DvD: Explorers of the World; French Explorers final part - Lewis Joliet and Jacques Marguerite, also Sieur de La Salle… Steampunk Research?

I had debated whether to go any further since the stuff was now way off the cutting point for the SCA time range, but just in case I need this information for the steampunk stuff I do (or anyone else reading it needs it) I think I’m going to finish summarizing the information I gather from the DVD. The next explorers are a partnership of Lewis Joliet and Jacques Marguerite. Jacques Marguerite was actually a priest but turned out to be an explorer as well. He came to Québec Canada in 1666 (yes I get the irony of that number) and learned the languages of the local groups so he communicate more effectively with them, something he ended up being very good at. He ended up going west to a mission where he ministered to the Ottawa tribe. It was there he heard about a great river, the Mississippi, and decided he was going to carry his ministry there. Marquette befriended a man called Lewis Joliet who was born in Québec and had become a fur trader. When the governor of New France gave Joliet the job of exploring the Mississippi River in 1673, he allowed Joliet to bring Marquette along. In their journey they came across the Missouri River, and at the time believed it to be the Northwest passage to the Pacific French explorers had so long sought. But their job was the follow the Mississippi River which they did past where the Ohio River meets the Mississippi, all way down to the Arkansas River, claiming the land in the name of France as they went. Though they were supposed to journey to the end of the Mississippi River the natives of the area warned them that further down the river was heading into Spanish territory so Joliet and Marquette were forced to stop there. They couldn’t risk capture from the Spanish if they wish to return with what they had learned, including the fact that according to the natives the Mississippi opened up until Gulf of Mexico not into the Pacific Ocean. The explorer that helped the French to expand the land claims Lewis Joliet and Jacques Marguerite had helped to discover, was René Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle (now there’s a mouthful). La Salle was a fur trader who had a passion for exploration. The Seneca, part of the Iroquois Federation, taught him how to travel in any season, living off the land and carrying only dried corn as provisions. The government of New France gave La Salle permission to build a fort on Lake Ontario, Fort Frontenac, then he persuaded the king, Louis XIV, to give him the right to explore the area between Florida and New Mexico and to build forts to protect French settlers for trading. La Salle journeyed down the Mississippi and claimed everything there for his King, naming it Louisiana. That was in 1682.