We know about the Mississippi River. It flows 2,350 miles (3,782 km) through the United States. But the river remained a mystery in the 1600s. Explorers didn’t even know where it ended. Two men helped change that 350 years ago!
Louis Joliet was born in New France in 1645. That was a French in North America. French leaders wanted to explore to the west. They had heard about a “great river.” Some said it reached the Pacific Ocean. In 1672, they asked Joliet to find out.
Jacques Marquette was Joliet’s partner. He was born in France in 1637. Marquette knew five Native American languages. Joliet and Marquette left Saint Ignace (now in Michigan) on May 17, 1673. There were five others. Together, they got into two canoes. They entered the Mississippi River on June 17. The area is now Wisconsin. They had to see where the river went.
Ruth Nelson wrote a book about Marquette and Joliet. “Locating the great river was the main goal of the ,” she said. “These men were on their own,” Nelson added.
Marquette and Joliet did not discover the river. Native Americans had lived along its shores for years. The explorers met many along the way. “I noticed more than 80 villages,” Joliet later wrote. “Each had 60 to 100 houses,” he added. “All their canoes were wooden,” he added. Joliet described “plums, wild apples, and several small fruits we did not know.”
The explorers found that the river ran toward the south. It did not go west! That means the Mississippi River did not reach the Pacific. By July 16, 1673, the group had crossed into Arkansas. There, they had to turn around. That’s because Spain owned the land to the south. Still, Marquette and Joliet had learned about the Mississippi River.
“We could not be more than 2 or 3 days’ journey from [the Gulf of Mexico],” wrote Marquette. He believed “beyond a doubt” the Mississippi River flowed into that. That meant the river reached the Atlantic Ocean.
“The impact was huge,” explained Nelson. The French now had a path to the Atlantic. The French would later create a “network of trading posts,” said Nelson. The author said that “opened up huge areas for trade and .”
Marquette died in 1675. Joliet died in 1700. But many cities on the Mississippi River carry their names. One is Joliet, Illinois. Another is Marquette, Iowa.
Updated May 16, 2023, 5:01 P.M. (ET)
By Tyler Burdick
