When I was young in St. Louis, I would occasionally go with my family to Pere Marquette Park, on the Illinois River about 50 miles from our house. The park is still there, all 8000 acres of it, run by the State of Illinois, complete with a lodge (built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the early 1930s) in which we never stayed, and a restaurant, where we would have lunch.

I also remember (perhaps you do, too) learning that Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet had “discovered” and explored the Mississippi River, although I don’t remember any of the details I learned in fifth (?) grade.

I hadn’t thought much about Marquette recently, but last weekend Edie and I went to the Georgetown Library annual book sale, and she stumbled on a book titled simply Jacques Marquette, written by and inscribed by one Joseph Donnelly, S.J. and published in 1968. I decided to read the book. Very glad I did.

I will get right to the bottom line first. In the 1670s, the French who had been settling what was then New France and is now primarily the province of Quebec had been working very hard to do two things: first, make money off trading with the Indians for fur pelts, and second, turn all of the local Indians into good Catholics. I would give Marquette a C+ on his success as a religious converter (I think he would give himself a similar grade), but an A on his ability to communicate with and get along with the native Americans. He learned, they say, six separate native languages. But sadly, I have to report, Marquette died at age only 38 of some sort of infection he picked up and suffered with for perhaps the last six months of his life.

But what I learned from the book goes beyond those basic facts.

(1) Seventeenth century French education. Jacques Marquette was born in Laon in northern France into a middle class family (if there was such a thing in the mid 17th century); his father was a lawyer. He was a bright boy, and his parents sent him initially to a local school when he was about 5, and then to a boarding school in Reims when he was only about 9. The book describes all of the schooling Jacques received, over a period of about 20 years. Clearly the French and the Society of Jesus (where Marquette got his later education) were both very serious about quality education. And in their way of thinking, education was more than reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also heavily on classical Greek and Roman learning, which was viewed as essential to training the mind, and on communication skills. There was religious training to be sure but, as I understand it, the training was not by way of the study of religious texts, but by the observance of the religious rituals, all of the religious rituals, including those connected with every single feast day or saint’s day. And school days were long and full, and students were expected to be serious.
In addition to all of this book learning, the education also involved learning to be a good citizen. How to treat people, how to help people. That sort of thing. The study of classical ethics and philosophy. Something again taken very seriously, and something we could probably use more of today.

I should add that I am sure that girls’ education was different, but the book did not discuss that at all. But for boys, as they grew and matured, the subject matter of their training increased. They began to study ethics and philosophy, and – for those who were interested in the priesthood, they continued to learn religious practice (actual theological studies to come later, just before ordination).

Schools training prospective priests also had very strict discipline. Since priests were expected to lead a very disciplined life and hold their place in a very hierarchical institution, the discipline was deemed to be important for training for the future, to make sure that young priests would obey their elders. In addition, future priests were given non-academic training: they were isolated for periods of time so that they could mediate, pray and reflect, they were assigned work at hospitals helping with treatments, cleaning patients and buildings, and helping with the dead, and were sent out into society, usually in pairs, wearing religious garb but with no food and no shelter, learning to live by begging from others, an activity that was to teach them empathy with the poor. And they were expected to learn to teach. In fact they were usually teaching younger students while they were engaged in their own studies.

(2) Samuel Champlain, a Frenchman, came to Canada first in 1603, 17 years before the Mayflower went ashore in New England. And by the middle of that century, the French had established a number of settlements along the St. Lawrence River (Quebec being the chief settlement) and upper Great Lakes. Most settlements had governmental representatives (military and civilian), clergymen, and independent fur traders and businessmen. And, they these groups did not always see eye to eye on how to run a settlement, or how to deal with neighboring tribes.

The settlements had to be fortified against potential Indian attacks. Their members had to grow sufficient food (or be able to trade for it) and obtain needed supplies. Contacting the home country was difficult and took a lot of time, so they also had to be pretty well self-sufficient. And it was very, very cold up there in the long winters and life was consequently quite hard.

As far as the priests were concerned (and there was quite a number of them in New France), their jobs were not easy. They served the French settlers, they often had to build their own settlements as they tried to get closer to Indian villages they were charged with converting Indians (or trying to), and they had to serve and instruct natives whom they had already converted. Many jobs at once, and they were often called to travel from one settlement to another, even though the other might be hundreds of snowy miles away, and the only ways to travel were on foot, or by canoe (with an overabundance of portages). And it was cold – deep snow, frigid temperatures and freezing breezes. (By the way, they had no horses.)

(3). This was not empty country. There were a lot of Indian villages, although the Indians tended to be semi-nomadic and apparently didn’t expect to stay in one location for too long. Their reason to move was usually because some other Indian tribe was kicking them out, or threatening to. This is because the various tribes did not get along with each other most of the time. There were smaller tribes, like the Hurons and the Ottawas, many of whom stuck with (and were therefore protected by) the French, and then there were much bigger tribes – such as the Iroquois to the east, and the Sioux to the west, who were, by and large, much more aggressive and powerful and, therefore, harder to deal with. It was a complicated and fairly sophisticated society.

(4) The trip to locate the Mississippi (with Joliet, as leader of the small party; Marquette being the accompanying priest came about because there were stories from Indians of all sorts of the existence of a very big river west of where they were. The French wanted to explore this river. Did it go to the great ocean that would lead them eventually to China? Or did it go, instead, to the gulf of Mexico where the French would come into contact with the Spanish (something they wanted to avoid)? It turned out that river was not hard to find (go west at a certain latitude and you can’t miss it, after all). And it turned out that there were many Indian villages on the way, with residents of each friendly and happy to help with directions. They were told about the Illinois River, which was a shortcut on the way back, and they were intrigued on the Mississippi (where they ran into more Indian villages and saw the first herds of buffalo they had ever seen) when they passed the muddy Missouri (not yet named) and the Ohio, both of which feed the Mississippi.

As an aside, I must say that I was somewhat appalled at the general gall of the French (that’s a pun) who were convinced they were saving the souls of the natives by converting them, whose own beliefs just didn’t matter at all. And how serious they were doing this, for just that reason.

Marquette never made it back to his home base in now upper Michigan, but his remains eventually did, and he certainly has not been forgotten. Both Marquette University in Milwaukee, and Marquette the largest city on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, are named for him

A fact-filled book, discussing so many things I knew nothing about.