Joliet, Illinois

“ Seeing no one, the visitors hollowed lustily, and four old men answered the call, bearing in hand the calumet of peace. "We are Illinois," said the Indians: "you are our fellow-men; we bid you welcome." They had never before seen any whites, but had heard mention of the French, and long wished to form an alliance with them against the Iroquois, whose hostile excursions extended even to their country. They were glad to hear from Joliet that the colonists had lately chastised those whom no others could vanquish, and feasted the visitors, to manifest their gratitude as well as respect. ”

“ It is certain that in 1673 part of the region known as the Illinois country was explored to some extent by two Frenchmen, Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit father. Marquette, under orders to begin a mission to the Indians, who were known to the French by their visits to the French settlements in the Lake Superior region, and Joliet, who acted under orders of Jean Talon, Intendant of Canada, ascended the Fox river, crossed the portage between it and the Wisconsin river, and followed that stream to the Mississippi, which they descended to a point below the mouth of the Arkansas. ”

“ Joliet also kept a journal, but unfortunately he lost all his papers in a canoe accident before he reached Quebec on his return. That the site of the future Chicago, situated as it was on so important a portage connecting the lake with the river systems of the interior, possessed advantages of a striking kind was plainly perceived by Joliet, who afterward wrote that « 8 » an artificial waterway could easily be constructed by cutting only a half league of prairie, "to pass from the Lake of the Illinois into St. ”

“ His patronymic was adopted as the name of a mountain situated near the Rivère des Plaines, a tributary of the Illinois; and Joliet is also the appellation, given in his honor, of a town near Chicago.
Père Marquette proceeded to Green Bay by Lake Michigan, in 1673; but he returned soon afterward and resumed his missionary labors among the Illinois Indians. Being then at war with the Miâmis, they came to him asking for gunpowder. "I have come among you," said the apostolic priest, "not to aid you to destroy your enemies' bodies, but to help you to save your own souls. ”

“ Marquette, shattered in health, remained at Green Bay, while Joliet pushed on to Montreal to tell of his discoveries. Marquette rallied sufficiently at the end of a year to attempt a mission among the Illinois Indians, where death found him in the spring of 1675. Joliet spent his last years in a vain endeavor to persuade the government of France to undertake on a grand scale the development of the rich lands along the Mississippi.
page 53But the story which Joliet took back with him to Quebec fired anew the ambition of La Salle. ”

“ On their return they sailed up the river Illinois, through the beautiful prairies. The tribe of Illinois that live on its banks wanted the good missionary to remain with them, and one of their chiefs, with his young men, led the party to Lake Michigan, by way of Chicago. Here Marquette remained to preach to the Miamis north of Chicago, and Joliet returned to Quebec, to announce the discovery of the upper Mississippi. ”

“ Autumn came upon the land and through the fallen leaves along the shore the young Indians passed back and forth among the villages on the Illinois. From the Kaskaskias, who dwelt farther up the river, the Peorias learned that Marquette and Joliet had stopped at the upper village, and that the black robe had promised to come again and preach to them. Moreover, when they left this village, one of the chiefs of the nation, with a band of his own men, went with them up the river, across the portage, and as far as the Lake of the Illinois—as they then called Lake Michigan. ”

“ BENJAMIN OLIN, Joliet, Ill.
Born in State of New York. Volunteered at Newark, Ill., in April, 1861. Elected Orderly Sergeant of Company. May, 1861, commissioned First Lieutenant. Served with Company in Missouri till November, 1861, when he resigned on account of ill health. Has been in the practice of law since 1862. At present County Judge of Will county, Ill. Is not a pensioner. Has never applied for a pension. A liberal democrat. ”

“ I am off for the war,” and moved on toward Joliet. On this journey he was troubled by the thought that he was liable to be rejected, as he was a small man and, at that time, first-class war material was in great abundance. When, however, he reached camp he passed muster successfully and was happy. Comrade Pierson closes his letter thus: “When another election comes ’round I want you fellows out there to attend to business better than you did before. Watch New Jersey next time.”
WILLIAM PRENTICE, Soldiers’ Home, Quincy, Illinois. ”

“ The value of the product for Chicago and Joliet in 1900 was respectively $31,461,000 and $13,380,000. The manufactures of foundry and machine-shop products are even greater in value than is the product of iron and steel. ”

“ And so this city, increasing its population by a half-million in each of the last three decades, has come to stand next to Paris in population and first of all great American cities in the constructive activity of its civic consciousness and urban imagination. The city is still smoke-enwrapped (when the wind does not blow from the lake) ; its streets run out into prairie dust and mud; its harbor, of which Joliet spoke in praise, merits rather the disparagement of La Salle; there are offending smells and sights everywhere. ”

“ A curious optical illusion was produced by the sun shining from behind a dark cloud, and throwing 203lines of light across the prairie, producing the effect of a fort, and of long rows of white buildings. The sun was setting behind clouds of crimson and gold when the train arrived at Joliet, and stopped twenty minutes for refreshments.
Joliet, named in honor of the citizen of Quebec who first trod the soil of Iowa, is a handsome town, ornamented with numerous spires. ”

“ The solitude of the great river appalled them: a vast torrent of rolling 22 water, bordered by forest and plain, so well fitted for the happiness of man, and yet no human being in all this land! What could it mean, and what would be the outcome? Joliet, of long experience with savage tribes, and astute in forest craft, distrusted the silence and solitude, and kept as keen guard as though on the war-path. A tiny camp-fire was built only for meals, and the nights were passed in the crowded canoes as far from shore as it was possible to anchor them in the deep river. ”

“ Joliet (often spelled [178] Jolliet) was born in Canada, the son of a wagon-maker. In boyhood he had been a promising scholar in the Jesuits’ school at Quebec, but, imbibing the spirit of the times, while a young man he became a rover in the wilderness and a trader among Indians. Three years before his appointment to explore the great river beyond the lakes, he had been sent with Peré to search for a copper-mine on Lake Superior, and the year before he stood by the side of Saint Lusson as he planted the arms of France at Sault Ste. Marie. ”

“ Joliet reduced the fables of the Indians to facts, discovered the muddy Missouri, and what is more, gave definite knowledge to the world of the fertile valleys of the Mississippi basin, wherein he planted the first germs of civilization, which speedily took the practical form of missions and settlements. ”

“ Behold then, in 1673, on the tenth of June, the meek, single-hearted, unpretending, illustrious Marquette, with Joliet for his associate, five Frenchmen as his companions, and two Algonquins as guides, lifting their canoes on their backs, and walking across the narrow portage that divides the Fox river from the Wisconsin. They reach the water-shed; uttering a special prayer to the immaculate Virgin, they leave the streams that, flowing onwards, could have borne their greetings to the castle of Quebec;—already they stand by the Wisconsin. ”

“ Many a bit of knowledge is picked up by those who travel the great roads. The sharp Bohemian, by playing at all trades, brushing against gentry of all sorts and scouring all neighborhoods, becomes at length a living cyclopaedia.
THE WAGON.
Joliet, like Democritus and Plato, saw everything with his own eyes, learned everything at first hand. He was a keen observer, and in our interviews subsequent to the affair of the chickens I was more than once surprised by the extent of his information and the subtlety of his insight. His wits were tacked on to a number of remote supports. ”

“ Some fifteen years ago the place occupied by the town of Joliet was the seat of Black Hawk’s power. It now contains twelve or fifteen hundred white people, and is a busy, growing place, with reasonable anticipations of becoming considerably larger in good time. The frank, hospitable, spirited, and intelligent people of this noble region of the West, must not, however, calculate too confidently on all their towns becoming great cities because they grow with astonishing rapidity at the first starting. Great cities, like great men, do not spring up in all places and every where. ”

“ Lawrence. In 1690, Sir William Phips, on his way with an English fleet to attack Quebec, made a descent on Joliet's establishment, burnt his buildings, and took prisoners his wife and his mother-in-law. In 1694 Joliet explored the coasts of Labrador, under the auspices of a company formed for the whale and seal fishery. On his return, Frontenac made him royal pilot for the St. Lawrence; and at about the same time he received the appointment of hydrographer at Quebec. He died, apparently poor, in 1699 or 1700, and was buried on one of the islands of Mignan. ”

“ About sixty leagues below the mouth of the Wisconsin, the western bank of the Mississippi bore on its sands the trail of men; a little footpath was discerned leading into a beautiful prairie, and, leaving the canoes, Joliet and Marquette resolved alone to brave a meeting with the savages. After walking six miles they beheld a village on the banks of a river, and two others on a slope at a distance of a mile and a half from the first. ”

“ Joliet, an American of humble birth, with two frail canoes equipped only with an ordinary hunting outfit, had six followers who, inspired by neither hope of gold nor desire of conquest other than that of a spiritual kind, came with peace and confidence, were received by all tribes with hospitality, and returned to their own without harm or contumely. ”

“ Joliet, a French trader, was a man possessed of far more brains than marked the average men of his times. He had not only the indomitable courage which is essential to the successful explorer, but he had also the rare ability to manage men ”

“ I lost two men and my box in sight of the first French settlement, which I had left almost two years before. Nothing remains to me but my life, and the wish to employ it in any service you may please.” This Report was sent to France in November, 1674.
There is in Mr. Barlow’s Collection a large map (27 × 40 inches) , which is held by Dr. Shea and General Clarke to be a copy of the original Joliet Map, with the Ohio marked in by a later and less skilful hand. A sketch of it is annexed as “Joliet’s Larger Map.” ”

“ It is doubtless true that "truth, crushed to earth, will rise again," but the converse proposition of the poet that error dies amid its worshipers requires qualification. Certainly in the matter under discussion La Salle as early as 1683 dealt the errors of Joliet with respect to the Chicago Portage a crushing blow. ”

“ This meeting in the wilderness is a suggestive and picturesque subject, but we may not dwell on it here. Joliet, though he had thus preceded LaSalle and the Sulpitians in the exploration of the lakes, had gone west by the old northern route along the Ottawa, Lake Nipissing and the French River. He was never on the Niagara, for after his meeting with LaSalle, he continued eastward by way of the Grand River valley and Lake Ontario. Fear of the savages deterred him from coming by way of the [Pg 21] Niagara, and thereby, it is not unlikely, becoming the white discoverer of Niagara Falls. ”

“ A little farther, a town, Marquette, stands near the place where the French priest and explorer, Père Marquette, ministered to the Indians. Up-stream, a busy city keeps the name of Joliet on the lips of thousands, though the brave explorer would doubtless not recognize it as his own; and below, the new- made Hennepin Canal makes a shorter course to the Mississippi River than that which leads by the ruins of La Salle's Fort Crèvecoeur. ”

“ The chief rose, and addressing Father Marquette, said, "I thank thee, Blackgown, and thee also," bowing to M. Joliet, "for taking so much pains to come and visit us. Never has the earth been so beautiful to us, and never has the sun shone so brightly upon us as to-day. Never has our river been so calm or so free from rocks. Your canoes have swept them away. Never has our tobacco had so fine a flavor, or our corn been so luxuriant as we behold it to-day, now that you are with us." ”

“ I had probably slept two hours when the porter called me, saying we would soon be in Chicago. I dressed myself leisurely and drank the last drop of coffee there was left on our train, for we had been liberally entertaining everybody who cared to travel any distance with us. I was surprised, on opening the door of my state-room, to see the car quite filled with good-looking men. They were newspaper men, members of the Chicago Press Club, I found a moment later, who had come out to Joliet to meet me and to escort me to their city. ”