The Historical Background to 1665 -- Confronting the Haudenosaunee, Searching for Ore, and Allouez in the Upper Country -- Copper Mines, Cavelier, and Wisconsin -- St. Lusson, Marquette, Jolliet and the Sault, Adrien Jolliet, and Frontenac -- St. Ignace to the Des Moines River -- From the Illinois Villages to the Illinois River -- From the Mississippi to Kaskaskia -- Kaskaskia to Lake Michigan and Beyond -- Canada, Jolliet, and Marquette -- Marquette Returns to Kaskaskia -- La Salle, Allouez, and Kaskaskia -- Hudson Bay, La Salle in the Illinois, and the Recollects -- La Salle, the Illinois Country, and the Gulf

"Often viewed in isolation, the Jolliet and Marquette expedition in fact took place against a sprawling backdrop that encompassed everything from ancient Native American cities to French colonial machinations. Mark Walczynski draws on a wealth of original research to place the explorers and their journey within seventeenth-century North America. His account takes readers among the region's diverse Native American peoples and into a vanished natural world of treacherous waterways and native flora and fauna. Walczynski also charts the little-known exploits of the French-Canadian officials, explorers, traders, soldiers, and missionaries who created the political and religious environment that formed Jolliet and Marquette and shaped European colonization of the heartland. A multifaceted voyage into the past, Jolliet and Marquette expands and updates the oft-told story of a pivotal event in American history"--