The Mission Era: Priests and Missionaries on the River, 1679–1857

La Salle's passage December 1679; the St. Joseph Mission from the 1680s; Fort St. Joseph 1691–1781; Carey Mission 1822–1830; the Pokagon mission 1830; Holy Cross from 1844; first resident pastor at Mishawaka, July 1857

First contact: The river's recorded mission history opens with a passage, not a settlement. In December 1679 René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, came down the St. Joseph River and crossed the St. Joseph–Kankakee portage at the river's bend — the passage the tribes leg carries whole. No priest resided on the river yet; the mission century that followed was seated upriver, at present Niles, Michigan, and governed this ground from there.

The Jesuit mission century, at boundary size: In the 1680s the Jesuit Father Claude-Jean Allouez established the Mission de Saint-Joseph among the Miami and Potawatomi of the St. Joseph valley, on ground south of present Niles. Notre Dame's own historical account dates one of the first missions in northern Indiana to about 1685, founded for the neighboring Potawatomi and Miami on the St. Joseph River at a point south of the present city of Niles, and records that Allouez came to establish the mission post permanently; the City of Niles' history carries the land grant behind it — in 1686 King Louis XIV granted land to the Jesuits for the Mission de Saint-Joseph, and Allouez ministered to the local Potawatomi. Allouez died on 27 April 1689. In 1691 the French built Fort St. Joseph beside the mission, a garrison and trading post the Niles history records as occupied for ninety years, from 1691 to 1781. The two endings stand in the record as two different facts and are printed so: Notre Dame's account says the St. Joseph Mission was abandoned in 1759, after the British defeated the French; the fort's occupation ran on, under changing flags, to 1781. For the whole of that century the valley's Christian worship was this mission's — Catholic, Jesuit-served, and seated in Michigan. No mission, chapel or priest was seated on the ground that became Mishawaka in that era in any source reached.

The Protestant mission, at boundary size: The next mission on the river was Baptist, and it also seated at Niles. In December 1822 the Baptist missionary Isaac McCoy brought a party of thirty-two from the Fort Wayne vicinity to a point about a mile west of present Niles and established Carey Mission, named for the English Baptist missionary William Carey. Its school opened on 27 January 1823 with thirty Indian pupils. The mission became a way station for settlers on the frontier's edge; McCoy removed to his Thomas station in 1829, leaving Robert Simerwell at Carey, and with the Indian Removal Act of 1830 the Carey school was discontinued. The 1828 treaty that took the Mishawaka townsite was concluded at these missionary establishments on the St. Joseph, as the tribes leg carries — the mission was the valley's address in the years just before the town was platted.

The Catholic return, 1830: The mission thread then returns to the Catholic line, and to this end of the valley. In 1830 Father Frederick Rese came to the old St. Joseph Mission and on 24–25 July 1830 baptized thirty of the Potawatomi, among them Chief Leopold Pokagon and his wife Elizabeth — Pokagon having traveled to Detroit to ask Father Gabriel Richard for a priest. Within weeks Father Stephen Theodore Badin, the first priest ordained in the United States, arrived to take up the revived mission, assisted by the Potawatomi-speaking lay missionary Angelique Campeau. Badin bought some fifty arpents near the Indiana–Michigan line, by Pokagon's village, and dedicated a chapel there on 21 November 1830; by late 1832 he had baptized more than 170 people, and he purchased the 524 acres around St. Mary's Lake that became Notre Dame. Father Louis DeSeille succeeded in the Potawatomi ministry and served the Indians of Bertrand and Pokagon and the Catholics of South Bend until his death in 1837; Father Benjamin Petit followed. The thread from this mission runs straight to Mishawaka: it was Badin's successor institution, the Congregation of Holy Cross at Notre Dame under Father Edward Sorin, whose missionaries crossed to the iron-works village in 1844.

Mishawaka's own segment, pointed to: From 1844 the course is the banked fragment's, in the St. Joseph Catholic Church article, and it is pointed to here rather than retold: Holy Cross missionaries serving the village from 1844, Mass in homes, the Church of the Holy Angels mission rooms, the parish erected 10 December 1848, and the first resident pastor, the Rev. John Mager, from July 1857. The river course above is what that article lacked: a hundred and seventy-eight years of mission on the St. Joseph — Jesuit, then Baptist, then Badin's — before a priest resided in Mishawaka at all.

Sources:

1. City of Niles, Michigan, "A History of Fort St. Joseph" (nilesmi.org) — the 1686 royal grant to the Jesuits, Allouez's ministry to the Potawatomi, the fort built 1691 and occupied to 1781.
2. University of Notre Dame, "The Spirit of Notre Dame" (the Log Chapel centenary account) — the mission of about 1685 south of present Niles, Allouez, the mission abandoned 1759, Allouez's death 27 April 1689, Badin's 1830 reorganization of the St. Joseph Mission and the move to St. Mary's Lake.
3. Rev. Thomas T. McAvoy, C.S.C., "Father Badin Comes to Notre Dame," Indiana Magazine of History — Rese's baptisms of 24–25 July 1830 including Pokagon, Badin's arrival and chapel purchase by the state line, DeSeille's succession.
4. Today's Catholic, "Faith of Native Americans laid foundation for diocese" — Pokagon's July 1830 journey to Detroit, Badin's arrival a month later, the chapel dedicated by 21 November, more than 170 baptized by late 1832, DeSeille replacing Badin in 1835.
5. Carey Mission records as carried in the Kansas Historical Society's Isaac McCoy papers sketch and the mission's standard history — established December 1822 a mile west of present Niles, school opened 27 January 1823 with thirty pupils, McCoy's removal 1829, the school discontinued 1830.
6. The banked religion fragment, "St. Joseph Catholic Church: The Mother Parish" — the 1844–1857 Mishawaka segment pointed to, not retold.