Odd Wisconsin Archive
Easter with Father Marquette
Dateline: Easter, 1675. Father Jacques Marquette, for whom we have named Wisconsin towns, schools, parks and even shopping centers, made his final trip through our state 330 years ago. Dying from typhoid, with two companions he journeyed down the shore of Lake Michigan from Green Bay, passed through the swamps that would become Chicago, and came to rest on the banks of the Illinois River half-way to Peoria. There, during Easter week of 1675, he preached to 500 Kaskaskia and other chiefs, with 1,500 warriors ranged on the prairie behind them. He never made it back to Wisconsin. An eyewitness account of his last voyage is included in American Journeys, along with his account of descending the Mississippi with Louis Joliet in 1673.