The Missionary of Hope

When a person thinks back to the colonial American past, imagining what the first Catholic missionaries who braved the elements, journeyed into the forests, and canoed down American rivers, must have been like, they are thinking of such a person as Frère Louis Hennepin, the epitome of the Catholic missionary in America.

Frère Hennepin was a Récollect Franciscan, the Récollects being one of the reform movements of sixteenth century France that emphasized austerity, penance, and prayer as well as being devoted to the Great Commission. Frère Hennepin was not only a missionary explorer but a writer as well, penning one of the great accounts of missionary adventure and a lively description of the French colony of Louisiana in his book, A Description of Louisiana.

Louis Hennepin was Flemish, born in Belgium, educated in Belgium and France. Early in life, he realized his desire to remove himself from the concerns of the world and devote himself to his relationship with God. After traveling throughout Europe, serving as a chaplain in war, working in the fisheries of Calais, listening to the stories of seamen who had crossed the Atlantic to New France, he joined the Récollect Franciscans with the hopes of one day seeing the lands himself.

His prayers were answered quickly, and he was assigned to New France, sailing to Quebec in 1675, where he served at Hotel Dieu, the first hospital for the needy and ill in Quebec, before being assigned as chaplain at Fort Frontenac (situated in Kingston, where Lake Ontario is the source of the St. Lawrence River). On the north shore of Lake Ontario, Hennepin also served as missionary to the Iroquois at the Quinte Mission.

During these initial years in New France, when he was not praying, catechizing Native American children (often in their own languages), teaching them French, caring for the sick, and saying Mass, Frère Hennepin traveled about Quebec and Lake Ontario hiking (often alone) into the interior on snowshoes with sled dogs and canoeing wild rivers and streams in search of adventure.

In 1679, Hennepin and other Franciscans joined René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, on a voyage of exploration across Lake Ontario. They arrived at the mouth of Niagara River, ascended the river to the falls, took portage around the falls, then halted to construct a three-masted small ship on which they crossed Lake Erie from east to west. Arriving at around present-day Detroit, they ascended the Detroit River, traveled through Lake St. Claire, then entered Lake Huron.

The journey north and west through Lake Huron was harrowing. The storms on the lake were notoriously dangerous, especially for a small wooden ship driven only by sails catching the wind. The Franciscans led the crew in prayers and dedicated the voyage to the care of St. Anthony of Padua. By the end of August, they were glad to reach the strait between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, which the French called Michilimackinac.

From there they sailed into Lake Michigan. At Green Bay, La Salle ordered the barque to return to Niagara while he and fourteen men in four birch canoes made the treacherous way south along the shores of Lake Michigan, trying to avoid conflict with the inhabitants, the Pottawattamie.

For any of the hundreds of missionaries who traveled the North American wilderness, food was always an issue. The missionary explorers with La Salle faced the possibility of starvation dozens of times. Faith, hope, and commitment to the Great Commission drove them forth. Hunger led them from Lake Michigan to the Illinois River, down which they went until they came upon an Illinois village, the warriors of which threatened to attack.

Hennepin recalled in A Description of Louisiana that he and the two other Franciscans, Frère Zenobius and Frère Gabriel, approached the Indians, relating:

[We took] their children by the hand, who were all trembling with fear; we manifested much affection for them, entering with the old men and the mothers into the cabins, taking compassion on these souls, which are going to destruction, being deprived of the word of God and lacking missionaries.

Thus, by love, they averted conflict.

Nearby, La Salle established a fort, and the men were still desperate for food; but their ultimate goals, the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico, were still far away. La Salle sent Hennepin and two French voyageurs to reconnoiter the way to the Mississippi. Upon reaching the great river, they did an exploratory descent; they felt much fear. Hennepin led the French canoers in prayer, especially calling upon the aid of St. Anthony, hoping that they would survive if and when they met Indian warriors.

Their prayers were answered, as upon meeting with a Sioux war party who threatened death, Hennepin approached them and prostrated himself on bended knee with presents; the warriors spared their lives but made them captives. Forced to ascend the Mississippi to the Sioux village, for nineteen days the war party paddled upriver. Hennepin repeated time and again the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary to gain patience and strength. Soon they reached the path to the village, but the challenges of the forced journey were just beginning.

Prayers helped Hennepin endure forced marches from dawn to dusk, crossing icy streams in which Hennepin, who was able to swim, exhausted himself in rushing water with ice shards cutting his skin. He could barely walk at times, but he could not halt, or the penalty would be death.

The Sioux village was at the Falls of St. Anthony on the upper Mississippi River. Here Hennepin was adopted by a Sioux family. His life was hard, with much work and little food, but Hennepin never lost his faith in God. He never lost his purpose for the journey, attempting to impart the Christian message by words and actions to the warriors, their wives, and the little children of the tribe. How does one go from being a captive to a teacher?

Challenges faced by all missionaries in North America were the difficulty in communicating their message and the apathy of their listeners, who were engaged in the struggle to survive. Hennepin, like Franciscan missionaries before and since, taught the people of the village to cross themselves, to repeat basic prayers, to kneel, to do homage to the Virgin Mary. He used pictures, prayer beads, crucifixes, all of which the Sioux enjoyed. But often, after catechism and prayers, they seemed to forget, and the lessons would have to start again.

To gain their trust, Hennepin practiced healing arts. He had brought herbal healing aids with him and applied them to the sick along with prayers to Christ and the Virgin for healing. Hennepin was also genuinely fascinated by the people, their culture and customs, their language and beliefs. The Indians, he thought, were amazingly superstitious, but his knowledge was not that much better—Hennepin believed like other seventeenth-century Europeans that the tribes of America were descended from the Lost Tribes of the ancient Hebrews. Indeed, the knowledge of America of the greatest thinkers in Europe was primitive. Knowing this, Hennepin kept track of where he went and what he learned, planning to tell the story of his travels in this massive land that the French had christened Louisiana.

During the summer of 1680, Sieur Du Luth (Dulhut) arrived with a small French contingent, convincing the Sioux to release Hennepin and the two voyageurs. After the grueling trip back to Lake Michigan, where he was able to bivouac for several days to collect himself and rest, he celebrated Mass, for he had not had wine for the Eucharist for nine months.

“All our Frenchmen went to confession and communion,” he wrote in A Description of Louisiana, “to thank God for having preserved us amid so many wanderings and perils.”

From here he traveled back to Quebec, and eventually returned to France, where he published his book in 1697, recounting his many adventures. He concluded it by restating his original aim in going to America: obedience to the Great Commission.

Father Hennepin had been a stranger in a strange land, a Frenchman lost somewhere in North America. Prayer and faith were the foundations to keeping himself from the shifting sands of doubt and despair. Another man of God many years later who experienced the challenges of coming to America, an Italian immigrant, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, learned that “hope is an anchor.” In America, Hennepin realized through hunger, fear, and despair that, in Pope Francis’ words, “God has made hope for us.”

Image from Wikimedia Commons