The Raffeix Map

The map shows "ribbon-map" depictions of the Mississippi and the three upper tributaries, the Wisconsin, Illinois and Ohio Rivers.

Father Raffeix was a well known Jesuit missionary in New France from 1663 to 1724. The 1676 date, cited on sites as the creation year of the map (since 1911, Catholic Encyclopedia) is wrong born out by evidence within the map.

 

An earlier map than the Raffeix map, the Thèvenot Map (1681), was a cobbled-together effort to publish to a wide audience a missionary claim that Jacques Marquette had made it to the Mississippi before LaSalle. Here is an image of this map with north at the top instead of at the right as on the LOC.

 

The Thèvenot Map

 

 

As popularized in 1681, this map was not questioned as Marquette's map and remained to be thought of as such until the middle of the 19th century. Then the " real" Marquette map, the Marquette Autograph Map, was discovered. The Illinois River as rendered by the missionaries on this 1681 map shows a more crude Illinois river than on the Marquette Map, supposedly drawn in 1674.

 

The Thèvenot Map (1681) and the Raffeix Map (1683?) show the state of missionary map making knowledge.

 

The sudden appearance of the Marquette Autograph Map and two "Marquette texts" (the St. Mary's Manuscript and the Journal), in 1844, were deceits insinuated into history to favor of a missionay preeminence of discovery to the disfavor of LaSalle.