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Have historians been deceived by hoaxes frauds and forgeries?
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Maps can redefine historical truth
Historians have been misled by inauthentic documents
Maps, when properly interpreted can best illustrate the Age of Exploration
A radical shift is in order for the historical roles of Marquette, Jolliet and the much vilified explorer La Salle |
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“In my evaluation, and in that of some distinguished experts, his pursuit of historical truth has resulted in some very unusual discoveries.”
Bill Mullen, Pulitzer Prize winning Tribune reporter
“Carl J. Weber is taking on one of the Mississippi's most esteemed legends and poking it right in the eye...”
Edward Husar, Quincy Herald Whig
“A treasured Canadian artifact, long hailed as the earliest map of the American Midwest and the best proof of the 1673 discovery of the Mississippi River by two French-Canadian explorers has been dismissed as a ``hoax'' by a U.S. researcher.”
Randy Boswell, CanWest News Service
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Ten years ago, after examining maps and other primary source documents, Prof. Carl J. Weber began researching the lore and legend of late 17th Century discovery and exploration. In papers and presentations, he has shown that earliest histories of Chicago, the Illinois Territory, and the Mississippi have been fundamentally distorted.
Years ago he cast extreme doubt on the accepted origin of Chicago's name as an American Indian word for a plant named after the skunk. He went on to expose as inauthentic the “first” map of the American Heartland; supposedly drawn by Jacques Marquette in the late 17th Century, it is a forgery of the mid-19th Century.
He identified the earliest text (1680) and map (1684) documenting the use of the Chicago word. A full-scale copy of this earliest map was not to be found in Chicago, and through his efforts, full-size copies are now in the holdings of the Chicago Historical Museum (formerly the Chicago Historical Society) and the Newberry Library.
Prof. Weber documents that LaSalle, not Marquette and/or Jolliet, is the earliest explorer through the Chicago area, and that the Marquette/Jolliet expedition of Mississippi discovery, as read in our
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history accounts, did not happen. Marquette's good name, after he had died, was used fraudulantly, in the 17th and 19th centuries by the Jesuit Missionaries to enhance their prestige and viciously shred the reputation of the real hero of this era of exploration and discovery, LaSalle.
Pursuing his sleuthing, Prof. Weber has shed new light on the “Mystery of the Ellington Stone.” This is an artifact that was found in west-central Illinois a century ago at the Mississippi River. The Ellington Stone is inscribed with the date 1671. Constructing a historical context, Prof. Weber concludes that certain Jesuit missionaries were at the Mississippi two years prior to the mistakenly presumed 1673 European discoverers. The Ellington Stone can now lay claim also to being the “earliest European artifact” in the American Heartland, antedating the Perrot Ostensorium by 13 years.
Recently Prof. Weber presented new findings to the Chicago Map Society at the Newberry Library. Quite stunning, these findings, based on original documents and linguistic insights, have supported the theory that LaSalle's naming the location of the original Chicago was predicated on the likelihood that the route was a gateway to the River of DeSoto, the Chucagua.
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