The French in the Heart of AmericaFinley, John H. (John Huston)
History
The French in the Heart of America
Finley, John H. (John Huston)
Canada -- History -- To 1763 (New France); French -- North America; Mississippi River Valley -- History
It is enough now, perhaps, to know that the voyagers passed the mouth of
the Illinois, the Missouri, the Ohio, and reached the mouth of the
Arkansas, when thinking themselves near the gulf and fearing that they
might fall into the hands of the Spaniards if they ventured too near the
sea, and so be robbed of the fruits of their expedition, they turned their
canoes up-stream. Instead, however, of following their old course they
entered the Illinois River, known sometimes as the "Divine River." I
borrow the observing father's description of that particular valley as it
was just two centuries before I first remember seeing it. "We have seen
nothing like this river for the fertility of the land, its prairies,
woods, wild cattle, stag, deer, wildcats, bustards, swans, ducks, parrots,
and even beaver; its many little lakes and rivers." [Footnote: B. F.
French, "Historical Collections of Louisiana," 4:51. "Jesuit Relations"
(Thwaites), 59:161.] Through this paradise of plenty they passed, up one
of the branches of the Illinois, till within a few miles of Lake Michigan,
where they portaged a thousand paces to a creek that emptied into the lake
of the Illinois. If they were following that portage path and creek today
they would be led through that city which stands next to Paris in
population--the city of Chicago, in the commonwealth that bears the name
of the land through which the French voyagers passed, "Illinois."
At the end of September, having been absent four months, and having
paddled their canoes over twenty-five hundred miles, they reached Green
Bay again. There these two pioneers, companions forever in the history of
the new world, separated--Joliet to bear the report of the discovery of
the Rivière de Buade to Count Frontenac, Marquette to continue his
devotions to his divinity and recruit his wasted strength, that he might
keep his promise to return to minister to the Illinois, whom he speaks of
as the most promising of tribes, for "to say 'Illinois' is in their
language to say 'the men.'"
By most unhappy fate Joliet's canoe was upset in the Lachine Rapids, when
almost within sight of Montreal, and all his papers, including his
precious map, were lost in the foam. But several maps were made under his
direction or upon his data.
Marquette's map, showing nothing but their course and supplying nothing
from conjecture, was found nearly two hundred years later in St. Mary's
College in Montreal, furnishing, I have thought, a theme and design for a
mural painting in the interesting halls of the Sorbonne, where so many
periods, personages, and incidents of the world's history are worthily
remembered. The art of that valley has sought to reproduce or idealize the
faces of these pioneers. The more eloquent, visible memorial would be the
crude map from the hand of the priest Jacques Marquette, son of Rose de la
Salle of the royal city of Rheims.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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