Missionaries at Mackinac

Missionaries at Mackinac. Mackinaw City Historical Pathway. , Roman Catholicism came to the Straits of Mackinac through the self-sacrificing efforts of seventeenth-century Jesuit Missionaries. In 1670 Father Jacques Marquette established a mission for Huron Indians on Mackinac Island. An agriculturally-based tribe, the Huron found the thin soil of Mackinac Island unsuitable for their crops. , , A year after settling on Mackinac Island, Marquette moved his mission to the more fertile land on the north shore of the Straits. Here, Marquette and Father Claude Dablon founded the permanent mission of St. Ignatius Loyola (today, St. Ignace, Michigan,) named in honor of the founder of the Jesuit order. Nearby, the Jesuits also established the mission of St. Francis Borgia to the Ottawa Indians, another agricultural tribe which planted corn fields on the St. Ignace peninsula. , , A fur trade community developed adjacent to the missions and by 1690 soldiers constructed Fort Du Buade to protect French commercial interests. When the French military closed Fort Du Buade and later reestablished a Great Lakes presence at Detroit in 1701, the Huron from St. Ignace migrated south and became the Detroit-area Wyandots. Left behind were the Jesuits and their faithful band of Ottawa still tilling the soil at the Straits of Mackinac. After depleting the soil at St. Ignace, the Ottawa and their Jesuit priests moved to the south shore of the Straits of Mackinaw (today Mackinaw City, Michigan,) sometime around 1708. In 1715 they were once again joined by French soldiers who constructed the palisaded community of Michilimackinac.