For preliminary material on Marquette Map Hoax, scroll down carljweber.com
More on the Marquette Map Hoax
The "Hoax" Map was "discovered" in the mid-1800s. After it was published in J.G. Shea, 1852, it became "the real" Marquette Map. Why real? Because there had been an earlier "real" Marquette map, one that lived in the minds of learnèd historians from 1681 to 1852. All along, the Marquette myths have been a knowing or unknowing conspiracy of the missionaries and those devoted to the touching tightly woven little story of the missionary and the explorer, who with five other Frenchmen, in two canoes and a little pouch of food, paddled off into the unknown.
Based on primary source authentic documents, Jolliet is the one who paddled off, looking still for the shortcut to China initiated by the fall of Constantinople to Islam. But something changed between the time Jolliet got his commission in 1672 and his return two years later -- and the purpose of the commission was re-engineered to make the Gulf of Mexico the object, not the far western ocean. Documenting what happened is not intended at this point. Marquette was added later. There are no primary source government documents associating Marquette with a 1673 expedition.
This 1681 "first fake map", now known among scholars as the Thèvenot Map, had from the beginning, been thought to have been authored by Marquette, but it was not. Nonetheless, as it appears on the Library of Congress map site, it indicates Marquette as the author -- in fidelity to its original claim. This map is alluded to by me in relation to the Ellington Stone.
The 1670s-80s were critical years to heartland exploration, discovery, and cartography -- the most advanced knowledge learned of the North American continental interior by northern approach of Europeans was the result of the explorations and discoveries of La Salle, as seen in the Minet Map. This map has never been interpreted as La Salle's map, even though comparative cartography shows it is. The Minet map was the working draft that became the Franquelin/LaSalle map of 1684, rather than Minet being based on Franquelin.
Prior to the document "discoveries", the official biographies of Marquette -- those of Sparks and Bancroft -- had been based on Thèvenot. To our day, claims made for Marquette/Jolliet are claims rightfully due Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle. The succession of defenders of the Marquette myths from the time of the mid-1800s "discovery" of the three fake Marquette documents (in addition to "seeding" of the Boucherville Parish Registry) have been Shea, Delanglez, Hamilton, and Campeau -- all of the same missionary order as Marquette. No recusal going on here. Today's "expert" erudites fall back on these keepers of the missionary faith instead of looking closely at the primary source documents. They are all, sometimes more, sometimes less, guilty of demonizing LaSalle. To a great extent, Delanglez, Hamilton and Campeau fostered the Marquette myths, but there is a sub-text of off-hand refutation of F.B. Steck.
A very convoluted story begins with Paris archivist Pierre Margry in the mid-1800s, claiming that during LaSalle's "missing years" following 1669, the explorer had discovered water routes to the Mississippi by way of the Ohio River. This was a serious challenge to the Marquette myths springing from the 1681 publication, which placed the "first" as Marquette/Jolliet, 1673. There was need for the Marquette myths to be re-invented with "discovered" documents.
When Margry in 1879 through the help of his friend Francis Parkman got the United States Congress to publish six volumes of his collected French archive documents, with claims they supported his LaSalle history, Shea, none too happy, the same year came out with The Bursting of Pierre Margry's LaSalle Bubble.
The battle continues. I take the side of LaSalle.
To further elaborate, the missionary heirs of Marquette were expelled from Canada, or forbidden to exercise their order in 1763. The expulsion was lifted and they were allowed back into Canada in 1842. Two years later the three fake documents are "discovered", said to have been cached among some other documents, decades before having been secreted away by hospital nuns. Ten years later they were published by Shea.
Marquette had been dead and buried six years, his good name ignominiously used and launched into legend when, in 1681, the Thèvenot map was published with the first Marquette Narrative, itself also a fake. This latter was quietly retired when it was in the mid-1800s replaced with a newly "discovered" narrative that accompanied the newly "discovered" map (of the Marquette Map Hoax), and a "discovered" narrative of a second voyage never previously known to history.
The understanding of the 1681 narrative as a fake was pieced together by F.B.Steck and published in 1928. Steck did not realize until the 1950's that the mid-1800s "discovered" map, "discovered" narrative, and "discovered" Journal of the Second Voyage were fakes. (See my claim of David Buisseret's misunderstanding of Steck in emails 4 and 5, December 2011.)
The 1681 Marquette narrative was a revision of the oral report Jolliet had given to Claude Dablon, missionary official in Quebec, in late summer, 1674. Marquette's name was not mentioned in the notes of Jolliet's report as written up by Dablon. Marquette was injected into the story shortly thereafter.
In fact, there is no document showing Jolliet to have ever mentioned Marquette's name, in any connection, and notwithstanding the mention of Intendant Talon and Governor Frontenac in the forward to the mid-1800s "discovered" narrative, there is no official government document relating to Marquette's participation in an exploration of the Mississippi. To the chagrin of authentic historical reportage, Thwaites, in the Jesuit Relations, in addition to a sequentially unfathomable presentation of Marquette related documents, deepens the chagrin by saying in error that the mid-1800s "discovered" narrative was in the hand of Marquette. Many must have been the budding scholars nipped into total confusion by Thwaites.
Jolliet was given a commission in 1672 to explore toward the South Sea (this is not the Gulf of Mexico, it is the Pacific Ocean), also known as the Vermillian Sea -- the coast off southern California. How this was transformed into a voyage of discovery to the Gulf of Mexico has until now never been broached.
When Jolliet returned to Quebec in 1674, he said that he had seen camels and ostriches and related pretensions. Hyperbole might be reasonably indulged in when telling of one's travels, but complete confabulations burden the historical record. Historians, but for a few, have never taken him to task for his multiple dissimulations, but they take him at his word that he lost all his documents in a canoe mishap, which later would be appended to say he lost all of his and Marquette's documents. He said there were copies of his and Marquette's documents in the hands of the missionaries, and he pledged replacement documents for the ones supposedly lost, after the spring thaw. There were no replacement documents. Neither has this been brought bear on Jolliet's reputation.
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