History professor says Marquette map a fraud,

Believes sketch couldn't have been made before 1813

BY MICHAEL SMOTHERS
OF THE JOURNAL STAR
Sunday, June 11, 2006

PEORIA - If Carl Weber is right, the Hotel Pere Marquette here might want to
find a new namesake.

For more than three centuries, history has accepted that Frenchmen Jacques
Marquette, a Jesuit priest, and Louis Joliet were the first Europeans to reach the
Mississippi River by canoeing down the Wisconsin River. They discovered the
Illinois River, stopping here along the way, by using it to return to Lake Michigan
and then to Canada.

History has accepted the so-called "Marquette Autograph Map," a thin sketch
accurately detailing the Illinois' curving course like the upper left side of a stop
sign, as proof of the famous 1673 journey. Marquette drew it upon their return,
after all of Joliet's records were lost when his canoe capsized on the St. Lawrence
River.

Marquette, no doubt, "was a good-hearted man," said Weber, a professor of
history and the humanities at DeVry University in Chicago. But he has a problem
with the map.

"It's a historical fraud." His research has convinced him that, "It couldn't have
been made before 1813," said Weber, also a member of the Chicago Map Society
based at the Newberry Library. Weber presented his findings at the Newberry last
September and will do so again in October at the Conference on Illinois History
in Springfield upon invitation from the Illinois State Historical Society.

His theory, he said, is anchored in cartographical research that is "thick" in detail.
But in a nutshell, Marquette's map "is too accurate" and contains information
about the Illinois that didn't appear on other early exploration maps "until
decades later."

Weber concludes that the Autograph map - supposedly discovered in 1844 among
documents stored and virtually forgotten in a Jesuit mission in Canada - was
created and forged with Marquette's signature by the Jesuit Order to strengthen
its political position in France and The Vatican.

"Some pretty historical chicanery came to pass," he said. According to his theory,
"The likelihood of Marquette going up the (Illinois) river with Joliet is very slim."
And while Joliet probably did traverse the Illinois, other evidence indicates he
wasn't the first. Weber points to the Ellington Stone, a limestone tablet the size of
a sheet of paper found near the Mississippi in Adams County that might've been
meant as a land marker claiming the Mississippi/Illinois territory for France.

It's clearly etched with the date 1671 and includes a "reclining cross and the
letters IHS," said Barbara Wilkinson, director of the Quincy Museum in Quincy,
where it's on display. A farmer had kept it for decades after finding it early last
century, she said. Because the farmer left marks from a screwdriver he used to dig mud out of the
etchings, one scholar who studied it "claimed it's a fake," Wilkinson said. But
"very soon," the University of Illinois plans to use a scanning device to determine
if the etchings are as old as they purport to be, Wilkinson said. If they are - and if
Weber's theory of the Autograph map and Marty and Bruce Fischer's theory
about Fort Crevecoeur in Beardstown are ever accepted - there will be more than
a few pages of history to rewrite.

Michael Smothers can be reached at 686-3287 or msmothers@pjstar.com.