Yet this was but romance. The real, detailed account of the missionary’s labors, the details which let us enter the sanctuary of his pious heart, were all the time lying unused in Canada. They were in the college of Quebec when Charlevoix was teaching in that institution as a young scholastic; but if he then already projected his history of the colony, no one of the old fathers seems to have opened to him the writings of the early founders of the mission. It was the same when he returned to make the tour through the country under the auspices of the government and with a view to its development.
The papers lay unnoticed, and when Louis XV.’s neglect of his American empire neutralized all the genius of Montcalm and the gallantry of his French and Canadian soldiery, the mission of the Jesuit Fathers was broken up. The precious archives were plundered; but some documents reached pious hands, who laid them up with their own convent archives, till the Society of Jesus returned to the land where it could boast of so glorious a career.
Among these papers were accounts of the last labors and death of Father Marquette and of the removal of his remains, prepared for publication by Father Dablon; Marquette’s journal of his great expedition; the very map he drew; and a letter left unfinished when the angel of death sheathed his sword by the banks of the Michigan River.
Father Felix Martin, one of the earliest to revive the old Canadian mission, received these treasures with joy, and has since gleaned far and wide to add to our material for the wonderful mission labors of the Jesuit pioneers. He has published many works, and aided in far more. With a kindness not easy to repay he permitted the writer to use the documents relating to Marquette in preparing a work on “The Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley.”
From these authentic contemporary documents we learn the real story of Father Marquette’s last labors. As he was returning from his voyage down the Mississippi, he promised the Kaskaskia Indians, who then occupied towns in the upper valley of the Illinois, that he would return to teach them the faith which he announced. His health, broken by exposure and mission labor on the St. Lawrence and the Upper Lakes, was very frail, but he had no idea of rest. Devoted in an especial manner to the great privilege of Mary—her Immaculate Conception—he named the great artery of our continent The River of the Immaculate Conception, and in his heart bestowed the same name on the mission which he hoped to found among the Kaskaskias.
To enter upon that work, so dear to his piety, he needed permission from his distant superior. When the permission came he took leave of the Mackinac mission which he had founded, and pushed off his bark canoe into Lake Michigan. The autumn was well advanced—for it was the 25th of October, 1674—and the reddening forests swayed in the chill lake winds as he glided along the western shore. Before he reached the southern extremity winter was upon him with its cold and snows, and the disease which had been checked, but not conquered, again claimed the frail frame. It could not quench his courage, for he kept on in his open canoe on the wintry lake till the 4th of December, when he reached Chicago. There he had hoped to ascend the river and by a portage reach the Illinois. It was too late. The ice had closed the stream, and a winter march was beyond his strength. His two men, simple, faithful companions, erected a log hut, home and chapel, the first dwelling and first church of Chicago. Praying to Our Lady to enable him to reach his destination, offering the Holy Sacrifice whenever his illness permitted, receiving delegations from his flock, the Kaskaskias, the winter waned away in the pious foundation of the white settlement at Chicago.
With the opening of spring Marquette set out, and his last letter notes his progress till the 6th of April, 1675. Two days after he was among the Kaskaskias, and, rearing his altar on the prairie which lies between the present town of Utica and the Illinois river, he offered up the Mass on Maundy Thursday, and began the instruction of the willing Indians who gathered around him. A few days only were allotted to him, when, after Easter, he was again stricken down. If he would die in the arms of his brethren at Mackinac, he saw that he must depart at once; for he felt that the days of his sojourning were rapidly closing. Escorted by the Kaskaskias, who were deeply impressed by the zeal that could so battle with death, the missionary reached Lake Michigan, on the eastern side. Although that shore was as yet unknown, his faithful men launched his canoe. “His strength, however, failed so much,” says Father Dablon, whose words we shall now quote, “that his men despaired of being able to convey him alive to their journey’s end; for, in fact, he became so weak and so exhausted that he could no longer help himself, nor even stir, and had to be handled and carried like a child. He nevertheless maintained in this state an admirable resignation, joy, and gentleness, consoling his beloved companions, and encouraging them to suffer courageously all the hardships of this voyage, assuring them that our Lord would not forsake them when he was gone. It was during this navigation that he began to prepare more particularly for death, passing his time in colloquies with our Lord, with his holy Mother, with his angel guardian, or with all heaven. He was often heard pronouncing these words: ‘I believe that my Redeemer liveth,’ or ‘Mary, Mother of grace, Mother of God, remember me.’ Besides a spiritual reading made for him every day, he toward the close asked them to read him his meditation on the preparation for death, which he carried about him; he recited his breviary every day; and although he was so low that both sight and strength had greatly failed, he did not omit it till the last day of his life, when his companions excited his scruples. A week before his death he had the precaution to bless some holy-water to serve him during the rest of his illness, in his agony, and at his burial, and he instructed his companions how to use it.
“On the eve of his death, which was a Friday, he told them, all radiant with joy, that it would take place on the morrow. During the whole day he conversed with them about the manner of his burial, the way in which he should be laid out, the place to be selected for his interment; how they should arrange his hands, feet, and face, and how they should raise a cross over his grave. He even went so far as to enjoin them, only three hours before he expired, to take his chapel-bell, as soon as he was dead, and ring it while they carried him to the grave. Of all this he spoke so calmly and collectedly that you would have thought he spoke of the death and burial of another, and not of his own.
“Thus did he speak to them as he sailed along the lake, till, perceiving the mouth of a river, with an eminence on the bank which he thought suited for his burial, he told them that it was the place of his last repose. They wished, however, to pass on, as the weather permitted it and the day was not far advanced; but God raised a contrary wind, which obliged them to return and enter the river which the father had designated.
“They then carried him ashore, kindled a little fire, and raised a wretched bark cabin for his use, laying him in it with as little discomfort as they could; but they were so depressed by sadness that, as they afterwards said, they did not know what they were doing.