“The unwillingness of the proprietor to have the grave of a saintly priest disturbed proved very opportune, not to say providential. Within the three or four months that elapsed since the first discovery many hundreds of persons from all parts of the country had the opportunity to examine the grounds, as yet untouched by the spade. We had time to weigh every argument pro and con. Among those visitors there were men of intelligence and historical learning. I will only mention Judge Walker, of Detroit, who has made the early history of our Northwest the subject of his particular study, and who went over the grounds with the English edition of La Hontan in his hand. He, as well as every one else whose judgment was worth anything, pronounced in favor of our opinion. The balance stood so that the smallest additional weight of evidence would make it incline on the side of certainty as absolute as can be expected in a case like this.
“The text of the Relation, it is true, would make us look for a vault, or small cellar (un petit caveau), in the middle (au milieu) of the church. But if anything indicating the existence of a tomb in the hollow towards the left side and the rear part of the chapel were discovered, could we not construe those words as meaning ‘within the church’? Besides, it must be remembered that Father Dablon, who left us the account, was not an eye-witness at the interment; nor did he visit the mission after that event, at least up to the time of his writing.
“We know, then, that Marquette’s remains were brought to this place in a birch-bark box; and there is nothing to indicate that, previously to being interred, they were transferred into any other kind of receptacle. In that box they remained under the catafalco (sous sa representation) from Monday, June 8, to Tuesday, 9 (1677), and in it, undoubtedly, they were deposited in a vault, or little cellar, which may have previously been dug out for other purposes. The box was sunk into the ground on that side of the excavation which was nearest to the altar, or, at least, the statue of the Blessed Virgin, the most appropriate spot for the interment of the champion of Mary Immaculate. An inscription, on paper, indicating whose bones were contained in the box, might have been placed within it; of this the piece of white paper we found among the bark may be a fragment. The poor casket rested, after the Indian fashion, on wooden supports. It may have been covered with mortar or white lime, or else a little vault constructed of wood and mortar may have been erected over it. When the building was fired, twenty-nine years after the interment, the burning floor, together with pieces of timber from above, fell on the tomb, broke the frail vault or mortar cover of the box, burned its top, and crisped its sides. Some of the pagan or apostate Indians remaining in that neighborhood after the transmigration of the Hurons and Ottawas to Detroit, though filled with veneration for the departed missionary (as their descendants remained through four or five generations), or rather for the very reason of their high regard for his priestly character and personal virtues, and of his reputation as a thaumaturgus, coveted his bones as a powerful ‘medicine,’ and carried them off. In taking them out of the tomb they tore the brittle bark and scattered its fragments. The bones being first placed on the bottom of the cellar, behind the tomb, some small fragments became mixed up with the sand, mortar, and lime, and were left behind.
“Such seems to me the most natural explanation of the circumstances of the discovery. Had the missionaries themselves, before setting fire to the church, removed the remains of their saintly brother, they would have been careful about the least fragment; none of them, at least, would have been found scattered outside of the box. That robbing of the grave by the Indians must have taken place within a few years after the departure of the missionaries; for had those precious remains been there when the mission was renewed (about 1708?), they would most certainly have been transferred to the new church in ‘Old Mackinac’; and had this been the case, Charlevoix, at his sojourn there in 1721, could hardly have failed to be taken to see the tomb and to mention the fact of the transfer in his journal or history.
“Our next object, if we were to be disappointed in finding the entire remains of the great missionary traveller, was to ascertain the fact of his having been interred on that particular spot; and in this, I think, we have fully succeeded. Considering the high probability—à priori, so to say—of the Indians’ taking possession of the bones, the finding of those few fragments under the circumstances described seems to me, if not as satisfactory to our wishes, at least as good evidence for the fact in question as if we had found every bone that is in the human body. Somebody—an adult person—was buried under the church; buried before the building was destroyed by fire; and buried under exceptional circumstances—the remains being placed in a birch-bark box of much smaller size than an ordinary coffin—who else could it have been but the one whose burial, with all its details of time, place, and manner, as recorded in most trustworthy records, answers all the circumstances of our discovery?
“Sept. 7th.—Went again to the grave to-day, and, after searching a little while near the spot where that young man had found the bones, I was rewarded with another small fragment, apparently of the skull, like two or three of those already found. Two Indian visitors who have called in since declared others to be of the ribs, of the hand, and of the thigh-bone. They also consider the robbing of the grave by their pagan ancestors as extremely probable. To prevent profanation and the carrying off of the loose ground in the empty grave, we covered the excavation with a temporary floor, awaiting contributions from outside—we are too poor ourselves—for the purpose of erecting some kind of a tomb or mortuary chapel in which to preserve what remains of the perishable part of the ‘Guardian-Angel of the Ottawa missions.’
“I shall not send you this letter before having shown some of the bones to a physician, for which purpose I have to go outside.
“Sheboygan, Mich., Sept. 11.—M. Pommier, a good French surgeon, declared the fragments of bones to be undoubtedly human and bearing the marks of fire.”
The result is consoling, though not unmixed with pain. It is sad to think that the remains of so saintly a priest, so devoted a missionary, so zealous an explorer should have been so heathenishly profaned by Indian medicine-men; but the explanation has every appearance of probability. Had the Jesuit missionaries removed the remains, they would have taken up the birch box carefully, enclosing it, if necessary, in a case of wood. They would never have torn the birch-bark box rudely open, or taken the remains so carelessly as to leave fragments. All the circumstances show the haste of profane robbery. The box was torn asunder in haste, part of its contents secured, and the excavation hastily filled up.
The detailed account of the final interment of Father Marquette, the peculiarity of the bones being in a bark box, evidently of small size for convenient transportation, the fact that no other priest died at the mission who could have been similarly interred, leads irresistibly to the conclusion that Father Jacker is justified in regarding the remains found as portion of those committed to the earth two centuries ago.