Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/66



It embraced territory which has since found eight states of the American Union. But so disastrous had been the fate of the explorers that no considerable portion of it was ever occupied by Spanish colonists.

In 1564 Admiral Coligny, of France, sent three ships to Florida to establish colony. A settlement was made near St. Mary's River, and no effort was spared by kind treatment to win the friendship of the natives. Members of the colony in 1565 explored the country westward in search of gold as far as the Mississippi River, but no permanent settlement was made in its valley. Through the missionary zeal of the Jesuits, the French had extended a chain of posts up the St. Lawrence River far westward and around the great lakes. Bancroft says of his brotherhood:

“The history of their labors is connected with the origin of every celebrated town in the annals of French America. Not a river was entered, not a cape turned, but a Jesuit led the way. Although certain privation and suffering were their lot, and martyrdom might be the crown of their labors, they ventured into the remotest regions and among the most warlike tribes.”

In 1634 Jean Nicolet, a French explorer in the Northwest, penetrated the forests beyond Lake Superior and about the Fox River. It was thought by some that he descended the Wisconsin River to its confluence with the Mississippi, and was the first discoverer of its headwaters. But a careful tracing of his account of the country through which he traveled, by recent historians, satisfies them that Nicolet never penetrated the country as far as westward as to reach the Mississippi River.

In 1669 Father Claude Allouez, a French missionary, explored the Canadian forests west to Lake Superior. Here he learned from some remote Indian tribe that there was a great river in the distant west called by them the “Mes-a-sip-pi,” or “Great River.” They said no White man had been seen in the valley through which it flowed. The country westward extending to the river was