French Explorers Set Out to Find the “Great Water”: May 17, 1673

This text comes from our book, Lands of Hope and Promise.

King Louis XIV had grandiose plans for France. He wanted France to be the greatest power (and thus have the largest army) in Europe. He wanted France to secure her “natural boundary” in the east, the Rhine River—an ambition that would bring France into conflict with the Holy Roman Empire and anyone else who wanted to keep France down. All of this, of course, required huge expenditures of money, which is why Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis’ finance minister, was looking for a route from New France to the silver mines of Mexico, via the Pacific. There were rumors that such a route existed—the Indians spoke of a “great water” in the west that flowed into the sea. To search for this route, the intendant of New France commissioned a fur trader by the name of Louis Jolliet, and Jolliet chose as his companion on this expedition an old schoolmate, now a Jesuit priest—Jacques Marquette.

Bust of King Louis XIV, Old Québec City, Quebec

Since his arrival in New France in 1666, Père Marquette had been working with refugee Ottawa and Huron at a mission in La Pointe, on the southernmost of the Apostle Islands on Lake Superior (in what is now Wisconsin). When the Sioux drove the Ottawa and the Huron out of Wisconsin, Marquette withdrew with them to Mackinac in Michigan. This mission, however, was bearing little fruit in conversions. The Indians were demoralized and much given to drinking strong liquor. It was in this discouraging position that Jolliet found his old schoolmate. With hopes of new mission fields to cultivate and greater success before him, Père Marquette joined Jolliet’s expedition. On May 17, 1673, Marquette, Jolliet, and five Frenchmen set out in two birch bark canoes from Mackinac to find the “Great Water.”

Paddling in their canoes across Lake Michigan, the explorers at length entered Green Bay. From Green Bay they followed the Fox River to Lake Winnebago. This was an old route, already explored and much traveled by both Jesuits and traders. However, when the party reached a swamp they grew confused about which water route to take, for there were many channels. Here Père Marquette was especially useful, for he knew many Indian languages and was able to talk with the local Indians, who directed the party through the swamp to the Wisconsin River. This south-westward-flowing river, they told Marquette, led to the Great Water.

A month after they had left Mackinac, the explorers entered the Great Water—the Mississippi. Moving with the current down river, they came upon rich fields of corn—the lands of the Illini people, who treated the company with great hospitality. They asked Jolliet, Marquette, and their companions to remain among them, and Marquette promised that he would return. He greatly desired to work among these Indians, whose demeanor and culture were so superior to that of the decayed Hurons. Great progress, he thought, could be made among them.

Continuing south, the explorers eventually came upon the mouth of a great river whose swift, turbulent current carried numbers of “large and entire trees, branches, and floating islands” into the Mississippi. This new river, which the natives called the “Muddy River,” was the Missouri. Marquette thought it might be the Straits of Anian—the westward channel to the Indies.

Jolliet and Marquette’s and La Salle’s voyages in North America

Not long after passing the mouth of the Missouri, the explorers found themselves in warmer regions where Spanish moss festooned the trees along the riverbanks. A short distance south of where the Arkansas River flows into the Mississippi, the party was welcomed and feasted by an Indian tribe. The dinner was not much to French tastes—boiled cornmeal and roasted dog—but the Indians could serve nothing better because, they explained, they feared to go out on the plains to hunt buffalo. There wandered other Indian tribes who hunted with guns they had received from white men. These white men, Jolliet and Marquette concluded, were the Spanish. If the French proceeded farther south they could be captured and then the news of the discovery of the Great Water would never reach France. Since it was clear that this southward flowing river did not run into the Pacific, but into the Gulf of Mexico, the company decided to return to Québec.

When the explorers reached the mission at Green Bay, Marquette was ill. He remained behind while Jolliet continued alone to Québec to deliver their report to the governor-general, Louis de Buade, Comte (Count) de Frontenac. When he recovered, Père Marquette returned to the Illinois Indians as he had promised. After a cold and bitter winter, he reached their village; but overcome by exhaustion and the effects of sickness, he remained only three weeks among them. Knowing he was near death, Marquette decided to return to Mackinac; but he never made it. Passing along the western shore of Michigan, Marquette asked his companions to take him ashore at the mouth of a small stream. There he died, May 19, 1675, at the age of 39.