Gravier, Jacques
Gravier, Jacques
Jesuit missionary; born 1651 at Moulins, where he studied classics and philosophy under the Jesuits; died in Louisiana in 1708. He joined the Jesuit Order in 1670, studied theology at the college of Louis-le-Grand, Paris, and was sent to Canada in 1685. In 1686 he went to Michilimackinac. In 1687 he succeeded Allouez in the Illinois mission begun by Marquette. He is the true founder of that mission, where he spent ten years of incredible hardship and suffering. He was the first to master the Illinois idiom, and reduced it to grammatical form. He grouped Kaskaskia and Peoria Indians, at the Rocher, near Ft. St. Louis, and despite the machinations of the medicine-men he moulded his flock into a model Christian Church. In his task he was seconded by a saintly woman, daughter of a Kaskaskia chief. In 1696 he was superior at Michilimackinac, with the title of vicar-general of Bishop St. Vallier. In 1700 he returned to the Illinois mission. In 1706 the ungrateful Peorias attacked and cruelly wounded the missionary. An arrow-head imbedded in his arm could never be extracted even by the surgeons in Paris. In 1708 Gravier returned to Louisiana, where he died of his wound that same year.
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Rochemonteix, Les Jésuites et la Nouvelle France (Montreal, 1896); Shea, The Catholic Church in Colonial Days (New York, 1886).
LIONEL LINDSAY
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VICopyright © 1909 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, September 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, CensorImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Gravier, Jacques
a French missionary to America, arrived in Canada in 1684. He was sent at once to the Illinois region, to follow up the labors of Marquette and others. He made a canoe voyage from Kaskaskia down the Mississippi to confer with Iberville; went down a second time in 1706, and from thence to Europe. He returned in February, 1708, re-embarked, and died at sea in April of the same year. He wrote a grammar of the Illinois language, a journal of his voyage down the Mississippi in 1700, and other works, a part of which have been published. See Appleton’s Amer. Cyclop. s.v.