PEORIA, Ill., June 11 (UPI) -- An Illinois history professor says a map accepted as proof of Frenchman Jacques Marquette's 1673 journey up the Illinois River is a fraud.
Carl Weber said Marquette's map "is too accurate" and contains information about the Illinois that didn't appear on other early exploration maps "until decades later," the Peoria (Ill.) Journal-Star reported.
For more than three centuries, history has accepted that the Jesuit priest and Louis Joliet were the first Europeans to reach the Mississippi River by canoeing down the Wisconsin River.
Weber, a professor of history and the humanities at DeVry Institute in Chicago, said his research has convinced him that the map couldn't have been made before 1813.
Weber alleges the map -- supposedly discovered in 1844 among documents stored and virtually forgotten in a Jesuit mission in Canada -- was created and forged with Marquette's signature by the Jesuit Order to strengthen its political position in France and the Vatican, the newspaper said.
