The Marquette Autograph Map:
A Question of Authenticity

The map that stands as the only remaining primary source document establishing Father Jacques Marquette's discovery of the Mississippi was forged and insinuated into history along with two other Marquette documents, in the mid-19th century. Marquette himself stands untainted, his good name was used as a prevarication to him unbeknownst.

Figure 1. The Jacques Marquette Autograph Map

The myth of the Jacques Marquette documents

Marquette had drawn a map over the winter of 1673-74. It was supposed to have documented an expedition of discovery down the Mississippi performed by Marquette and Jolliet in 1673 commissioned by the Canadian government. After the expedition, Marquette returned to the Jesuit mission at Green Bay Wisconsin. Jolliet appears in Montreal the following year. Jolliet claimed that he had an accident, his canoe overturned, and he lost not only his own papers, but the original papers of Marquette.

The original narrative by Marquette, fortunately, a back-up created by Marquette himself, found its way into print in Paris in 1681. A map, said also to have been Marquette's, was published that year with the narrative. These documents were republished and translated over many dacades and as late as the 1840s were accepted as primary source documents of the discovery of the Mississippi River.

Although in 1773 Pope Clement XIV had supressed the Jesuit order, nonetheless, in about 1800, a small cache of Jesuit documents found its way into the safekeeping of the nuns of the hospital, Hôtel-Dieu of Quebec, the papers deposited there by the last living Canadian Jesuit, Father Cazot.

In 1814, the Jesuit Supression was Lifted by Pope Pius VII, and in 1842 the order was allowed to return to Canada. The documents deposited in the safekeeping of the nuns were then taken from their dark corner in 1844, returned to the Jesuits, and revealed to the light of history.

Among these newly discovered documents were said to have been three with a most noteworthy provenance.

• Firstly, the "real" Marquette map. The one that had been published in 1681 was no longer recognized as Marquette's;
• Secondly, the "real" Marquette narrative. Although not in his hand, this document immediatley came to be recognized as the authentic Marquette narrative. The narrative published in 1681 was now understood to be an abridged version of this newly recovered document;
• Thirdly, a journal of a second Marquette expedition.

Upon the emergence of these documents, the Jesuits announced their pride at the prominence of their order in the late 17th century, and their important role in colonial history. The map has since taken its place as the "real" first map depicting the Mississippi River, the Illinois River, the Chicago region, etc. The newly discovered "original" narrative now displaced the one published in 1681 as the truely authentic document. Of the Marquette journal of a second voyage, a few words will be said momentarily.

The map and two other Marquette documents that surfaced in 1844 are the documents that "prove" the prominent history of the Jesuits in early North American history, their discovery of the Mississippi river, the Illinois territory, the Chicago portage, etc..

Summary of what in fact took place

When Jolliet in late summer of 1674 told Governor Frontenac, in Quebec, that his canoe had overturned and he lost all his notes and maps, Jolliet is recorded as having promised that copies retained at the Green Bay mission, St. Xavier, would be forthcoming the next year. In November, Frontenac wrote to Minister of the Colonies, Colbert, in Paris, of Jolliet's ill-fortune on the Lachine rapids within sight of Montreal. Frontenac told the Minister that the following year copies of the documents would be forwarded to Paris. That was the last to be heard of it.

Jolliet is recorded nowhere as having mentioned documents drawn up by Marquette. Astonishingly, Jolliet is not known to have ever mentioned the name of Marquette in connection with a 1673 expedition, or in any connection whatsoever.

On August 1, 1674, Jolliet conferred in Quebec with Father Claude Dablon, Jesuit superior, about his Mississippi expedition. Dablon took notes of the conversation. These notes were later cast in the shape of a Marquette first person narrative, and published as such in 1681, six years after Marquette had died. Although Jesuit apologists will argue to the contrary to this very day, there is not documentation of any kind associating Marquette with an expedition of discovery until the fraudulent 1681 publication. When this first person narrative was published that year by Melchissedech Thèvenot, of course it became "common knowledge," and everybody knows, that Marquette discovered the Mississippi River.

By the mid-19th century, with the quickening integration of the American heartland into the Union, interest in colonial history quickened. The Jesuits, newly reconstituted in North America, the result of the Papal lifting of the Suppression, were vying with other Catholic orders for the loyalty of the immigrants who were finding their paths into the American interior.

The Jesuits, under the watch of Jesuit superior Felix Martin, in 1844 were given a collection of documents that had been resting in Quebec in the care of the hospital nuns. To bolster their earlier missionary preeminence in the long-past colonial frontier heatland, the Jesuits led history to believe that the three Marquette related documents were among those given to them by the nuns. They were not.

In regard to the narrative unearthed in 1844, said to have been the original on which the 1681 version was based, and in regard to the journal of a second Marquette expedition, these documents have been and will be discussed elsewhere.

The Significance of the Map

The Marquette Autograph Map, as described in all current history accounts, advances the proof and central support that Jacques Marquette was the first European to voyage the Mississippi, ascend the river of the Illinois, and traverse the Chicago portage. The map can no longer be accepted as a defensible proof. Although additional reasons are given elsewhere, there is one major, and two minor challenges that prima facie demonstrate the map is a fraud.

1. The map shows the Illinois River as approximating three sides of an octagon. This degree of accuracy was acheived on no other map until the one drawn by John Melish in 1813;
2. There is no record of Marquette ever having been schooled in map making;
3. No other map is known to exist that can be identified with Marquette.
   
   A few other reasons

The Melish and Marquette Maps Compared. John Melish map detail used with permission of The University Library of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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