Marquette and Joliet

The French were the first Europeans to resume contact with the Chickasaws after de Soto. In August of 1673, Father Jacques Marquette and Canadian fur trapper Louis Joliet passed down the Mississippi River along the edge of the Chickasaw Homelands, encountering unidentified Indians at the mouth of the Ohio and near modern-day Memphis, as they explored the Mississippi River. Father Marquette gave the Chickasaw a letter in Latin to pass along to other Europeans. In this letter he asked who these natives were and with which Europeans they had been in contact. Remarkably, the letter reached Colonel Byrd in Virginia two years later.