4 THE GEOLOGY OF MINNESOTA. 



[Marquette, 1673. 

 MENARD. 



To Marquette has been given the honor of the first discovery of the 

 Mississippi at any point north of the Chickasaw bluff ; but it appears that 

 an earlier Jesuit missionary reached it by way of the Wisconsin river in 

 1661, while in pursuit of his labors, in an attempt to preach the gospel to 

 the wandering Huron nation, twelve years before Marquette and Joliet. 

 He descended either the St. Croix or the Wisconsin, and ascended the 

 Black river, on the headwaters of which the Hurons had chosen a resi- 

 dence ; but in making a portage Menard was lost in the wilderness. 

 Marquette descended the Wisconsin and passed down the Mississippi.* 



ALLOUEZ. 



After the death of Menard, Claude Allouez was appointed, in 1665, to 

 the Mission of the Holy Spirit, at La Pointe. It was probably in 1666 that 

 he visited Fond du Lac Suptrieur, and there met a number of the Nadoues- 

 sioux from the country to the west and southwest, and learned for the first 

 time of the great river, which, in his Relation, he denominated the Messipi. 

 Allouez, however, never saw the great river of which he heard so much ; 

 on the banks of which dwelt the strange race of aborigines who were 

 reported to live in a country of prairies abounding in all kinds of game, 

 who cultivated tobacco and lived largely on "marsh rice," spoke a language 

 entirely unknown, used the bow and arrow with great dexterity, and dwelt 

 in cabins covered with deer skins the Iroquois of the country, as 

 Marquette styled them.f 



During Marquette's administration the Mission at La Pointe was 

 abandoned on account of the hostility of the Dakotahs, who are described 

 by Marquette as a "certain people called Nadouessi, dreaded by their 

 neighbors ; and, although they only use the bow and arrow, they use it 

 with so much skill and dexterity that, in a moment, they fill the air. In 

 the Parthian mode, they turn their heads in flight, and discharge their 

 arrows so rapidly that they are no less to be feared in their retreat than in 

 their attack." Although Marquette traveled over much of the western 



* Transactions of the Department of American History of the Minnesota Historical Society, E. D. Ts'eill. In 



French's Historical Collections of Louisiana, Part IV , it is stated, on the authority of the Jesu 

 Sieur Nicollet, m 1639, probably was the first Frenchman on the Mississippi after the visit of D( 



.f DeSoto. 



t French expresses the opinion that Allouez visited the Mississippi by way of the Fox and Wisconsin rivers in the 

 year 1670. (Jesuit Relation of 1669-70.) HM CoU. Louisiana. 



