102 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



The first clear trace of a priest io Wisconsin was in 1660. In 

 that year Father Menard, paddling along the south shore of Lake 

 Superior for many a weary week, near its western extremity, 

 reached La Pointe — ■ one of the most northern peninsulas in the 

 region which is now Wisconsin. 



"He evangelized the natives who flocked together there." 

 Such are the words of the old chronicler. The meaning is, not 

 that the Jesuit dispensed the whole gospel to the Indians, nor yet 

 all that he could give, but only so much of it, such a homoeo- 

 pathic dose — as they would receive. 



Early travelers into the Orient when they there met certain 

 albinos thought them the posterity of blacks converted by St. 

 Thomas and whitened by baptism. It seemed doubtful, how- 

 ever, whether such a skin-bleaching was a real improvement, la 

 like manner, may it be questioned whether the western mission- 

 aries who had chosen St. Thomas for their patron were any more 

 successful than he. 



However we may speculate on this matter, we must feel that 

 Menard's motives were the best. Sometimes he had no altar but 

 his paddles supported by croiched sticks and covered with his 

 sail. Moreover, he dared not celebrate mass in the presence of 

 those he had there baptized, because it was beyond his power to 

 convince them that that sacrament was not a juggling trick to se- 

 cure for the priest slaves in the life beyond life. Father Allouez 

 was less scrupulous. He boasts as of some great thing that he 

 had taught one Wisconsin tribe to make the sign of the cross 

 and to daub its figure on their shields. When one of these con- 

 verts had married three sisters at once and was censured for it by 

 La Salle, his defense was: "I was made a Christian against my 

 will by Father Allouez." In 1672 this father was welcomed by 

 Mascoutins whose head-center seems to have been not far from 

 Portage City. 



With Father Menard, in 1660, were three lay-helpers, whom he 

 next year dispatched southward into Wisconsin to certain Hurons 

 who had sought an asylum at the mouth of Green Bay. Having 

 labored nine years for those Hurons in their old home, he soon 

 followed his fugitive converts, but perished in the wilderness of the 



