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Article: Jolliet-Marquette Explorations
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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JOLLIET-MARQUETTE EXPLORATIONS
JOLLIET-MARQUETTE EXPLORATIONS.
Louis Jolliet was a native of New France who, after being educated at the Jesuit schools of Quebec, embarked on a career of exploration in the far western country during the seventeenth century. On one of his voyages to Lake Superior in 1669, he met the Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette, then at the mission of Sault Ste. Marie. Three years later, the authorities of New France commissioned Jolliet to undertake the discovery of the great central river of the continent, which American Indians called the Mississippi. Jolliet requested that Marquette be appointed chaplain of the expedition. Late in the autumn of 1672 he set ...