In 1659, Groseilliers and Radisson penetrated beyond Lake Superior, and dwelt for a time among the Sioux, who knew of the Mississippi River. Next year Groseilliers went thither again, accompanied by the Jesuit Menard and his servant, Guerin. In 1661 Menard and Guerin pushed into what is now Wisconsin, and may have seen the Mississippi. These explorations made the French familiar with the copper mines of Lake Superior, and awakened the utmost zeal to see the Great River of which the Indians spoke. La Salle probably discovered the Ohio in 1670, and traced it down to the falls at Louisville. His main eulogist holds that he even reached the Mississippi at that time, some three years earlier than Joliet, but this is not substantiated. We also reject the belief that he reached the stream by way of the Chicago portage in 1671. [Illustration: Totem of the Illinois.] [1676] In 1672 Count Frontenac, Governor of New France, despatched Louis Joliet to discover the Great River. He reached the Strait of Mackinaw in December, and there Pere Marquette joined him. In May, next year, they paddled their canoes up the Fox River and tugged them across the portage into the Wisconsin, which they descended, entering the Father of Waters June 17, 1673. They floated down to the mouth of the Arkansas and then returned, their journey back being up the Illinois and Desplaines Rivers. Joliet gave his name to the peak on the latter stream which the city of Joliet, Ill., near by, still retains. Joliet arrived at Quebec in August, 1674, having in four months journeyed over twenty-five hundred miles. It thus became known how close the upper waters of the great rivers, St. Lawrence and Mississippi, were to each other, and that the latter emptied into the Gulf of Mexico instead of the South Sea (Pacific); yet, as the Rocky Mountains had not then been discovered, it was for long believed that some of the western tributaries of the Great River led to that western ocean. [Illustration: The Reception of Joliet and Marquette by the Illinois.] [1682] In 1676 Raudin, and three years later, Du Lhut, visited the Ojibwas and Sioux west of Lake Superior. Du Lhut reached the upper waters of the Mississippi at Sandy Lake. He went there again in 1680. In 1682 La Salle crossed the Chicago portage and explored the lower Mississippi all the way to the Gulf, taking possession of the entire valley in the name of France and naming it Louisiana. Nicholas Perrot travelled by way of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers to the upper Mississippi in 1685, and again in 1688. It is in his writings that the word "Chicago" first appears in literature.