JOLIET AND MARQUETTE, FUR TRADER AND MISSIONARY, EXPLORE THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY FOR NEW FRANCE
Stories of a new country
33. French Explorers in the Northwest. Year after year, traders and missionaries, returning to Montreal and Quebec from the west, told strange stories of a great river larger than any the French had yet seen. In May, 1673, Joliet, a fur trader, and Marquette, a missionary, were sent out by Count Frontenac, governor of the French settlements in Canada, to explore this river.
Joliet and Marquette find the Mississippi
With five others they paddled in canoes along the north shore of Lake Michigan, through Green Bay, up the Fox River, and then crossed overland to the beautiful Wisconsin. Quietly and rapidly their boats passed down the Wisconsin until they reached a great valley several miles in width and a great river.
Following the current, they passed the mouth of the gently flowing Illinois, then the rushing and muddy Missouri, the slow and clear Ohio, and finally, in July, they reached the mouth of the Arkansas. Convinced that the Mississippi flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, they set out on the return trip of two thousand miles.
Joliet reached Quebec in safety, but Marquette fell ill and remained among the Indians. The next spring while preaching in Illinois near where Ottawa now stands, he fell ill again, and died. The Indians showed their love and respect by bearing his remains by canoe to Mackinac, where he was buried beneath the chapel floor of his own mission house.