Since there might be some interest in water related;

I grabbed this off google groups, my original posting in RBP was 1/24/99 -------------------
I was watching PBS the other day and saw a special on George Washington including a picture of our first president standing in the bow of a boat
while his men paddled and used poles to make his famous river crossing.
Course, it wouldn't have been much of a crossing had there not been the nameless figures propelling that boat for him, in fact it would have been disappointing indeed to see him standing there, boat tied to a dock, not
moving at all.

So then I thought, I've already run into many paddlers names in researching events in the past, so why not write a little about them? I must warn you
in advance, I'm a computer programmer, not a writer, but you may still find
the information enjoyable.

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Famous Paddlers You May Not Know

The story of
Jacques Largillier, Pierre Moreau, Jean Plattier, Jean Tiberge,


Jacques Largillier, Pierre Moreau, Jean Plattier, and Jean Tiberge had
been involved in the fur trade for sometime. There were employed by
Adrian Jolliet and his brother Louis for several years. Jacques
Largillier had aquired the nickname Beaver, Pierre Moreau had aquired
the nickname Mole (I don't know why the nicknames were published in
the 1898 book, but they were so I thought I'd forward them along). The
Jolliet brothers had a fur trading business which was run by the oldest
brother Adrian until his loss in the wilderness. Louis Jolliet ran the
trading post at Sault Saint Marie.

It was spring, 1673, when Pierre Moreau, Jean Plattier, Jean Tiberge,
Jacques Largillier, and Louis Jolliet left Quebec City for the mission
at St Ignace. When they arrived at the mission, the paddlers probably waited outside as Louis Jolliet met with Father Dablon, the head of the mission
to present him with a letter from Count Frontinac, the Governor of New
France. The letter said the group was to explore the unknown country
searching for the great river the Indians referred to as Messip and to
see if it offered a route to Cathay, China. It was customary at the
time to take a missionary along on exploratory trips and so Father Dablon
was asked to assign a missionary to go with the group.

May 17th, 1673, the 4 paddlers probably loaded the 5 bags of corn meal,
2 strings of dried beef and cache of trinkets (to present as gifts to
Indian friends met along the way) while Marquette and Jolliet said farewell
to the Misson people. They paddled out onto Lake Michigan and left the
mission at Michilimackinac (now simply refered to as Mackinac). They arrived
at St Francois-Xavier Mission on the shores of Green Bay (refered to as
"that stinking place" due to it's algae-rich green waters) on May 27th.
Here again the paddlers probably stayed with the two canoes as Marquette
and Jolliet talked with Father Allouez about what he had heard of the great river from the Indians in 1657 at the great gathering on the shores of Lake Superior.

The Indians had told of a great river and warned the French not to go there. They said great monsters that swallowed men and canoes whole lived in it.
They were also told that there was an alternative route to return to
Lac de Illinois (now called Lake Michigan), the Illinois river.

Marquette joined the other men (also, a group of friendly Mascouten Indians came with to show them the portage between the Fox (at the base of Green Bay, Wisconsin) and the Wisconsin River to reach the great river). After the
portage had been made, the friendly Indians bid farewell to the group and returned north, while the explorers made their way downstream.

On June 17th, 1673 they met the great river and Marquette named it the
River of Immaculate Conception. As they traveled down the river both
Marquette and Jolliet kept journals while the paddlers paddled. Once,
Marquette tried to use his paddle to push away a log, only to discover it
was really a 10 foot long sturgeon fish that did not take kindly to being prodded. However, perhaps protected by being a man of God, or simply very lucky, the fish assumed that a paddler in the other canoe had attacked it
and bumped and rammed into the side of that voyager canoe nearly a league (about 3 miles).

At one point they spotted a bluff with the face of a demon painted upon
it. Marquette bemoaned in his journel that such demon worship existed here
in the wilderness, but before Marquette could finish writing his note the canoes encountered the swirling waters where the Missouri met the Mississippi. Even today, the area hasn't been exactly tamed and the Army chose to build the Chain Of Rocks Canal around the area instead.

The demon warning remained visible on the river until the 1850's, when the cliff was quarried for gravel.

After they had reached the mouth of the Arkansas river and encountered trade items of Spanish origins, Marquette and Jolliet decided the group should
turn back to avoid spanish capture. After the paddlers spent days fighting
the strong currents of the Mississippi, they met a group of Illini indians
on the west bank of the river who offered to show them the other portage.
On the trip downriver the explorers had completely missed the mouth of the Illinois River. (Here, depending on the source the story varies between the Illini giving the explorers a boy slave to show them the way, and them simply telling them where it was) So the group continued upstream on the Mississippi until they reached the mouth of the Illinois River. While paddling up the
slow current of the Illinois, they found the village of Grand Kaskaskia. They spent several days in the large village and Marquette promised to return as soon as possible.

Marquettes sickness began to appear at this point. While the paddlers might have been offered some food, Marquette, who was promising to save indian
souls may have been offered much food and goodwill. Today, doctors reading
what he wrote of his symptoms believe he had contracted typhoid fever from improperly prepared food. Sometimes it pays to be the paddler and not the preacher....

They left Grand Kaskaskia with an escort of Illini indians to show them the Chicago portage. After several days, Marquette wrote that with the help
of the Illini women they completed moving their gear across the portage
and they were ready to depart. (I suspect, the paddlers and the woman moved
the gear, while Marquette preached to the indian men)

They paddled back to the mission at Green Bay, where Marquette and Jolliet
made copies of their journals.

Jolliet, Moreau, Plattier, Tiberge travel backed to Quebec City while
Marquette and Jacques Largillier remained at the mission. In running a
set of rapids on the return, Jolliet swamped his canoe. Both Jolliet
and Marquette's journels were both lost, and one person drowned (one
book claims Jean Tiberge drown, another claims a young boy slave or "donne" drown).

Jolliet gave Count Frontinac a verbal account of the journey as best he
could recall and drew maps (the original is in the Newberry Library here
in Chicago) based on his recollection. He also informed Frontinac that
the river appeared to go to the Gulf of Mexico, and not the Pacific as
hoped. Frontinac wrote Father Dablon (then the head of the Jesuit missions
in New France) demanding the copies of the journal, which Dablon promised
at the next spring.

Afterwards, times did not go well for either Marquette or Jolliet.
Marquette would return to Chicago the next year with Largillier and
Pierre Porteret but Marquette would die on the return trip. Jolliet
would be back working at his fur trading post. In Quebec City in 1674, Jolliet's sister-in-law (Adrian's widow) sued him seeking rent for her
canoe he borrowed the year before.

Jacques Largillier and Pierre Porteret would be written about again in
1676, but Pierre Moreau, Jean Plattier and Jean Tiberge, would not be
heard from again. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Information sources for the above text:

* Discovery and Conquest of the Northwest, 1898, Rufus Blanchard
(I was in a used book store talking to the owner about events of the
past, and I think he was enjoying researching the topic as much as I,
then he pulled out this book and gave it to me for free, saying that
he thought I would find it very helpful. On the first page, the
author stated that the book was the result of 50 years of research
and he was publishing the book without copyright as a gift to the
people of Chicago. This was the book that had the nicknames of the
two voyagers.)
* Joliet, 1918, Carl Sandburg
* Early Chicagoland, 1928, Harley, Bradford, Mitchell
* The Illinois, 1940, James Gray
* The Heartland (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois), 1956, Walter Havigurst
* Marquettes Explorations, 1970 Raphael N Hamilton, S.J.
(this book states that it was customary for a missionary to have a
boy servant or donne and says that a donne drown in the return
accident)
* Jacques Marquette, 1985, Joseph P. Donnelly, S.J.

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Next time, the story of two more frenchmen, Accau and Du Gay, who's misadventures with a explorer would make that explorer famous, for
awhile.... then he'd just be considered crazy...


--
John Nelson -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chicago Area Paddling/Fishing Page
http://www.chicagopaddling.org http://www.chicagofishing.org
(A Non-Commercial Web Site: No Sponsors, No Paid Ads and Nothing to Sell)

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