SOUTHERN SHORES OF LAKE SUPERIOR 315 



mitted ; but I strongly doubt the correctness of this 

 information, though it is asserted that tradition has 

 handed down full particulars of the affair. The accounts 

 which I heard are somewhat confused and contradictory ; 

 and though I am acquainted with some of the writings 

 of Father Marquette, I have not been able to find an 

 authentic account of his death. This much is certain, 

 that the French look upon him as a martyr, and the 

 English and Americans as a meddlesome politician who 

 provoked his fate. 



He was a French priest who, leaving Canada, then a 

 French colony, established himself alone in the forest, 

 somewhere in the immediate neighbourhood of the town 

 which now bears his name. He acquired an extraordinary 

 influence over the Indians, many of whom he converted 

 to the Roman Catholic faith. He certainly had no par- 

 ticular right to establish a mission on English territory, 

 as it then was ; but considering that the country was a 

 wilderness inhabited by the Red Men only, it is difficult to 

 believe that the father had any political motive for his 

 action. Nor is it usual to forbid men of the Cross from 

 propagating their views among savages, or to require 

 them to obtain the permission of the executive authorities 

 to establish their missions in a wilderness. At least that 

 has never been the policy of the British people. But Father 

 Marquette aroused the jealousy of the local authorities, 

 and his mission was suddenly attacked and himself and 

 his converts butchered on the spot. I believe that 

 American militia were the actual murderers, and that the 

 father was killed by a thrust from a sergeant's halberd. 

 He is represented as being so killed in an old French 

 print, and there is a tradition among the Roman Catholics 

 at many places in Lower Canada that such was his fate. 

 But other accounts record that he met with a very 

 different fate. Some of English or American origin assert 

 that he was slain by Indians, and some that he was not 

 murdered at all. 



