In this succinct dual biography, Laura Chmielewski demonstrates how the lives of two French explorers – Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit missionary, and Louis Jolliet, a fur trapper – reveal the diverse world of early America. Following the explorers' epic journey through the center of the American continent, Marquette and Jolliet combines a story of discovery and encounter with the insights derived from recent historical scholarship. The story provides perspective on the different methods and goals of colonization and the role of Native Americans as active participants in this complex and uneven process.

In 1673, an unlikely pair set off to see whether the Mississippi River flowed into the Pacific Ocean.

A biography of the French explorers whose primary goal was to find the Northwest Passage, but who made their mark on history by exploring and charting the Mississippi River.

An account of the expedition led by two Frenchmen, a soldier and a priest, to explore the Mississippi River in the late seventeenth century.

Often viewed in isolation, the Jolliet and Marquette expedition in fact took place against a sprawling backdrop that encompassed everything from ancient Native American cities to French colonial machinations. Mark Walczynski draws on a wealth of original research to place the explorers and their journey within seventeenth-century North America. His account takes readers among the region’s diverse Native American peoples and into a vanished natural world of treacherous waterways and native flora and fauna. Walczynski also charts the little-known exploits of the French-Canadian officials, explorers, traders, soldiers, and missionaries who created the political and religious environment that formed Jolliet and Marquette and shaped European colonization of the heartland. A multifaceted voyage into the past, Jolliet and Marquette expands and updates the oft-told story of a pivotal event in American history.

This exciting new book outlines how Marquette and Jolliet laid the groundwork for further French colonization of the New World, which led to the claiming of the huge territory of Louisiana.

A brief biography of the seventeenth-century French explorers who were the first Europeans to locate and chart the Mississippi River.