66 NOTES ON THE NORTHWEST. 



particularly in a late history of this country, by an author of 

 much literary fame,* I should not feel warranted to lay aside 

 as condemned, and wholly to omit. 



One other step, also, in the progress of discovery in this 

 region precedes both the voyage of Hemiepin and that of 

 Marquette. In the year before Marquette's voyage, that is, 

 in 1672 or 1673, Claude xllouez and Dablon, the two mis- 

 sionaries who had been with him in 1668 at the Sault, 

 ascended the Fox River. In passing up the river, they per- 

 ceived, on the banks of the rapids, a kind of idol, very badly 

 formed, and which appeared rather as a freak of nature, 

 where they had expected to find a work of art. It was a 

 rock, whose summit, at a distance, appeared to be in the Hke- 

 ness of a man's head ; and the savages had taken it for the 

 tutelar}^ deity of their country. They had painted it all sorts 

 of colors, and never passed it without offering tobacco, 

 arrows, or something else. The missionaries, to satisfy the 

 Indians of the impotence of their pretended divinity, over- 

 turned the stone into the river." — Char., vol. ii., p. 250. 



On the 13th of May, 1673, Father Marquette, a Jesuit, 

 embarked, as the relation says, with Mr. Joliet, a citizen of 

 Quebec, who was the director of the expedition, and five 

 other Frenchmen, at some point on or near the Strait of 

 Mackinac, which is not named, and arrived at the Bay of 

 Puans (Green Bay), at a village inhabited by Kikapoos, 

 Miamis, and Mascoutins, where they obtained guides, who 

 accompanied them on their way as far as the Wisconsin 

 River ; and passing down the Wisconsin (miscalled, in the 

 relation, the Mesconsin), they arrived on the Missisippi on 

 the 17th of June. They proceeded down the river, from the 

 mouth of the Wisconsin, more than one hundred leagues, 



• Bancroft. — History of the United States 



