A Catholic History of Chicago

The first Catholic act on the site of Chicago was a winter Mass. Jacques Marquette passed through the Chicago portage with Louis Jolliet in 1673 and came back the next year, ill, with two French companions. His own journal says he left the Green Bay mission on October 25, 1674 and reached the frozen river on December 4. He camped about two leagues up the river, said the Mass of the Conception in December and, after a novena to the Virgin Immaculate, wrote in late January 1675 that his illness had left him. By March 30 he was saying Mass every day. He left on March 29 or 30, founded a mission among the Illinois at Easter and died on May 18, 1675 on the way back to Saint Ignace. Nobody knows where the cabin stood; tradition puts it on the South Branch of the river, and a bronze tablet of 1930 on the Damen Avenue bridge marks the guess. Father Jacques Marquette.

A short Jesuit mission of the Guardian Angel served the Miami at Chicago from 1696 to about 1700. After that the fur trade village was French and Native, and many of its settlers were Catholic.