Jacques Marquette

During the seventeenth century, dedicated Jesuit missionaries forged into the North American wilderness to live and work among the native peoples of the Great Lakes region. In September 1666, at age twenty-nine, Father Jacques Marquette arrived in Quebec. He then helped establish a mission in Sault Ste. Marie, worked at the Mission of Ste. Esprit in the Chequamegon Bay area, and founded a mission in St. Ignace. In 1673 Marquette and Louis Jolliet explored the Mississippi River as far south as the Arkansas River. Two years later Marquette fulfilled his promise to return to the Illinois people. Illness cut short his ministry and on May 18, 1675, he died while returning to St. Ignace. In 1677 Odawa Indians returned his remains to St. Ignace for burial beneath the floor of his mission.