Today, there are two memorials to Ménard in the northwoods. The memorial text along the Michigamme River in Mansfield Township, Michigan: "July 4th, 1661...As a matter of conjecture Father Menard somewhere along this river either died or was murdered while on his way southward from L'Anse to visit the Menominee Indians." (46° 05' 01" N | 88° 13' 25" W) An other monument is about one hundred miles south west on the Wisconisn River. "In Honor Of Pere Rene Menard. / Born at Paris Sept. 7th, 1605 / Entered the Jesuit Order Nov. 7th, 1624. / Sailed for Quebec in Mach 1840. Lost hereabouts in July 1661, while enroute to Huron village to baptize Indian refugees. / Erected in 1923 By Merrill council, 1133 Knights of Columbus, aided by the Wisconsin State Council." (45° 14' 53" N | 89° 47' 23" W). Jesuit priests and fur trapping voyageurs were among the first wave of French colonizers in the New World. These French trade routes and indigenous contacts south of the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River were later controlled by British colonial, American territorial and finally American state. Ménard is historically elusive because his story is hundreds of years old. It has also been translated through the three European (Fr, UK, USA) colonial traditions but also through multiple indigenous traditions (Dikota-Sioux, Pottawatomie and Chippewa). These indigenous traditions were being stressed by the imperialist natives (Iriquois) and the approaching Europeans. The Europeans were being tested by the wilderness-frontier. If he intended to survive, Ménard must have believed in divine providence. If he had intended to become a martyr, Ménard could not have chosen a better path.

Monet describes Ménard as a Jesuit missionary who was born in Paris on 2 March 1605. He joined the Jesuits in 1624, studied at La Flèche, Bourges, and arrived as a missionary in Canada in 1640. He ministered to the "Hurons...Nipissings and Algonkins" when he arrived. From 1651-56 he lived in residence at Trois-Rivières and became superior in 1658. After that, he joined the Iroquois for two years. In 1660 he ministered to Ottawa. He spent the next year with the Hurons "who were encamped near the mouth of the Black River." He was lost in the woods in August 1661.The Monet narrative continues after Ménard is lost. "Several years later his breviary and his cassock were discovered in the possession of the Sioux, who had found them and placed them among their manitous on an altar upon which they offered up prayers to the Great Spirit."

Marshall's 1954 history of Brule Country describes Ménard's New France. French traders made commercial alliances with the Algonquin people (Ottawas, Eries, Hurons, Chippewas) from the eastern Great Lakes and south-eastern Lake Michigan. The French were also friendly with the Winnebago--who had encountered Jean Nicolet in Green Bay. The Algonquin were enemies of the Iroquois--which made the French Iroquois enemies too (in this period). Jesuit missionaries were sent out from Quebec, Montreal and Three Rivers to convert every native regardless of their tribe. This included the Iroquois (Mohawk, Oneida, Onodaga, Cayuga and Seneca). According to Marshall, the "result [was] many devoted Jesuit missionary, preaching peace and good will to the savages, perished at the hands of these vengeful warriors."

Alexander McGinn Stewart published a biography of Menard in 1934, maintained online by John Allen since 1997. Stewart was interested in Ménard's canoe trips, his Jesuit education and the native people he met. The fifth chapter starts in the 1658 with Ménard returning to his "official Residence" in Trois-Rivières where he was appointed Superior. There was a developing trade fur route between Trois-Rivières, French trappers and native groups. Ménard followed a group of French and Ottawa traders down that trade route "up the Ottawa River, through the little lakes beyond Mattawa...[to] Lake Nipissing." He continued to the north end of Lake Huron through the "long cascade at Sault Ste Marie" and up into Lake Superior.

Ménard's story is punctuated by trials. One of these comes in Sault Ste. Marie. According to McGinn the Ottawa on Ménard's canoe tried to lighten the load "so part of the way they skirted the shore and made Fr. Menard walk along the beaches." Ménard was an old man. Stewart's account reads as if the Ottawa traders resented the dead weight of the Jesuit. The natives were "hurrying" and the Father was "compelled" to do the same to keep up. The real trial was when an Ottawa "suspicious" and in "fear" stole Ménard's prayer book and "threw it away." The breviary disappears from the Stewart narrative at this point. This is consequential because Ménard continued to minister. He "converted 50 adult Indians" when he arrived in Keweenaw Bay from Trois-Rivières. He could have done this without liturgy. But when his artifacts were discovered with the Sioux--the breviary was alongside his cassock. It is possible that the loss of the breviary is part of a thematic martyrdom embedded in Ménard's story (and Christianity in general).

As Ménard and his Ottawa companions were outside of the canoe it was destroyed. Stewart proposes two causes of this catastrophe. First, a tree fell on it while Ménard and his fellow-travelers were skirting the shallow water. McGinn preferred a second explanation, that a tree fell on the canoe as the men slept and the canoe was "used as a roof at night." The men were stranded on the banks for six days. They didn't have any supplies. They survived on "the offal of an abandoned Indian hunting camp" eating bones, skin and "clotted dried blood." To make it worse--members of the trade flotilla passed the stranded men--unable to help because their canoes were weighed down with goods and livre. After six days some other traders picked them up. The voyage continued to "the winter rendezvous" near Keweenaw bay. Where he spent an awful winter.

After wintering in Keweenaw Bay Ménard and a companion started a voyage from the Chequamegon Bay looking for a way to get to the Black River from the Chippewa River. This is where the Stewart narrative ends in suppositions. Maybe it was a "deadly...sorcerer of the Indians...jealous of Fr. Ménard" that killed him after separating from his companion at a portage. There is no evidence of this provided. What is known is Ménard disappeared somewhere in between Chequamegon Bay and the Flambeau River. Stewart (1934) comes at the tail end of a Ménard moment in Wisconsin history. His gruesome story makes for good history. There is also confusion about his final route. This is addressed the state historical society and Jesuit organizations. The WI-SHS Assistant Superintendent Annie A. Nunns described the academic consensus to Stewart that was found in the author's copy of the book.

The full text: "Dear Sir: Miss Kellogg of our research department who has made a study of Father Menard's life and work, makes the following report to reply to your query concerning his route: The earlier studies of Father Menard's route were based on the assumption that he started from Keweenaw Bay; after more careful reading of the sources it is now admitted by most historians that the start was from Chequamegon Bay. That much alters the conclusions about the route, making it down the Chippewa, not the Wisconsin, and up a tributary of that river towards the headwaters of the Black River." The State historical society journal published on this in June 1921.

Shifting Ménard's starting point more than one hundred miles west from Keweenaw to Chequamegon bays was a historical correction of a seventeenth century event that happened in the twentieth century. In fact, neither the monument in Mansfield (Menominee river basin) nor the one north of Merrill (Wisconsin river basin) is on the route where Ménard was lost--on the Turtle-Flambeau-Chippewa River.

Kellog's "The First Missionary in Wisconsin" is the article referenced by Nunns. Kellog's Ménard narrative is congruent with Stewart's that came a decade later. Ménard wasn't alone in the woods. Kellog emphasized Me´nard's company of guides, traders and sometimes personal attendant's. Kellogg describes the upheaval caused in the Great Lakes Indian nations by French settlement on the east and Iroquois raids from the West. A violent clash is predictable in this political situation. Further evidence of the upheaval caused by French and Iroquois pressures is found in where Ménard's cassock and breviary wound up. The Sioux were settled in Lake Superior before pressures from the Algonquin, French and Iroquois pushed them into the Dakotas to become plains peoples. They could have picked up his stuff anywhere on this journey.

The Dakota relics of Ménard might have been "found in a cabin of western Indians" who were accused of killing the missionary. According to Kellogg, "the savages denied it; had they been guilty they would probably have boasted of the deed." The more likely explanation is Ménard getting lost in the woods. He was a martyr in France. The "exact site of his martyrdom will probably never be known." Kellogg describes Ménard's last few voyages in the Northwoods. It starts with familiar Wisconsin history tropes: Jean Nicolet's landing in Green Bay which "marked the close of a great era of exploration." This was in 1634. There were only a "few wandering Winnebago Indians" in Wisconsin's forests. Population pressures changed this landscape. By 1652, Wisconsin it was "a refuge for a horde of Indian fugitives--tribes of the Algonquian and Iroquoian families who were fleeing" from New York Iroquois who were armed by the Dutch.

According to Stewart, the Iroquois are forcing native people allied with the French--like the Ottawa--to look for more western transportation routes. Ménard's final mission to the Flambeau and Black rivers was inspired by a Iroquois presence in the Wisconsin river valley. To Stewart, "[Ménard's] route was down the Chippewa and up a tributary to the headwaters of the Black River. Refugees from the old Huron country had found in this new land among the Ottawas, in a white birch and beaver country, a maze of lakes and rivers, which as yet the Iroquois had not explored and which formed, for these Hurons, a safe dodging place from the guns and tomahawks of their old relentless enemies."

Kellog describes the Huron and Ottawa as Great Lakes "refugee" nations. These two tribes had been fleeing the genocidal armed Iroquois since 1650--from upstate New York, the Great Lakes to Green Bay. By Ménard's time Huron had settled in Black River and Ottawa in Lac Court Oreilles. This was the last piece of the northwoods before the great plains of Minnesota and greater Sioux country. Ménard was headed for the Huron's new home when he disappeared. This was newly contested territory inhabited by many overlapping people. It is tempting to see the Iroquois as the invaders and blame them for Ménard's disappearance. However, this wasn't Ottawa or Huron's traditional home either. Pre-history is tricky. This is compounded by transient populations. Any Wisconsin regional history should start with the three of the eight Anishinaabe people [Potawatomi, Chippewa-Ojibwa, Odawa-Ottawa] and the Mississippi Sioux [Dakota and Ho-Chunk-Winnebago speakers]. Then the Iroquois confederacy [Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca] acquires European guns. After the smallpox epidemic destroys most of the native population the Iroquois are able to use their firepower to conquer most of the Great Lakes and the peoples that lived there. The French fur trapping regime initiated by guys like Nicolet and Ménard capitalized on the post epidemic depopulation and advanced technology in the same way as the Iroquois.

The first French trade routes used canoes around Montreal. The Jesuits followed the traders. In 1656 "two missionaries embarked in the returning trade flotilla of the Indians from northern Wisconsin." They were ambushed by Iroquois. One missionary was killed and the other was "abandoned by the Indians." Ménard was next up to bat. He ventured back with the Ottawa in 1660. He was "fifty-five years of age" when they left. He had a "delicate constitution, worn by long years of service in the western wilderness." He had been evangelizing to Huron and Ottawa for twenty years and could speak "six Indian dialects."

He was "eager" for the assignment and knew it was "in effect a death sentence." In a letter to France Ménard described his reasoning, "I could not doubt if I failed to respond to this opportunity that I should experience an endless remorse." He also had a psychological wanderlust which he described as a divine inspiration pushing him "yonder." The journey gets predictably bad as soon as Ménard and his companions leave New France as the "Indian traders who had promised the French of Canada to care for Father Ménard quickly broke their word." At first it seems like Kellogg's language is a little harsh. The Father was told to pull his own weight. The Indians were mean to him when he couldn't. He didn't have the right shoes and cut his feet which became swollen. He didn't get the best food. And so on...

The story becomes scary as Ménard is "separated from the French traders who might have aided him." This language is interesting. It assigns the terrifying burden of looking after an injured old man in the wilderness to (presumably) civilized mercantilists rather than savage Indians. The Father is also cut off from "his own donnée who had volunteered to accompany him." Essentially he was the fourth in a canoe with three natives. The canoe "was broken by a falling tree." Nobody in the flotilla stopped to help them and for "six days they existed by pounding bones and eating offal." After the six days they got a ride to an Ottawa winter camp "at the foot of Keweenaw Bay" and arrived October 15. This might be the current town of L'Anse. Ménard decided to spend the winter there with the people there.

The "chief" was a "surly brute." Ménard started scolding the man's polygamy. The chief kicked him out of his wigwam into the winter. Ménard made a "poor hut" from tree branches and presumably lived off of fish from the bay and "wine for the mass [which] did not congeal" for the whole winter. In the spring some French traders came from Chequamegon to Keweenaw bay and carried Ménard back to Chequamegon. When they arrived Ménard found a "great concourse of Indians, refugees from several tribes" and he started to preach to them.

Word came from Black River that the Huron were starving. Ménard "determined it was his duty to go thither and baptize all the heathen he could before their death..." and he sent a message to the Huron via some traders. When the traders arrived they "found the Huron in a famishing condition, so weak they could scarcely stand or lift their hands." The traders decided that the Huron were to weak to hear and Ménard was to old to journey. They refused to deliver the message and returned to Chequamegon.

Ménard decided to go anyway. This is where the memoria and obituaries rediscover his story. To Kellogg "Ménard was determined to visit his Huron neophytes" in Black River. His divine inspiration pushed him yonder. He set out from Chequamegon on July 13, 1661 with "some smoked meat and a bag of dried sturgeon." He was accompanied by a trader and some Huron guides. The guides became "weak for lack of food and dissatisfied with the slow progress of the old man..." left and promised to send another party. The two Frenchmen waited two weeks. No one came."

The French twosome usufructed a canoe that they found. They started in the Chippewa river toward the Black. They could have also been in the Yellow or Jump Rivers. This matters because the current of this river was great. The canoe became caught in some rocks in a rapid. Ménard "to lighten his companion's labors, considerately stepped ashore" and the trader freed the canoe and waited "[s]afely up in quiet water" for Ménard. The missionary didn't appear. The trader shot five times and yelled a bunch before he "became frightened at the menace of the forest" and he started toward the Hurons. It took him two days to get there. He didn't speak their language. They launched a half-hearted rescue attempt.

After that "the Huron were obdurate in their refusal to search for the missing missionary." It is understandable. They were scared that the same Iroquois that got Ménard would get them. After a few days the trader returned to Chequamegon and "reported the loss...the exact site of his martyrdom will probably never be known." Kellogg also uses some hagiographic superlatives "heroism...devotion to duty" to describe this Quixotic Jesuit missionary. Ménard might have come to Wisconsin looking for the vanity of martyrdom or he might have been a humble servant. What is obvious is that he annoyed the people he lived with. More than once did his companions pull the vehicle over and ask him to get out. He was old so he deserved respect. But he didn't get his limitations. This made him a danger to himself and his companions.

Mashall's Brule Country includes a paragraph about Ménard. The period was after the "Iroquois war saw considerable expansion in French America..." New France received troops, colonists, farm labor and missionaries from Europe. Ménard was part of this. In 1660 he "accompanied a returning party of Chippewas as the first apostle to the Lake Superior district." Marshall doesn't mention the first two missionaries from Kellogg, one killed and the other abandoned.

Ménard was "fifty-six years old and far from robust." He had a "kind and gentle ways" that were ridiculed by the native people. The canoe trip from Montreal was "long" his winter in L'Anse was "harrowing." The mission to the starving Hurons is described as "an errand of mercy" on which "he perished." This final mission is most interesting. First, obviously, because he disappeared. Second, because of the goal. Ménard was on his own--cut off from superiors and operating without a mandate. He was going to baptize dying Hurons so they could get into heaven. This is not a marketable skill in the frontier wilderness. Even if he would have arrived at the Huron camp--he had nothing to offer them but salvation. Third, the previous emphasis on hardships make Ménard seem like a martyr in training. Multiple accounts describe the hardships he endured even as the savages and traders who accompany him are fine. He is forced to carry stuff. He didn't bring the right shoes so his feet hurt. He has to ride in the canoe without his friends. Even when he has good luck--such as in L'Anse--he messes it up by acting righteous.

Ménard's mysterious fate is curious as a whodunnit. It is also interesting as a psychological supposition about the link between French colonialism and Jesuit martyrdom. But Ménard's years of suffering are as interesting as questions about the location and cause of his death.