Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 March 1885 — Who Discovered the Mississippi? [ARTICLE]

Who Discovered the Mississippi?

“C’est bien drole,” as the Frenchman says, to note how writers differ concerning facts about which there should most certainly be no differing in opinion. I note in a pamphlet the statement that “Louis Joliet, in the year 1673, accompanied by Father Marquet e, discovered the Mississippi from Canada." This was in answer to a query as to who discovered that river, but is in reality no answer to the question propounded, De Soto crossed the river at its southern extremity in 1539, and left his bones on its banks, 134 years previous to the "exploration of Peres Joliet and Marquette, a MS. map of whose route is still in existence. But even De Soto was not the first, for in 1520 there existed a map on which was marked the lower part of the “Rio del Espiritu Santo. The first European to traverse the continent from sea to sea was Cabeza de Vaca, of whom Shea very appropriately writes: “He remains m history in a distant twilight as the first European known to have stood on the banks of the Mississippi, and to have launched his boat upon its waters./’ A rare work containing an account of his explorations was sold last spring at a library sale in Rhode Island, but I have lost my note of the title of the work.— Somerville Journal.