The missions: the Jesuit mission at the fort, and Carey Mission

Mission de Saint-Joseph, in being by 1686, Allouez its founder; Carey Mission, December 1822 – 1830

The Jesuit mission: The valley's first resident priest came with its people. When the Miami returned to the St. Joseph River valley in the 1680s, the Jesuit Father Claude-Jean Allouez accompanied them, and the mission he founded among the Miami and Potawatomi below present Niles — the Mission de Saint-Joseph — preceded the fort. Its founding date is given three ways in the record and all three stand: the History Museum at South Bend dates a French mission on the river to 1680; the Berrien and Cass county profile tradition likewise puts Allouez's founding at about 1680; the archaeological survey of the fort site finds the mission already in existence in 1686, founded among the Miami after their return, and carries the paper title behind it — a tract on the river granted to the Jesuits on 1 October 1686 by the governor and intendant, Denonville and Champigny, and confirmed by King Louis XIV in 1689; the City of Niles' history compresses the same grant to "1686: King Louis XIV grants land to the Jesuits for the Mission de Saint-Joseph." Allouez ministered there until his death in 1689 — on 27 April in Notre Dame's account, on 27 August in the Fort Wayne church history — and was buried near Niles, where a granite cross raised in 1918 marks his assumed grave. Fathers Aveneau, Gravier, and Chardon continued the mission after him, until hostility between the French and the Miami interrupted their labors. In 1691 the fort was built on the mission's site, around its chapel and school; the mission's own course ends with the French collapse, Notre Dame's account dating its abandonment to 1759. For the whole of that century the Christian worship of this valley — the rapids village's country included — was this mission's: Catholic, Jesuit-served, and seated in Michigan.

Carey Mission, this ground's mission: The next mission on the river was Baptist, and it is the one tied by paper to Mishawaka's ground. In December 1822 the Baptist missionary Isaac McCoy, come at the invitation of Territorial Governor Lewis Cass and holding the federal teacher's post under the Treaty of Chicago of 1821, brought a party of thirty-two — his family and accompanying Indians — from the Fort Wayne vicinity to the St. Joseph River, and established Carey Mission about a mile west of present Niles, naming it for the English Baptist missionary William Carey. Its school opened on 27 January 1823 with thirty Indian pupils; six mission houses stood by the following year. The mission's ground became the treaty ground of this build: the Treaty of St. Joseph of 20 September 1828, which took the Mishawaka townsite, was concluded "at the Missionary Establishments upon the St. Joseph," as the tribes leg carries whole. Decline came with white settlement and the removal policy: McCoy removed in 1829 to his Thomas station near the Grand River, leaving Robert Simerwell the only missionary at Carey; the school was discontinued with the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the mission closed that year; in 1831 McCoy led several Potawatomi west to a new mission in Kansas. Nothing of the mission stands today but a Daughters of the American Revolution marker, near Carey Mission Road and Isaac McCoy Drive at Niles.

Sources:

1. An Archaeological Reconnaissance Survey to Locate Remains of Fort St. Joseph (20BE23) in Niles, Michigan (Archaeological Report No. 22, 1999) — Allouez and the Miami return, the mission in existence by 1686, the Denonville–Champigny grant of 1 October 1686 and Louis XIV's confirmation of 1689, the documents' silence until the fort of 1691.
2. Michigan State Historic Preservation Office, Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project poster (Michigan Archaeology Month, 2023) — the Miami return with Allouez in the 1680s, the 1686 royal land grants, Allouez as the settlement's founding Jesuit, the 1918 granite cross at his assumed burial site.
3. The Catholic Church in Fort Wayne (Allen County–Fort Wayne Historical Society, 1961) — Allouez's mission on the St. Joseph, his death 27 August 1689 and burial near Niles, the succession of Aveneau, Gravier, and Chardon and the interruption of their labors.
4. City of Niles, "A History of Fort St. Joseph," and the Berrien & Cass County profiles of Father Allouez — the mission dated about 1680 in the profile tradition, the 1686 grant and the fort built on the mission site in 1691 in the city's; the History Museum, South Bend, for the 1680 mission dating.
5. The banked religion addendum — Notre Dame's account dating Allouez's death to 27 April 1689 and the mission's abandonment to 1759, printed there and carried here as the conflict stands.
6. Carey Mission records as carried in the Kansas Historical Society's Isaac McCoy papers sketch and the mission's standard histories — the December 1822 founding and the party of thirty-two, the school of 27 January 1823, the six mission houses, McCoy's 1829 removal and Simerwell left alone, the 1830 discontinuance and closing, the 1831 removal to Kansas, and the present DAR marker.
7. The banked tribes fragment — the Treaty of St. Joseph of 20 September 1828 concluded at the missionary establishments on the St. Joseph, pointed to and not retold.