Notes on Historical Context: The Ellington Stone
Carl J. Weber
February 2007

Why have historians ignored this artifact found
a century ago in the vicinity of Quincy Illinois?

Why? Because they have not honed to a more sharpened focus the events of the several years surrounding 1671. Nor have they integrated into their conclusions the findings of Father Francis Borgia Steck, as published in 1928 and 1960.


Image by permission of Quincy Museum

 On the contrary, longstanding established historical accounts have stood firm, with little felt need for reappraisal — to the detriment of an account that is deeper and more true.

Consequently, academic historians have ignored the Ellington Stone .It does not fit the mold. The date, 1671, seen on this "hard copy" document, if accepted as authentic, seriously confronts the established interpretation of the historical timeline.

Although not discussed in the notes below, the exact year 1671 saw the explorer LaSalle, for most of the year, "missing" in the frontier wilderness interior of the western Great Lakes. The exact year 1671 saw the authority of King Louis XIV (through the St. Lusson expedition initiated by Intendent Jean Talon in Quebec) pushing far into the Great Lakes interior and claiming possession of a vast domain for France. The exact year 1671 saw the Jesuit missionaries establishing an outpost settlement at today's Mackinac, a gateway to the Illinois and the Mississippi. The events in the years surrounding 1671 represent a scamble of activity, all aimed at preeminence of discovery and exploration.

Authorities have long claimed that Marquette and Jolliet, in 1673, were the first Europeans to venture into the North American Continental Interior by way of the Great Lakes. The year 1673 is more often than not set as the beginning of North American Continental Interior history. The Ellington Stone is a severe challenge to that interpretation.

 

The Jesuit Lake Superior Map
of 1671

To the right is a detail from a Jesuit map of Lake Superior created in 1671, the same year as the date on the Ellington Stone. It was published in the yearly report, Jesuit Relations, Vol. LV (Paris: 1673). The certainty of these dates does not seem open to doubt. Tribes comprising the Illinois Indians, from earliest historical times, occupied regions between the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. Translating the French, the map reads, "Route to the Illinois, 150 leagues to the south." For reasons not given, the text of the 1673 Jesuit publication says 100 leagues — not 150 leagues (p. 97). Nonetheless, the Ellington Stone was found hundreds of miles directly south of the Jesuit Mission of St. Esprit. The dotted line represents a route from the southwestern edge of Lake Superior toward the land of the Illinois and the Ellington Stone.

Jesuit knowledge of the Illinois was said to have been learned by them from the Illinois Indians themselves, who had visited the mission at Lake Superior. This explanation seems insufficient to account for the facts.

 

Another map, same text, from 1674

The “Route of Return”: Approximate Ellington Stone Latitude

detail of Thevenot map, 1681

In 1681 a narrative and a map, a detail of which is presented above, were published as Marquette’s ― of his purported participation in a 1673 expedition of discovery. In the mid-1800s the map was discounted as being not by Marquette, and no modern scholars dispute this. In addition to the published version of this map, several other very similar versions exist from this early period (known as the “Manitoumie” maps). There is little doubt that these various versions predate the publication in 1681. Yet there is no certainty, in fact, never even any informed conjecture, as to the provenance of these maps. In 1928, Father Francis Borgia Steck demonstrated why the narrative published in 1681, which this map accompanied, was, in fact, not Marquette’s. It was to all appearances a forgery: Francis Borgia Steck, The Jolliet-Marquette Expedition (Quincy: Franciscan Fathers, 1928). The 1681 map, now known as the Thevenot Map, can be found on the Library of Congress web site. Dotted lines on the map say, in French, “route of going” and “route of return.” The latitude of the “route of return,” when occasional historians have alluded to it, their commentary has treated it as a curious anomaly. This is the earliest map of the North American interior authenticated in a publication ― but the most that has been said about it is that until the mid 1800s it was thought to have been Marquette’s.

For recent examination of the stone, see http://www.itarp.uiuc.edu/atam/ellington.html
It was determined that the Ellington Stone was made from local stone. The article asks,

Is this a marker left by the French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle two years before the Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet expedition in 1673? If so, then European explorers were traveling in Illinois earlier than is commonly accepted...

A subtle argument links LaSalle to the Ellington Stone. The "If so..." makes it appear that the artifact could not have been created by anyone else. There is no evidence that such link between LaSalle and the Ellington Stone exists. However much I would welcome a conclusion that it was LaSalle's handiwork, being that I regard him as the most heroic player in the saga of the opening up of the North American Interior, a connection is at best feeble. Most tellingly, the Jesuit symbol on the Ellington Stone is a signature of who left us the Ellington Stone. The Jesuits. The history fits.