Fr. René Ménard

Ménard was a Jesuit missionary who "disappeared into the forest in the Wisconsin district in August 1661." (Monet)

Today, there are two memorials to Ménard in the Northwoods. There are also streets named for him in France. The memorial text along the Michigamme River in Mansfield Township, Michigan:

"July 4th, 1661
"As a matter of conjecture Father Menard somewhere along this river either died or was murdered while on his way southward from L'Anse to visit the Menominee Indians." (46° 05' 01" N | 88° 13' 25" W)

The memorial text along the Wisconsin River in between Merrill and Tomahawk:

"In Honor Of Pere Rene Menard.
"Born at Paris Sept. 7th, 1605
"Entered the Jesuit Order Nov. 7th, 1624.
"Sailed for Quebec in Mach 1840. Lost hereabouts in July 1661, while enroute to Huron village to baptize Indian refugees.
"Erected in 1923
"By Merrill council, 1133 Knights of Columbus, aided by the Wisconsin State Council." (45° 14' 53" N | 89° 47' 23" W)

J. Monet wrote a Ménard obituary for the Dictionary of Canadian Biography in 1966 (revised in 1979 and 2017). Selections from that text:

"Ménard, René, priest, Jesuit, missionary; b.2 Mar. 1605 in Paris; disappeared into the forest in the Wisconsin district in August 1661."

"René Ménard joined the Jesuits on 7 Sept. 1624 in Paris and studied at La Flèche, Bourges, and Orléans...he was sent to Canada, where he arrived on 8 July 1640...

"In 1641 he went off to Sainte-Marie-des-Hurons and later was a missionary to the Nipissings and Algonkins...

"From 1651 to 1656 he was the superior of the residence at Trois-Rivières. Then he took part in the move to the Onondaga country...and went to spend two years among the Iroquois.
"In 1660 he accompanied an expedition of Ottawas who were returning to their home in the region of modern Michigan. The following year he started out from there to go to join some Hurons who were encamped near the mouths of the Black River, in the Wisconsin district, but he became lost in the woods.

"Several years later his breviary and his cassock were discovered in the possession of the Sioux, who had found them and placed them among their manitous on an altar upon which they offered up prayers to the Great Spirit. In confidential memoranda to Rome Father "Ménard's colleagues praised highly his intelligence and judgement, adding that he had a special talent for winning the Indians' confidence.

Albert M. Marshall Brule Country St. Paul, MN: The North Central Publishing Company, 1954. 12, 14.

Marshall described Brule Country under New France's influence. French traders made commercial alliances with the Algonquin people (Ottowas, Eries, Hurons, Chippewas) from the eastern Great Lakes and south-eastern Lake Michigan. The French were also friendly with the Winnebago--who had encountered Jean Nicolet in Green Bay. The Algonquin were enemies of the Iroquois--which made the French Iroquois enemies too (in this period).

Jesuit missionaries were sent out from Quebec, Montreal and Three Rivers to convert every native regardless of their tribe. This included the Iroquois (Mohawk, Oneida, Onodaga, Cayuga and Seneca). According to Marshall, the "result [was] many devoted Jesuit missionary, preaching peace and good will to the savages, perished at the hands of these vengeful warriors."

The confusion of dates, places and missions is not a big issue here. Ménard was born four hundred years ago. What is weird is the assumption that he died. What is strange is the assumption that he died. Without a body or a story. The odds of Ménard's premature death are the same as his giving up the cassock and going native. The odds are only slightly higher than Ménard's rapture.

Louise P. Kellogg "The First Missionary in Wisconsin" Wisconsin Magazine of History vol. 4 no. 4 (June 1921) Menasha: George Banta Publishing Company.

Ménard wasn't alone in the woods. According to an article written a hundred years ago by Louise P. Kellogg--Me´nard was always accompanied by guides, traders and sometimes personal attendant's.

Kellogg describes the upheaval caused in the Great Lakes Indian nations by French settlement on the east and Iroquois raids from the West. A violent clash is predictable in this political situation. Further evidence of the upheaval caused by French and Iroquois pressures is found in where Ménard's cassock and breviary wound up. The Sioux were settled in Lake Superior before pressures from the Algonquin, French and Iroquois pushed them into the Dakotas to become plains peoples. They could have picked up his stuff anywhere on this journey.

The Dakota relics of Ménard might have been "found in a cabin of western Indians" who were accused of killing the missionary. According to Kellogg, "the savages denied it; had they been guilty they would probably have boasted of the deed." The more likely explanation is Ménard getting lost in the woods. He was a martyr in France. The "exact site of his martyrdom will probably never be known."

Kellogg describes Ménard's last few voyages in the Northwoods. This is a terrifying story that is not included in the roadside memorials or the Monet obituary. It starts with many of the same markers: Jean Nicolet's landing in Green Bay which "marked the close of a great era of exploration." This was in 1634. There were only a "few wandering Winnebago Indians" in Wisconsin's forests. Population pressures changed this landscape. By 1652 it was "a refuge for a horde of Indian fugitives--tribes of the Algonquian and Iroquoian families who were fleeing" from New York Iroquois who were armed by the Dutch.

Two Great Lakes "refugee" nations were in contact with the French: the Huron and the Ottawa. These two tribes had been fleeing the genocidal Iroquois since 1650. These two made it into Green Bay and the Huron settled in Black River and Ottawa in Lac Court Oreilles.

The Ottawa developed trade with the French in Montreal by canoe. The Jesuits followed the traders. In 1656 "two missionaries embarked in the returning trade flotilla of the Indians from northern Wisconsin." They were ambushed by Iroquois. One missionary was killed and the other was "abandoned by the Indians."

Ménard was next up to bat. He ventured back with the Ottawa in 1660. He was "fifty-five years of age" when they left. He had a "delicate constitution, worn by long years of service in the western wilderness." He had been evangelizing to Huron and Ottawa for twenty years and could speak "six Indian dialects."

He was "eager" for the assignment and knew it was "in effect a death sentence." In a letter to France Ménard described his reasoning as YOLO--"I could not doubt if I failed to respond to this opportunity that I should experience an endless remorse." He also had a psychological wanderlust which he described as a divine inspiration pushing him "yonder."

The journey gets predictably bad as soon as Ménard and his companions leave New France as the "Indian traders who had promised the French of Canada to care for Father Ménard quickly broke their word." At first it seems like Kellogg's language is a little harsh. The Father was told to pull his own weight. The Indians were mean to him when he couldn't. He didn't have the right shoes and cut his feet which became swollen. He didn't get the best food. This reads like a bad Yelp review.

Then it becomes scary as Ménard is "separated from the French traders who might have aided him." This language is interesting. It assigns the terrifying burden of looking after an injured old man in the wilderness to (presumably) civilized mercantilists rather than savage Indians. The Father is also cut off from "his own donnée who had volunteered to accompany him."

Essentially he was the fourth in a canoe with three natives. The canoe "was broken by a falling tree." Nobody in the flotilla stopped to help them and for "six days they existed by pounding bones and eating offal." After the six days they got a ride to an Ottawa winter camp "at the foot of Keeweenaw Bay" and arrived October 15. This might be the current town of L'anse. Ménard decided to spend the winter there with the people there.

The "chief" was a "surly brute." Ménard started scolding the man's polygamy. The chief kicked him out of his wigwam into the winter. Ménard made a "poor hut" from tree branches and presumably lived off of fish from the bay and "wine for the mass [which] did not congeal" for the whole winter.

In the spring some French traders came from Chequamegon to Keewenaw bay and carried Ménard back to Chequamegon. When they arrived Ménard found a "great concourse of Indians, refugees from several tribes" and he started to preach to them.

Word came from Black River that the Huron were starving. Ménard "determined it was his duty to go thither and baptize all the heathen he could before their death..." and he sent a message to the Huron via some traders. When the traders arrived they "found the Huron in a famishing condition, so weak they could scarcely stand or lift their hands." The traders decided that the Huron were to weak to hear and Ménard was to old to journey. They refused to deliver the message and returned to Chequamegon.

Ménard decided to go anyway. This is where the memoria and obituaries rediscover his story. To Kellogg "Ménard was determined to visit his Huron neophytes" in Black River. His divine inspiration pushed him yonder. He set out from Chequamegon on July 13, 1661 with "some smoked meat and a bag of dried sturgeon." He was accompanied by a trader and some Huron guides. The guides became "weak for lack of food and dissatisfied with the slow progress of the old man..." left and promised to send another party. The two Frenchmen waited two weeks. No one came.

The French twosome usufructed a canoe that they found. They started in the Chippewa river toward the Black. They could have also been in the Yellow or Jump Rivers. This matters because the current of this river was great. The canoe became caught in some rocks in a rapid.

Ménard "to lighten his companion's labors, considerately stepped ashore" and the trader freed the canoe and waited "[s]afely up in quiet water" for Ménard. The missionary didn't appear. The trader shot five times and yelled a bunch before he "became frightened at the menace of the forest" and he started toward the Hurons. It took him two days to get there. He didn't speak their language. They launched a half-hearted rescue attempt.

After that "the Huron were obdurate in their refusal to search for the missing missionary." After a few days the trader returned to Chequamegon and "reported the loss."

For the purposes of this local story "the exact site of his martyrdom will probably never be known." Kellogg also uses some hagiographic superlatives "heroism...devotion to duty" to describe this Quixotic Jesuit missionary. Ménard might have come to Wisconsin looking for the vanity of martyrdom or he might have been a humble servant. What is obvious is that he annoyed the people he lived with. By not understanding his limitations, he endangered others. By scolding others, he imperiled himself.

The Mashall narrative Brule Country includes a paragaraph about Ménard. The period was after the "Iroquois war saw considerable expansion in French America..." New France received troops, colonists, farm labor and missionaries from Europe. Ménard was part of this. In 1660 he "accompanied a returning party of Chippewas as the first apostle to the Lake Superior district." Marshall doesn't mention the first two missionaries from Kellogg, one killed and the other abandoned.

Ménard was "fifty-six years old and far from robust." He had a "kind and gentle ways" that were ridiculed by the native people. The canoe trip from Montreal was "long" his winter in L'Anse was "harrowing." The mission to the starving Hurons is described as "an errand of mercy" on which "he perished."

This final mission is most interesting. First, obviously, because he disappeared. Second, because of the goal. Ménard was on his own--cut off from superiors. He was going to baptize dying Hurons so they could get into heaven. This is not a marketable skill in the frontier wilderness. Even if he would have arrived at the Huron camp--he had nothing to offer them but salvation. Third, the previous emphasis on hardships make Ménard seem like a martyr in training. Multiple accounts describe the hardships he endured even as the savages and traders who accompany him are fine. He is forced to carry stuff. He didn't bring the right shoes so his feet hurt. He has to ride in the canoe without his friends. Even when he has good luck--such as in L'Anse--he messes it up by acting righteous.

Father Ménard is not a sympathetic character. He is a self-righteous lunatic, a religious fanatic who doesn't listen to reason. He annoyed his peers. He seemed to have a death wish. He piggybacked his weird cultural beliefs on burgeoning trade routes. He refused to change his actions for traders or savages. He was one of the first Americans.