René Menard

Who was René Menard?

René Menard was a French Jesuit missionary explorer who traveled to Canada in 1641, learned the language of the Wyandot, and was soon in charge of many of the satellite missions around Sainte-Marie among the Hurons. Menard also worked with the Iroquois, and was said to speak six Indian dialects. He survived the continuous attacks from the Iroquois on the Huron.

In 1660, Menard was sent west from Montreal with a trading party of Ottawa and the fur traders Radisson and Groseilliers, heading for what is now northern Wisconsin, aiming to establish a mission among the Ottawa. The 55-year-old Menard didn't expect to return. The night before departure he wrote to a friend, "In three or four months you may include me in the Momento for the dead, in view of the kind of life led by these peoples, of my age, and of my delicate constitution. In spite of that, I have felt such powerful promptings and have seen in this affair so little of the purely natural, that I could not doubt if I failed to respond to this opportunity that I should experience an endless remorse."

Leaving Trois-Rivières, Quebec at the end of August, they paddled for six weeks up the St.