Father Jacques Marquette - Columbia Bottoms C.A. - St. Louis County, MO - Etched in Stone on Waymarking.com

County of site: St. Louis County
Location of site: Confluence platform, Columbia Bottoms Conservation Area, St. Louis County
Erected by: Missouri Conservation Commission

Quote: " ... THROUGH A VAST UNKNOWN of barbarism, poured its turbid floods into the bosom of its gentle sister."
Father Jacques Marquette, 1673

"It will be necessary to review the events connected with the discovery of the Mississippi by the French. In 1673 Joliet was sent to find this great river of which they had long heard from the Indians coming from the West. He had been a priest, but had returned to the life of a trader. He had been sent to explore the country, on Lake Superior, containing the copper mines. On his journey into the wilderness to find the Mississippi a Jesuit, Jacques Marquette, was selected to accompany him. The priest puts it the other way, saying that Joliet was appointed by Frontenac and Talon to go with him. They set out on the 17th of May, 1673, in two birch-bark canoes, from old Point Ignace, on the north side of the Strait of Michillimackinac. As attendants they had five Frenchmen - doubtless skilled in woodcraft and wilderness navigation. For supplies they carried some smoked meat and Indian corn, and their baggage was limited to the barest necessaries.

"Thus provided and equipped these pioneers set forth. They coasted Lake Michigan to Green Bay. From thence they ascended Fox River, crossed Lake Winnebago, and again took to Fox River, which they coursed to its source. There they dragged their canoes overland to the head of the Wisconsin. Here they embarked again, but on the waters of the mighty river which they sought. On the 17th of June, 1673, they reached the Mississippi, and Marquette wrote that he experienced a joy which he could not express. They continued down the stream, and upon its banks no human being was descried for many days. On the west bank, on the 25th of June, footprints were seen, and a path led the explorers to an Indian village two leagues away. Other towns were in sight - all of the Illinois stock, thrown beyond the Mississippi by the irresistable onset of the Iroquois from the country now embraced in the State of New York. Marquette addressed the Indians in their own tongue, and the explorers were well received. They were feasted, but exhorted to refrain from going on, which counsel they could not heed. Six hundred Indians went with them to their canoes and saw them again committed to the Mississippi. Below the mouth of the Illinois they beheld, painted on a beetling shore-cliff, the images of imaginary diabolic monsters - manitous of the Illinois tribes. They were still discussing those pagan representations when "A torrent of yellow mud rushed furiously athwart the calm blue current of the Mississippi; boiling and surging, and sweeping in its course logs, branches, and uprooted trees. They had reached the mouth of the Missouri, where that savage river, descending from its mad career through a vast unknown of barbarism, poured its turbid floods into the bosom of its gentler sister. Their light canoes whirled on the miry vortex like dry leaves on an angry brook." ~ Search of Blue Skyways