1674. Gabriel Gravier first made this map known through an Étude sur une carte inconnue; la première dressée par L. Joliet en 1674, après son exploration du Mississippi auec Jacques Marquette en 1673.[566] A sketch of it, with a key, is given herewith. The tablet in the sketch marks the position of Joliet’s letter to Frontenac, of which a reduced fac-simile is also annexed.
“In this epistle,” says Mr. Neill, “Joliet mentions that he had presented a map showing the situation of the Lakes upon which there is navigation for more than 1,200 leagues from east to west, and that he had given to the great river beyond the Lakes, which he had discovered in the years 1673-1674, the designation of Buade, the family name of Frontenac.[567] He adds a glowing description of the prairies, the groves, and the forests,” and writes of the quail (cailles) in the fields and the parrot (perroquet) in the woods. He concludes his communication as follows: “By one of the large rivers which comes from the west and empties into the River Buade, one will find a route to the Red Sea” [Mer vermeille, i. e. Gulf of California].
“I saw a village which was not more than five days’ journey from a tribe which traded with the tribes of California;[568] if I had arrived two days before, I could have conversed with those who had come from thence, and had brought four hatchets as a present. You would have seen a description of these things in my Journal, if the success which had accompanied me during the voyage had not failed me a quarter of an hour before arriving at the place from which I had departed. I had escaped the dangers from savages, I had passed forty-two rapids, and was about to land with complete joy at the success of so long and difficult an enterprise, when, after all dangers seemed past, my canoe turned over. I lost two men and my box in sight of the first French settlement, which I had left almost two years before. Nothing remains to me but my life, and the wish to employ it in any service you may please.” This Report was sent to France in November, 1674.
There is in Mr. Barlow’s Collection a large map (27 × 40 inches), which is held by Dr. Shea and General Clarke to be a copy of the original Joliet Map, with the Ohio marked in by a later and less skilful hand. A sketch of it is annexed as “Joliet’s Larger Map.”
A copy of what is known as “Joliet’s Smaller Map” is also in the Barlow Collection, and from it the annexed sketch has been made. This map is called Carte de la descouverte du Sr Jolliet, ou l’on voit la communication du Fleuve St. Laurens avec les Lacs Frontenac, Erie, Lac des Hurons, et Illinois ... au bout duquel on va joindre la Rivière divine par un portage de mille pas qui tombe dans la Rivière Colbert et se descharge dans le Sein Mexique. Though evidently founded in part on the Jesuits’ map of Lake Superior, it was an improvement upon it, and was inscribed with a letter addressed to Frontenac. The Valley of the Mississippi is called Colbertie; the Ohio is marked as the course of La Salle’s route to the Gulf;[569] the Wisconsin is made the route of Joliet.
Mr. Parkman describes another map, anonymous, but “indicating a greatly increased knowledge of the country.” It marks the Ohio as a river descended by La Salle, but it does not give the Mississippi.[570] Harrisse found in the Archives of the Marine a map which he thought to be a part of the same described by Parkman, and this was made by Joliet himself later than 1674.
There is in the Parkman Collection another map ascribed to Joliet, and called in the sketch given herewith “Joliet’s carte générale,” which Parkman thinks was an early work (in the drafting, at least) of the engineer Franquelin. It is signed Johannes Ludovicus Franquelin pinxit; but it is a question what this implies. Harrisse[571] thinks that Franquelin is the author, and places it under 1681. Gravier holds it to imply simply Franquelin’s drafting, and affirms that it corresponds closely with a map signed by Joliet, which has already been mentioned as his earliest. Mr. Neill says of this map that it “is the first attempt to fix the position of the nations north of the Wisconsin and west of Lake Superior. The Wisconsin is called Miskous, perhaps intended for Miskons; and the Ohio is marked ‘Ouaboustikou.’ On the upper Mississippi are the names of the following tribes: The ‘Siou,’ around what is now called the Mille Lacs region, the original home of the Sioux of the Lakes, or Eastern Sioux; the Ihanctoua, Pintoüa, Napapatou, Ouapikouti, Chaiena, Agatomitou, Ousilloua, Alimouspigoiak. The Ihanctoua and Ouapikouti are two divisions of the Sioux, now known as Yanktons and Wahpekootays. The Chaiena were allies of the Sioux, and hunted at that time in the valley of the Red River of the North. The word in the Sioux means ‘people of another language,’ and the voyageurs called them Cheyennes.”