Jacques Marquette, S.J., 1637-1675

Dust jacket notes: "Excepting the Jesuit martyrs of North America, Saints Isaac Jogues, Jean de Brebeuf, and their companions, no seventeeth-century Jesuit missionary's name is so well-known in the United States as that of Father Jacques Marquette. Though he has been honored by having his name attached to cities, rivers, business firms, colleges, universities, and high schools, up to the present no solidly scholarly biography of Father Marquette has been published in any language. This biography is the result of careful, painstaking investigation into every phase of Father Marquette's brief life of a few days less than thirty-eight years, 1637-1675. For the first time, the reader may learn the accurate details of Marquette's ancestry, his education, the early years of his Jesuit life in France, and the carefully documented history of his missionary career in New France. From this volume emerges a vivid, active, vigorous Jacques Marquette who dearly loved and profoundly understood the Indian as few other missionaries had. Also, the biography unhesitatingly addresses itself to the several controversies which have arisen in recent years regarding the subject. Was Marquette the discoverer of the Mississippi River? Can it be held that Jacques Marquette was not a priest? If he was, where, when, and by whom was he ordained? Did Marquette write the journal of the voyage down the Mississippi in the summer of 1673 or was that journal the work of Father Claude Dablon? This book meets a need to know the true Father Jacques Marquette, appearing as it does, during the five years (1968-1973) dedicated to celebrating the tercentenary of Marquette's presence in America...."