Jacques Marquette

For more information on Jacques Marquette, visit Britannica.com.

Jacques Marquette (1637-1675) was a French Jesuit, missionary, and explorer who followed the Illinois and Mississippi rivers on a journey of discovery.

Jacques Marquette was the son of a seigneur of Laon. In 1654 he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Nancy, went on to teaching, and began theological studies in 1665. He pleaded to be allowed to become a missionary, feeling that he was not suited to theology. He was accordingly sent to New France, arriving in Quebec in September 1666.

For about 2 years Marquette studied the Montagnais language at Trois-Rivières. Then, in May 1668, he left by canoe from Montreal to join a mission at Sault Sainte Marie. In 1669 he founded a mission at the far western end of Lake Superior. Here he met for the first time the Illinois Indians, whom he came to enjoy and to admire. When they were forced to shift eastward owing to pressure from the Sioux, Marquette went too and in 1671 founded the mission of St-Ignace (named after Ignatius of Loyola) on the north shore of the Straits of Michilimackinac (Mackinac).

In December 1672 Louis Jolliet arrived at St-Ignace, carrying with him a commission from Quebec to explore the western rivers. The French had already acquired some knowledge of the Illinois country from the Indians and were anxious to explore it further. The winter of 1672/1673 was spent discussing and arranging the expedition for the spring, and in mid-May 1673 Marquette and Jolliet left together on their epic exploration of the Illinois and Mississippi.

They got a long way south, beyond the present city of Memphis, and probably to about the northern border of Louisiana at 33°N, in other words, nearly 800 miles south of St-Ignace. There they had to stop. Jolliet, although he spoke six Indian languages, could no longer make himself understood, and increasing Indian hostility made it seem undesirable to proceed further, although they believed - erroneously - that they were only 150 miles from the sea. They turned north about mid-July, and using the Illinois River and the Chicago portage they were back at Lake Michigan in September.

Jolliet went on to Sault Sainte Marie, where he wintered (1673-1674), going on to Quebec in the spring. But Marquette was unwell; he stayed at a mission at Baie des Puants (Green Bay) for a whole year, returning south to the Illinois country in October 1674. Bad weather and Marquette's recurring dysentery forced them to winter not far from present-day Chicago. They were helped by visits from Marquette's old friends, the Illinois, and in Easter week of 1675 he was sufficiently well to visit a magnificent gathering of Indian braves and chiefs on the Illinois River. Marquette headed northward to St-Ignace but died in May, near present-day Ludington, Mich.

Further Reading

The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites (73 vols., 1896-1901), contains in volume 59 what is reputed to be Marquette's account of his expedition. A good deal of controversy has arisen in recent years over the authenticity of this account. The opposition to Marquette's reputed role is led mainly by Francis Borgia Steck in his Marquette Legends (1960). The older and probably still standard account is Louise Phelps Kellogg, The French Régime in Wisconsin and the Northwest (1925). Joseph P. Donnelly, Jacques Marquette, S. I. (1968), defends the traditional view of Marquette. The work by Jesuit scholar Raphael N. Hamilton, Marquette's Explorations: The Narrative Reexamined (1970), is a critical analysis. Marquette figures in a reissue of an old work whose original edition is a collector's item because of its maps and sketches, Justin Winsor, Cartier to Frontenac: Geographical Discovery in the Interior of North America in its Historical Relations, 1534-1700 (1894; repr. 1970).

Father Jacques Marquette

Father Jacques Marquette, S.J., (June 1, 1637 – May 18, 1675),^[1] sometimes known as Pere Marquette, was a French Jesuit missionary who founded Michigan's first European settlement, Sault Ste. Marie, and later founded St. Ignace, Michigan. In 1673 Father Marquette and Louis Jolliet were the first non-Native Americans to see and map the northern portion of the Mississippi River.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Photo gallery 3 Notes 4 See also 5 External links

Biography

Jacques Marquette was born in Laon, France, on June 1, 1637 and joined the Society of Jesus at age seventeen. After working and teaching in France for several years, he was dispatched to Quebec in 1666 to preach to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, where he showed great proficiency in the local languages, especially Huron. In 1668 Father Marquette (French: Père Marquette) was redeployed by his superiors to missions farther up the St. Lawrence River in the western Great Lakes. He helped found a mission at Sault Ste. Marie and at the Mission of the Holy Spirit in La Pointe, on Lake Superior, near the present-day city of Ashland, Wisconsin. Here, he came into contact with members of the Illinois tribes, who told him about the Mississippi River and invited him to teach their people who mostly lived further south. Because of wars between the Hurons at La Pointe and the neighboring Dakota people, however, Father Marquette had to relocate to the Straits of Mackinac; he informed his superiors about the rumored river and requested permission to explore it.

Father Jacques Marquette exploring

Leave was granted, and in 1673, Marquette was joined by Louis Joliet, a French-Canadian explorer. They departed from St. Ignace on May 17, with two canoes and five voyageurs of French-Indian ancestry. They followed Lake Michigan to the Bay of Green Bay and up the Fox River, nearly to its headwaters. From there, they were told to portage their canoes a distance of slightly less than two miles through marsh and oak plains to the Wisconsin River. At that point the French later built the trading town of Portage, named for its location. From the Portage, they ventured forth, and on June 17, they entered the Mississippi near Prairie du Chien.

A statue of Father Marquette at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.

The Joliet-Marquette expedition traveled to within 435 miles (700 km) of the Gulf of Mexico but turned back at the mouth of the Arkansas River. By this point they had encountered several natives carrying European trinkets, and they feared an encounter with explorers or colonists from Spain.^[2] They followed the Mississippi back to the mouth of the Illinois River, which they learned from local natives was a shorter route back to the Great Lakes. They returned to Lake Michigan near the location of modern-day Chicago. Marquette stopped at the mission of St. Francis Xavier in Green Bay in September, while Joliet returned to Quebec to relate the news of their discoveries.

Jacques Marquette memorial Ludington, Michigan

Marquette and his party returned to the Illinois Territory in late 1674, becoming the first Europeans to winter in what would become the city of Chicago. As welcomed guests of the Illinois Confederation, the explorers were feasted en route and fed ceremonial foods such as sagamite.^[3][4]

In the spring of 1675, the missionary again paddled westward and celebrated a public Mass at the Grand Village of the Illinois near Starved Rock. A bout of dysentery picked up during the Mississippi expedition, however, had sapped his health. On the return trip to St. Ignace, he died near the modern town of Ludington, Michigan.

There is a Michigan Historical Marker at this location that reads

“

Father Jacques Marquette, the great Jesuit missionary and explorer, died and was buried by two French companions somewhere along the Lake Michigan shore on May 18, 1675. He had been returning to his mission at St. Ignace which he had left in 1673 to go exploring in the Mississippi country. The exact location of his death has long been a subject of controversy. A spot close to the southeast slope of this hill, near the ancient outlet of the Pere Marquette River, corresponds with the death site as located by early French accounts and maps and a constant tradition of the past. Marquette's remains were reburied at St. Ignace in 1677. [5]

”

The grave of Father Marquette, St. Ignace, Michigan.

His grave is now located at what is currently the Ojibway Museum on State Street in downtown St. Ignace. Father Marquette is memorialized in several towns and rivers that bear his name, such as Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Marquette, Michigan, and the Father Marquette National Memorial near St. Ignace.^[6] Pere Marquette State Park near Grafton, Illinois, is located at the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers and is the site where Indians of the Illini Confederation showed Marquette a faster return route to the Great Lakes.

Photo gallery

Pere Marquette on the river at Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin	Michigan Historical Marker "Marquette's Death"	Father Marquette sketch	statue, Detroit, Michigan
The statue of Père Jacques Marquette in front of Fort Mackinac	Statue of Jacques Marquette on Marquette University campus, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.	Pere Marquette at St. Mary's Catholic Church, Utica, IL	Memorial plaque in Square Jacques Marquette, in his hometown of Laon, France

Notes

1. ^ Jacques Marquette - Britannica Online Encyclopedia
2. ^ Catton, Bruce (1984). Michigan: A History, p. 14. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393301753.
3. ^ Wisconsin Historical Society
4. ^ Zeldes, Leah A. (Sept. 23, 2009). "Eat this! Sagamité: A native-Illinoisan vegetable medley". Dining Chicago. Chicago’s Restaurant & Entertainment Guide, Inc.. http://blog.diningchicago.com/2009/09/23/eat-this-sagamit-a-native-illinoisan-vegetable-medley/. Retrieved Sept. 23, 2009. 
5. ^ Marquette's Death - Michigan Historical Marker Registered Site S0278
6. ^ Marquette, Jacques 1637 – 1675

See also

Sagamite

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jacques Marquette

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
• The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents 1610 to 1791, including Marquette's journal
•  "Jacques Marquette". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Jacques_Marquette. 
• Marquette University

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