Where Father Marquette Died
Near Ludington, Michigan
Look south across the water to the Buttersville peninsula and you may see a stark white cross standing above the dunes, lit at night and visible far out on the lake. It marks the place where one of the most famous explorers of the Great Lakes drew his last breath. Father Jacques Marquette was a French Jesuit missionary who, with the trader Louis Jolliet, had mapped a long stretch of the Mississippi River.
On the return journey his health collapsed from dysentery he had contracted along the way. On the eighteenth of May, sixteen seventy five, he died on this shore near what is now Ludington. He was only thirty seven years old.
Two French companions, Pierre Porteret and Jacques Largillier, buried him at a spot he had chosen and raised a large wooden cross over the grave. Two years later, Kiskakon Ottawa travelers found the site, gathered his remains, and carried them back to the mission at Saint Ignace for reburial. The modern memorial cross commands sweeping views across both Lake Michigan and Pere Marquette Lake, a quiet monument to the man whose name is stamped on the river, the lake, and the whole surrounding country.
