Father Jacques Marquette was a 17th-century priest and explorer. He accompanied Louis Jolliet on an expedition into the midwest in 1673 where they became the first Europeans to see the Mississippi River. Unfortunately most of the records of this expedition were lost on the return journey on account of an overturned canoe. But not all the records. In 1844 a map, apparently drawn by Marquette, was found hidden away in the archive at College Sainte-Marie in Montreal. This map was immediately recognized 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." But is the map real? Some don't think so, particularly Carl Weber, a history professor at DeVry University. Weber argues that the Jesuits "determined to assert the primacy of the religious order's role in the exploration of North America, probably concocted the map to bolster Marquette's place in history." As evidence he points out that 1) it's undeniable that the map "emerged all of a sudden out of nowhere in the middle of the 1800s." That alone makes it suspicious. But also 2) it's far more accurate than one would expect for a map drawn in 1673. DeVry Weber says: "Well over a century of map production never achieved a roughly approximate contour of the Illinois River until it appeared on a map in 1813, Map of the United States, prepared by John Melish." Isabelle Contant, a director of the Archives of the Company of Jesus in St-Jerome, defends the map's authenticity, noting that experts have positively identified Marquette's cursive writing on the map. Sounds like we need Gil Grissom and his CSI team to get to the bottom of this debate. For more info, check out this Canada.com article about the controversy, as well as DeVry's Weber's website: The Marquette Map Hoax.