La Relation de la Nouvelle-France 1673 et Of New France (1698)

Abstract

Philology is used here to establish the historical value of three documents purporting to bear witness to the “discovery” of the Mississippi in 1673 by Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette. Two of these 17^th-century documents have never been considered, namely a translation entitled Of New France that appeared in the English edition of the last two works by Récollet Louis Hennepin (1698), and a French version of the same text, Relation de la Nouvelle-France 1673, preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in the papers of Abbé Eusèbe Renaudot. Compared with the Brotier 155 version of Jesuit father Dablon’s Relation de la decouverte de la Mer du Sud, considered by Jean Delanglez to be the most reliable and oldest, these documents testify to a major rewriting effort that began before August 1, 1674 (the alleged date of dispatch of the presumed “original” document). Their comparison highlights the importance of Hennepin, who held confidential documents and whose works can help us fill in the gaps in official accounts of exploration in the Mississippi River basin. Despite the absence of originals, the variants in these three documents show that the Brotier 155 version is no more valid or even older than its shorter copies. Rather, these variants suggest that Dablon may have drawn on one or more earlier documents to write his Relation, which contradicts the narrative posture that would have us believe that the information he provides came from Jolliet’s oral testimony alone.