Born 1645,
Beauport, Canada
Died 1700,
Quebec, Canada
When he discovered the upper Mississippi River, Louis Jolliet was accompanied by Father Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit missionary. On Jolliet’s return trip to Quebec province (then known as New France) to present a report on the expedition, his canoe overturned and he lost all of his papers. He wrote another report entirely from memory; this narrative corresponds closely with Marquette’s description, which is considered the official account of the journey.
Jolliet was born in the new colony of New France in 1645, the son of a craftsman who died while Jolliet was still a child. His mother was widowed twice before she married Jolliet’s father, who was a farmer, and settled down in the town of Beauport near Quebec City.
At the age of 11, Jolliet entered the Jesuit college in Quebec, where he studied philosophy and prepared to enter the priesthood. He also studied music and played the organ at the cathedral of Quebec for many years. In 1666 he defended a thesis before Bishop Laval of Quebec and other learned men. The bishop was so impressed by Jolliet’s work that he became one of the young man’s principal patrons.
In 1667 Jolliet gave up his seminary studies and borrowed money from Laval to spend a year in France. During his stay he studied hydrography, the science of charting bodies of water. On his return to Quebec he decided to enter the fur trade, which was the main business in New France. In that capacity Jolliet made at least one trip to the West, from 1670 to 1671, and was one of the signers of a document in which the French claimed possession of the Great Lakes region.
In 1672 Jolliet was chosen by the two highest officials in French Canada—the intendant, Jean Talon, and the governor, the Count de Frontenac—to lead an expedition to search for the Mississippi River. The French knew of the river from reports from their Native American trading partners, but they wondered if it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico or farther west, into the Gulf of California.
On October 4, 1672, Jolliet left Quebec with his party. In early December they reached the mission and trading post at Michilimackinac, which is now the town of St. Ignace on the Mackinac peninsula between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. Jolliet stayed at the mission for the winter. While he was there he made the acquaintance of the priest in charge of the mission, Father Jacques Marquette. Jolliet had brought instructions that Marquette was to accompany him on his voyage in order to preach among the Native American tribes along the way.
The exploring party left Michilimackinac in May 1673 with seven men in two canoes; of the seven men, only the names of Jolliet and Marquette are known. Since both Jolliet’s and Marquette’s logs of the journey were lost, their exact route is unknown; however, it is supposed that they traveled westward along the north shore of Lake Michigan to Green Bay, Wisconsin, then up the Fox River. Making a portage overland to the Wisconsin River, they descended to the Mississippi on June 15, 1673. They traveled down the Mississippi past the Missouri and Ohio rivers.
Jolliet and Marquette stopped about 450 miles south of the mouth of the Ohio River at the mouth of the Arkansas River, just north of the present boundary between the states of Arkansas and Louisiana. They stayed among the Quapaw tribe, from whom they heard reports of the Spanish approaching from the west. The unfriendliness of the Quapaws, as well as the knowledge that the Mississippi must run into the Gulf of Mexico, convinced the explorers to turn back without having reached the mouth of the Mississippi.
In mid-July 1673 the expedition began the return trip up the Mississippi to the Illinois River, making the portage at Chicago into the southern part of Lake Michigan. Jolliet and Marquette split up at Saint Francis Xavier mission at Green Bay. Jolliet spent the winter of 1673-74 at Sault Sainte Marie in Upper Michigan, writing and copying his journal and making maps. However, he later lost all of his papers when his canoe overturned on the Lachine Rapids near Montreal. He finally reached Quebec in the fall of 1674.
Once back in Quebec, Jolliet married and settled down as a fur merchant. He requested permission from the French government to establish a colony in the Illinois country, but France was reluctant to start any new ventures because its meager resources were already spread over a wide area in New France. Jolliet therefore devoted his efforts to the fur trade on the North Shore of the St. Lawrence River.
In 1679 Jolliet headed a mission to explore an overland route to the rich fur-trading regions of Hudson Bay, which were being exploited by the English. When he reached Hudson Bay he encountered English traders and was able to learn the extent of their activities. On his return to Quebec, he wrote a report saying that the French risked losing the fur trade if they allowed the English to continue trading in the area.
As a reward for his success Jolliet was given trading rights and land on the North Shore; he was also awarded the island of Anticosti in the middle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Although many of the details of Jolliet’s life from that point onward are sketchy, it is known that he had a successful career in the fur and fish trades on the St. Lawrence. He also made several exploratory trips, including a mission to the coast of Labrador in 1689.
In 1694 Jolliet was commissioned to return to Labrador to map the coastline. Leaving Quebec April 28, he sailed along the North Shore and the coast of Labrador until he reached the settlement of Zoar in July. Jolliet drew the first maps of the area, described the landscape, and gathered information about the Inuit inhabitants. He noted that the only economic resources in Labrador were whale oil and seal oil, which could be traded with the Inuit. In October 1694 he returned to Quebec, only to discover that Anticosti Island had been seized by the British during his absence.
In 1692 Jolliet was made royal professor of hydrography at the Jesuit college in Quebec. He died during the summer of 1700.
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