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The 17th of May, 1673, Father Jacques Marquette, the missionary priest of St. Ignace, on what is now called the north shore of Michigan, and Louis Jolliet, a trader from Montreal, set out on a journey together.
The work that was commenced by Jolliet and Marquette, of solving the mystery that had so long surrounded the Mississippi, was completed by Réné Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, a native of Rouen, who came to Canada when quite a young man, and obtained a grant of land from the Sulpician proprietors of Montreal at the head of the rapids, then known as St. Louis.
As early as 1634, they penetrated into Canada, and, shortly after to the sources of the Mississippi and the prairies of Illinois. "My companion," said the fearless Marquette, "is an envoy of France, to discover new countries; but I am an ambassador of God, to enlighten them with the gospel." But of all the missions of the Jesuits, those in Paraguay were the most successful.
Here, then, in the wide valley which Father Marquette saw peaceful and golden, lazy with fruit and river, half-asleep beneath the nod of God, here, then, was staged every element for human tragedy, every element of the modern economic paradox. Ah! That hot, wide plain of East St. Louis is a gripping thing.
He was Canadian born, the son of a wagon-maker in Quebec; and he had been well educated, and possessed an active, adventurous mind. He was dressed for this expedition in the tough buckskin hunting suit which frontiersmen then wore. But Marquette retained the long black cassock of the priest.
They accorded the strangers a kind reception and furnished guides to direct the party, which was composed of nine persons in all Joliet, Marquette, with five other whites, and two natives.
The girl dropped to the ground, drew her blanket over her head, and began to sing her death-song. "So the black-coat and the woman-stealer have come to die before the Indian's god?" sneered the chief. "If it be God's will, we will die defying your god and you," replied Marquette. "Yet we fear not death, and if God willed he could deliver us as easily as he could destroy that worthless image."
One was near the entrance of the river into Lake Huron, about forty miles below the celebrated Falls of St. Mary. The other was at Green Bay, an immense lake in itself, jutting out from the northwestern extremity of Lake Michigan. Father Marquette reared his log-cabin in the vicinity of a small Indian village, on the main land, just south of the island of Mackinaw. He named the station St.
Three weeks later the steam barge Pole Star sailed down the reach of Saginaw Bay. Thorpe had received letters from Carpenter advising him of a credit to him at a Marquette bank, and inclosing a draft sufficient for current expenses. Tim Shearer had helped make out the list of necessaries.
Upon each of the four sides of the square, the good father, who had ever been taught to regard with the utmost veneration the Mother of Jesus, hung a picture of the Blessed Virgin, that all might gaze upon her sad yet beautiful features. Father Marquette took his seat upon a mat, in the centre of the enclosure.
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