Note VII-6 — Chapter VII · GEOGRAPHY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.[VII-1]

This description makes in the orig. ed. a 3-page footnote, which I reset in the main text, as no confusion will come from this obvious digression, the reader returning to Prairie du Chien in due course. It was furnished to Pike by (Robert) Dickson, whose name appears at the end. In spite of the mangling of the geographical names, and one or two sentences that seem to have got awry, it is a very telling piece of work—perhaps the most concise and correct statement extant in 1810 of what is one of the most memorable routes in the annals of American exploration. It was by this famous Fox-Wisconsin traverse from the Great Lakes to the Miss. r. that the latter was itself discovered to Europeans. For it is practically if not identically the route of Joliet and Marquette, 1673. Under the Canadian governorship of Comte Louis de Buade de Frontenac, who succeeded De Courcelle Apr. 9th, 1672, the Quebec trader Joliet, the priest Marquette, and five other Frenchmen, who were at Michilimackinac in Dec., 1672, passed thence by Green bay of Lake Michigan, Fox r., Lake Winnebago and Wis. r., to Miss. r. at Prairie du Chien, reached June 15th or 17th, 1673, and named Rivière Colbert after the French king's minister. Our esteemed antetemporary Jonathan Carver paddled that way too, and so did others too numerous to mention, among them the macronymous G. W. Featherstonhaugh, F. R. S., etc., whose canoe voyage up the Minnay Sotor, etc., made in 1835, furnished data for very readable and realistic gossip, 2 vols. 8vo, Lond. 1847, I. p. 151 seq. The clearest view of the Fox-Wisconsin traverse I have seen is on the map accompanying Bvt. Maj. C. R. Suter's Rep., being Doc. E of Bvt. Maj.-Gen. G. K. Warren's Prelim. Rep. Surv. Miss. River above Rock Island rapids, this being Ex. Doc. No. 58, Ho. Reps., 39th Congress, 2d Sess., 8vo, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1867, pp. 1-116. Accurate engineering operations always reduce the mileages guessed at by tired travelers or idle tourists, but Dickson's estimates come remarkably near Suter's measurements, some of which are: Lower Fox r., 37½ m.; traverse on Lake Winnebago, 15½ m.; Upper Fox r., 104 m.; canal at portage, 2⅓ m.; Wisconsin r., 112 m.; total, Green Bay to Prairie du Chien, 271⅓ m.

I may here summarize as curtly as I can the main points of the probable fact that the Upper Mississippi was reached by practically this route, by Menard and Guerin, before its long-alleged and generally accepted discovery by Joliet and Marquette, as above noted. In 1659 Fond du Lac was approached by two traders, Groseilliers and Radisson; the former was Medard Chouart, the latter Pierre d'Esprit. Groseilliers, Grozayyay, Desgrozeliers, etc., was b. near Meaux in France; traded on Lake Huron in 1646; in 1647, married Veuve Étienne of Quebec, daughter of Abraham Martin; in Aug., 1653, married Marguerite Hayet Radisson, sister of Radisson. Radisson was b. St. Malo, France; came to Canada 1651, married Elizabeth Herault 1656; was at Three Rivers in Canada in 1658, and arranged to go with Groseilliers to Lake Superior. The two built the first trading-post on Lake Superior, at Chaquamegon bay (old Chagouamikon, etc.). Groseilliers was back at Montreal Aug. 21st, 1660; he returned to Lake Superior and was at Keweenaw bay Oct. 15th, 1660. Some of the traders of his party wintered here 1660-61; with them was the Jesuit Menard, the first missionary on the lake. Menard and one Jean Guerin left the lake June 13th, 1661, for the region of the Ottawa lakes in Wisconsin. Perrot says that Menard and Guerin followed the Outaouas to the Lake of the Illinoets (Lake Michigan), and to the River Louisiane (i. e., the Mississippi), to a point above the River Noire (Black r.), where they were deserted by their Huron Indians. One day in August, 1661, they were ascending a rapid in their canoe, which Menard left to lighten it; he lost his way, and perished; Guerin survived. Menard's breviary and cassock, it is said, were later found among the Sioux. Justin Winsor's Narr. and Crit. Hist. Amer. IV. p. 206, gives a sketch map on which a place is marked as that where Menard was lost. This seems to be toward the sources of Chippewa r. If Perrot's relation be true, and not misunderstood, Menard and Guerin reached the Mississippi via the Wisconsin from Green bay, ascended it to the Black or the Chippewa, and left it that way in the summer of 1661, 12 years before Joliet and Marquette came to the Mississippi.