(1637–75) Catholic missionary, explorer; born in Laon, France. As a young man and as a Jesuit priest, his hero was St. Francis Xavier. He came to Quebec, Canada (1666), learned Indian languages, and proceeded to do missionary work among the Ottawa and Huron Indians in the Great Lakes region. In 1673, he and Louis Jolliet (French explorer, 1645–1700), searched for and found (June 17, 1673) the waters of the Mississippi River; they were the first white men to follow the course of the river. They went as far as the mouth of the Arkansas River and then returned. Marquette preached among the Illinois Indians (1674–75) until he died prematurely from ailments aggravated by his exertions. His journals remain an invaluable record of the region in these years. Wisconsin placed his statue in the U.S. Capitol.
It's a tourist town now, but three centuries ago, there was little there but a log chapel and a few friendly Huron Indians who watched as their priest, Jacques Marquette, disappear into the feared and dangerous west.
Little did Jesuit missionary Father Jacques Marquette know in 1673 when he and his party of explorers paddled by these 75 acres that one day his religious order would own it.
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