[68] Letter of Gravier to Laval, September 17, 1697, Jesuit Relations, LXV, 52.
Pinet was a man of deeds rather than words, and has himself left no account of his mission. The statements of his associates show that he was successful in his work here; the adult Indians, "hardened in debauchery," paid little heed to his teachings, but the young were baptized, and even the medicine men, who were the most inveterate opponents of Christianity, manifested a desire to have their children instructed.[69] It was Pinet's practice to spend only the summer season at Chicago. The winters he spent with the missionaries lower down on the Illinois, or in following his charges on their annual hunt.[70]
[69] Ibid., 70; Shea, Early Voyages Up and Down the Mississippi, 53-54.
[70] Jesuit Relations, LXV, 70; Shea, op. cit., 53, 59.
The site of the mission of the Guardian Angel has long been a subject of misapprehension. Aside from the general allusions to the mission as being at Chicago, the document of chief importance in determining its location is the letter of St. Cosme of January 2, 1699.[71] He had passed during the preceding autumn and early winter, in company with a party of associates, from Mackinac to the Mississippi by way of Green Bay, the Chicago Portage, and the Illinois River route, and the letter is, in fact, a report concerning this trip. The party spent some time at Pinet's mission, detained by storms and other obstacles. From a study of this letter, as printed by Shea, Grover concludes that the mission was situated above the modern Chicago on the North Shore, near the present village of Gross Point.[72]
[71] Printed in Shea, op. cit., 45 ff.
[72] Grover, Pinet, 167 ff.
Shea's translation of St. Cosme's letter, however, frequently departs from the original manuscript.[73] Because of this fact, reference to the latter deprives Grover's argument of whatever force it might otherwise possess.[74] It shows that St. Cosme's party left the site of the modern city of Racine on October 17, and having been detained by wind, cabined three days later "five leagues from Chikagwa." This they should have reached early on the twenty-first, but a wind suddenly springing up from the lake obliged them to land "half a league from Etpikagwa." Here the priests left their baggage with the canoemen, and went "by land" to the house of Father Pinet, which they say was built on the bank of the little river, having on one side the lake and on the other a fine large prairie. On the twenty-fourth, the wind having fallen, they had their canoes brought with all their baggage, and, the waters being extremely low, placed everything not absolutely necessary for their further journey in a cache, to be sent for the following spring. Finally on the twenty-ninth they started from Chicago and encamped for the night at the portage, two leagues up the river.
[73] This is preserved in the archives of Laval University at Quebec. I have used an attested copy made "with the greatest possible fidelity" by Father Gosselin, archivist of Laval University, in the Chicago Historical Society library.
[74] Aside from the inaccuracy of Shea's translation of St. Cosme's letter, on which Grover bases his argument, he has made it the basis of a number of unwarranted and erroneous conclusions.