. History of Greene county, Illinois: its past and present. le of the seventeenth century, brought the FrenchCanadian missionaries and fur traders into the Valley of the Mississippi,and which, at a later period, established the civil and ecclesiasticalauthority of France from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico,and from the foot-hills of the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains. The great river of the West had been discovered by DeSoto, theSpanish conqueror of Florida, three quarters of a century before theFrench founded Quebec in 1608, but the Spanish left the country a wil-derness,
. History of Greene county, Illinois: its past and present. le of the seventeenth century, brought the FrenchCanadian missionaries and fur traders into the Valley of the Mississippi,and which, at a later period, established the civil and ecclesiasticalauthority of France from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico,and from the foot-hills of the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains. The great river of the West had been discovered by DeSoto, theSpanish conqueror of Florida, three quarters of a century before theFrench founded Quebec in 1608, but the Spanish left the country a wil-derness, without further exploration or settlement within its borders, inwhich condition it remained until the Mississippi was discovered by theagents of the French Canadian government, Jolietand Marquette, in renowned explorers were not the first white visitors to 1671—two years in advance of them—came Nicholas Perrot to had been sent by Talon as an agent of the Canadian government to log 110 HISTORY OF THE STATE OF HISTORY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS. HI call a great peace convention of Western Indians at Green Bay, prepara-tory to the movement for tlie discovery of the Mississippi. It wasdeemed a good stroke of policy to secure, as far as possible, the friend-ship and co-operation of the Indians, far and near, before venturing uponan enterprise which their hostility might render disastrous, and whichtheir friendship and assistance would do so much to make successful;and to this end Perrot was sent to call together in council the tribesthroughout the Northwest, and to promise them the commerce and pro-tection of the French government. He accordingly arrived at GreenBay in 1671, and procuring an escort of Pottawattamies, proceeded in abark canoe upon a visit to the Miamis, at Chicago. Perrot was there-fore the first European to set foot upon the soil of Illinois. Still there were others before Marquette. In 1672, the Jesuit mis-sionaries. F
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