Canadian historic treasure may be a hoax. Randy Boswell.
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, who claims it couldn't have been drawn before the War of 1812.
The map was discovered in the 1840s at a Montreal religious college among historical documents related to the Jesuit missionaries of early Canada. It is still held today by the Jesuit Archives in St-Jerome, Que., but has been loaned to the U.S. Smithsonian Institution and the Canadian Museum of Civilization for recent exhibitions celebrating the 400th anniversary of French settlement in North America.
Believed to have been drawn by Father Jacques Marquette, a celebrated 17th-century Catholic priest who ventured into the western wilderness to convert natives, the hand-drawn map depicts Lake Superior, Lake Michigan and several rivers flowing into a great southern waterway christened, by Marquette, ``La Riviere de la Conception'' in honour of the Virgin Mary.
more... http://linkme2.net/ad _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
