Jesuit Priest, Jacques Marquette and Fur Trader Louis Joliet are the first Europeans to push into the Mississippi Basin from Huron and Iroquois lands in the Great Lakes.....They navigate into Minnesota and on down thru Illinois and traverse a great length of the "Big Muddy"(Mississippi River).......... observing and recording "Serenghetti-like" wildlife throughout...................Another teriffic first hand account of mid 17th Century America.......................Brings a smile to my face to read and absorb these "picture-images" of what our great Country looked like in front of Christmas 1673-------Let me wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday week leading into the New Year..............Thanks for coming to the blog..................thanks for being there day in and day out as we fully review what Wild America was ............what Wild America is now..................and what re-wilding might have Wild America look like in the years ahead--blogger Rick

Marquette & Joliet, 1673 On a May day more than 300 years ago, two unlikely explorers set out on a four-month voyage that carried them thousands of miles through the heart of America. The two were Father Jacques Marquette, a studious Jesuit two weeks shy of his 36th birthday, and Louis Joliet, a 27-year-old philosophy student turned fur trader. Their voyage was the seed that would sprout the first white settlements in the interior of North America, introduce Christianity into 600,000 square miles of wilderness, give French names to cities from New Orleans to LaCrosse, transform Indian cultures and lifestyles from Minnesota to Missouri, and nearly exterminate the fur-bearing mammals of the Upper Midwest.

Aug. 25, 1673: Entering The Illinois River

click on "map" below to see Marquette and Joliet's route thru the Mississippi Basin

Map of Marquette & Joliet's route.
After nearly six weeks of paddling upstream, Marquette and Joliet finally reached the mouth of the Illinois River on August 25th. Although still going against the current, the Illinois was much smaller and less turbulent than the lower Mississippi. This became the prefered route of travelers going from the Great Lakes to St. Louis and points further south, and most commerce with the lower Mississippi subsequently by-passed the Fox-Wisconsin waterway.
Marquette's Journal: "We have seen nothing like this river that we enter, as regards its fertility of soil, its prairies and woods; its cattle(buffalo), elk, deer, wildcats, bustards [Canada geeese], swans, ducks, parroquets(extinct Carolina parakeet), and even beaver. There are many small lakes and rivers. That on which we sailed is wide, deep, and still, for 65 leagues."

Joliet: "The river which we named for Saint Louis [the Illinois River], which rises near the lower end of the lake of the Illinois, seemed to me the most beautiful, and most suitable for settlement. ... The river is wide and deep, abounding in catfish and sturgeon. Game is abundant there; cattle, stags,(elk) does(deer), and turkeys are found there in greater numbers than elsewhere. For a distance of eighty leagues, I did not pass a quarter of an hour without seeing some.

September 13, 1673: Chicago

Marquette and Joliet reached the site of downtown Chicago about Sept. 13, 1673, but left no description of it. Joliet summarized the entire area in his interview with Fr. Dablon, who made the notes at left, the earliest description of the vicinity that would later become Chicago and its suburbs.

Marquette and Joliet had been guided to Lake Michigan by "one of the chiefs of this nation, with his young men." Fr. Allouez gives a vivid description how welcoming the Illinois tribes were to the Jesuits.
Over the next two or three weeks Marquette and Joliet would have to paddle the western shore of the lake from Chicago to Green Bay, no small feat in the early autumn winds. In subsequent journal entries they exchange calm prairies and shaded forests for rolling whitecaps and towering bluffs. Click here for a map of their route through Illinois, up the Lake Michigan shore, and across the Door Penninsula.
Dablon's Interview with Joliet: �The place at which we entered the lake is a harbor, very convenient for receiving vessels and sheltering them from the wind. The river is wide and deep, abounding in catfish and sturgeon. Game is abundant there; oxen, cows, stags, does, and Turkeys are found there in greater numbers than elsewhere."

End of August, 1673: in the Illinois countryEditor's Note:

The explorer Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de LaSalle, his chief lieutnant Henri de Tonti, his employees, French soldiers, and fur traders utilized this route frequently. For more than 150 years it was the chief way settlers and goods were transported between lake cities such as Montreal or Detroit and the rich interior portion of the continent accessible from St. Louis. Fur traders looking for beaver, who needed access to the Upper Mississippi, continued to prefer the more northern Fox-Wisconsin route by which Marquette and Joliet had started out in May and June of 1673. But after Marquette and Joliet made the Illinois River route known and LaSalle and his many followers relied on it, its lakeshore terminus at Chicago was destined to grown into Lake Michigan's major port rather than Green Bay.Map of Marquette & Joliet's route

LaSalle traveled through the Illinois Country six years later, in December of 1679. While Marquette and Joliet make their way silently upstream, let's read his description below:

"The Illinois River is navigable for canoes at a distance of a hundred paces from its source, winding and increases so rapidly that in a short time it becomes almost as broad and deep as the Marne. It runs through vast marshes, winding so much that, although the current is rather strong, they sometimes found after paddling a whole day that they had not advanced two leagues in a straight line; as far as the eye could reach they saw only marshes covered with reeds and alders, and for more than forty leagues of their course, they would have found no place to encamp but for some mounds of frozen ground upon which they rested and lighted their fire. After traversing these marshes, they found no game as they had expected, because there are only great open plains where nothing grows but very tall grass, which is dry at this season, and had been burnt off by the Miamis in the chase of wild cattle. Animals are usually very numerous here, as it was easy to judge from the skeletons and the heads of these cattle which were seen on all sides...
"Many other kinds of animals are found in these vast plains of Louisiana; stags, roe deer, beavers, otters, are common. In the season are seen herds of two hundred and even four hundred wild cattle [buffalo]; bustards [Canada geese], swans, turtle-doves, turkeys, paroquets [Carolina parakeets], partridges, and many other birds are very numerous. There is an abundance of fish, and the soil is extraordinarily fertile.
"It is a country of boundless prairies, interspersed with forests of high trees, where all sorts of timber for building may be had, among the rest excellent oak, solid like that of France and very different from the Canadian oak. The trees, which are of enormous size and height, would furnish the very best timber for ship-building. There are also in the forests several kinds of fruit-trees, and wild grape-vines producing clusters a foot and a half in length, which ripen perfectly, and of which very good wine is made. Open fields are to be seen covered with very good hemp, growing naturally to the height of six or seven feet."

Aug. 25, 1673: Entering The Illinois River

After nearly six weeks of paddling upstream, Marquette and Joliet finally reached the mouth of the Illinois River on August 25th. Although still going against the current, the Illinois was much smaller and less turbulent than the lower Mississippi. This became the prefered route of travelers going from the Great Lakes to St. Louis and points further south, and most commerce with the lower Mississippi subsequently by-passed the Fox-Wisconsin waterway.  The "parroquets" were the now-extinct Carolina parakeet. Joliet's "oxen" were, of course, buffalo, and his speculations about settlers yoking them to the plow show how optimistic he was about the Illinois Country.

Marquette's Journal: "We have seen nothing like this river that we enter, as regards its fertility of soil, its prairies and woods; its cattle, elk, deer, wildcats, bustards [Canada geeese], swans, ducks, parroquets, and even beaver. There are many small lakes and rivers. That on which we sailed is wide, deep, and still, for 65 leagues."
Joliet: "The river which we named for Saint Louis [the Illinois River], which rises near the lower end of the lake of the Illinois, seemed to me the most beautiful, and most suitable for settlement. ... The river is wide and deep, abounding in catfish and sturgeon. Game is abundant there; oxen, cows, stags, does, and turkeys are found there in greater numbers than elsewhere. For a distance of eighty leagues, I did not pass a quarter of an hour without seeing some.
"There are prairies three, six, ten, and twenty leagues in length, and three in width, surrounded by forests of the same extent; beyond these, the prairies begin again, so that there is as much of one sort of land as of the other. Sometimes we saw the grass very short, and, at other times, five or six feet high; hemp, which grows naturally there, reaches a height of eight feet. A settler would not there spend ten years in cutting down and burning the trees; on the very day of his arrival, he could put his plow into the ground. And, if he had no oxen from France, he could use those of this country, or even the animals possessed by the Western Savages, on which they ride, as we do on horses.
"The 19th, we came to the Mouth of the River, call'd Houabache [the Ohio], said to come from the Country of the Iroquois, towards New England. That is a very fine River, its water extraordinary clear, and the Current of it, gentle. "We observ'd some other Superstitions among those poor People, one whereof was as follows. There were some certain Days, on which they Fasted, and we knew them, when as soon as they awak'd, they besmear'd their Faces and Arms, or other Parts of their Bodies, with a slimy Sort of Earth, or pounded Charcoal ; for that Day they did not eat till Ten or Eleven of the Clock at Night, and before they did eat they were to wipe off that Smearing, and had Water brought them for that Purpose. The Occasion of their Fasting was, as they gave us to understand, that they might have good Success in Hunting, and kill Abundance of bullocks [bison].

Joutel's Journal, on the Arkansas River, July 1687:(a companion of Joliet and Marquette) This is a Country abounding in all Things. The Plains lying on one Side of it, are stor'd with Beeves [buffalo], wild Goats, Deer, Turkeys, Bustards [Canada geese], Swans, Ducks, Teal and other Game. The Trees' produce plenty of Fruit, and very good, as Peaches, Plumbs, Mulberries, Grapes, and Wallnuts. They have a Sort of Fruit they call Piaguimina, not unlike our Medlars but much better and more delicious.

Late June, 1673: Buffalo and Other Mysterious Animals.

This is another entry that exhibits Marquette's interest in and careful description of natural phenomena. The fish that nearly overturned their canoes was probably a channel catfish, which were recorded in the early 19th century as weighing as much as 200 pounds. The spatula-nosed fish is presumed to be the alligator gar (Atractosteus spatula), though it has not been found north of the Illinois River in modern times. The tiger-like mammal was probably a bobcat (Lynx rufus) or Canada lynx (L. canadensis).

Marquette's long description of the American buffalo (Bison bison) shows how Europeans were fascinated by anmimals not found in their homelands. The first description of the Buffalo which dates from 1536, is by Spanish explorer Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, whose fascination was echoed by nearly every other European traveler who saw them. The ruby-throated hummingbird evoked a similar fascination.
 Marquette's Journal: "Here we plainly saw that [the river's] aspect was completely changed. There are hardly any woods or mountains; the islands are more beautiful, and are covered with finer trees. We saw only deer and cattle, bustards [Canada geese], and swans without wings, because they drop their plumage in this country.

"From time to time, we came upon monstrous fish, one of which struck our canoe with such violence that I thought that it was a great tree, about to break the canoe to pieces. On another occasion, we saw on the water a monster with the head of a tiger, a sharp nose like that of a wildcat, with whiskers and straight, erect ears; the head was gray and the neck quite black; but we saw no more creatures of this sort. When we cast our nets into the water we caught sturgeon, and a very extraordinary kind of fish. It resembles the trout, with this difference, that its mouth is larger. Near its nose, which is smaller, as are also the eyes, is a large bone shaped like a woman's busk, three fingers wide and a cubit long, at the end of which is a disk as wide as one's hand. This frequently causes it to fall backward when it leaps out of the water.
"When we reached the parallel of 41 degrees 28 minutes, following the same direction, we found that turkeys had taken the place of game; and the pisikious, or wild cattle [buffalo], that of the other animals. We call them "wild cattle," because they are very similar to our domestic cattle. They are not longer, but are nearly as large again, and more corpulent. When our people killed one, three persons had much difficulty in moving it. The head is very large; the forehead is flat, and a foot and half wide between the horns, which are exactly like those of our oxen, but black and much larger. Under the neck they have a sort of large dewlap, which hangs down; and on the back is a rather high hump. The whole of the head, the neck, and a portion of the shoulders, are covered with a thick mane like that of horses; it forms a crest a foot long, which makes them hideous, and, falling over their eyes, prevents them from seeing what is before them. The remainder of the body is covered with a heavy coat of curly hair, almost like that of our sheep, but much stronger and thicker. It falls off in summer, and the skin becomes as soft as velvet. At that season, the savages use the hides for making fine robes, which they paint in various colors. "The flesh and the fat of the pisikious are excellent, and constitute the best dish at feasts. Moreover, they are very fierce; and not a year passes without their killing some savages. When attacked, they catch a man on their horns, if they can, toss him in the air, and then throw him on the ground, after which they trample him under foot, and kill him. If a person fire at them from a distance, with either a bow or a gun, he must, immediately after the shot, throw himself down and hide in the grass; for if they perceive him who has fired, they run at him, and attack him. As their legs are thick and rather short, they do not run very fast, as a rule, except when angry. They are scattered about the prairie in herds; I have seen one of four hundred.