Mission of the Guardian Angel

In the 17th century the Chicago area was inhabited by a number of Algonquian peoples, including the Mascouten and Miami tribes, who had migrated into northern Illinois and Wisconsin as a result of the Beaver Wars. Jesuit missionaries exploring the Great Lakes region had first encountered these tribes in the 1650s. The Miami had established some villages on the Des Plaines and Chicago Rivers in the mid-17th century, but these were abandoned in the 1650s as they moved west of the Mississippi and then to Wisconsin. Father Jacques Marquette on his first encounter with the Miami at a large village near what is now Portage, Wisconsin during his expedition with Louis Jolliet to the Mississippi River in 1673 described them as "the most civil, the most liberal, and the most shapely [of the three nations that occupied the village]." In the 1690s the Miami returned to the Chicago area, establishing two villages; one at the mouth of the Chicago River, and another about upstream on the north branch of the river. ==Pinet's Mission==

Pierre François Pinet was born at Périgueux in France on November 11, 1660, and entered the Jesuit novitiate at Bordeaux in 1682. He travelled to Canada in 1694, arriving first in Quebec then travelling to Montreal, Ville-Marie, and Michillimackinac. In 1696 Pinet established the Mission of the Guardian Angel at Chicago, but he was soon forced to abandon the mission by Louis de Buade de Frontenac, the Governor General of New France. An appeal was made to François de Laval, bishop of New France, and the mission was re-established in 1698. Sometime after 1700, the Miamis started to move to the Maumee and Wabash valleys in Indiana, ==Location==

The exact location of the Mission of the Guardian Angel in unknown but various historians have proposed a number of sites in the Chicago area. John Gilmary Shea published an English translation of the letter in 1861; however, Chicago historian Milton Milo Quaife, writing in 1913, noted that Shea's translation "frequently departs from the original manuscript" and that differences in translation may account for some of the different sites proposed. Quaife, working from a duplicate of the original manuscript concluded that the mission was built on the banks of the main stem of the Chicago River, somewhere between the forks and its mouth in what is now downtown Chicago. Other locations proposed include Lake Calumet and a location near Goose Island. Other locations suggested have been Evanston by the Evanston Historical Society, Lake Calumet by Hurlbut, Churchill Woods by V. P. Web, Winnetka by the Saints Faith Hope and Charity Parish Winnetka, the Merchandise Mart by Swenson, Highland Park by Bower and Dooley, the area around LUMA (a Loyola University campus) by Loyola University Chicago, Gross Point by Grover, and Wilmette. ==See also==