Father Jacques Marquette arrived in Quebec as a missionary from France seeking to bring Christianity to the native peoples. He was commissioned by the Genes D'Armes d'Exploration Francais to explore the unknown Mississippi River.
He traveled by canoe from Lake Michigan and over to the Mississippi River, where he floated to the Arkansas River but did not go further out of fear of the Spaniards.
Marquette met with over 500 chiefs and, in the words of a Jesuit, he "explained to them the principal mysteries of our religion, and the end for which he had come to their country; and especially he preached to them Christ crucified, for it was the very eve of the great day on which he died on the cross for them."