CHAPTER IX
THE MISSION OF VILLE MARIE
While the Jesuits carried the Cross to the Hurons, the Algonquins, and the Iroquois, other crusaders, equally n.o.ble and courageous, planted it on the spot where now stands the foremost city of the Dominion. The settlement of the large and fertile island at the confluence of the Ottawa and the St Lawrence had a motive all its own.
Quebec was founded primarily for trade; and so with practically all other settlements which have grown into great centres of population. But Montreal was originally intended solely for a mission station. Its founders had no thought of trade; indeed, they were prohibited from dealing in furs, then the chief marketable product of the colony.
We have seen that the men and women who founded the Sillery mission, and the Hotel-Dieu and the Ursuline convent at Quebec, received their inspiration from the Relations of the Jesuits. So likewise did the founders of the settlement on the island of Montreal. Jerome le Royer de la Dauversiere of La Fleche in Anjou, a receiver of taxes, and Abbe Jean Jacques Olier of Paris, were the prime movers in the undertaking. Each independently of the other had conceived the idea of establishing on the island of Hochelaga a mission for the conversion of the heathen in Canada. Meeting by accident at the Chateau of Meudon near Paris, they planned their enterprise, and decided to found a colony of devotees, composed of an order of priests, an order of sisters to care for the sick and infirm, and an order of nuns for the teaching of young Indians and the children of settlers at the mission. These two enthusiasts went to work in a quite practical way to realize their ambition. They succeeded in interesting the Baron de Fancamp and three other wealthy gentlemen, and soon had a sum--about $75,000-- ample for the establishment of the colony. While they were busy at this work, Mademoiselle Jeanne Mance, a courageous and devout woman, was moved by one of Father Le Jeune"s Relations to devote her life to the care of the wounded and suffering in the wilds of New France; and the projected colony on the island of Montreal offered an opportunity for the fulfilment of her desire. Madame de Bullion, a rich and very charitable woman, had agreed to aid Olier and Dauversiere by endowing a hospital in the colony, and Jeanne Mance offered her services as nurse and housekeeper. A leader was needed, a man of soldierly training and pious life; and in Paul de Chomedy, Sieur de Maisonneuve, a veteran of the wars in Holland, the ideal man was found. No attempt was made at this time to secure teachers; there would be at first neither white nor red children to teach, for there were no Indians living on the island of Montreal, and the colonists would not at first bring their families to this wilderness post. The funds collected and the leader found, the next step was to get permission from the Hundred a.s.sociates to settle on the island; and here was a difficulty. The a.s.sociates had been liberal in land-grants to their own members; and Jean de Lauzon, the president, had received for himself large concessions, among them the entire island of Montreal. However, he was persuaded, probably for a consideration, to part with a grant that brought him no return, and which he could visit only at the risk of his scalp. Olier and Dauversiere and their a.s.sociates secured the land, and Maisonneuve was appointed governor of the new colony.
The Jesuits had played an important part in this undertaking. It was their Relations that had given the impulse, and the promoters of the colony had the able a.s.sistance of Father Charles Lalemant, whom we have already met as the first superior of the Jesuit order in New France. It was he who persuaded Jean de Lauzon to consent to surrender his grant, and it was to him that Maisonneuve first came to seek advice as to how he could best consecrate his sword to the Church in Canada. And it was largely on Lalemant"s recommendation that Maisonneuve received his appointment as leader of the colonists and governor of the colony. To Lalemant, too, came Jeanne Mance when she first heard the clear call to the new mission.
The promoters of the "Society of Our Lady of Montreal"
now set to work to collect recruits for the mission, provide supplies, and prepare vessels to transport the colonists to New France. All was ready about the middle of June 1641, and, while Dauversiere, Olier, and Fancamp remained in France to look after the interests of the colony there, Maisonneuve and Jeanne Mance, with three other women and about fifty men, set sail and arrived in Quebec before the end of August. Here they did not find the enthusiastic welcome which they expected. Maisonneuve had come with a special commission as governor of Montreal, and was coldly received by Montmagny, who was jealous of him, and who moreover believed, no doubt rightly, that a divided authority would not be in the best interests of struggling New France. The Jesuits at Quebec tried to persuade Maisonneuve to abandon his enterprise. There were, they said, no inhabitants on the island of Montreal, it was in the direct route of the Mohawks, who annually haunted the Ottawa and St Lawrence, and swift destruction would surely be the fate of the colony. But Maisonneuve could not be moved from his fixed purpose; he would go to Montreal even "if every tree on that island were to be changed to an Iroquois."
Accompanied by Father Vimont, the superior of the Jesuits, and Governor Montmagny, Maisonneuve went up the river, and took formal possession of the island on the 15th of October in the name of the "Society of Our Lady of Montreal." The colonists spent the winter at St Michel, near Sillery, for there was no room for the Montrealers in the buildings at Quebec. On May 8, 1642, Maisonneuve led his company--in a pinnace, a barge, and two row-boats --to the site of the new colony. Here, too, were Father Vimont and Madame de la Peltrie, who for the nonce had deserted her Ursulines to accompany Jeanne Mance to a field that offered greater excitement and danger. On the 18th of May, at a spot where tall warehouses now abound and where the varied roar of the traffic of a great city never ceases, they set up an altar, and Father Vimont consecrated the island mission. In the course of his sermon he uttered the prophetic words: "You are a grain of mustard seed that shall rise and grow till its branches overshadow the earth. You are few, but your work is the work of G.o.d. His smile is upon you and your children shall fill the land." The city of Montreal, the throbbing heart of the business life of Canada, with its half-million and more inhabitants and its magnificent charitable, religious, and educational inst.i.tutions, is the fulfilment of his words.
But the beginnings were feeble and disheartening. A few houses, flanked by a windmill and fort, and connected by a footpath where now runs St Paul Street, represented the beginnings of Montreal--or Ville Marie, as the settlement had been christened by the Society in Paris.
The Iroquois soon learned of Ville Marie. Within a few months a scalping party of Mohawks paid it a visit, and killed several workmen and wounded others. The wounded became the care of Jeanne Mance, who never henceforth lacked patients. Between the labourers injured by accident in the forest and the wounded from Iroquois fights, the gentle-handed nurse and her a.s.sistants were kept always busy. Many of her patients were friendly Indians who had suffered in the raids; sometimes even a sorely smitten Iroquois would be borne to the rude hospital.
But the mission did not grow. The Algonquins and Hurons viewed the island of Montreal as too exposed for a permanent encampment, for the Iroquois ever hovered about it. At no season of the year was Ville Marie immune from attack; night and day the inhabitants had to be on the alert; and often the cry "The Iroquois!" sent the entire population to the shelter of the fort. For fifteen years there was little change in the population, and year after year the same dangers and hardships faced the people.
But Maisonneuve and Jeanne Mance hoped on, confident that Ville Marie was destined to have a glorious future. In 1653 Marguerite Bourgeoys, a woman of great force of character, arrived in the colony to open a school. Finding no white pupils, she gathered about her a few red children, and made her school-room in a stable a.s.signed to her by Maisonneuve. Presently more pupils came, and among them some white children. In 1658 she returned to France to secure a.s.sistants, and when, in the following year, she resumed her labours at Ville Marie, it was as the head of the "Congregation of the Sisters of Notre Dame," an organization that has so greatly developed as to make its influence felt, not only in Canada, but in the United States as well.
Meanwhile, in 1642, Abbe Olier had founded the Seminary of St Sulpice in Paris; and during the intervening years had been a.s.siduously training missionaries to take over the spiritual control of Ville Marie. Since its founding the Jesuits Poncet, Du Peron, Le Moyne, and Pijart, who had been trained in the difficult school of the Huron mission, and Le Jeune and Druillettes, had ministered to the inhabitants. But in August 1657 the Sulpician priests Gabriel de Queylus, Gabriel Souart, and Dominic Galinier arrived at Ville Marie, and the Jesuits immediately surrendered the parish to them. Henceforth Ville Marie was to be the peculiar care of the Sulpicians, giving them for many years enough of both difficulty and danger.
The Iroquois peril did not abate. Never a month pa.s.sed but the alarm-bell rang out to warn the settlers that the savages were at hand. Even the priests went about their duties with sword at side; and two of them, Vignal and Le Maitre, fell beneath the tomahawk. Only the courage, watchfulness, and foresight of Maisonneuve and of such men as Sergeant-Major Lambert Closse, who gave his life for the colony, saved Ville Marie from utter destruction.
And as years went on the Iroquois grew bolder. Having scattered the Hurons and the Algonquins, they now threatened every trading-post and mission station in Canada.
In 1660 the climax came. Early in the spring of that year the hara.s.sed mission at Ville Marie learned that several hundred Iroquois, who had wintered on the upper Ottawa, were coming down, and that another horde, approaching by way of the Richelieu, would join forces with them. It was the purpose of the savages to destroy Ville Marie and Three Rivers and Quebec, and to wipe out the French on the St Lawrence for good and all.
There was at this time in Ville Marie a young soldier named Adam Daulac, or Dollard, Sieur des Ormeaux, twenty-five years old. He believed that the best defence was attack, and boldly proposed to ascend the Ottawa, with a band of sixteen volunteers, and waylay the Iroquois coming from the north-west. And so the gallant young men bade farewell to their friends and set out. In two large canoes they paddled up the Ottawa, past the swift waters at Ste Anne, through the smooth stretch of the Lake of the Two Mountains, up the fierce current at Carillon, and then on to the rapids of the Long Sault. Here they paused; this was a fitting place for battle. The Iroquois would never expect to find a handful of Frenchmen here, and they could be surprised as they raced down the rapids.
On a level stretch near the foot of the Sault there was a rude fort ready at hand, a palisaded structure which had served during the previous autumn as a shelter for an Algonquin war-party. The French drew the canoes up on the sh.o.r.e, and stored the provisions and ammunition in the fort. Then all save the watchful sentinels lay down for a much-needed rest. On the following day Daulac"s band was reinforced by four Algonquins and forty Hurons, the Hurons led by the chief Annahotaha, an inveterate foe of the Iroquois, who had on more than one occasion taken terrible revenge on the enemies of his people.
Daulac, now in command of sixty men, confidently awaited the Iroquois. In the meantime axe and saw and shovel were plied to erect a second row of palisades and to fill the s.p.a.ce between with earth to the height of a man"s breast.
Scouts went out and discovered the encampment of the Iroquois, and at last brought the news that two canoes were running the rapids. Daulac hurriedly placed several of his best marksmen in ambush at a spot where the Iroquois were likely to land. The musketeers, however, in their excitement, did not kill all the canoemen. Two of the Iroquois escaped and sped back through the forest to warn their countrymen, and soon a hundred canoes came leaping down the turbulent waters. For a moment Daulac and his men watched the advancing savages. Then they dashed into the fort to prepare for the fight. Against their defences rushed the Iroquois. Again and again the defenders drove them back with great loss. And for a week the heroic band, living on short rations of crushed corn and water from a well they had dug within the fort, kept the a.s.sailants at bay. During this time the Iroquois received large reinforcements, but to no avail. At length they made shields of split logs heavy enough to resist bullets; and presently the bewildered defenders of the fort saw a wooden wall advancing against them. They fired rapid, despairing volleys; a few of the shield-bearers fell, but their places were quickly filled from those in the rear. At the foot of the palisades the Iroquois cast aside the shields, and, hatchet in hand, hacked an opening.
The end had come. The Iroquois breached the wall. But Daulac and his men stood to the last, brandishing knife and axe, while with fierce war-cries the Iroquois bounded into the fort; and when the sounds of battle ceased there remained only three Frenchmen, living but mortally wounded, on whom the savages could glut their vengeance.
[Footnote: The story of the fight was brought to Montreal by some Hurons who deserted Daulac"s party and escaped.]
The Iroquois had won, but they had no stomach for raiding the settlements. If seventeen Frenchmen, a.s.sisted by a few Indians, could keep their hosts at bay for a week, it would be useless to attack strongly fortified posts.
And so Daulac and his men at this "Canadian Thermopylae"
had really turned aside the tide of war from New France.
The settlements were saved, and for a time traders and missionaries journeyed along the St Lawrence and the Ottawa unmolested.
In 1663, when Louis XIV took New France under his wing, the surviving members of the original Society of Our Lady of Montreal made over the island to the Sulpicians, who a.s.sumed the liabilities of the Society, and took up the task of looking after the education of the inhabitants and the care of the sick. Four years later the Seminary of St Sulpice was given judicial rights in the mission of Ville Marie. In 1668 five more Sulpicians came to the colony, among them Rene de Galinee and Dollier de Ca.s.son, who were to win distinction as missionaries and explorers.
Many Sulpician missions pushed out from Ville Marie, along the upper St Lawrence and the north sh.o.r.e of Lake Ontario.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century the complexion of Ville Marie, then generally called Montreal, had somewhat changed. The Jesuits, the Recollets, who had returned to New France in 1670, and the Sulpicians all laboured there. Moreover, from a mere mission station it had become an important trading centre; and as such it was to continue. In position it was well adapted for the fur trade, and after the British took possession in 1760 it became the emporium of a great traffic in the fur-fields of the north and west. But its glorious days are those of its infancy, the days of Maisonneuve and Daulac, of Jeanne Mance and Marguerite Bourgeoys, of Rene de Galinee and Dollier de Ca.s.son.
CHAPTER X
THE MISSIONARY EXPLORERS
The establishment of royal government in 1663 gave new life to the missions of Canada, and the missionaries pressed forward with unflagging zeal. They penetrated to the remotest known tribes and blazed fresh trails for traders and settlers in the western and northern wildernesses. We have not s.p.a.ce here to tell the story of these pathfinders, but a few examples may be given.
In 1665 Father Claude Allouez went to Lake Superior to begin a sojourn of twenty-five years among the Indians in the region which now forms part of the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. In 1666 Father Gabriel Druillettes, "the patriarch" of the Abnaki mission, who had already borne the Cross to the Crees of the north, began his labours among the Algonquins of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior. In 1669 and 1670 the Sulpicians Dollier de Ca.s.son and Rene de Galinee explored and charted Lake Erie and the waters between it and Lake Huron. In 1670 Father Claude Dablon, superior of the western missions, joined Father Allouez at the mission of St Francois-Xavier on Green Bay; and, among the Winnebagoes of this region and the Mascoutens and Miamis between the rivers Fox and Wisconsin, he learned of "the famous river called the Mississippi." In 1672 Father Charles Albanel toiled from the Saguenay to Hudson Bay, partly as missionary, but chiefly to lay claim to the country for New France, and to watch the operations of the newly founded Hudson"s Bay Company.
It was the 25th of May 1670 when Galinee and Ca.s.son arrived at Sault Ste Marie, after an arduous canoe journey from their wintering camp on Lake Erie, near the site of the present town of Port Dover. At the Sault they found a thriving mission. It had a capacious chapel and a comfortable dwelling-house; it was surrounded by a palisade of cedars, and about it were cultivated bits of ground planted with wheat, Indian corn, peas, and pumpkins. Near by were cl.u.s.ters of bark wigwams, the homes of Ojibwas and other Indians, who came here each year to catch the whitefish that teemed in the waters of the rapids fronting the settlement.
One of the priests in charge of this mission, when the Sulpicians halted at it on their circuitous journey back to Montreal, was the young Jesuit Jacques Marquette, a man of delicate mould, indomitable will, keen intellect, and ardent faith. He was not to remain long at Sault Ste Marie; for he had heard "the call of the west"; and in the summer of this year he set out for the mission of St Esprit, at La Pointe, on the south-west sh.o.r.e of Lake Superior. Here there was a motley collection of Indians, among them many Hurons and Petuns, who had fled to this remote post to be out of reach of the Iroquois. These exiles from Huronia still remembered the Jesuits and retained "a little Christianity." St Esprit was not only a mission; it was a centre of the fur trade, and to it came Illinois Indians from the Mississippi and Sioux from the western prairies. From these Marquette learned of the great river, and from their description of it he was convinced that it flowed into the Gulf of California. He had a burning desire to visit the savage hordes that dwelt along this river, and a longing to explore it to its mouth. But while he meditated the journey war broke out between the Sioux--the Iroquois of the west--and the Hurons and Ottawas of St Esprit. The Sioux won, and the vanquished Hurons and Ottawas took to flight, the Hurons going to Michilimackinac and the Ottawas to Great Manitoulin Island. Marquette followed the Hurons, and set up a mission at Point St Ignace, on the north sh.o.r.e of the strait of Michilimackinac.
Meanwhile "the great intendant," Talon, was pushing out in all directions for new territory to add to the French dominions in America. And just before the end of his brilliant administration he commissioned the explorer Louis Jolliet to find and explore the Mississippi, of which so much had been heard from missionaries, traders, and Indians. Like Marquette, Talon believed that this river flowed into the Western Sea--the Pacific ocean--and that it would open a route to China and the Indies; and it was directed that Marquette should accompany Jolliet on the journey.
Jolliet left Montreal in the autumn of 1672 and reached Michilimackinac, where he was to spend the winter with Marquette, just as the ice was forming on lake and river.
When he drew up his canoe in front of the palisaded mission at Point St Ignace, Marquette felt that his ambitions were about to be realized. He was disappointed in his flock of Algonquins and the feeble remnant of Hurons, and he hoped to gather about him on the Great Plains--of whose vegetation and game he had heard marvellous accounts--a mult.i.tude of Indians who would welcome his Gospel message. Dablon and Allouez had already touched the outskirts of this country, and their success was an earnest of great things in store.
The winter pa.s.sed slowly for Marquette; but at length, on May 17, 1673, the explorer and the missionary with five a.s.sistants--a feeble band to risk a plunge into the unknown--launched their canoes and headed westward.
The explorers first shaped their course along the northern sh.o.r.e of Lake Michigan, then steered south-west until they reached the mouth of the Menominee river, flowing into Green Bay. Here they rested for a brief period among friendly Menominees, who tried to persuade them to give up their venture. According to the Menominees, the banks of the Mississippi were infested by savage tribes who tortured and slew all intruders into their domains. As this did not seem sufficient to discourage Jolliet and Marquette, they added that demons haunted the land bordering the river and monsters the river itself, and that, even if they escaped savages, demons, and monsters, they would perish from the excessive heat of the country Both Jolliet and Marquette had heard such stories from Indians before. Pressing on to the south end of Green Bay, they entered the Fox river and ascended it until they reached Lake Winnebago. After crossing this lake they continued westward up the extension of the Fox. They were now in the land of the Mascoutens and Miamis. The country teemed with life; birds filled the air with whirr of wing and with song; as the voyagers paddled ever westward deer and elk came from their forest lairs to gaze with wondering eyes at these unfamiliar intruders on their haunts. The Mascoutens were friendly, and supplied the travellers with bison flesh and venison, and with guides to direct them over the watershed to the Wisconsin.
They carried the canoes over a forest trail, and launched them on this river; and then with exulting hearts swept forward on the last stage of their journey to the Mississippi. At length, on the 17th of June, they reached the great river and landed at the place where now stands Prairie du Chien. They had the feeling of conquerors, but of conquerors whose greatest battle has yet to be fought. Out of the far north came this mysterious river; but whither did it go? Did these waters sweep onward till they lost themselves in the Pacific, or did they pour into some southern bay of the Atlantic? Such were the questions that agitated the minds of these first of Frenchmen to gaze on the "Father of Waters," [Footnote: It is thought possible that in 1658-59 Pierre Esprit Radisson and Medard Chouart des Groseilliers crossed the Mississippi while hunting furs in the country west of Lake Superior; but there is an element of doubt as to this. Save for the Spaniards, Jolliet and Marquette were the first white men on the Mississippi, so far as known.]
questions that were not to be laid at rest until La Salle, nine years later, toiled down the river and from its mouth viewed the wide expanse of the Gulf of Mexico.
After a brief rest the party launched their canoes and for over a week drifted downward with the current, anchoring their canoes in mid-stream at night for fear of an attack by hostile Indians. But during this time they saw no human beings; the only living things that caught their eyes as they sped past forest and plain were the deer browsing along the banks, the birds circling overhead, and immense herds of buffalo moving like huge armies over the gra.s.sy slopes. At length they reached a village of friendly Illinois, and here they were feasted on fish, dog, and buffalo meat, and spent the balmy midsummer night in the open, sleeping on buffalo robes.
While at this village, Marquette, who had a rare gift of tongues, addressed the Illinois in Algonquin, and thus preached the Gospel for the first time to the Indians of the Mississippi. Here their hosts warned them of the dangers they were going to--death from savages or demons awaited them in the south--and presented them with a calumet as a pa.s.sport to protect them against the tribes below.
After leaving this village the explorers came upon a "hideous monster," a huge fish, the appearance of which almost made them credit the stories of the Indians.
According to Marquette: "His head was like that of a tiger, his nose was sharp, and somewhat resembled a wildcat; his beard was long, his ears stood upright, the colour of his head was grey, and his neck black." Onward swept the explorers past the mouth of the Illinois. A few miles above the present city of Alton they paused to gaze on some high rocks on which fabulous creatures were pictured. "They are," wrote Marquette in his narrative, "as large as a calf, with head and horns like a goat; their eyes red; beard like a tiger"s, and a face like a man"s. Their tails are so long that they pa.s.s over their heads and between their forelegs, under the belly, and ending like a fish"s tail. They are painted red, green, and black." The Indians of the Mississippi were certainly not without imagination and possessed some artistic skill.
No doubt it was these pictured rocks that had originated among the Menominees and Illinois the stories of the demons with which they had regaled Marquette and Jolliet.
While the voyagers were still discussing the pictured rocks, their canoes began to toss and heave on rushing waters, and they found themselves in the midst of plunging logs and tumbling trees. They were at the mouth of the Missouri. As they threaded their way past this dangerous point, Marquette resolved that he would one day ascend this river that he might "preach the Gospel to all the peoples of this New World who have so long grovelled in the darkness of infidelity."
Onward still into the unknown! At the mouth of the Ohio--then called by the Indians the Ouabouskigon [Footnote: This word, as well as the word Ohio, or O-he-ho, means "The Beautiful."]--they drew up their canoes to rest and then advanced a little farther south to an Illinois village. The inhabitants of this village wore European clothing and had beads, knives, and hatchets, obtained no doubt from the Spaniards. The Indians told the explorers that the mouth of the river was distant only a ten-days"
journey, whereas it was in reality a thousand miles away.
But with increased hope the Frenchmen once more launched their canoes and went on until they came to the mouth of the Arkansas. Here they met with the first hostile demonstration. Indians, with bows bent and war-clubs raised, threatened destruction to these unknown whites; but Marquette, calm, courageous, and confident, stood up in the bow of his canoe and held aloft the calumet the Illinois had given him. The pa.s.sport was respected and the elders of the village, which was close at hand, invited the voyagers ash.o.r.e and feasted them with sagamite and fish. Leaving this village, they pressed southward twenty odd miles to another Arkansas village. The att.i.tude of the Indians here alarmed them, and this, with the apprehension that the mouth of the Mississippi was much farther away than they had been led to believe, decided them to return.
Jolliet and Marquette were now satisfied with what they had achieved. The southward trend of the river proved conclusively that it could not fall into the Gulf of California, and, as they were in lat.i.tude 33 degrees 41 minutes, the river could not empty into the Atlantic in Virginia. It must therefore join the sea either on the coast of Florida or in the Gulf of Mexico. Moreover, to proceed farther would but add weary miles to the difficult return journey. But the chief reason for turning back is best given in Marquette"s own words:
We considered that the advantage of our travels would be altogether lost to our nation if we fell into the hands of the Spaniards, from whom we could expect no other treatment but death or slavery; besides, we saw that we were not prepared to resist the Indians, the allies of the Europeans, who continually infested the lower part of the river.
On the 17th of July, just one month after they first sighted the waters of the Mississippi, the explorers turned their canoes northward. A little south of the Illinois river some friendly Indians told them of a shorter way to Lake Michigan than by the Wisconsin and Fox river route. These Indians were anxious to have Marquette remain with them and establish a mission. He was unable to comply with their request, for in the miasmal region of the lower Mississippi he had contracted a severe malarial fever; but he promised to return to them as soon as his health permitted. The explorers were now joined by a chief and a band of Indians as guides to Lake Michigan, and with these they ascended the Illinois and then the river Des Plaines. From the river Des Plaines they portaged their canoes to the Chicago river and descended it to Lake Michigan. They arrived at Green Bay at the end of September, having travelled in all, since leaving this spot, over twenty-five hundred miles.
Marquette was too ill to go farther; and he remained at Green Bay to recruit his strength, while Jolliet hastened to Quebec to report to Frontenac the results of his expedition. Unfortunately, the canoe in which Jolliet travelled was upset in the Lachine rapids and the papers containing his charts and the account of his journey were lost; however, he was able to piece out from memory the story of his Ulysses-like wanderings.
By the autumn of 1674 Marquette thought that he had completely recovered his health, and, having received permission from his superior, he set out for the Illinois country on the 25th of October to establish the mission of the Immaculate Conception. He was accompanied on this journey by two a.s.sistants--two true heroes--known to history only as Pierre and Jacques, and a band of Potawatomis and Illinois. In ten canoes the party paddled southward from Green Bay, for nearly a month buffeting the tempestuous autumn seas of Lake Michigan. They ascended the Chicago river for six miles and encamped. Marquette could go no farther; he was once more prostrated with illness, and a severe hemorrhage threatened to carry him off. But his valiant spirit conquered, and during the winter he was able to minister to some Illinois, who were encamped a short distance away and who paid him occasional visits. By the spring he had so far recovered that he decided to undertake the journey to the Mississippi, his heart set on founding a mission among the tribes there.
On the 13th of March he and his two helpers broke camp and portaged their canoe to the Des Plaines. Near the junction of this river with the Illinois was the Indian town of Old Kaskaskia. The Indians of this town gave him a welcome worthy of a conqueror, such as indeed he really was. He went among them teaching and preaching; but brain and body were burning with fever; he felt that he had not long to live, and if he would die among his own people he must hasten home. He summoned the Indians to a grand council. And, in one of G.o.d"s first temples--a meadow decked with spring flowers and roofed by the blue vault of heaven--he preached to a congregation of over three thousand--chiefs, warriors, women, and children. His sermon finished, he blessed his hearers, and, leaving his words to sink into their hearts, bade them farewell.
Pierre and Jacques now made ready the canoe, and the journey to Michilimackinac began. When they reached Lake Michigan Marquette was only half conscious. While he lay on the robes piled in the bottom of the canoe, his faithful henchmen paddled furiously to reach their destination.
But their efforts were in vain; Marquette saw that his end was approaching and bade them turn the canoe to land.
And on May 19, 1675, on the bleak sh.o.r.e of Lake Michigan, this hero of the Cross, the greatest of the missionary explorers, entered into his rest. He was only thirty-eight; he had not finished his work; he had not realized his ambitions; but his memory lives, a force for good, as that of one who dared and endured and pa.s.sionately followed the path of the setting sun.