In returning, Joliet and Marquette came up the Illinois River, and reached Lake Michigan by portaging over to the Chicago River. They were back at the Jesuit mission at De Pere, in September. Marquette having fallen ill, Joliet was obliged to return to Quebec alone, leaving the missionary to spend the winter with his Wisconsin friends. When almost within sight of the French settlement at Montreal, at the mouth of the Ottawa River, poor Joliet lost all his papers in the dangerous Lachine rapids, and could make only a verbal report to the government. He later prepared a map of his route, with great care, and forwarded that to France; it is one of the best maps of the interior parts of North America made in the seventeenth century. Joliet, as the leader of the expedition, had hoped to receive, either in office or lands, substantial rewards for his great discoveries; but there were now new officials at Quebec, with whom he had little influence, and the recompense of this brave spirit was small. Others reaped what advantages there were in the opening of the Mississippi valley to the fur trade.
On the other hand, the unworldly priest who was his friend and companion, and who neither desired nor needed special recognition for what he had done, has, all unconsciously, won most of the glory of this brilliant enterprise. Under the rules of the Jesuit order, each missionary in New France was obliged to forward to his superior at Quebec, once each year, a written journal of his doings. Marquette prepared his report at leisure during the winter, while at De Pere, and in the spring sent it down to Quebec, by an Indian who was going thither to trade with the whites. Accompanying it was a crudely drawn but fairly accurate map of the Mississippi basin. The journal and map arrived safely, but for some reason neither was then printed; indeed, they remained almost unknown to the world for a hundred and seventy-nine years, being at last published in 1852. Marquette never learned the fate of either Joliet's elaborate records or his own simple story of the expedition, for he died in May, 1675, on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, worn out by disease and by excessive labors in behalf of the Indians.
By the time Marquette's journal was finally published, Joliet had been well-nigh forgotten; and to Marquette, because his journal was the only one printed, is given the chief credit in nearly every American history. The legislature of Wisconsin has placed a beautiful marble statue of the gentle Marquette, as the discoverer of the Mississippi, in the capitol in Washington; whereas the name of his sturdy chief is perpetuated only in the principal prison city of Illinois.
THE JESUIT MISSIONARIES
In planting settlements in Canada (or New France, as it was then called), the French had two principal objects in view: the fur trade with the Indians, and the conversion of these Indians to the Christian religion. Roman Catholic missionaries from France therefore accompanied the first settlers, and were always prominent in the affairs of the colony. Governor Champlain brought to Quebec some missionaries of the Recollect order, a branch of the Franciscans; but after a few years, the difficulties of their task proved so great that the Recollects asked the Jesuits, a much stronger order, to come over and help them. It was not long before nearly all the Franciscans returned home, and the Jesuits were practically the only missionaries in New France.
During the first few years, these missionaries spent their winters in Quebec, ministering to the colonists, and each spring went out to meet the Indians in their summer camps. It was soon found, however, that greater persistence was needed; and after that, instead of returning home in the autumn, they followed the savages upon their winter hunts. In order to convert the Indians, the missionaries studied their many languages, their habits, and their manner of thought, lived as they lived, and with them often suffered untold misery, for life in a savage camp is sometimes almost unbearable to educated and refined white men, such as the French Jesuits were. They did not succeed in winning over to Christianity many of their savage companions; indeed, the latter frequently treated them with great cruelty, and several of the missionaries were tortured to death.
Such were the ignorance and superstition of the Indians, that every disaster which happened to them, poor luck in hunting, famine, accident, or disease, was attributed to the "black gowns," as the Jesuits were called because of their long black cassocks. When the missionaries were performing the rites of their church, baptizing children or sick people, or saying mass, it was thought by these simple barbarians that they were practicing magic for the destruction of the red men. Thus the Jesuits, during the hundred years or more which they spent in traveling far and near through the forests of New France, seeking new tribes to convert, while still laboring with those already known, were in a state of perpetual martyrdom for the cause of Christianity. No soldier has ever performed greater acts of heroism than these devoted disciples of the cross. Several of the best and bravest of them were among the pioneers of the Wisconsin wilderness.
The first Jesuit missionary to come to Wisconsin was Father René Ménard (pr. Ray-nay' May-nar'). He had sailed from France to Canada in the year 1640, when he was thirty-five years old, and on his arrival was sent to the savages east of Lake Huron, among whom he labored and suffered for eight years. Later, he went to the Iroquois, in New York, and at last had to fly for his life, on account of an Indian plot to murder all the French missionaries in that country. He was for some time the superior of his order, at the Three Rivers mission, on the St. Lawrence, halfway between Quebec and Montreal, and in the early autumn of 1660 was summoned to go to Lake Superior, which had been made known through the explorations of Radisson and Groseilliers.