Father Jacques Marquette - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born: June 1, 1637 Laon, Kingdom of France
Died: May 18, 1675 (aged 37) near Ludington, Michigan
Other names: Pere Marquette
Father Jacques Marquette S.J. (June 1, 1637 – May 18, 1675),[1] sometimes known as Père Marquette or James Marquette,[2] was a French-American 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 Europeans to explore and map the northern portion of the Mississippi River Valley.
Jacques Marquette was born in Laon, France, on June 1, 1637. He came of an ancient family distinguished for its civic and military services. Marquette joined the Society of Jesus at age 17.[3] He studied and taught in France for several years, the Jesuits assigned him to New France in 1666 as a missionary to the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Arriving at Quebec he was at once assigned to Trois-Rivières on the Saint Lawrence, where he assisted Gabriel Druillettes and, as preliminary to further work, devoted himself to the study of the local languages, and became fluent in six different dialects.[4]
In 1668 Father Marquette was moved by his superiors to missions farther up the St. Lawrence River in the western Great Lakes region. That year he helped Gabriel Druillettes found the mission at Sault Ste. Marie in present-day Michigan.[5] Other missions were founded at St. Ignace in 1671 (St. Ignace Mission),[3] and at La Pointe, on Lake Superior near the city of Ashland, Wisconsin. At La Pointe he encountered members of the Illinois tribes, who told him about the important trading route of the Mississippi River. They invited him to teach their people, whose settlements were mostly farther south. Because of wars between the Hurons at La Pointe and the neighboring Lakota people, Father Marquette left the mission and went to the Straits of Mackinac; he informed his superiors about the rumored river and requested permission to explore it.
Leave was granted, and in 1673 Marquette joined the expedition of Louis Jolliet, a French-Canadian explorer. They departed from St. Ignace on May 17, with two canoes and five voyageurs of French-Indian ancestry (Métis).[3] They followed Lake Michigan to 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. Many years later, at that point the town of Portage, Wisconsin was built, named for the ancient path between the two rivers. From the portage, they ventured forth, and on June 17 they entered the Mississippi near present-day 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.[7] They followed the Mississippi back to the mouth of the Illinois River, which they learned from local natives provided a shorter route back to the Great Lakes. They reached Lake Michigan near the site of modern-day Chicago, by way of the Chicago Portage. In September Marquette stopped at the mission of St. Francis Xavier, located in present-day Green Bay, Wisconsin, while Jolliet returned to Quebec to relate the news of their discoveries.[8]
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.[9]
In the spring of 1675, Marquette traveled westward and celebrated a public mass at the Grand Village of the Illinois near Starved Rock. A bout of dysentery which he had contracted during the Mississippi expedition sapped his health. On the return trip to St. Ignace, he died at age 37 near the modern town of Ludington, Michigan.
A Michigan Historical Marker at this location 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.[10]
”
The Ojibway Museum on State Street in downtown St. Ignace is in a building that was constructed adjacent to Marquette's gravesite during urban development.
Jacques Marquette BiographyMissionary (1637–1675)
UPDATED: AUG 13, 2019
ORIGINAL: SEP 29, 2014
French missionary and explorer Jacques Marquette is best known as the first European to see and map the northern portion of the Mississippi River.SynopsisJacques Marquette was born in Laon, France, on June 1, 1637. He joined the Society of Jesus at age 17 and became a Jesuit missionary. He founded missions in present-day Michigan and later joined explorer Louis Joliet on an expedition to discover and map the Mississippi River.
Early LifeFrenchman Jacques Marquette became an explorer in the mid-1600s, not only because of his interest in travel and discovery of new lands, but also because of his religion. At age 17, Marquette—who was born in Laon, France, on June 1, 1637—joined the Society of Jesus and became a Jesuit missionary.
Marquette studied and taught in the Jesuit colleges of France for about 12 years before his superiors assigned him in 1666 to be a missionary to the indigenous people of the Americas. He traveled to Quebec, Canada, where he demonstrated his penchant for learning indigenous languages: Marquette learned to converse fluently in six different Native American dialects and became an expert in the Huron language.
In 1668, Marquette sent to establish more missions farther up the St. Lawrence River in the western Great Lakes region. He helped establish missions at Sault Ste. Marie in what is now Michigan—the state's first European settlement—in 1668 and at St. Ignace, also in Michigan, in 1671.
Explorations and DiscoveriesOn May 17, 1673, Marquette and his friend Louis Joliet (also spelled "Jolliet"), a French-Canadian fur trader and explorer, were chosen to lead an expedition that included five men and two canoes to find the direction and mouth of the Mississippi River, which natives had called Messipi, "the Great Water."
Despite sharing a goal to find the river, the two leaders' ambitions were different: Joliet, an experienced mapmaker and geographer, was focused on the finding itself, while Marquette wanted to spread the word of God among the people he encountered on the way there.
Marquette's group traveled westward to Green Bay in present-day Wisconsin, ascended the Fox River to a portage that crossed to the Wisconsin River and entered the Mississippi near Prairie du Chien on June 17, 1673. Following the river to the mouth of the Arkansas River—within 435 miles of the Gulf of Mexico—Marquette and Joliet learned that it flowed through hostile Spanish domains. Fearing an encounter with Spanish colonists and explorers, they decided to return homeward by way of the Illinois River in mid-July.
While Joliet continued on to Canada to relay news of the expedition and its discoveries, Marquette stayed behind in Green Bay. In 1674, he set out to found a mission among the Illinois Indians. As a result of the cold winter weather, he and two companions camped near the site of what is now Chicago, becoming the first Europeans to live there. In the spring, Marquette reached the Indians he sought, but illness—dysentery he contracted while on his mission—forced him to return home. He died on May 18, 1675, en route to St. Ignace at the mouth of a river later named Père Marquette in his honor.
Recognition and MemorialsMarquette has been recognized and memorialized for his accomplishments, particularly in the names of many towns, parks and geographical locations. Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was named for him. Several statues have also been erected in his honor, including one at the Prairie du Chien post office, at Quebec's parliament building and in his birthplace of Laon, France.
https://www.biography.com/religious-figure/jacques-marquette
Born: June 1, 1637 Laon, Kingdom of France
Died: May 18, 1675 (aged 37) near Ludington, Michigan
Other names: Pere Marquette
Father Jacques Marquette S.J. (June 1, 1637 – May 18, 1675),[1] sometimes known as Père Marquette or James Marquette,[2] was a French-American 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 Europeans to explore and map the northern portion of the Mississippi River Valley.
Jacques Marquette was born in Laon, France, on June 1, 1637. He came of an ancient family distinguished for its civic and military services. Marquette joined the Society of Jesus at age 17.[3] He studied and taught in France for several years, the Jesuits assigned him to New France in 1666 as a missionary to the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Arriving at Quebec he was at once assigned to Trois-Rivières on the Saint Lawrence, where he assisted Gabriel Druillettes and, as preliminary to further work, devoted himself to the study of the local languages, and became fluent in six different dialects.[4]
In 1668 Father Marquette was moved by his superiors to missions farther up the St. Lawrence River in the western Great Lakes region. That year he helped Gabriel Druillettes found the mission at Sault Ste. Marie in present-day Michigan.[5] Other missions were founded at St. Ignace in 1671 (St. Ignace Mission),[3] and at La Pointe, on Lake Superior near the city of Ashland, Wisconsin. At La Pointe he encountered members of the Illinois tribes, who told him about the important trading route of the Mississippi River. They invited him to teach their people, whose settlements were mostly farther south. Because of wars between the Hurons at La Pointe and the neighboring Lakota people, Father Marquette left the mission and went to the Straits of Mackinac; he informed his superiors about the rumored river and requested permission to explore it.
Leave was granted, and in 1673 Marquette joined the expedition of Louis Jolliet, a French-Canadian explorer. They departed from St. Ignace on May 17, with two canoes and five voyageurs of French-Indian ancestry (Métis).[3] They followed Lake Michigan to 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. Many years later, at that point the town of Portage, Wisconsin was built, named for the ancient path between the two rivers. From the portage, they ventured forth, and on June 17 they entered the Mississippi near present-day 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.[7] They followed the Mississippi back to the mouth of the Illinois River, which they learned from local natives provided a shorter route back to the Great Lakes. They reached Lake Michigan near the site of modern-day Chicago, by way of the Chicago Portage. In September Marquette stopped at the mission of St. Francis Xavier, located in present-day Green Bay, Wisconsin, while Jolliet returned to Quebec to relate the news of their discoveries.[8]
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.[9]
In the spring of 1675, Marquette traveled westward and celebrated a public mass at the Grand Village of the Illinois near Starved Rock. A bout of dysentery which he had contracted during the Mississippi expedition sapped his health. On the return trip to St. Ignace, he died at age 37 near the modern town of Ludington, Michigan.
A Michigan Historical Marker at this location 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.[10]
”
The Ojibway Museum on State Street in downtown St. Ignace is in a building that was constructed adjacent to Marquette's gravesite during urban development.
- Marquette County, Michigan;[11] Marquette County, Wisconsin
- Several communities, including: Marquette, Michigan; Marquette, Wisconsin; Marquette, Iowa; Marquette, Illinois; Marquette Heights, Illinois; Pere Marquette Charter Township, Michigan;[12] and Marquette, Manitoba
- Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
- Marquette Island in Lake Huron
- Lake Marquette in Minnesota; Marquette Lake in Quebec
- Marquette River in Quebec; Pere Marquette River in Michigan
- Pere Marquette Park in Milwaukee, WI
- Pere Marquette State Park near Grafton, Illinois
- Marquette Park, Chicago, Illinois
- Pere Marquette Beach, a public beach in Muskegon, Michigan
- Pere Marquette State Forest, in Michigan
- The Pere Marquette Railway
- "Cité Marquette", former US-City-Base (1956–1966) built by Americans based on the NATO Air Force Base in Couvron (38th Bombardment Wing), Laon, France (his birthplace).
- Marquette Transportation Company, a towboat company using a silhouette of the Pere in his canoe as their emblem.[13]
- Marquette Building in Chicago; Marquette Building in Detroit; Marquette Building in St. Louis; Pere Marquette Hotel in Peoria, Illinois
- Father Marquette is memorialized by various statues, monuments and historical markers:
- Father Marquette National Memorial near St. Ignace, Michigan[14]
- Chicago Portage National Historic Site, along with Louis Jolliet, near Lyons, Illinois
- Statues have been erected to Marquette various locations, including at: Detroit, Michigan; Fort Mackinac, Michigan; Marquette, Michigan; Milwaukee, at Marquette University; Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, Utica, Illinois; Laon, France; the National Statuary Hall of the United States Capitol; the Quebec Parliament Building
- The Legler Branch of the Chicago Public Library displays "Wilderness, Winter River Scene," a restored mural by Midwestern artist R. Fayerweather Babcock. The mural depicts Father Jacques Marquette and Native Americans trading by a river. Commissioned for Legler Branch in 1934, the mural was funded by the Works Projects Administration.[15]
- Father Marquette has been honored twice on postage stamps issued by the United States:
- A one-cent stamp in 1898, part of Trans-Mississippi Issue, which shows him on the Mississippi River;[16]
- A 6-cent stamp issued September 20, 1968, marking the 300th anniversary of his establishing the Jesuit mission at Sault Ste. Marie.[17]
- Notes[edit]
- ^ "Jacques Marquette". Encyclopædia Britannica.
- ^ Melody, John. "Archdiocese of Chicago" The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. 23 February 2012
- ^ Jump up to:a b c ""Jacques Marquette", Biography". biography.com.
- ^ Spalding, Henry. "Jacques Marquette, S.J." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 15 February 2019
- ^ Monet, J., “Marquette, Jacques", Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 1, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003
- ^ The painting was rendered as an engraving on a US commemorative postage stamp, 1898 (Illustration)
- ^ Catton, Bruce (1984). Michigan: A History, p. 14. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-30175-3
- ^ Campbell, T.J., "James Marquette", Pioneer priests of North America, 1642-1710, Vol. 3, Fordham University Press, 1910
- ^ "Odd Wisconsin Archive: Beer and Sweet Corn". wisconsinhistory.org. Archived from the original on 21 September 2013.
- ^ "Michigan Historical Markers". michmarkers.com. Archived from the original on 2009-03-31. Retrieved 2008-07-26.
- ^ "Bibliography on Marquette County". Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University. Retrieved January 20, 2013.
- ^ "Focus on our history: How county was named". Ludington Daily News. October 3, 1987. p. 2. Retrieved 30 April 2015.
- ^ "Home | Marquette Transportation Company". marquettetrans.com. Marquette Transportation Company LLC. 2015. Retrieved 7 May 2015.
- ^ "Term: Marquette, Jacques 1637 – 1675". wisconsinhistory.org. Archived from the original on 3 November 2013.
- ^ Chicago Public Library. About Legler Branch.
- ^ Haimann, Alexander T., "Arago: people, postage & the post. 1-cent Marquette on the Mississippi". National Postal Museum. Accessed May 2, 2017.
- ^ Tessa Sabol. "Trans-Mississippi Exposition Commemorative Stamp Issue and National Identity at the Turn of the Twentieth Century". National Postal Museum. Accessed May 2, 2017.
Jacques Marquette BiographyMissionary (1637–1675)
UPDATED: AUG 13, 2019
ORIGINAL: SEP 29, 2014
French missionary and explorer Jacques Marquette is best known as the first European to see and map the northern portion of the Mississippi River.SynopsisJacques Marquette was born in Laon, France, on June 1, 1637. He joined the Society of Jesus at age 17 and became a Jesuit missionary. He founded missions in present-day Michigan and later joined explorer Louis Joliet on an expedition to discover and map the Mississippi River.
Early LifeFrenchman Jacques Marquette became an explorer in the mid-1600s, not only because of his interest in travel and discovery of new lands, but also because of his religion. At age 17, Marquette—who was born in Laon, France, on June 1, 1637—joined the Society of Jesus and became a Jesuit missionary.
Marquette studied and taught in the Jesuit colleges of France for about 12 years before his superiors assigned him in 1666 to be a missionary to the indigenous people of the Americas. He traveled to Quebec, Canada, where he demonstrated his penchant for learning indigenous languages: Marquette learned to converse fluently in six different Native American dialects and became an expert in the Huron language.
In 1668, Marquette sent to establish more missions farther up the St. Lawrence River in the western Great Lakes region. He helped establish missions at Sault Ste. Marie in what is now Michigan—the state's first European settlement—in 1668 and at St. Ignace, also in Michigan, in 1671.
Explorations and DiscoveriesOn May 17, 1673, Marquette and his friend Louis Joliet (also spelled "Jolliet"), a French-Canadian fur trader and explorer, were chosen to lead an expedition that included five men and two canoes to find the direction and mouth of the Mississippi River, which natives had called Messipi, "the Great Water."
Despite sharing a goal to find the river, the two leaders' ambitions were different: Joliet, an experienced mapmaker and geographer, was focused on the finding itself, while Marquette wanted to spread the word of God among the people he encountered on the way there.
Marquette's group traveled westward to Green Bay in present-day Wisconsin, ascended the Fox River to a portage that crossed to the Wisconsin River and entered the Mississippi near Prairie du Chien on June 17, 1673. Following the river to the mouth of the Arkansas River—within 435 miles of the Gulf of Mexico—Marquette and Joliet learned that it flowed through hostile Spanish domains. Fearing an encounter with Spanish colonists and explorers, they decided to return homeward by way of the Illinois River in mid-July.
While Joliet continued on to Canada to relay news of the expedition and its discoveries, Marquette stayed behind in Green Bay. In 1674, he set out to found a mission among the Illinois Indians. As a result of the cold winter weather, he and two companions camped near the site of what is now Chicago, becoming the first Europeans to live there. In the spring, Marquette reached the Indians he sought, but illness—dysentery he contracted while on his mission—forced him to return home. He died on May 18, 1675, en route to St. Ignace at the mouth of a river later named Père Marquette in his honor.
Recognition and MemorialsMarquette has been recognized and memorialized for his accomplishments, particularly in the names of many towns, parks and geographical locations. Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was named for him. Several statues have also been erected in his honor, including one at the Prairie du Chien post office, at Quebec's parliament building and in his birthplace of Laon, France.
https://www.biography.com/religious-figure/jacques-marquette