About this record
Marquette drew this map when he returned from his 1673 journey with Joliet. It is the first European map of the Mississippi Valley. His information quickly began to appear on subsequent European maps, such as that by Thevenot given elsewhere on the Turning Points site. Marquette's original manuscript was soon lost, however, along with his diary of the trip; both of them lay unread in Jesuit archives in Montreal for nearly 200 years. They were re-discovered and published ina rare limited edition in 1852. The version shown here is a photograph of the original manuscript at St. Mary's College in Montreal, as it appeared in volume 59 of the Jesuit Relations in 1899. That volume, linked elsewhere at Turning Points, discusses the relationships between this first map of the Mississippi and other early European depictions. Click "Zoom & Pan" to see more details on the map.Citation
Marquette, Jacques. "Autograph map of the Mississippi or Conception River, 1673" in The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, ed. by Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland: Burrows Bros. Co., 1896-1901), vol. 59;