It has already been stated that F. Marquette had sent some pious pictures to the Illinois, and by the same messenger to the Sioux, whom he expected to be embraced in his intended mission. The messenger who carried the father's presents also bore his request for protection and a safe-conduct to such European missionaries as might visit or pass through their country, and a message, “That the black-gown wished to pass to the country of the Assinipoils and Kilistinons; that he was already among the Outagamis; and that he himself was going in the fall to the Illinois.”
Sad indeed must have been the feelings of the good father, when, early in the winter, the Sioux returned to him the pious pictures he had sent them, in which he saw an ominous forerunner of impending war. The Ottawas and Hurons had by their insolence aroused the indignation of the Sioux, and the latter had seized the tomahawk and prepared for the bloody and revengeful strife. His hopes of reaching the cabins of the Sioux by an overland route now vanished before the approaching storm. The Indians at Lapointe could not withstand the fierce onsets of the Dakotah war-parties, and first the Ottawas, abandoning their village, launched their canoes upon the lake, and were soon gathered in Ekaentoulon Island. The Hurons remained alone at Lapointe, and F. Marquette remained in the midst of them to minister to their spiritual wants, share their dangers, and uphold their faith and courage. And when they too were forced to [pg 693] depart, the good father, ever true to his spiritual flock, was content to “turn his back on his beloved Illinois to accompany his Hurons in their wanderings and hardships.” The Hurons settled at Mackinaw, a bleak and desolate spot, but the abundance of fish the neighboring waters afforded was certain to secure the fugitives from starvation, while the very desolation of the scene seemed a protection from hostile bands. Scarcely had the Hurons thrown up their cabins on this dreary shore, when a rude sylvan chapel, surmounted by a cross, graced and cheered the scene, and became the cradle of religion at the mission of S. Ignatius. Such was the early origin of Michilimackinac. Beside the enclosure of cabins and chapel arose a palisade fort for defence. For several years F. Marquette labored in this remote and arduous station, cheered only by the consolations which spring from faith and by the bountiful harvests of souls he reaped.
Though longing to proceed on his mission to the Illinois, as all his letters so earnestly manifest, F. Marquette found ample work both for his mind and hands in arranging matters at Lapointe, so that his departure should cause as little damage as possible to that mission, to which he had been so faithful and devoted, and which he was now about to confide to the care of another, and in making the necessary preparations for his departure; for his time seemed now near at hand. The dreary days of winter were enlivened by recounting the projected plans of the coming spring, and in gathering all the information within his reach concerning the Mississippi and the nations inhabiting its banks. Most of the actual knowledge then possessed on the subject was derived from the accounts and relations of the Jesuit missionaries of the Northwest, and from the reports of the Canadian traders among the Indians. His inquiries of the more northern tribes were eagerly answered by startling fables of various hues and contradictory generalities, but nothing definite could be learned from them as to the course of the great river, its direction or outlet, or of the natives along its course. All was conjecture and theory. As early as 1639 the Sieur Nicolet, who was the interpreter of the French colony of New France, had penetrated westward to the furthest grounds of the Algonquins, and had encountered the Winnebagoes, “a people called so because they came from a distant sea, but whom the French erroneously called Puents.” And we learn from F. Vimont that “the Sieur Nicolet, who had penetrated furthest into those distant countries, avers that, had he sailed three days more on a great river which flows from that lake (Green Bay), he would have found the sea.” And although the Indians called the Mississippi itself “the sea,” and the Sieur Nicolet may have fallen into the same error, in either case it seems quite certain that he was the first to reach the waters of that river. In 1641, Fathers Isaac Jogues and Charles Raymbaut carried their missionary labors to the Sault St. Mary, and received distinct accounts of the Sioux, and of the great river on whose banks they lived. In 1658, after F. Garreau had suffered martyrdom on the St. Lawrence on his way to renew the Western missions destroyed by the recent Iroquois war, De Groseilles and another Frenchman penetrated to Lake Superior, and passed the winter on its shores. They visited the Sioux, learned with greater clearness and particularity of the course of the great river on whose banks they stood. Their annalist writes: “It [pg 694] was a beautiful river, large, broad, and deep, which would bear comparison, they say, with the St. Lawrence.” The missionaries of the Saguenay had also “heard of the Winnipegouek, and their bay whence three seas could be reached.” And war parties of the Iroquois told the missionaries of New York of their wars with the Ontoagannha, “whose towns lay on a beautiful river (Ohio), which leads to the great lake, as they called the sea, where they traded with Europeans who pray to God as we (the French) do, and have rosaries and bells to call men to prayer.”[225] F. Ménard, the founder of the Ottawa mission, also heard, in 1660, of the Mississippi and the nations on its banks, and was only prevented from visiting them by meeting with a martyr's death while prosecuting his work. F. Allouez, his successor, also writes of the great river, “which empties, as far as I can conjecture, into the sea of Virginia,” and was the first to reveal to Europeans its Indian name; for, in speaking of one of its tribes, he says: “They live on a great river called Messipi.” At the time that F. Dablon was appointed Superior of the Ottawa missions, and F. Marquette appointed to establish the intended Illinois mission, and the exploration of the river was about to be undertaken, the latter, as already stated, was for some time engaged in gathering information concerning its course and outlet. Three principal conjectures prevailed at this time: first, that it ran towards the southwest, and entered the Gulf of California; second, that it flowed into the Gulf of Mexico; third, that it took a more easterly direction, and discharged itself into the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere on the coast of Virginia. To F. Marquette belonged the glory of solving the problem, and thus of opening the interior of the continent to Christianity and civilization.
The war which was raging in the country rendered it impossible for the missionaries of themselves to undertake the opening of the long-desired mission of the Illinois, and they had accordingly applied for assistance to the French government to further this great enterprise. F. Marquette, as we have seen from his letters, remained ever ready at a moment's notice from his superiors to advance into this dangerous field. He was not deterred by a consciousness of his own declining health, already enfeebled by labors and exposures, nor by the hostile character of the nations through whose country he would have to pass, nor by the danger of a cruel death at the hands of the fierce Dakotah. This last only made the prospect more enticing to one whose highest ambition was to win the glorious crown of martyrdom in opening the way for his brother Jesuits to follow in the battle of the faith. The same flotilla that carried his letter to F. Dablon to Quebec in the summer of 1672, on its return conveyed to him the joyous news that the petition of the missionaries had found favor with the government; that the Sieur Jolliet was designated to undertake the exploration of the Mississippi; and that F. Marquette was chosen the missionary of the expedition. It was the Blessed Virgin whom, F. Marquette says, “I had always invoked, since my coming to the Ottawa country, in order to obtain of God the favor of being able to visit the nations on the Mississippi River.” It was on the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the same Blessed Virgin Mary that he received the glorious tidings that the realization of his hopes and prayers was at hand. He [pg 695] bestowed upon the great river the name of the Immaculate Conception, which, however, as well as its earlier Spanish name of River of the Holy Ghost, has since yielded to its original Indian appellation.
The exploring party, consisting of “the meek, single-hearted, unpretending, illustrious Marquette, with Jolliet for his associate, five Frenchmen for his companions, and two Algonquins as guides, lifting their canoes on their backs, and walking across the narrow portage that divides the Fox River from the Wisconsin,” set out upon their glorious expedition. Mr. J. G. Shea, to whom we are so much indebted for his researches into this interesting part of the history of our country, describes the voyage in the following graphic and eloquent manner:
“In the spring they embarked at Mackinaw in two frail bark canoes; each with his paddle in hand, and full of hope, they soon plied them merrily over the crystal waters of the lake. All was new to Marquette, and he describes as he went along the Menonomies, Green Bay, and Maskoutens, which he reached on the 7th of June, 1673. He had now attained the limit of former discoveries; the new world was before them; they looked back a last adieu to the waters which, great as the distance was, connected them with Quebec and their countrymen; they knelt on the shore to offer, by a new devotion, their lives, their honor, and their undertakings to their beloved Mother, the Virgin Mary Immaculate; then, launching on the broad Wisconsin, sailed slowly down its current, amid its vine-clad isles and its countless sand-bars. No sound broke the stillness, no human form appeared, and at last, after sailing seven days, on the 17th of June they happily glided into the great river. Joy that could find no utterance in words filled the grateful heart of Marquette.
“The broad river of the Conception, as he named it, now lay before them, stretching away hundreds of miles to an unknown sea. Soon all was new; mountain and forest had glided away; the islands, with their groves of cottonwood, became more frequent, and moose and deer browzed on the plains; strange animals were seen traversing the river, and monstrous fish appeared in its waters. But they proceeded on their way amid this solitude, frightful by its utter absence of man. Descending still further, they came to the land of the bison, or pisikiou, which, with the turkey, became sole tenants of the wilderness; all other game had disappeared. At last, on the 25th of June, they descried footprints on the shore. They now took heart again, and Jolliet and the missionary, leaving their five men in the canoes, followed a little beaten path to discover who the tribe might be. They travelled on in silence almost to the cabin-doors, when they halted, and with a loud halloa proclaimed their coming. Three villages lay before them; the first, roused by the cry, poured forth its motley group, which halted at the sight of the new-comers and the well-known dress of the missionary. Old men came slowly on, step by measured step, bearing aloft the all-mysterious calumet. All was silence; they stood at last before the two Europeans, and Marquette asked, ‘Who are you?’ ‘We are Illinois,’ was the answer, which dispelled all anxiety from the explorers, and sent a thrill to the heart of Marquette; the Illinois missionary was at last amid the children of that tribe which he had so long, so tenderly yearned to see.
“After friendly greetings at this town of Pewaria, and the neighboring one of Moing-wena, they returned to their canoes, escorted by the wondering tribe, who gave their hardy visitants a calumet, the safeguard of the West. With renewed courage and lighter hearts, they sailed in, and, passing a high rock with strange and monstrous forms depicted on its rugged surface, heard in the distance the roaring of a mighty cataract, and soon beheld Pekitanoui, or the Muddy River, as the Algonquins call the Missouri, rushing like some untamed monster into the calm and clear Mississippi, and hurrying in with its muddy waters the trees which it had rooted up in its impetuous course. Already had the missionaries heard of the river running to the western sea, to be reached by the branches of the Mississippi, and Marquette, now better informed, fondly hoped to reach it one day by the Missouri. But now their course lay south, and, passing a dangerous eddy, the demon of the Western Indians, they reached [pg 696]the Waboukigou, or Ohio, the river of the Shawnees, and, still holding on their way, came to the warm land of the cane, and the country which the mosquitoes might call their own. While enveloped in their sails as a shelter from them, they came upon a tribe who invited them to the shore. They were wild wanderers, for they had guns bought of Catholic Europeans at the East.
“Thus, after all had been friendly, and encouraged by this second meeting, they plied their oars anew, and, amid groves of cottonwood on either side, descended to the 33d degree, when, for the first time, a hostile reception was promised by the excited Metchigameas. Too few to resist, their only hope on earth was the mysterious calumet, and in heaven the protection of Mary, to whom they sent up fervent prayers. At last the storm subsided, and they were received in peace; their language formed an obstacle, but an interpreter was found, and after explaining the object of their coming, and announcing the great truths of Christianity, they embarked for Akamsea, a village thirty miles below on the eastern shore.
“Here they were well received, and learned that the mouth of the river was but ten days' sail from this village; but they heard, too, of nations there trading with Europeans, and of wars between the tribes, and the two explorers spent a night in consultation. The Mississippi, they now saw, emptied into the Gulf of Mexico, between Florida and Tampico, two Spanish points; they might, by proceeding, fall into their hands. Thus far only Marquette traced the map, and he put down the names of other tribes of which they heard. Of these, in the Atotchasi, Matora, and Papihaka, we recognize Arkansas tribes; and the Akoroas and Tanikwas, Pawnees and Omahas, Kansas and Apiches, are well known in after-days.