MARQUETTE, JACQUES. — Jesuit, missionary, and explorer, b. at Laon on 10 June 1637, d. in present-day Ludington on 18 May 1675. From 1666 he lived in the Indian missions of Canada, first among the Algonquins, then with the Hurons at Trois Rivières and Sault Ste Marie, and in 1670 in the mission of the Holy Spirit. He knew six dialects and was greatly loved by the various tribes.
From as early as 1670 he desired to penetrate the regions of the Mississippi, beyond the lands already discovered by the French, and had gathered information about them, especially from the Illinois farther south; he had also discussed the matter with his superiors and the governor. The latter finally decided on the expedition, entrusting it to the active merchant of Québec, L. Jolliet, and assigning M. to him as companion. The canoes departed from the mission of S. Ignatius on 17 May 1763, skirted the northwestern shores of Lake Michigan, and, by way of Green Bay, the Fox River, and Lake Winnebago, entered Wisconsin, which flowed precisely into the Mississippi, reached on 17 June; they then descended along the broad current as far as the confluence of the Arkansas. Fearing the neighboring Spaniards and the new Indian tribes, Jolliet and M. did not dare proceed farther, and on 17 July they set out on the return journey, ascending the Ohio and the Illinois and reaching Crown Bay and Lake Michigan toward the end of September. While Jolliet continued on to Québec to deliver the news, M. fell ill with dysentery near present-day Chicago. An attempt to establish a mission among the Illinois Indians in the winter of 1674–75 proved fatal to him; and he ended his life while trying to return to Maclinac, at the mission of S. Ignatius.
The goal of determining whether the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of California, as the French believed, or farther east into the Gulf of Mexico, had been achieved. During the journey and afterward, M. carefully recorded everything he had seen—the tribes, places, fauna and flora, and the adventures he experienced—and drew from it prospects for future commerce. The Americans always regarded him as the discoverer of the Mississippi; they gave his name to a city (now also the seat of a diocese: “Sault Ste Marie and M.”); the Jesuits established M. University in Milwaukee; in 1904 the M.-League was founded in New York, an association of laypeople intended to keep alive interest in the Catholic missions among the Native Americans and to provide them with the necessary spiritual and material means; in 1887 his statue, the work of the Italian S. Trentanove, was placed in the Capitol in Washington; and other bronze reproductions were placed at Marquette, Michigan, and on the island of Maclinac.