Marquette, Jacques
mar-ket', Jacques (1637-1675), a French Jesuit missionary and explorer. He was born at Laon, France, and died on the shore of a small stream, now called the Marquette, in Michigan. He was educated in France, and having joined the Jesuits was sent to Canada in 1666. He spent a year and a half at the Three Rivers Mission learning the language and customs of the Indians. He became an adept in the management of a canoe and in woodcraft. In 1668 he opened a mission among the Hurons at Sault Ste. Marie. In 1671 his charges were hard pressed by the Sioux, and he removed with them to the Island of Mackinac. He built a chapel here, or at St. Ignace. In December, 1672, he was visited by Joliet, bearing a commission to explore the Mississippi Valley and to take possession in the name of the French king.
In the following spring a substitute took Father Marquette's place at the Mission. Joliet, Marquette, and seven men set off in two birch bark canoes bound on a voyage of exploration. They followed the shore of Green Bay to the mouth of the Fox River and ascended that stream to Lake Winnebago. Rumors of the Father of Waters increasing as they advanced, they paddled up the headwaters of the Fox, portaged into the headwaters of the Wisconsin, and descended that stream, floating out on the broad waters of the Mississippi June 17, 1673. They then went down the Mississippi about 300 miles below the mouth of the Arkansas, suffering frightfully from swarms of mosquitoes. They returned to Lake Michigan by way of the Illinois River, portaging at Sturgeon Bay into Green Bay again, a canoe journey all told of nearly 3,000 miles. The reports of Joliet were lost in Lake Erie. An account of the journey by Marquette is still extant and has been drawn upon freely by Parkman in his history of the Jesuits in North America.
Father Marquette was no doubt much worn by his toils. He labored for a year or two longer to establish further missions. At his death his remains were borne by faithful Indian friends to St. Ignace. They were buried in the chapel. In 1706 the chapel was burned, but in 1877 the pastor of the present Catholic church there discovered the grave. The remains of the explorer now rest under a suitable monument erected to his memory in 1882 by the citizens of St. Ignace. A lake port and county of the upper peninsula of Michigan bear his name.