FATHER HENRY NOUVEL, S.J.,

THE PIONEER MISSIONARY OF LOWER MICHIGAN.

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception Celebrated in the Heart of the Peninsular State Two Hundred and Eleven Years Ago.

BY VERY REV. EDWARD JACKER.

Relation de ce qui s'est passé de plus remarquable aux Missions des Pères de la Compagnie de Jesus en la Nouvelle France les années 1673 à 1679 par le R. P. Claude Dablon, Recteur du College de Québec & Superieur des Missions de la Compagnie de Jesus en la Nouvelle France. A la Nouvelle York, De la Presse Cramoisy de Jean-Marie Shea. MDCCCLX.

I.

INTRODUCTION.

It seems strange, but the fact admits hardly of a doubt, that no missionary, and perhaps no other white man, had set his foot on the southern peninsula of Michigan fully fifteen years after the distant "land of the sky-blue water" had been reached, or approached, by two adventurous Frenchmen ;*

*In the winter of 1659-'60 Desgroseillez and Radisson, the first white men that entered Lake Superior, made an excursion from Keweenaw Bay to the head of the Black River, where the Tionontate Hurons then temporarily resided. (The statement that the Huron village was six days' journey from the lake, in a southwesterly direction, shows that they started from Keweenaw, then the great rendezvous of the Ottawas.) It was thence, undoubtedly, they set out on their much-discussed visit to the eastern Dakotas, or Nadouessiou, as the French called them. This tribe then lived, according to Perrot, on both sides of the Mississippi, between the St. Croix and Minnesota Rivers. If a part of their towns, as should be presumed, were located beyond the Mississippi, Desgroseillez must have crossed that river; for he asserted that he "visited the forty towns of which that nation is composed." But the degree of credit to be accorded to this statement rests on his character for veracity, which admits of doubt. Voyageurs, as a rule, were always given to hyperbolical talk. The assertion of the two adventurers that five of the Dakota towns counted 5,000 warriors is an evident and gross exaggeration, whether the statement be taken severally or in the aggre

nearly as long after the sacrifice of the new law had been offered up by a lonely priest on the shore of Lake Superior and in the forests of northern Wisconsin;* five years after that great rendezvous of nations in past and modern times, Green Bay, had become the centre of numerous missionary stations, in what is now Wisconsin ;† nay, at a date when the

gate. That they saw the Dakotas-though all they said of them they might have learned from the Hurons-may be readily admitted; but to reach their first villages they need not have proceeded beyond the St. Croix, or not even so far. The Mandwa (French Mantoué, Ojibwa Mando), who formed part of the forty towns, were but ten days' travel from the head of Green Bay, in a northwesterly direction, probably on the Manedowish (which appears to have its Ojibwa name -Mandowish-from that tribe or band); or, at farthest, at the headwaters of the St. Croix, in northwestern Wisconsin. (See Relations of 1658, p. 21, Quebec edition.) Those travellers gave also an account of the Poualak (Ojibwa Bwan, pl. Bwanag), or western Dakotas; but the turn with which Father Lallemand introduces their account of them (" il faut prendre congé de ces peuples, sans faire pourtant grande ceremonie, pour entrer dans les terres d'une autre Nation belliquense,” etc.), plainly shows that Desgroseillez himself did not pretend to have visited them. What he said about their using coal (charbon de terre) for fuel rests on a misunderstanding; his Huron or Ottawa informants probably told him that the Sioux of the prairies gather their fuel from the ground, meaning "buffalochips."

Thus Father Hennepin and his companions may, after all, have been the first white men that entered Minnesota.

(Compare Father Tailhan's " Memoire, etc., par Nicolas Perrot," pp. 88, 237, and 340; Relations des Jesuites, Rel. of 1660, pp. 12 and 13, Quebec edition.)

*Father René Menard, having arrived in Keweenaw Bay (Baraga Co., Mich.), October 15, 1660, said the first Mass on Lake Superior, shortly after that date, if not on the same day. About August 10, 1661, he offered up his last Mass, on the Upper Wisconsin, probably near the mouth of Copper River, a few miles above Merrill, Lincoln Co., Wis. (Rel. 1661, p. 3; 1663, p. 21; Perrot, p. 92. For the proofs regarding the locality, see Father Chrysostom Verwyst's "Missionary Labors of Fathers Marquette, Menard and Allouez.")

The shores and neighborhood of Green Bay were, within the second half of the 17th century, inhabited, simultaneously or successively, by various clans of the Ottawa tribe, especially Kiskakons, Sinagaux, and Nassawakwatons; by Menomonees, Pottawattomies, Sacs, Foxes, Winnebagoes, and Tionontate Hurons; and visited by the Maskotens and other more distant clans of the Illinois, and even by the Iowas. Green Bay is the only spot where there dwelled in peace, side by side, at least for a few years, representative tribes of the three great families of the Algonkin, the Huron-Iroquois, and the Dakota. At the present day more than a dozen of different European nationalities are represented in the border counties of the bay, besides a remnant of the aboriginal

prairies of Illinois had already beheld thousands of awestruck savages gathering around a Catholic altar;* and when the coast of Hudson's Bay and the mouth of the Arkansas formed the northern and southern limits of the Jesuits' travels.†

This curious fact appears the more unaccountable, if we remember that the northern shores of Lakes Huron and Michigan-distant, at the straits, but a few miles from Lower Michigan-had for more than thirty years formed the travelling route of traders and missionaries; and that for nearly five years previous to the period in question a most important mission that of St. Ignatius-had been in successful operation on the very point of land which brings the upper peninsula into such close proximity with the lower.§

population, numbering about 3,000, and consisting of Menomonees, Mohegans, and Iroquois (Oneidas).

The Green Bay mission was opened December 3, 1669, by Father Allouez, in a motley town of Sacs, Pottawattomies, Foxes, and Winnebagoes, situated about a day's journey north of the mouth of Fox River, on the west shore. About two years later a spot on the river, two leagues above the mouth, was chosen for a central station and for the erection of a large church. (Rel. 1670, p. 94; 1672, p. 37; 1673-'79, p. 79. Compare also Verwyst, "Missionary Labors.")

*On Holy Thursday, April 11, 1675, and on the following Easter Sunday, Father Marquette celebrated Mass in the Kaskaskia mission, on the Illinois, in the presence of thousands of Indians. (Rel. 1673–79, p. 103.)

The shore of Hudson's Bay was reached after several unsuccessful attempts by Father Charles Albanel June 28, 1672. The date of Marquette's arrival at the mouth of the Arkansas is July 15, 1673. (Rel. 1672, p. 50. Shea, "Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley," pp. 47-50.)

Some time before 1640, most probably in 1634, John Nicolet, the pioneer by excellence of the West, passed through the Straits of Mackinac on his way to Green Bay. In 1654 two young Frenchmen accompanied a party of Ottawas and Hurons to the same place. About 1665 Nicolas Perrot, the author of the Memoire, entered Lake Michigan. He may have been one of the six Frenchmen whom Father Allouez met at Green Bay in 1669. This missionary himself passed the Straits at least five times before the year 1675; Dablon and Nouvel twice; André and Marquette at least once. (Rel. 1640, p. 36; 1643, p. 3; 1654, p. 9; 1670, pp. 92, 94, 101; 1672, p. 37, etc. Perrot, p. 258.) Already in the winter of 1670-'71, Father Dablon, then Superior of the Ottawa Mission and residing at Saut Ste. Marie, had built, or caused to be built, a temporary chapel on Point St. Ignace, opposite the Island of Mackinac, and less than four miles distant from the north shore of Lower Michigan. Father Marquette, who arrived with the Hurons in the summer of 1671, was the first resident missionary. (Rel. 1671, pp. 25, 37; 1672, p. 36.)

The puzzle, however, is easily solved by pointing to the one great fact which plays such an important part in most other questions bearing on the fate of Canada and its dependencies under French rule-the implacable hostility of the Iroquois against the Algonkin allies of France; for two of its consequences were the insecurity of the southern lake route and the complete depopulation of Lower Michigan. No resident tribe, roving through its woods and to be reclaimed from paganism, invited the missionary; no prospect of gain attracted the trader; and the advantage of the lower lakes as an easy thoroughfare to the West was far outweighed by the dangers of the passage.

No missionary, then, up to 1675, had entered the southern peninsula of Michigan;* and the first who set foot on its

* Up to 1672, when the publication of the Jesuit's Relations ceased, these admirable records contain such complete and accurate information on the Fathers' movements in the so-called Ottawa Mission, that their passing over in silence any missionary excursion to a region hitherto unknown cannot be presumed. All we find mentioned in regard to the southern peninsula of Michigan before that date is the statement that up to the year 1648 the southern, i. e., the Michigan shore of Lake Huron, was inhabited by the following tribes: Ouachaskesouek (Wazhashkôsag, those of the muskrat clan), Nigououichirinik (Negawishininiwag, men of the sandy shore), Outaouasinagouk (Otawag Zhinagog, the rattle-snake clan of Ottawas), Kichkagoueiak (Kishkagoyag, those of the short-tailed bear clan), and Outaouak (Otaway, Ottawas); twenty years later, that "the main land, which is two and a half leagues from the island [Mackinac], had been the residence of the three tribes now in Green Bay," i. e., Pottawattomies, Sacs, and the Nassawakwatt or Fork clan of Ottawas ("ceux de la Fourche"); and again, that "those southern lands in the neighborhood of Missilimakinac were the former home of the Pottawattomies and Sacs and other tribes since chased from thence by the Iroquois. (Rel. 1648, p. 62; 1671, pp. 25, 37.) The last passage referred to reads in the text: "Les trois Nations qui sont à present dans la Biye des Puants, comme étrangers, residoient à la terre ferme au milieu de cette Isle." This gives no sense, and every translator has been puzzled with the main land in the middle of the island." Read à 2 et mi-lieue,-two and a half leagues, or seven and a half miles from the island, and you have the true distance; or, d une lieue, one league,-the distance from Mackinac Island to Bois Blanc Island,-which the Fathers believed to be a part of the main land, if we may judge from their map. This latter circumstance also goes far to show that up to 1671 none of them or their French companions had seen the socalled south channel, which they could not have failed to do if they had crossed the Strait.

The Relation of 1672-'73, happily preserved in MS., and first published in 1860 by

shore did so only to find on it his solitary grave. In the spring of that year Father Marquette, having opened the mission of the Illinois, but now worn by sufferings and hardships, coasted along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, and, on the 19th of May, breathed forth his pure soul near the mouth of the river since called after his name. Thus the future Peninsular State became, like that of Wisconsin, hallowed ground by the lonely death of an apostle.*

But in the autumn of that very year Father Marquette's creation, the mission of St. Ignatius, sent forth the priest who, by a winter's labors in the heart of the peninsula, inaugurated the mission of Lower Michigan, and, as his saintly

Dr. J. G. Shea, is equally full in its accounts of the Ottawa missionaries' travels, but contains no allusion to an excursion into the lower peninsula. The Relations of the following years (1673–79, published by the same) have come down to us in the form of an abridgment or a compilation of select pieces; but, facts of much less importance being embodied, it is in nowise probable that the opening of an entirely new mission field before 1675 should have been omitted.

The map which accompanies Father Marquette's journal (of the discovery of the Mississippi, 1673) gives the contour of the lower peninsula in dotted lines—a mark, as the Father himself observes, of its having been drawn from Indian accounts. Accordingly, up to 1674, in the summer of which year he forwarded that map from Green Bay, no Jesuit-at least no one with whom Marquette had communication - had explored any part of Lower Michigan. On the earlier maps (of 1671 and 1672), it is true, a considerable part of that peninsula appears traced in full lines; but the peculiar appearance of the contours-more undulatory than denticulated,—and, still more, the very great inaccuracy of that section, as compared with other parts of the map, plainly show that it is not drawn from actual observation.

Moreover, in the narrative of Father Marquette's last journey, it is expressly stated that the western shore of the peninsula (then as now in common parlance at Mackinac called the south shore) was a still unknown route. (Rel. 1673-'79, p. 105.)

As to the northern and eastern coasts, the very journal here translated furnishes the evidence that up to the late autumn of 1675 they were terra incognita to the Jesuits.

The Sulpitians Dollier and Galinée, who passed through the Detroit and St. Clair Rivers in the spring of 1671, may have touched the Michigan shore and followed it for some distance for the sake of shelter from westerly winds, but from the outlet of Lake Huron, their route was along the Canadian shore.

There is a remarkable parallelism in the deaths of the pioneer missionaries Menard and Marquette; both ending their lives, as they had wished and prayed for, like St. Francis Xavier, on a mission journey, far from their brethren, and in total, or almost total, abandonment and want of human consolation.