Menard, Fr. Rene, 1605-1661 | Wisconsin Historical Society

Historical Essay

Menard, Fr. Rene, 1605-1661

Menard, Fr. Rene, 1605-1661 | Wisconsin Historical Society
Dictionary of Wisconsin History.

first missionary to reach Wisconsin; when Iroquois attacks drove his small flock of converts 1,000 miles west, he followed after them in 1660; wintering on Keweenaw Bay, he set out in the spring for a village of exiled Hurons near the headwaters of the Black River northwest of modern Wausua, hiking overland across the Upper Penninsula of Michigan, canoeing the Wisconsin River past Lac Vieux Desert, and meeting his death at a rapids on the Rib River in Taylor County.

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[Source: See the Jesuit Relation for 1663-1664 at Turning Points in Wisconsin Hisotry (www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints); his story is told in Thwaites, Reuben Gold, Stories of the Badger State (N.Y.: American Book Co., 1900).]