The Red Pieta, by Lester W. Bentley, 1942

The mission of St. Francis Xavier was a seventeenth-century Jesuit mission located on the rapids of the Fox River near De Pere, Wisconsin.[1]

It was founded in 1671 by Claude Allouez to proselytize the native peoples of the western Great Lakes. In 1684 a chapel measuring 70'x40' and seating six-hundred was completed under the direction of Father Verboort to serve an expanding Catholic population.[2] The mission was used as a base of operations by Nicolas Perrot in his explorations of the Upper Midwest in the 1680s. In 1686 he made a present of a silver ostensorium to the mission which was rediscovered by workmen digging a foundation in 1802. In 1687 the mission of St. Francis Xavier was destroyed in an Iroquois attack.

References

  1. ↑ "Wisconsin Historical Markers: WRL-30: St. Francis Xavier Mission".
  2. ↑ History of St. Francis Xavier Parish
  • Campbell, Henry Colin. Wisconsin In Three Centuries. 1st. New York: The Century History Company, 1906. Print.

44°26′56″N 88°03′42″W / 44.44889°N 88.06167°W / 44.44889; -88.06167


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