MIAMI INDIANS ETHNOHISTORY ARCHIVES: St. Joseph Mission

THE OHIO VALLEY-GREAT LAKES ETHNOHISTORY ARCHIVES: THE MIAMI COLLECTION
It is noted that the following works from the Miami Archives should be read and considered within the historical context in which they were composed and printed. The opinions expressed and the language used do not reflect the opinions or standards of the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, but are, rather, indicative of thought in that historical moment during which the documents were published.

ST. JOSEPH'S MISSION (continued - part 3 of 6, manuscript pgs. 36-41)
From THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW
written by George Pare

Just as Father Chardon, profiting no doubt by the efforts of his predecessors, had succeeded in bringing his savage charges through the first steps of civilization, as denoted by the fact that they were cultivating their land, the western country was thrown into a turmoil by the uprising of the Four Indians. The English; working through the Iroquois, had nerved them to make a supreme effort to destroy French influence in the Lake country. From their home in Wisconsin they came even as far as Detroit which they besieged in 1712. Father Chardon found further labors on the St. Joseph impossible, and withdrew to Mackinac. The mission was left without a resident missionary for a period; of seven or eight years (Mich. Pio. Colls., XXXIII, 555).

Father Chardon continued his missionary career at Green Bay, where he remained until that mission was abandoned in 1728, " the solitary priest on the old mission ground west of Lake Michigan" (Shea, History of the Catholic Church in the United States New York, 1886-92, I, 629). He was again at the St. Joseph Mission for a brief period in 1729. In 1733 we find him in Quebec, carried on the list of the Society as "old and infirm." He died there, April 11, 1743. For the subsequent history of the St. Joseph Mission we are indebted to an invaluable document which has lately come to light, the baptismal register itself. It is not intact, but the patched and water-stained leaves that remain speak unmistakably of the vicissitudes through which they have passed. All the romance of an old register is there. As the entries succeed each other in these pages touched by the hands of priest and soldier, Indian and trader, they conjure up the thrilling history of the Lake region in the halfdawn before our national life (Rochemonteix, op. cit.,, V, 52).

For the subsequent history of the St. Joseph Mission we are indebted to an invaluable document which has lately come to light, the baptismal register itself. It is not intact, but the patched and water-stained leaves that remain speak unmistakably of the vicissitudes through which they have passed. All the romance of an old register is there. As the entries succeed each other in these pages touched by the hands of priest and soldier, Indian and trader, they conjure up the thrilling history of the Lake region in the half-dawn before our national life. (The original register is in the archives of the Quebec Seminary. Through the kindness of Msgr. ASmedee Gosselin, archivist of the Seminary, the writer was permitted to make a photostat copy. This was edited by Milo M. Quaife and the writer for the MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICVAL REVIEW, XIII, 201-39).

The register as we have it begins with an entry by Father Michel Guignas, dated August 15,1720. There are good reasons for placing the beginning of his work at the St. Joseph Mission layout two years earlier. Charlevoix writes in 1721 that the Indians have been for a long time without a missionary, but that one has lately been sent them. Father Guignas came to Canada in 1716, and made his profession in the Society at the mission house at Mackinac, February 2, 1718. (For details concerning Father Guignas, see Rochemonteix, op. cit., IV, 183, 199; Thwaites, Relations,LXVIII, 329, and Index.) He was probably given his charge a few months later. There are at least four or five pages missing at the beginning of the register, showing that many entries had been made before the first date mentioned above.

The first pages of the register disclose that by this time French traders had settled on the St. Joseph River. To Albert Bonne, voyageur, and Marianne Sancer-Ferron is born a son, Joseph. Pierre Pepin Laforce and Michelle Le Ber are blessed with a son, Michael, and to safeguard the interests of some far-off relative, Ange Lafontaine, "a young man from Prairie de la Magdeleine held him over at the fort taking the place of and acting for another godfather." The fort, abandoned in 1696, had been re-occupied about 1715, and the soldiers had evidently been permitted to bring their wives. Marguerite Faucher of the parish of Lachine presents a daughter, Magdeleine, to her husband, Claude Collet, "a soldier in the Troops of the parish of St. Albin Diocese of Chalon sur Marne. "

This obscure soldier and his humble consort were the parents of a son who achieved distinction. Charles-Ange Collet was born and baptized at the St. Joseph Mission on October 1, 1721. As a youth he received his preliminary schooling in Montreal, and in 1744 he began the study of theology at the Quebec Seminary. Ordained, September 23, 1744, he was first placed in charge of Sorel. Seven years later he became a member of the Seminary staff, where his zeal and piety soon brought him into prominence. Elected a member of the Cathedral Chapter in 1758, he was one of the three canons who witnessed the interment of Montcalm. A year later he passed over to France, and took up his residence in Thaïs, a suburb of Paris, where he was still living in 1793. (See sketch of Charles-Ange Collet by Amedee Gosselin in the Bulletin des Recherches Historiques, XXX, 389 ff.)

For the student of the history of Catholicism in Michigan, Charles-Ange Collet has a particular interest. He was probably the first native of Michigan to enter the priesthood. The only reason for the reservation is the presence in the Canadian priesthood of another Father Collet, who may have been the brother of Charles-Ange. In 1753, a Recollect was ordained in Quebec, whose name was Leonard-Philibert Collet, and the ordination record states that he was born, November 3,1715. His birthplace is not given, and moreover no extant Canadian register contains the record of his baptism. There is a strong probability that the Collet family were already established on the St. Joseph at this date. (For sketch of Luke Collet, see ibid., 397-400. In 1725 a daughter of Claude Collet was baptized at Mission St. Joseph. The godmother was Marie Joseph Collet, styled in the record"a native of this place," hence born there. She must have been at least nine or ten years old to be admitted to the office of godmother.) Hence, it is not beyond the bounds of probability that the friar in his grey habit, bearing in religion the name of Father Luke, was brother to Charles-Ange wearing the purple of his canonry.

After his ordination, Father Luke was destined to spend eight years as chaplain to the troops that France was moving through the West to oppose the British advance. We find him at Duquesne, Niagara, and Presqu'Ile. In 1760 he was twice in Detroit, once on January 14, and again on March 22. On both occasions he signed the baptismal register as "Chaplain of the Ohio river country." The next year he was laboring in the missions along the Mississippi in the neighborhood of Kaskaskia, and in that field he died, September 5, 1766. (Ibid., 398. In his mission on the Mississippi, Luke Collet was associated for a time with a Father Hippolyte Collet, another Recollect, but who is known to have come from France.) Although his origin must remain a mystery, it is not difficult to believe that a pious family in the St. Joseph Mission may have given two sons to the Church as surely as it did one.

To the little colony on the St. Joseph, although strangely enough he says nothing of the French in it, came Father Pierre Charlevoix in 1721. Ostensibly on a visitation of the western missions he had really been sent by the French government to gather first-hand information regarding the prospects for colonizing the Mississippi Valley, and the feasibility of opening a path to the Vermillion or Western Sea that still haunted the imagination of the government. His previous residence in Canada, his personality, and his talents admirably fitted him for this confidential mission. The record of his travels and observations, published long after his return to France, is one of the most absorbing books of early travel in America. (Louise Phelps Kellogg (ed.), Journal of a Voyage to North America. Translated from the French of Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix Chicago, 1923).

Father Charlevoix arrived in Quebec in 1720, but he did not begin his journey until the spring of the following year. From Mackinac he had intended going to Green Bay, and from there pushing his way westward to the limits of French influence. However, the unsettled temper of the Indians made this so dangerous that he was prevailed upon to choose the St. Joseph River route to the Mississippi. To this change of plan, we owe his visit to the St. Joseph Mission.

Leaving St. Ignace, he coasted along the western shore of Michigan. When at the mouth of the Marquette River, he spent some time trying to locate the grave of Father Marquette, who had died there in 1675. A few days later he was ascending the St. Joseph River, his keen eyes noting unfamiliar trees, and his pleasure at the sight of the ever-changing panorama heightened by the perfume of the sassafras growing in profusion.

On August 8, he arrived at the post where, as he writes:

. . . we have a mission, and where there is a commandant with a small

garrison. The commandant's house, which is but a very sorry one, is called

the fort, from its being surrounded with an indifferent pallisado....

We have here two villages of Indians, one of the Miamis and the other of

the Poutewatamies, both of them mostly Christians; but as they have been

for a long time without any pastors, the missionary who has lately been

sent them, will have no small difficulty in bringing - them back to the

exercise of their religion...(Ibid., II, 86-87).

Father Charlevoix's stay at the mission afforded him a close range study of the Indians assembled there. He mentions a visit to a Miami chief who received him with an impassive hauteur, although minus his nose, which had been bitten off during a debauch. He describes the game of lacrosse, and the skill which the Miami played it.

The Potawatomi had a famous old chief named Piremon, and another younger one called Wilamek. "This person is a Christian and well instructed, but makes no exercise of his religion. One day as I reproached him for it, he left me abruptly, went directly to the chapel, and said his prayers with so audible a voice, that we could hear him at the missionary's . ."(Ibid., 98).

Here, as elsewhere, the ravages of the liquor traffic were evident.

Several Indians of the two nations settled upon this river, are just

arrived from the English colonies, whither they had been to sell their

furs, and from whence they have brought back in return a great quantity

of spiritous liquor.... every night the fields echoed with the most

hideous howlings. One would have thought that a gang of devils had

broke loose; from hell, or that the two towns had been cutting one

another's throats....

Your Grace may from thence judge, what a missionary is capable of

doing in midst of this disorder, and how disagreeable it must be to

a good man, who has in a manner exiled himself, in order to gain souls

to God, to be obliged to become a witness of it without being able to

remedy it (Ibid., 98-99).

When the Indians are reproached for these disorders they answer that the French started them drinking, and that if no more liquor be forthcoming from them it can be procured from the English.

The problem thus presented was never solved by the French government. The Indian first got liquor for his furs, and later; when his loyalty was necessary for the very existence of the colony, an ever-increasing supply of brandy was necessary to seal his allegiance. While in no way justifying this course, Father Charlevoix's national feeling led him to soften somewhat his condemnation of the French, on the ground that they diluted the liquor destined for the Indians, and thus made it less harmful than the brand supplied by the English. Certain it is that here on the St. Joseph, as in all the other posts, the liquor traffic meant the ruin of the missions.

With this cheerless picture, Father Charlevoix closes his account of the mission. His duties called him down the Mississippi and back to France; behind him he left a young missionary at his lonely post.

From now on, the Ottawa Mission begins to decline. Green Bay is soon to be abandoned, and from Mackinac as a center the few remaining missionaries are to spend their years in almost constant wanderings. It is difficult to decide whether any of the subsequent priests mentioned in the mission register ever resided there for any length of time. In the space of fifty-three years covered by the register, there are only nine entries dated during the winter months; most of the others are grouped in such a way as to indicate only an occasional visit by the missionaries.

After Father Charlevoix's departure, the history of the mission is again clouded in obscurity. Any further knowledge of it must be gleaned from the pages of the register itself. Let us take up the succession of missionaries in the order of their service.

Father Guignas must have left the St. Joseph Mission shortly after the farewell of his famous confrere, for there is a new name in the register on October 1. The brilliant record of his college days had not been forgotten by his superiors; from the wilderness of Michigan he was summoned to the chair of hydrography at the college of Quebec. His five years of teaching coincided with the current agitation for finding a passage to the Western or Vermillion Sea‹in other words the Pacific Ocean.

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