savages
gave delighted shouts at the strange ceremony, but of its real
meaning they knew nothing. What they understood was that the
French seemed to be good friends who brought them muskets,
hatchets, cloth, and especially the loved but destructive
firewater which the savage palate ever craved.

The mystery of the Great Lakes once solved, there still remained
that of the Western Sea. The St. Lawrence flowed eastward.
Another river must therefore be found flowing westward. The
French were eager listeners when the savages talked of a mighty
river in the west flowing to the sea. They meant, as we now
suppose, the Mississippi. There are vague stories of Frenchmen on
the Mississippi at an earlier date; but, however this may be, it
is certain that in the summer of 1673 Louis Joliet, the son of a
wagon-maker of Quebec, and Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit priest,
reached and descended the great river from the mouth of the
Wisconsin to a point far past the mouth of the Ohio.

France thus planted herself on the Mississippi, though there her
occupation was less complete and thorough than it was on the St.
Lawrence. Distance was an obstacle; it was a far cry from Quebec
by land, and from France the voyage by sea through the Gulf of
Mexico was hardly less difficult. The explorer La Salle tried
both routes. In 1681-1682 he set out from Montreal, reached the
Mississippi overland, and descended to its mouth. Two years later
he sailed from France with four ships bound for the mouth of the
river, there to establish a colony; but before achieving his aim
he was murdered in a treacherous attack led by his own
countrymen.