The biggest fraud in the American cartographic record.

On March 15, 2012, David Buisseret will talk before the Chicago Map Society on why Carl J. Weber's 2005 thesis was "not very convincing". Weber argued the first map (1673) of the American interior was a forgery, too perfect for its time, done by missionaries in the mid-1800s to bolster their 17th century reputation.

Buisseret claims that he has a document from Paris, and he will present it on March 15, to give Weber his comeuppance with an "unanswerable case".

Weber says that looking at emails 4 and 5 in David Buisseret Plagiarizes Carl J. Weber shows Buisseret making shockingly incongruent academic blunders that Weber says support his own case, and about which Buisseret has yet to responed.

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Open Letter to David Buisseret, Nov., 2010

 

Maps and Explorers of North American

Heartland in Late 17th century...

 

 

* * *

Bill Mullen, Pulitzer Prize winning Tribune reporter, January 5, 2005...

"In my evaluation, and in that of some distinguished experts, his pursuit of historical truth has resulted in some very unusual discoveries. They will merit some basic revisions in the historical record. Carl and I have communicated numerous times about this research, by phone, email, and in person. Between assignments for the Chicago Tribune, I've been carefully reviewing 17 nth century documents and what later historians have had to say about them - at times in consultation with Professor Weber. Using his core work in this area, my intention is to publish a piece about French colonial America, inquiring into some of the inaccuracies that have long been considered established fact regarding the foundational histories of the regions of the Mississippi Valley, the Illinois Valley and the Chicago area. " William Mullen, Tribune Staff Writer. (January, 2005)

Update from Mr. Mullen, Novermber 3, 2010. "The field you are in is so full of academic intrigue and back-stabbing, so rife with charges, counter-charges and ad hominem attacks that I wearied of trying to sort through it.". .

 

new David Buisseret Plagiarizes Carl J. Weber Over Marquette Map Hoax

After years of treating Weber frivolously, The Chicago Map Society, lead by David Buisseret, is going to attempt to refute Weber's work.

Nov 30, 2011
Dear David,

In the Cambridge Announcement last month it says, [re Marquette Map] "has been thought by many to be a more recent forgery," in the Newberry Announcement it says,"has been thought by some to be a relatively recent forgery". You wrote to me last April, “Your various messages have incited Carl Kupfer and me to look again at the whole Marquette-Jolliet corpus."
Shouldn't proper academic attribution merit the change of the announcements to read "thought by Carl J. Weber to be a forgery" ?

Regards,
Carl

Weber has for seven years used the "Marquette Map Hoax" in the name of his thesis, as described below. Now, Buisseret is knowingly using Weber's words, mocking Weber's thesis, saying "The Great...", while denying the plagiarism. This in preparation for Buisseret's March 15 presentation to the Chicago Map Society at the Newberry Library.

Weber is demanding Buisseret, the Chicago Map Society and the Newberry Library in their announcements stop plagiarizing his thesis title; othewise, provide academic attribution.

_________

 

 

The Marquette Map is a Forgery

The greatest fraud in North American Cartography


“Carl J. Weber is taking one of the Mississippi's most esteemed legends and poking it right in the eye...”

Edward Husar, Quincy Herald Whig

“A treasured Canadian artifact, long hailed as the earliest map of the American Midwest and the best proof of the 1673 discovery of the Mississippi River by two French-Canadian explorers has been dismissed as a ``hoax'' by a U.S. researcher.”

Randy Boswell, CanWest News Service

Historians have since 1852 accepted this map as authentic. It was published that year in J.G. Shea. It has some grand claims of marking milestones:

  1. The first map of the American heartland ,
  2. The first map documenting Europeans at Chicago,
  3. The first map of the "Discovery" of the Mississippi River from a northern approach,
  4. The only primary source document of a 1673 Marquette-Jolliet expedition

On the other hand, it has the contrary claim of topping the list of fakes.

The map, "discovered" in the 1840s, is also called the St. Mary's Map, and the Montreal Map.

Delangley says it is incontrovertible evidence of a 1673 Marquette Mississippi expedition. As will be demonstrated, Delangley was wrong, the map is not authentic.

And what of the various maps specifically said by historians to be dependent on this map? It looks like the forgery is dependent on them.

Ten years ago, by way of detective work on Chicago's name, I started studying 1650-1700 maps and explorers.

Six years ago I made presentations about this map to historian groups, published it, got some radio, print and internet coverage, and have always had it on my web site.

Tony Campbell has had it on his list of maps of dubious authenticity as a possible "forgery/fake?" for a few years now.

The singular discovery and argument here:

The most formidable challenge to the map's authenticity is the Illinois River is shaped too accurately.

It's too accurate by 140 years, when John Melish, in 1813, made a map for Illinois statehood.

The mapmakers cartogaphic tool kit made a great leap forward in the 18th century. In Marquette's time, instruments were crude, the ability to record latitude inconsistent, and confident ability to record longitude still waiting for the 18th century to be discovered.

Fast forwarding 138 years to the Melish Map of Illinois, 1813. This was the cartographic document for Illinois statehood. The Illinois River would have been charted with tools and techniques far in advance of Marquette's.

Whoever forged the Marquette Autograph Map in the name of Marquette used a post-1813 template for the shape of the Illinois River. The shape of the Illinois River approximates three sides of an ocatagon.

See pre-Melish Maps

Marquette, with no map training and not known to have made any other maps, was able to create a map 140 years ahead of its time?

 

 

When, in the mid-1800s this map entered history, it was said to have been in a cache of old missionary documents that had been entrusted to hospital nuns in 1800. Steck researched the cache of documents and claimed that the three Marquette documents, this map being one of them, were not in the original inventory listings.

When the missionaries returned to Canada in 1842, the nuns gave them the cache of documents, included amongst which, as the story goes, was the Marquette Map.

With the exception of Francis Borgia Steck in 1959, Marquette Legends, no one appears to have questioned the authenticity of the map. Steck points out that Marquette's own mission, St. Xavier, is not on the map, the Mississippi called "River of the Conception" is totally ahistorical, and the location of certain Indian tribes on the map suggested a slightly post-1700s state.

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