Background
Christian Hoecken was born on February 28, 1808 at Tilburg, Netherlands.
Christian Hoecken was born on February 28, 1808 at Tilburg, Netherlands.
Hoecken was raised to the priesthood March 29, 1832, and started for America the same year, arriving in Missouri in November. His faculties, given by Bishop Rosati, were dated November 6, 1833. His first priestly labors were exercised in the villages of Florissant, St. Charles, and Dardenne.
In May 1836 he joined Father Van Quickenborne in the Kickapoo Mission, eight miles north of Leavenworth, which had been established by the Society of Jesus at the request of Gen. William Clark, then superintendent of Indian affairs in the West. Hoecken made rapid progress in acquiring the Kickapoo language. He built a school, which received some government aid, and taught the children. The Indians were astonished at the fluency and correctness of his speech; they affectionately called him "the Kickapoo Father. "
The Catholic services, mass, sermon, and benediction, appealed to the Indians at first; their attendance was regular and respectful. One of their number, called the Prophet, stirred up strife and opposition among them, however, and like the children they were in everything save age and innocence, the Kickapoos grew tired of attending the mission house. Their passion for strong drink completed the work of devastation; the mission was closed in 1839; and Father Hoecken, after a brief stay at the Novitiate, turned to the Potawatomi Mission, which had been established by Father Pierre-Jean De Smet near Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1838. Here, also, drunkenness was the main obstacle to making converts.
In August 1841, Council Bluffs was abandoned by the missionaries, and Hoecken took charge of the large band of Catholic Potawatomis, on the headquarters of the Osage River in Kansas. A temporary chapel was raised on Potawatomi Creek, but on May 10 the entire multitude of the faithful removed to the river called Sugar Creek. Father Hoecken on three occasions visited Council Bluffs, 1842, 1844, 1846; but in 1848 all the Catholic Potawatomi were brought together in the Mission of St. Mary's, Kansas.
Three years later, in 1851, while on a journey with Father De Smet to the Indians at the headwaters of the Missouri, Hoecken was taken with cholera and died. His remains were buried on the Nebraska shore of the river, near the mouth of the Platte, but after a short while were taken to St. Charles and reinterred in the cemetery of St. Stanislaus Novitiate, Florissant.
Hoecken was a member of the Society of Jesus.
Quotes from others about the person
"The qualities that most distinguished him amid his labors and privations were his admirable frankness, his simplicity, his sound judgment and ever joyous and peaceful disposition of mind and heart, and an imperturbable contentment, which the author of this notice has never found to the same degree in any individual. " - Archbishop Kenrick
Hoecken never married.