Louis Joliet

Louis Joliet (sculpture by Alfred Laliberté in front of the Parliament building in Quebec)

Signature of Louis Jolliet

Map of the Mississippi River System from circa 1681 based on the Joliet and Marquette expedition of 1673

Louis Joliet , common spelling Jolliet , (born September 21, 1645 near Québec , † between May and October 1700 on the north bank of the Saint Lawrence River ) was a French explorer and cartographer .

Life

Louis Joliet (or Jolliet) was born on September 21, 1645 near Québec in the French colony of New France , later Canada, as the son of the car maker Jean Joliet. At the age of ten he came to the Jesuit college in Québec and studied there for the priesthood. In 1667, however, he renounced a clerical office. Instead, he and his brother Adrien began to trade with the Indians in the unexplored Canadian hinterland. Bishop Laval of Québec provided him with the necessary capital for a career as a “ranger”. However, Adrien made the first trip to the Great Lakes region .

On June 4, 1671, he stayed in this region anyway, because he was one of the signatories of a in Sault Ste. Marie made a statement that France took possession of the Great Lakes area and all adjoining countries as far as the Pacific , the Gulf of Mexico and Hudson Bay . In the Jesuit mission there, Joliet probably met the Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette , with whom he arranged an expedition to find the Mississippi River , the existence of which they had heard from the Indians. In this way they hoped to find a connection to either the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific and in this way to open up a connection to China. Although the two were able to win the support of Governor Frontenac , they did not receive any financial help from the Crown.

Joliet and Marquette left on May 17, 1673 with five other French. They followed Lake Michigan to Green Bay , took canoes up the Fox River , switched from this to the Wisconsin River and followed it downstream to the Mississippi, which they reached on June 17th. Though increasingly convinced that the river flows into the Gulf of Mexico and not the Pacific, they followed it to about the level of the Arkansas River . When they were informed by Indians of the proximity to the sea and warned of hostile tribes and observed Spanish trade goods, they turned back so as not to fall into the hands of the Spaniards, who used to crack down on invaders into their colonies. On his return to Canada in the summer of 1674, Joliet's canoe capsized in the Lachine Rapids . He himself was rescued by fishermen after four hours in the water, but his diaries and maps were lost and had to be reconstructed from memory.

In 1674 Joliet married and settled in Québec, but did not lose interest in the fur trade. In 1676 he founded a trading company for the north bank of the St. Lawrence River. Three years later he received lands on the Mingan Peninsula and in 1680 Anticosti Island. In 1679 Joliet traveled overland to Hudson Bay on behalf of the governor to get an idea of ​​the English presence there and the fur trade.

By 1690, Joliet was not only famous in Canada, but also in France and even in England, to which the maps of the Mississippi and St. Lawrence River based on his information had contributed significantly. He increased this fame in 1694 with an expedition to explore the coast of Labrador , during which he came to the height of the 65th parallel and made the first exact maps of this region and brought back news about the country and its people. On April 13, 1697 he was appointed professor of hydrography in Quebec . He died at an unknown time between May and October 1700, probably on one of his properties on the St. Lawrence River.

literature

• Louis Jolliet . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).

Web links

Commons : Louis Jolliet  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Joliet in the Musée canadien de l'histoire , detailed curriculum vitae, animated map of his many expeditions; optional English or French