Louis Jolliet

wait a minute, now I want to know more about him.

Who was Father Marquette? Well, Jacques Marquette was born in France in 1637, became a Jesuit missionary, came to New France, traveled extensively through the Great Lakes region, and he learned indigenous language, established missions, and especially remembered for the 1673 expedition he made with Luis Joliet, Father Joliet, through the Mississippi River system.

The city of Marquette's own history says that Father Marquette traveled along the southern shore of Lake Superior, camped at what is now called Lighthouse Point in 1669.

Joliet, there's a lot of places around here called Joliet too.

Fort Frontenac could be justified to fit into both exceptions, especially the one calling for protecting the commerce and trade of the French.

But even the second exception... closer communication with the more southern sea, was now in play, for Louis Joliet had found a way through, across only a short portage near Chicago, to the Mississippi, and therefore in all probability, to the Gulf of Mexico.

Unfortunately, it would not do for Frontenac to simply rely on Colbert's exceptions and proceed as if he had not been reprimanded.

He needed to stay governor in New France to build a fortune independent of his wife, and both he and LaSalle had debts to repay.

He suspected the Jesuits, but was smart enough not to accuse them.

He had bigger fish to fry, the Mississippi, and a plan to find his way to the Gulf.

Louis Joliet had, as long-standing and attentive listeners well know, returned from his expedition to the Mississippi via the Illinois River and discovered the short portage just west of Chicago over the subtle watershed there.

South of that watershed, all water flowed to the Mississippi and the Gulf.

They meant, as we now suppose, the Mississippi.

There are vague stories of Frenchmen on the Mississippi at an earlier date, but however this may be, it is certain that in the summer of 1673, Louis Jolliet, the son of a wagon maker of Quebec, and Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit priest, reached and descended the great river from the mouth of the Wisconsin to a point far past the mouth of the Ohio.

France thus planted herself on the Mississippi, though there her occupation was less complete and thorough than it was on the St. Lawrence.

Distance was an obstacle.

The I&M Canal remains one of the most significant engineering projects in American history, as it effectively opened the portage that had existed between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River, thereby clearing a water trade route between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

Such a project had been envisioned as early as the 17th century, when Père Marquette and Louis Joliet traveled through the Chicago Portage, with the latter remarking that the French could create a North American empire if the passage could be opened to allow for trading.

It was Stephen Long, however, who in 1816 finally surveyed the portage to propose the actual endeavor.

Two others, Nathaniel Pope and Ninian Edwards, supported the initiative, suggesting that the border of Illinois be moved north from the tip of Lake Michigan to allow the canal to be built entirely in one state.