Lac Superieur. Lac Superieur, ov De Tracy. Lac des Illinois, ou Missihiganin. Lac des Illinois. Baye des Puans. No name. Puans. Pouteoutami. Outagami. Outagami. Maskoutens. Maskoutens.
Joliet gives the name Miskonsing to the river, and marks the portage; while Marquette gives no names. The country south of Lake Superior and west of Lake Michigan in Marquette is blank. In Joliet it is marked ‘La Frontenacie.’ West of Lake Superior in Marquette is a blank; in Joliet are several lakes and the tribe of Madouesseou. Joliet calls the Mississippi, Rivière de Buade, and Marquette names it R. de la Conception.”
The original French of the narrative as Shea found it at Montreal was printed for Mr. Lenox in 1855,[576] and bears the following title: _Récit des voyages et des découvertes du P. J. Marquette en l’année 1673, et aux suivantes_;[577] and the copy being defective in two leaves, this matter was supplied from the print of Thevenot, next to be mentioned.
The copy which Dablon sent to Paris was used by Thevenot, who gives it, with some curtailment, in his _Recueil de voyages_, published in Paris in 1681,[578] with the caption: “Voyage et découverte de quelques pays et nations de l’Amérique septentrionale par le P. Marquette et Sr. Joliet.”[579]
The Jesuits about this time made a map, which, from having been given in Thevenot as Marquette’s, passed as the work of that missionary till Shea found the genuine one in Canada. What was apparently the original of this in Thevenot is a manuscript which Harrisse[580] says was formerly in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, but cannot now be found. Mr. Parkman has a copy of it, and calls it “so crude and careless, and based on information so inexact, that it is of little interest.”[581]
As engraved in Thevenot, this map differs a little, and bears the title: “Carte de la découverte faite l’an 1673, dans l’Amérique septentrionale. Liebaux fecit.” Sparks followed this engraving in the map in his _Life of Marquette_, and calls it, with the knowledge then current, “the first that was ever published of the Mississippi River.”[582]
Marquette’s later history is but brief. In the autumn of the next year (1674) he started to found a mission among the Illinois; but being detained by illness near Chicago, he did not reach the Indian town of Kaskaskia till the spring of 1675. His strength was ebbing, and he started with his companions to return to St. Ignace, but had only reached a point on the easterly shore of Lake Michigan, when he died, and his companions buried him beside their temporary hut. The next year some Ottawas who had been of his flock unearthed the bones and carried them to Michillimackinac, where they were buried beneath the floor of the little mission chapel.[583]