AN UNBLEMISHED LAND

Soon after the discovery of America white men had learned about the Lower Mississippi. But for more than a century and a half the white men’s knowledge of the Upper Mississippi was little more than a rumor.

The French came to Canada first in 1534, and explored the country west as far as lake Michigan. They had heard of a big river to the southwest, and wanted to find out if that river emptied into the Gulf of Mexico, or possibly the Gulf of California.

An expedition was organized by five wood rangers led by trader, Louis Joliet and a Jesuit missionary, Father Jacques Marquette.

They left St. Ignace in northern Michigan on May 17, 1673, in two well loaded birch bark canoes. From Lake Michigan they entered Green Bay and ascended the Fox River. Here they came across Mascoutins and Miamis (both Algonkian Indians) whose language Father Marquette could speak.

Though they warned of danger to the west, the Indians provided guides to help them across the portage from the Fox River to the Wisconsin River.

Launching their canoes once again the explorers continued their journey. On June 17, 1673, Father Marquette wrote in his journal, that he could not express the joy as they beheld the broad waters of the Mississippi, beyond which rose the first glimpse of Iowa ever beheld by a white man.