from email Buisseret to me, December 2, 2011.

Dear Carl,

...Among those who had doubts before you is surely Steck, whose work in the 1920s caused many subsequent commentators to be cautious in their attributions of this map.  See for instance the book by W. P. Cumming, Skelton and Quinn, The exploration of North America (New York 1974) pp. 36-37, or, most recently, Raymonde Litalien and others, Mapping a continent (Québec 2007) p. 100.
 
It is quite true that you "incited' us to undertake this study, in the days when you were trying to persuade the Chicago Map Society to endorse your concept (I was then a member of its board, and so received your messages).  At first we thought that your idea might be correct. But then the evidence began going to other way, and culminated in our discovery at Paris of a version of the Marquette map that had been there since the 1670s...

David Buisseret

 

I wrote back to Buissert, giving him links to why his citations of Cumming and Litalien were wrong, and that he demonstrated a lack of understanding of Steck's ideas in the 1920s.

Dear David

....You admonished, “Among those who had doubts before you is surely Steck, whose work in the 1920s caused many subsequent commentators to be cautious in their attributions of this map”.

Who are these “many”? There are not any "subsequent commentators... based on Steck's map work of the 1920s". You can provide no such citations. Steck had no such 1920s doubts, as you contest, about Marquette's authorship of the map.

You insist, “see for instance the book by W. P. Cumming, Skelton and Quinn, The exploration of North America (New York 1974) pp. 36-37”. Nothing of the sort there to see. The citation says the opposite of what you argue: see Cumming.

“or,” you continue, “most recently, Raymonde Litalien and others, Mapping a continent (Québec 2007) p. 100.”  See Litalien I don’t know what you have in mind, and neither of these authors has anything to do with Steck. Steck was blackballed long ago.

Regards,
Carl

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The claim of the culmination of a "discovery" of a map "at Paris", a version of the Marquette, there since the 17th century, is not true. They appropriated information about the map from Lucian Campeau.

LES CAHIERS DES DIX

no 47 (1992)

Les cartes relatives à la découverte du Missisipi par le
P. Jacques Marquette et Louis Jolliet
Lucien Campeau       41

 

Data on the map prevents an assessment of the map to be of 1670s origin, as both Buisseret/Kupfer and Campeau assert.