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Bv John R. ISmikv, M. I).
Published by direction of the Marquette Monument Association,
     Mackinac, Mich., July i/t/i, 187S.
     DETROIT:
FKER PRK8N BOOK AND JOB PRINTING HOVKK.
1878.
 
 
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Pere James Marquette
By John R. Bailey, M. D.
Published by direction of the Mari/ucftc Monument Association,
       Mackinac, Mich., July 17I/1. tSjS.
vrV.
        DETROIT:
FREE PRESS BOOK AND JOB PRINTING HOUSE. 
 
                       OF

PERE  JAMES   MARQUETTE,


           First Explorer of the Mixxixxijijii.
   This illustrious Christian gentleman was born of an ancient
 and honorable family, in the city of Laon, in the Department
 of  Aisne, France, in the year  1637.   He was allied, through
 his pious mother, Rose de la Salle, to John Baptist de la Salle,
 founder of the Brothers  of  the Christian Schools, where thou-
 sands of poor were instructed free, long before there was any
 system of public education.  During the War of the Revolu-
 tion three of the Marquettes died  here, in the French army.
 Of the valor of  the family there is no doubt.
  At the age of 17, in  1654, his pious heart induced him to
 enter the  Society of  Jesus; and  12 years he was  engaged in
 study  and teaching, and  the  improvement  of himself  and
 fellow-men.
  Then being invested with the  order of priesthood, his reli-
 gious zeal induced him to seek a mission among the savages who
 knew not God.  Sailing for Canada in 1666, he  landed at Quebec
 September 20th, buoyant with health, to  labor where his supe-
riors should send him.
  Francis de  Laval was Bishop  of Petrea and Vicar Apostolic
of New France.   The war with the Iroquois had  ended,  and
peace reigned throughout the ('anadas.
  Menard embarked  in 1660 to raise the cross at the Ottawa
Mission of Sault St. Mary's, which Jogues and Raymbault had 
6
planted twenty years before.  He tried to reach the Sioux on
the Upper Mississippi, but died in the woods of famine or by
the hatchet of the roving Indian.
  On the 15th of October Marquette started for Three Rivers,
to study the  Montagnais, key language of the various tribes,
also Algonquin, with Father Gabriel Druilletes, and remained
there until April, 1668, when he  was ordered to the Ottawa
Mission of  Lake Superior.
  Alloiiez  reports that  in  1666  and  1667  the Hurons  and
Ottawa nomads roamed the desert north of Lake  Superior.
From  Lac des  Ilinois  (Michigan)  came  the Pottawatomies,
worshipers of  the  sun ;  also the  Sacs and Foxes  and the
Ilinois, to Alloiiez, at the mission, to rehearse their joys  and
sorrows, and receive Christian consolation  and advice.
  At the west end of Lake  Superior Alloiiez met the warlike
Sioux, who dwelt, says Bancroft,  " in a land of prairies, with
wild rice for food, and skins  of  beasts, instead of bark, for
roofs to their cabins, on the banks of the Great River, of which
Alloiiez reported the name to be ' Messipi.'  In 1667 Alloiiez
returned to Quebec."
  Alloiiez,  Claude  Dablon and Pere James  Marquette estab-
lished the Chippeway Mission of St. Mary,  in 1668, the  first
settlement of Europeans in  Michigan.
  1669, Bancroft  says:  "The  purpose  of  discovering  the
Mississippi, of which the tales of the natives had published the
magnificence, sprang from Marquette himself/'   He was ready
for the journey in the fall of 1669, but was delayed at Che-
goi-me-gon, where he learned from a young Ilinois the dialect
of that tribe in  1669 and 1670.  The project of  Marquette was
favored by Talon, intendant of  New France, who desired the
French to descend the  " Messipi," and plant their flag on the
Pacific and the  Mexican Gulf, by the side of that of Spain.
  May, 1671, there was a congress  of many  Indian tribes at
Sault Ste. Marie, where  they were formally placed under the
protection of the French king, Louis XIV.
  " In  the  same  year  Marquette  gathered the  wandering
remains of  one  branch of the  Huron nation round a chapel at 
I
Point St.  Ignace, on the  continent  north of the peninsula of
Michigan."   "Here, also, Marquette once more gained a place
among the founders of Michigan."   Here he  remained until
1673, maturing his plans for  his  voyage  of  discovery, and
ministering  to the  Indians—their  " Guardian  Angel of  the
Mission "—whilst  Aloiiez  and  Dablon  bore the cross  through
Eastern Wisconsin and the north of  Illinois.
  The Pottawatomies  "heard with wonder" Marquette's "dar-
ing proposal.  They said  these distant nations never spare the
strangers; their mutual wars fill their  borders  with bands of
warriors;  the Great River abounds  in monsters, which devour
both  men and canoes; the  excessive heats occasion  death."
The good father replied:   "I shall gladly lay down my life for
the  salvation of  souls;" and the  docile  Indians  joined  in
prayer.
  May  17, 1673,  Marquette,  M. Joliet,  and five men,  set  out
in two bark canoes, from  the mission of St.  Ignatius, at Michi-
limackinac,  to conquer  or  die  in  their glorious enterprise.
Indian corn and dried  meats  were their only provisions.
  Their voyage  from Point St. Ignace, in frail  birch bark
canoes, over  the  unexplored  Lac des Ilinois, through the Baie
des Puants  (Bay  of the  Fetid—Green  Bay), was  dangerous,
novel  and fascinating.   Leaving   the  bay they  enter Fox
River, about 260 miles long,  where  were many birds  feeding
on wild oats.  Advancing up the river, they passed the rapids
and approached Maskoutens,  where they arrived June 7, 1673.
  June 10th, taking two  Algonquin guides, they started for a
river, the " Miskousing"  (Wisconsin), three leagues  off, that
emptied into the Mississippi.   The guides took them safely to
a portage, twenty-seven  hundred paces  long, and helped  to
transport  their canoes  to the  river, and returned home.   Before
embarking, they paid  their devotions to the Most High God,
as they always did on  important occasions.
  They sailed down the broad  Wisconsin, past alternate prai-
ries and hill-sides, towards  the great river Mississippi, which
they entered June 17th, with a  joy that could not be expressed.
Here the two  birch bark canoes raised  their happy sails to 
                              8

 unknown breezes and floated down the ocean  stream, through
 prairies and  forests,  often meeting  with the  wild Illinois,
 Sbawnees, Sioux and Chickasas (Marquette carrying  the  cross
 before him), frequently stopping to smoke the calumet, and
 always striving to convert those strange people to the worship
 of the true Manitou and the Catholic faith.
   They reached  the Mou-in-gou-e-na (Des Moines), where
 Marquette  stayed six days, and published to  the  Illinois the
 true God, their Creator.   Their great chief hung around Mar-
 quette the sacred calumet, which was  the amulet of peace to
 all savage nations.
   The little group proceeded omvards.  "  I did not fear death,"
 says Marquette.  " I should have esteemed it the greatest hap-
 piness to have died for the glory of  God."
   They passed  the  Missouri, and in  less than forty leagues
 floated past the Ohio to latitude 33°, where, on  the west  bank
 of' the " Great River,  stood the village of Mitchigamea, where
 Marquette asked the aid of God.  The next day, ten men, in
 a wooden canoe, escorted  the  discoverers ten leagues to the
 village of Akansea, below the Arkansas river, the end of their
 voyage.   Here  the  good Marquette spoke of  God  and  the
 mysteries of the Catholic faith."   Marquette  and Joliet  left
 Akansea July 17th,  1673, and ascended the Mississippi.
   At latitude 30° they entered the river Illinois.  The tribe of
 Illinois entreated Marquette to reside with them, and a young
 chief conducted the  party, by way of  Chicago,  to lake Michi-
 gan.   In September  all were safe in Green Bay.
   Joliet  returned to Quebec and  announced  the  discovery,
 whilst Marquette remained to preach the gospel to the Indians.
 Being  often sick with dysentery, and in feeble  health, he
 remained at the  Green Bay Mission until October  25th, 1674,
 when he sailed for Chicago.  Reaching this river, after suffer-
 ing from much  sickness and -delays, " he was received  as an
 angel from heaven."  Here he remained  only  a few  months,
 imparting the gospel to the red  men.  May 18th, 1675, his
 strength failing, he resolved to sail to the  Mission of  St. Igna-
tius, Michilimackinac, and recruit his health in that salubrious 
9
clime.   On the route, he entered a little river in Michigan, and
Bancroft says, " Erecting an altar, he said mass after the rites
of the Catholic church; then, begging the men who conducted
his canoe to leave him alone for a half hour:
               " ' In the darkling wood,
           Amidst cool and silence he knelt down,
           And offered to the Mightiest, solemn thanks
           And supplication.'
   " At the end of the half hour they went to seek him and he
was  no more.  The good missionary, discoverer of  a world,
had fallen  asleep on  the  margin of  the  stream that bears his
name.   Near its mouth the canoemen dug his grave in the
sand.  Ever after, the forest  rangers if in danger,  on Lake
Michigan, would invoke  his name.   The people of  the West
will  build his monument." •
   Thus at the age of 38, May 19th, 1675, in the height of his
fame and glory, was the good priest taken away from earth to
fill a brighter sphere in some celestial space.  He was 21 years
in the Society of Jesus—12 in France and 9  in America,
   God did not suffer the remains of Marquette to be forgotten.
Two years later, on the anniversary of his death, the  "Kiska-
kon" Indians (Algonquins) and a number of Iroquois repaired
to the spot and disinterred his body.   Cleaning the bones, they
placed them in  a neat box of birch bark and conveyed them to
Point St. Ignace.
   The  convoy consisted of thirty canoes.   As they approached
the mission of St. Ignace,  " Missilimakinac,"  Fathers Nouvel
and Pierson met them and intoned the " De  Profundis," in the
sight of all the people, before landing.  The body remained in
state, in the church, all day Whitsun-Monday, June 8th, 1677,
and the next day was deposited with funeral honors in a little
vault under the church, "where he now reposes," the "guar-
dian angel  of  the Ottawa  missions," opposite the beautiful
island of Mackinac, the home of the "Great Manitou" and of
the " spirits " whom the Indians delighted to worship.
  In 1671 Marquette  had a log chapel built at St. Ignace, and
in 1674  a  church, surrounded by palisades  twenty feet  high, 
10
situated  near a point of  land opposite the island  of  Michili-
mackinac.  The mission was abandoned and  the  church set
fire to about  1706.   Another was erected, but has long since
disappeared.   Last year the foundations of the old church
were discovered, on  lot No. 19, Mr. David  Murray's  place, at
Point St. Ignace, and the remains of  Marquette, in the vault,
inclosed in the bark casket described.
  Marquette  made a map of his voyage,  to  accompany his
journal, showing the course of the river " De  la Conception "
(Mississippi) from about 43 deg.  30 min. to 34  deg. north lati-
tude; also  the  adjacent  lakes  and  countries.  This map was
published in  Paris in 1681, the year before the discoveries  of
La Salle on the Mississippi.
  It is pleasant to verify, from historical records, the fact that
while the march of the early Spanish  explorers, in the south-
ern part of America,  was invariably  marked  by cruelty and
bloodshed, in the course of the early French missionaries and
explorers no blood  was shed but that  of their own martyred
brethren, blackened by no crime or injury to the aboriginal
people,  and herein, aside from  Marquette's saintly  life and
romantic end,  may be  found the  reason why the name of  the
Great River's first explorer has taken such a hold on the affec-
tions of the people of the Northwest, herein the father of the
thought which inspired Bancroft's prophecy, uttered a quarter
of a century ago, that the West will erect his monument.
  Now let the people of America and Europe unite,  without
distinction of race, creed, or  sect, and build a shapely monu-
ment to the great and good missionary, whose fame and Chris-
tian virtues we can only emulate.
  Mackinac, Mich.,  July 17th, 1878. 
 
 
 
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