'Jolliet and Marquette' by Mark Walczynski
Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet’s journey through the Great Lakes region has been memorialized in several Midwest states and cities, nowhere less than in Milwaukee with Marquette University and Pere Marquette Park. The expedition has been the subject of shelves of books with new titles every few years.
Mark Walczynski’s New History provides a deeper context than many predecessors. Walczynski not only touches on French-Canadian colonial administration and the regime’s unusually tolerant, cooperative relations with Native American allies, but also explores the linguistics of Native speakers, clearing up questions about place names and misconceptions by the early explorers. As Jesuits, Jolliet and Marquette were highly educated, well equipped to make useful geographical and anthropological observations, yet they were shaped by the prejudices of their time and regarded Native Americans as captive to a “false and abominable religion.” Walczynski looks to recent archeological discoveries to draw a fuller picture of 17th century Native American life in the Midwest.
