Father Jacques Marquette’s Autograph Map:
A Question of Authenticity?
Carl J. Weber © 2006
“…the Marquette Autograph map is a particularly noteworthy document. It lends the central support to the famous 1673 Mississippi River discovery by Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette. Today’s information technology permits a close examination of the cartographic record. The contour of the Illinois River in this map suffers the weakness of many forgeries. In this case, it is too accurate for its times.” |
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Marquette's authorship of the right side image is contradicted by a comparison with historical maps. The Illinois River roughly approximating three sides of an octagon is unseen in the cartographical record before 1813, as seen on the left, except for the "Marquette" image on the right. The reasonable conclusion is that the map long believed to have been created by Marquette was not created in 1673-74. It was created in the 19th century. Examination of maps post-1674/pre-1813 easily renders this conclusion.
The following are only a dozen of scores of examples of the Illinois River on maps between 1673-74 and 1813. The red arrows point to the Illinois River branching to the northeast off the Mississippi River. The southwestern tip of Lake Michigan is also seen at the top right. Except for the reputed Marquette authored map, no map appeared before 1813 with an Illinois River shape remotely approximating the actual course of the river.
The place of the Marquette Autograph map in the history of cartography is anything but humble. It has long been championed as the first map of the Continental Interior, the first map of the Mississippi Valley, of the Illinois River, of the Chicago region, and so on. It has also been the most important supporting document of the 1673 Jolliet/Marquette expedition of discovery. This map, even though esteemed with great reverence for many generations by our most renowned scholars, is, in fact, not authentic.
It was not drawn in the 1670s, but rather, rendered after 1813, and obviously not by Marquette.
In addition to the (1.) much-too-accurate course of the Illinois River on the “Marquette Autograph” map, Marquette was (2.) neither known to have ever undergone any training in cartography nor of (3.) ever having created any other map.
The authenticity of this document is fundamental to the long-accepted history of the Marquette and Jolliet story. The weight of this map as historical evidence by scholars can be summed up by preeminent Jesuit scholar Jean Delanglez, investing absolute trust in the authenticity of this document, when he wrote:
Marquette’s map is not only the oldest source for our knowledge of the expedition of 1673, but it is also the single extant autograph document by a member of the expedition. Its importance is readily realized when we remember first that it expresses cartographically what was contained in Marquette’s journal, which the missionary had before him when he made the map. And secondly, that in spite of its sketchiness, it is much more accurate than the maps of the same section the Mississippi River which were drawn during the next twenty-five years.
On both statements, Delanglez is not right.
The map mentioned directly above, published in 1681, was not a Marquette Autograph. Nor was the one published in 1852. The 1681 map, now known among scholars as the Thèvenot Map, was until the mid-19th century thought to be an engraving of the legitimate map of Marquette. (This Thèvenot Map has recently been put up on the Library of Congress site.) What the Thèvenot map affirms is the embarrassingly limited extent of Jesuit knowledge of the interior. The most advanced knowledge of the continental interior in the early 1680s was the result of the explorations of La Salle. Whether disingenuous or naive, the Jesuits have, to our day, claimed for themselves the claims rightfully due to La Salle.
When the Marquette Autograph became widely known through publication by John Gilmary Shea in 1852, it was heralded as the "real" undisputed map of Marquette. As shown above, regarding the contour of the Illinois River, the new "real" map was a deception foisted on historians.