Who Is Louis Joliet's Exploration In Search Of The Northwest Passage?

The story told is that upon returning to Montreal, Canada, following his exploration of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River 1673-1674, with Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette, Louis Joliet lost all of his records when his boat overturned in the St. Lawrence River, and shortly afterwards, at the request of French officials, he drew from memory the “Nouvelle decouverte de plusieurs nations dans la Nouvelle France en l'année 1673 et 1674”, translated “New Discovery of Several Nations in New France in the Years 1673 and 1674”. Louis Joliet was a Canadian explorer, who, despite his philosophical and religious studies, renounced his clerical vocation in 1667 and pursued fur trading at the age of 23 instead. Did you know that Joliet’s exploration in search of the Northwest Passage was not sanctioned by the French Crown? It was Jean Baptiste Talon, Louis XIV’s intendant, who sent him and his company west, where he failed to find the elusive passage, but claimed the Louisiana Territory for the French. He became the first prominent French Canadian explorer to play a vital role in the opening-up of North America

The map was the earliest to depict Mississippi based on first hand knowledge, and is one of the oldest maps of Canada made by a Canadian. The map depicts North America wholly surrounded by the ocean, and the Great Lakes- Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario are presented as vast bodies of water in the interior. Did you know that on early map Lake Michigan was called Lac des Illinois (Lake Illinois)? The lake became known as Lac des Illinois in 1679, a name originated in the Illinois Native American tribe that lived on its shore. The Great lakes appear to be fed by two river systems, one being the Saint Laurent River, emptying into the Atlantic, and the Mississippi River(Riviere de Buade) that empties into the Gulf of