Joliet and Marquette, thrown together somewhat by circumstances, combined in the 1670s to make the first meaningful thrust into present day Illinois and Indiana, a journey which some historians have chosen to call one of the most famous in the annals of American history. Father Medard, the first of the Jesuits to penetrate the region to the west of the Sault, came in 1660 and Father Allouez followed him in 1665, establishing a mission near the western extremity, of Lake Superior, which he called La Point du Saint Esprit, or La Pointe for short.īut while these Frenchmen busied themselves with the upper Great Lakes area, it remained for others – Louis Joliet, Father Jacques Marquette and Sieur de La Salle – to explore the long finger of water reaching southward to Hoosier Slide and to open up this country to the white man. The Jesuit fathers Jogues and Raymbault named Sault Saint Marie and established a temporary mission there in 1641. History credits Etienne Brule, a protégé of Champlain, with discovering Lakes Huron and Superior in 1623, and Jean Nicolet with first setting eyes on Lake Michigan in 1634. Lawrence River while the English aimed at the Mississippi Valley, and it was this happenstance that left the familiar French names rather than the lesser known English names in the historical legacy of Michigan City. The French centered their efforts on the lower St. Two of the European powers of that day accepted the challenge of finding this route –France and England. When Vasco da Gama, in 1499, showed the impracticability of rounding Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, for instance, and Ferdinand Magellan, in 1520, demonstrated the hardships of the route around the tip of South America, there remained but one real possibility - a northwest passage through the vast new continent that came to be known in time as North America.
Instead, it continued to intrigue other European adventurers as late as the 1600s and, with this insatiable curiosity, it might be said, lay the seeds that eventually brought Michigan City into being. The Making of a Community …a History of Michigan City, IndianaĬhristopher Columbus’ dream of a feasible westward passage from Europe to the Orient did not die with him.
0 kommentar(er)
