Question/Problem 2: Describe the reasons for and the outcomes of the European explorers between 1492 and 1673.

The expeditions of Marquette and Joliet brought together two explorers with very different backgrounds. Marquette was born in 1637 in Laon, France. He studied for the priesthood and in 1668 he was sent to America to be a missionary among the Ottowa Ind ians. He was one of the many missionaries the French sent to convert the Indians. Louis Joliet was born in 1645, in Quebec, Canada. He went to Europe to study. He later returned to Canada and searched for copper. He served as a trader and trapper for a few years and became an expert cartographer.

During these years the French colony at Quebec struggled. It was always short of money and supplies and constantly threatened with attack by the Iroquois Indians. By 1665, the French decided to fight for a claim in the New World. An army was sent to Q uebec to fight the Iroquois. Once the Iroquois were forced to sue for peace New France expanded and prospered. The French claimed Canada and all of the area around the Great Lakes and south. Their goal was to build an empire that would control the main trade routes and find the waterway to the west.

From the Indians, Father Marquette had learned of a great river that started in the north and flowed southward all the way to the sea. The Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto was the first to report its existence. In 1673, Governor Frontenac commissioned Louis Joliet to explore this river, known as the Mississippi. Father Marquette served as chaplain of the expedition. Marquette and Joliet set out from Lake Michigan with five companions and two birch bark canoes.

The expedition traveled down Lake Michigan and up the Fox River. The Indians helped them carry their canoes over land to the Wisconsin River on which they floated down to its mouth and entered the Mississippi. They paddled down the great river past the mouths of the Illinois, the Missouri, and the Ohio. Finally they reached the spot where the Arkansas entered the Mississippi and celebrated at a feast given by the Arkansas Indians. All along the way friendly Indians had guided them. Marquette and Jol iet learned that the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of Mexico and that the Spanish had established settlements farther south. They were discouraged from going further because the Indians to the south were hostile and had been given guns by the Spanish. Rather than run the risk of falling into Sp anish hands, Marquette and Joliet turned back.

The expedition returned to Canada by way of Lake Michigan. Marquette resumed his missionary work but fell ill shortly after his return and never fully recovered. He died in May 1675. Joliet became a trader in the Hudson Bay area and later explored the coast of Labrador. He died in Canada in 1700.

Marquette and Joliet completed a voyage that covered 2,500 miles and lasted four months. They became the first Europeans to descend the river as far south as the Arkansas. When they reached Quebec, they were able to report that the Mississippi flowed i nto the Gulf of Mexico and not westward towards the Pacific. Although they did not find the route to the west they were searching for they did chart the course of the Mississippi. This river was to become very important to the French fur trade.