Description. In 1673, Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette and fur trapper Louis Jolliet led a French expedition on the Mississippi. They were the first Europeans to explore this area.

It wasn’t until late fall of 1674 that Father Jacques Marquette launched his canoe in the frigid waters of Lake Michigan near the portage at Sturgeon Bay. Accompanied by two Frenchmen, he was… ...

The story of Father Jacques Marquette, the 17th-century French Jesuit whose Upper Peninsula mission became St. Ignace, will now be told from the perspective of Native Americans as a national ...