3/8 63). They explored these lakes, dotted their shores here and there with mission and fur-trading stations, and took possession of the country. The French on the Mississippi.%--In the course of these explorations the French heard accounts from the Indians of a great river to the westward, and in 1672 Father Marquette (mar-ket') and Louis Joliet (zho-le-a') were sent by the governor of New France to search for it. They set out, in May, 1673, from Michilimackinac, a French trading post and mission at the foot of Lake Michigan. With five companions, in two birch-bark canoes, they paddled up the lake to Green Bay, entered Fox River, and, dragging the boats through its boiling rapids, came to a village where lived the Miamis and the Kickapoos. |