ame first to Canada in 1672 the French had a post called
St. Esprit on the south shore of Lake Superior near its western end and
they had also passed westward from Lake Michigan and founded posts
on both the Illinois and the Wisconsin Rivers which flow into the
Mississippi.

France had placed on record her claim to the whole of the Great West. On
a June morning in 1671 there had been a striking scene at Sainte Marie
du Saut. The French had summoned a great throng of Indians to the spot.
There, with impressive ceremony, Saint-Lusson, an officer from Canada,
had set up a cedar post on which was a plate engraved with the royal
arms, and proclaimed Louis XIV lord of all the Indian tribes and of all
the lands, rivers, and lakes, discovered and to be discovered in the
region stretching from the Atlantic to that other mysterious sea beyond
the spreading lands of the West. Henceforth at their peril would the
natives disobey the French King, or other states encroach upon these his
lands. A Jesuit priest followed Saint-Lusson with a description to the
savages of their new lord, the King of France. He was master of all the
other rulers of the world. At his word the earth trembled. He could set
earth and sea on fire by the blaze of his cannon. The priest knew the
temper of his savage audience and told of the King's warriors covered
with the blood of his enemies, of the rivers of blood which flowed from
their wounds, of the King's countless prisoners, of his riches and
his power, so great that all the world obeyed him. The savages gave
delighted shouts at the strange ceremony, but of its real meaning they
knew nothing. What they understood was that the French seemed to be good
friends who brought them muskets, hatchets, cloth, and especially the
loved but destructive firewater which the savage palate ever craved.

The mystery of the Great Lakes once solved, there still remained that
of the Western Sea. The St. Lawrence flowed eastward. Another river must
therefore be found flowing westward. The French were eager listeners
when the savages talked of a mighty river in the west flowing to the
sea. They meant, as we now suppose, the Mississippi. There are vague
stories of Frenchmen on the Mississippi at an earlier date; but, however
this may be, it is certain that in the summer of 1673 Louis Joliet, the
son of a wagon-maker of Quebec, and Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit priest,
reached and descended the great river from the mouth of the Wis