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FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN NORTH AMERICA,
A SERIES OF HISTORICAL NARRATIVES, PART THIRD.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT WEST

BY FRANCIS PARKMAN

1870







TO THE CLASS OF 1844,
HARVARD COLLEGE,
THIS BOOK IS CORDIALLY DEDICATED
BY ONE OF THEIR NUMBER.




PREFACE.


The discovery of the "Great West," or the valleys of the Mississippi and
the Lakes, is a portion of our history hitherto very obscure. Those
magnificent regions were revealed to the world through a series of daring
enterprises, of which the motives and even the incidents have been but
partially and superficially known. The chief actor in them wrote much, but
printed nothing; and the published writings of his associates stand
wofully in need of interpretation from the unpublished documents which
exist, but which have not heretofore been used as material for history.

This volume attempts to supply the defect. Of the large amount of wholly
new material employed in it, by far the greater part is drawn from the
various public archives of France, and the rest from private sources. The
discovery of many of these documents is due to the indefatigable research
of M. Pierre Margry, assistant custodian of the Archives of the Marine and
Colonies at Paris, whose labors, as an investigator of the maritime and
colonial history of France can be appreciated only by those who have seen
their results. In the department of American colonial history, these
results have been invaluable; for, besides several private collections
made by him, he rendered important service in the collection of the French
portion of the Brodhead documents, selected and arranged the two great
series of colonial papers ordered by the