In 1672, Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette were commissioned by King Louis XIV to discover the course of the Mississippi River. On June 17, 1673, their expedition entered the Mississippi from the Wisconsin River and began its descent by canoe. On July 4, 1673, the seven-man expedition passed the mouth of the Missouri River and later observed the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi. After reaching an Arkansas Indian village near present Helena on July 17, they were certain that the Mississippi flowed into the Gulf of Mexico. Fearing the Spanish if they continued southward, Marquette and Joliet turned back there. A dedicated and gentle priest, Father Marquette first brought the word of God into the Mississippi Valley, gave the world an account of its lands and, with Joliet, laid the basis for France's claim to the area. Born at Laon, France, on June 1, 1637, Father Marquette died on April 18, 1675, on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan from the hardships of his missionary life.