Father Jacques Marquette:

A Jesuit educated aristocrat, Father Jacques Marquette (pictured above) chose to minister in the North American "wilderness" instead of saying Mass in French cathedrals. He preferred the danger of traveling the Great Lakes in a birch bark canoe to the safety of a comfortable teaching position at a French university.

From his arrival in Canada in 1666, until his death in 1675, Marquette accomplished more than most people do in a lifetime. His years in the Great Lakes wilderness inspired legends of his compassion and his zeal to explore.

In his travels to spread Christianity among the Algonquian-speaking Natives of what would become the American Midwest (including the Illinois Country), Marquette traveled extensively. His 1673 journal recounts his expedition down the Fox River-in what is now Wisconsin to the Mississippi River, on which he traveled southward all the way to the mouth of the Arkansas River.

Marquette's Outbound Journey May 12-July 17, 1673

Marquette's return trip took him back up the Mississippi to the Illinois River, across the short portage to the Chicago River, and up Lake Michigan to Green Bay.

Marquette's Return July-September, 1673

Along the way, Marquette kept a journal of his interactions with the Native people of the region. Although we can look back on it and describe it in terms of Marquette's biases (he was, after all a French priest who hoped to convert the "heathen savages"), his Journal stands as one of the first clear descriptions of the Illinois country that survives today.