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Updated: June 13, 2025
After Father Marquette's exploring journey, twenty soldiers, two sergeants, and four bandsmen, under the command of Lieutenant du Roussel, were sent thither in 1684 by M. de Beauchamptrelle, commanding the king's troops at Mackinaw. Now, as I have said, it possessed a hotel and about fifty houses, inhabited for the most part by merchants trading with the Redskins.
The river is named "Mitchisipi, ou grande Riviere." Marquette's route, in going and returning, is marked by lines; but the return route is incorrect. The whole map is so crude and careless, and based on information so inexact, that it is of little interest. The Jesuits made also another map, without title, of the four Upper Lakes and the Mississippi to a little below the Arkansas.
Hard, mordacious, no man's friend . . . that was the David Drennen who at Père Marquette's fête sought any quarrel to which he might lay his hands. The world had battled and buffeted him; it had showered blows and been chary of caresses; he had struck back, hard-fisted, hard-hearted, a man whom a brutal life had made brutal in its own image.
I have, however, a fac-simile of a map made a few years later by order of the Intendant Duchesneau; which is decorated with the portrait of one of them, answering to Marquette's description, and probably copied from his drawing. St. Cosme, who saw them in 1699, says that they were even then almost effaced.
These performances took place on the site of the future town of Napoleon, Arkansas, and there the first confiscation-cross was raised on the banks of the great river. Marquette's and Joliet's voyage of discovery ended at the same spot the site of the future town of Napoleon.
Ignace, had grown in importance, and was now a stockaded fort, having French houses both within and outside it, like Detroit. After Father Marquette's old mission had been abandoned and the buildings burned, another small mission was begun at L'Arbre Croche, not far west of Fort Michilimackinac, such of his Ottawas as were not scattered being gathered here.
But they made no use of their discovery, and on their maps traced it as an insignificant stream. The French did not know whether this river flowed into the Gulf of California which was called the Red Sea or to the western ocean, or through Virginia eastward. Illinois Indians, visiting Marquette's mission after the manner of roving tribes, described the father of waters and its tributaries.
But the chief reason for turning back is best given in Marquette's own words: We considered that the advantage of our travels would be altogether lost to our nation if we fell into the hands of the Spaniards, from whom we could expect no other treatment but death or slavery; besides, we saw that we were not prepared to resist the Indians, the allies of the Europeans, who continually infested the lower part of the river.
Drennen's face had gone white; the fingers gripping his torn side were sticky and wet and red. He rose half way from his chair only to drop back, the rigid muscles along his jaw showing how the teeth were hard set. He had seemed to forget Ernestine, George, all of them, his gaze seeking and finding the table where his gold lay, then lifting to Frank Marquette's face suspiciously.
A big cat-fish collided with Marquette's canoe, and startled him; and reasonably enough, for he had been warned by the Indians that he was on a foolhardy journey, and even a fatal one, for the river contained a demon 'whose roar could be heard at a great distance, and who would engulf them in the abyss where he dwelt. I have seen a Mississippi cat- fish that was more than six feet long, and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds; and if Marquette's fish was the fellow to that one, he had a fair right to think the river's roaring demon was come.
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