Michel Guignas

Background

Michel Guignas was a native of Aquitaine, he was born at Condom in the diocese of Auch on January 22, 1681.

Career

At the age of twenty-one Michel Guignas entered the Jesuit order and in 1716 was sent to reinforce the mission work in New France, which was languishing for lack of new men. After a year’s initiation into the difficulties of labor among the Indians, Guignas was sent to the mission at Mackinac, the entrepot for the western fur trade and the rendezvous of traders and Indians from all the northern regions. One large tribe had never been reached, that of the Sioux, on the headwaters of the Mississippi.

In 1727 it was determined by the governor of New France to found a post and a mission in this region and Guignas was one of the two missionaries chosen for this difficult task.

Careful preparations were made for the voyage and the missionaries were furnished with astronomical instruments to take observations. Leaving Mackinac August 1, 1727, the expedition passed to the Mississippi by the well-known Fox-Wisconsin route and ascending the great river, built Fort Beauharnois on the northwest side of Lake Pepin, near the present Frontenac, Minnesota.

The missionaries named their mission St. Michel Archange. Guignas was the diarist of the expedition and described the adventures of the party with a lively pen.

The next year the garrison was obliged to evacuate the fort because of a French invasion of the Fox country.

On October 15, 1728, Guignas and several of the officers and soldiers were captured below the Wisconsin River and kept prisoners for five months during which time they had “much to suffer and everything to fear. ”

Finally Guignas escaped to the Illinois country and recuperated among his brethren at the Kaskaskia mission. Nothing daunted by this experience, he again accepted an appointment to the Sioux country in 1731 when Godefroy de Linctot went to restore the Sioux post. For five years the garrison remained at Fort Trempealeau in Wisconsin, so remote that in 1735 Guignas’s colleagues wrote that he had not been heard from for so long it was feared he had been captured and burned.

In 1736 the fort was removed to Lake Pepin where Father Guignas had a notable garden. From here he and the French garrison were driven the next year by a revolt of the Sioux; they retreated by way of Lake Superior to Mackinac.

After all these adventures Guignas in 1740 retired to Quebec where he spent the remainder of his life, acting as prefect in 1749.

Achievements

• Michel Guignas was influential with the Indians, who respected him for his bravery and good sense. His chief ministration was to the soldiers and officers of his posts, who appreciated the cultured presence, good advice, and restraining influence of the missionary.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Early voyages up and down the Mississippi

    (This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)

Personality

Naturally gentle, Michel Guignas showed uncommon courage in danger, not for a brief moment, but over long periods of time.