# Père Marquette/Chapter 2

To the Spaniard belongs the honor of discovering the Mississippi. Spain was aware of the existence of the great river in 1519. From a host of early and brave explorers, from Pineda, from Narvaez, from Cabeza de Vaca, and from the Peruvian, La Vega, came word of its certain magnitude, and of its possible course. The Rio del Espíritu Santo it was called, a name given it by Francisco de Garay, Governor of Jamaica. Parkman says that on early Spanish maps it is often indistinguishable from other affluents of the Gulf of Mexico. Nevertheless, it was a magic word on Spanish lips and in Spanish hearts. Its breadth, like the height of Niagara Falls, was madly exaggerated, and wild stories were told of its slow, resistless current which no river bed could hold. The Reverend Francis Borgia Steck, who has written a lengthy trea​tise on the discovery and rediscovery of the Mississippi, is of the opinion that Spanish cartographers marked the river plainly on their maps, but gave it little prominence because, fearing always the encroachments of France, they had no mind to call her attention to this waterway.
In 1537 Hernando de Soto was empowered by Charles the Fifth to conquer and colonize Florida. He had been a brave and able captain under Pizarro in Peru. He had enriched himself with the treasure wrung from the Inca, Atahualpa. It is said that he was on friendly terms with that hapless ruler, and that he was absent from Caxamalca when Pizarro, having gained possession of wealth so fabulous that it was like a golden dream, ridded himself of his royal prisoner by having him strangled in the great square of the city. De Soto quarreled bitterly with his commander when he heard of this savage crime, and soon afterward returned to Spain. He took with him, however, his share of plunder, squandered it lavishly in Seville, married a lady of noble birth, and became a man of consequence. Then there came to him reports of ​gold in the lovely peninsula coveted by the Spaniards. Cupidity once more wrung his heart. Memories of the Inca's treasure chamber haunted him night and day. He sold his property, and went back to the New World with the Emperor's authority to seize and to hold, and with six hundred fighting men packed into nine small ships. Eight secular priests and four friars accompanied the expedition.
On Pentecost Sunday the sailors sighted the shores of Tampa Bay which the commander christened commemoratively La Bahia del Espíritu Santo. Landing, he took formal possession of Florida in the name of Spain, and sent out two exploring parties to ascertain the wealth and the temper of the inhabitants. The wealth they found to be mythical, the temper exceedingly uncertain. Here were no rich towns, no peaceful Peruvians waiting to be despoiled; but a wild country, tangled woods, feverish swamps, and brave Indians, friendly or hostile as the case might be, but always ready to repel attack. Difficulties and dangers multiplied. De Soto's dwindling army lost hope and spirit. For three years he shared the hardships of his soldiers, ​leading them hither and thither, now searching for gold (dim rumors of which reached him from time to time), now seeking the best sites for the never forgotten project of colonization. Finally the river of his dreams became for him the river of fate. It was on its shores that he died, a defeated and disheartened man. It was in its muddy waters that his corpse was sunk, fastened and weighted in a hollow tree. It was down its current that the three hundred survivors of the expedition fled terror-stricken from the wreckage of their hopes.
Two things of great interest are left to us from this unsuccessful expedition: a passage describing De Soto by one of his followers, the anonymous "Gentleman of Elvas," and a passage describing the Mississippi in flood by Garcilaso de la Vega. The description of De Soto corresponds exactly with the description of another and greater adventurer, La Salle, whose tragic fate was also bound up with the mysterious and baffling river. "De Soto," says the Gentleman of Elvas, "was dry of speech and inflexible of purpose. He wished to know what others thought, and he listened to what others said. ​But he did not like to be opposed; he invariably acted as he thought best; and he bent all his comrades to his will."
The description of the flooded Mississippi was not written until forty years after the event; but the impression it left upon La Vega's mind was vivid and permanent. "The great river," he wrote, "began early in March to widen rapidly. It overflowed the level land, and rose to such a height that only the tops of the tallest trees were visible. It was a beautiful thing to see the vast stretch of water covering the fields for twenty leagues and more. Indians went to and fro in their canoes. They protect their homes by building them on heavy piles, or sometimes—as in the case of chiefs—on artificial mounds. The flood reached its highest point on the twentieth day of April. Before the end of May it had subsided, and the river was running within its natural boundaries."
The control of the Gulf of Mexico and the lower Mississippi was as vital to Spain as was the control of the St. Lawrence to France. In the spring of 1540, while De Soto was still pursuing his visionary schemes, Francisco Vasa de ​Coronado was dispatched from Mexico by the Viceroy, Mendoza, with instructions to visit the Indian towns, which were reported to be fabulously rich (the finding of gold was an obsession with the Spaniards), to study the conditions of the country with a view to colonization, and to report upon the great river, the Rio del Espíritu Santo. He was accompanied by a picked body of horsemen, two hundred and sixty in number, sixty foot soldiers, and no less than a thousand Mexican Indians, who looked after the supplies, guarded the sheep and cattle, scouted, cooked, and made things easy for their masters. Coronado had no better fortune than De Soto. He found no wealthy towns and few friendly Indians. He knew nothing about colonization, and he cared less. As for the river, though accounts of it reached him from time to time, he never gained its banks. De Soto at least beheld it before he died, and found a grave beneath its waters. Coronado seems to have done nothing but eat up his provisions and return home, a broken and discredited man. For a stream of its magnitude, the Mississippi was singularly elusive.
​Meanwhile, in the Far North, wandering Indian tribes carried from trading station to trading station stories of the vast river which few of them had seen, but of which all had heard. France and England, having plenty to occupy them at home, were tardily colonizing their territorial claims in the New World. The first adventurers, it must be remembered, did not want to go up and down North America; they wanted to go across and reach China, that land of desire. The English wasted a vast deal of time and labor in trying to find the mythical Strait of Anian, which they thought connected the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It found a place on the early Dutch and Flemish maps, having been put there, not because it existed, but because it was desired. Even Champlain hoped and believed that Canada (New France) would offer "a favorable passage to China." He traced somewhat waveringly on his map a river flowing to the south, which he took on credit from the Indians, and he came near to its final discovery when he sent Jean Nicollet on a mission of peace to the Winnebagoes who had quarreled with the friendly Hurons.
​Nicollet was the interpreter at Three Rivers on the St. Lawrence; a man of great courage, great natural ability, and comprehensive ignorance of all save Indian languages and Indian ways, which was what he needed to know. He was received with such warmth of hospitality that one hundred and twenty beavers were devoured at a single feast. Having accomplished his purpose, he made his fearless way to the Wisconsin River, which he descended so far that he was—according to savage guides—but three days' journey from the "Great Water." By this they meant the Mississippi River. He thought they meant the sea.
Other adventurers came as near, or nearer, to the goal. Colonel Wood of Virginia and Captain Bolton believed mistakenly that they had reached it. Pierre Esprit Radisson, a native of St. Malo, and his brother-in-law, Médard Chouart des Grosseilliers, wandered from the shores of Lake Superior into an unknown land peopled by unknown tribes, and brought back the strange tale of a "forked river," one branch flowing westward, and one southward toward Mexico. The French priests, Père Jogues, ​Père Raymbault, Père Ménard (who was lost in the wilderness), and Père Allouez all pushed their missions closer to the mysterious river, the discovery of which became a matter of pride and purpose with the Jesuit order. To its zeal for souls it was beginning to add a zeal for knowledge of the barbarous land it was striving assiduously to civilize.
The first half of the Seventeenth Century had witnessed the missionaries' staunchest labors and their heaviest trials. Outposts had been established and destroyed. Jesuit priests had suffered great hardships, and had been butchered with hideous cruelty. From 1660 the aspect of things changed. "The epoch of the saints and martyrs was passing away," writes Francis Parkman; "and henceforth we find the Canadian Jesuit less and less an apostle, and more and more an explorer, a man of science, and a politician." The map of Lake Superior, published in 1671, he pronounces "a monument of Jesuit hardihood and enterprise." Their yearly reports sent to France contained observations on the winds, currents, and "tides" of the Great Lakes; speculations on subterranean ​outlets; accounts of copper mines; and here and there descriptions from hearsay of the mighty river, "wide, deep, beautiful, and worthy of comparison to our great St. Lawrence," which flowed southward, "perhaps to the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps to the Vermilion Sea," and which, "with the help of God and of the Blessed Virgin," should soon be made known to the world.