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Updated: May 15, 2025
Up to this time the large seminary alone existed; of the five ecclesiastics who were its inmates in 1663, Louis Joliet abandoned the priestly career. It was he who, impelled by his adventurous instincts, sought out, together with Father Marquette, the mouth of the Mississippi. Now, what were the results accomplished by the efforts of the missionaries at this period of our history?
Two centuries and a half ago Marquette and Joliet, bearing the commission of the French Governor of Quebec, embarked upon their expedition for the discovery of new countries to the southward. Animated by the earnest desire of extending the blessings of religion no less than that of adding to the domain of their imperial master, they set out upon an expedition which has become historic.
Some doubt was felt as to the Walloons, who had so lately transferred themselves from the archduke's army, but their commander, Marquette, made them all lift up their hands, and swear solemnly to live or die that day at the feet of Prince Maurice. Two hours long these two armies had stood looking each other in the face. It was near two o'clock when the arch duke at last gave the signal to advance.
Leaving this village, they pressed southward twenty odd miles to another Arkansas village. The attitude 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.
I have read in the chronicles, with a regret as great as that of the hungry Hennepin, that the Illinois, from whom La Salle expected hospitality at their village farther down the Illinois River, which had been visited by Marquette twice, were off on their hunting expeditions. But I have satisfaction in knowing that he took needful food from their caches in my own county, now named La Salle.
Immediately upon Marquette reaching their village, they hastened to entreat of him powder and ball, that they might fit out an expedition against their foes.
Reuben G. Thwaites in his "Father Marquette" quotes the following description, written by a Jesuit missionary about eight years after Radisson's visit: "What is commonly called the Saut is not properly a Saut, or a very high water-fall, but a very violent current of waters from Lake Superior, which, finding themselves checked by a great number of rocks, form a dangerous cascade of half a league in width, all these waters descending and plunging headlong together."
But let us look a little more closely at the means by which they accomplished undertakings which, to any other race of men, would have been not only impracticable, but utterly desperate. Take again, as the representative of his class, the case of Father Marquette, than whom, obscure as his name is in the wastes of history, no man ever lived a more instructive and exemplary life.
Here, too, was a savage hand-to-hand combat with broadswords and pikes, and when the pikes were broken, with great clubs and stakes pulled from the fascines; but the besiegers were victorious, and the defenders sullenly withdrew with their wounded to the inner entrenchments. On the 27th June, Daniel de Hartaing, Lord of Marquette, was sent by the States-General to take command in Ostend.
Ignace, where to-day candles burn before the portrait of Pere Marquette, saw a vessel equipped with sails, as large as the ships with which Jacques Cartier first crossed the Atlantic, come ploughing its way through waters that had never before borne such burdens without the beating of oars or paddles.
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