St. Joseph Mission, Niles, Michigan

St. Joseph Mission, Niles, Michigan

St. Joseph Mission
	Here in 1837 in the then flourishing settlement of Bertrand, a fine brick church, dedicated to St. Joseph was built to serve the Catholics of the area. In this church on Sept. 8, 1844 the habit of the Sisters of the Holy Cross was given for the first time in America. Those who received the habit were Sister Mary of the Holy Cross Sweeney, Sister Mary of the Nativity Daily, and Sister Mary of Mount Carmel Dougherty. The sisterhood opened its first school this same year in a dwelling which still stands a thousand feet to the north. This mission in the Detroit diocese was under the direction of the Reverend Edward Sorin, C.S.C. founder of the University of Notre Dame. In 1911 the church was torn down. Madeline Bertrand, wife of the town's founder, is among those who are buried in this historic cemetery.
New York Tablet, December 29, 1877
	First Mission at Notre Dame The first attempts at the erection of a mission in Southern Michigan, according to the testimony of the few of the tribe of the Pottawatomies still to be found on the spot, was made perhaps as early as 1675. The successful achievement was accomplished in 1680. Father Allouez, in that year, attended by Dabion, after having coasted Lake Michigan from Green Bay, entered the St. Joseph's river, so called in honor of the patron saint of Canada, and making advance against its tide, proceeded until, some twenty-five miles (fifty by the river) from its mouth, he reached the locality now the seat of the inviting town of Niles. About half a mile up-stream from the town--a narrow belt of boggy lowland lying between it and the river--rises a semi-circular bluff, at the base of which, and through the soil of the marshy level, runs a brook which empties its slender contribution of supply into the St. Joseph. On this bluff, up till within twenty-five years since, if not now, the traces where plainly distinguishable of a fortification, the cross planted at the time of its construction, and still to be seen, in the rear of it, indicating by whom, and for what use, it was built. Here, conveniently established between an encampment of Miami's on one side of the river and three several settlements--one at Pokagon, a second on the shores of what are now known as the Notre Dame Lakes, and the third and principal one, close by the fort--of the Pottawatomies on the other, Allouez built a chapel (a brewery occupies the site now), and near by, a log cabin for his own accommodation. His labors were carried on successfully, and without the occurrence of any extraordinary event to invest them with special interest. After a faithful service of several years, he died in the summer of 1690. His ashes repose in the graveyard of the Catholic mission at Niles. The establishment was kept up, part of the time under the ministry of Chardon, "a man wonderful in the give of tongues, speaking fluently nearly all the Indian languages of the northwest, until 1759. In that year the French garrison of Fort St. Joseph was attacked by a party of English soldiers, the engagement resulting, after a fierce contest, in the defeat of the French. The survivors of the garrison, including the priests, were carried away prisoners to Quebec. The mission, thus violently dissolved, was not reorganized for nearly a hundred years. In 1830 Father Stephen Badin pitched his tent in the vicinity, revived the faith among the Pottawatomies, built a chapel on the little St. Mary's Lake, near South Bend, bought a section of land, which, conveyed to the Bishop of Vincennes, through him was dedicated, in the interests of education to the church, and is now the seat of that notable institution of learning--The University of Notre Dame.--Nevin's Black-Robes or Sketches of Missions and Ministers in the Wilderness and on the Border.
Today's Catholic, p.22, August 12, 1990
	When Fort St. Joseph was built at Niles Editor: I would like to point out an error as to the location of Fort St. Joseph on the map appearing on page as in the July 29 issue and in the second paragraph on page 13 which reads: "The Dearborn Trail, at least the part going through Goshen, followed the route of an earlier trail through the wilderness that went to Fort St. Joseph, a strongpoint built by the French on the shore of Lake Michigan and subsequently relocated at Niles." There were two forts on the St. Joseph River (originally called the river of the Miami's). The first Fort Miami's built in 1679 by Robert Cavelier de La Salle at the mouth of the St. Joseph River (where it empties into Lake Michigan). In reality it was not a fort. It was merely an unauthorized trading post. No French troops were ever stationed there and nothing of a historical nature ever took place there. It was abandoned circa 1688/1689. The second was Fort St. Joseph built in 1691 on the east bank of the St. Joseph River twenty leagues from its mouth and near the Jesuit mission founded in 1684 by Father Claude Allouez. This location is near the southern limits of present-day Niles, Michigan. This fort was built by Ensign Augustin Legardeur de Courtemanche on the direct orders of Governor General Louis de Baude, Comet de Frontenac. Fort St. Joseph was strategically situated a short canoe trip from Lake Michigan and its water routes to the northern posts and only a few miles downstream from the portage to the Kankakee-Illinois-Mississippi water route to the Illinois and Louisiana posts. Fort St. Joseph figured prominently in the historical events of the area during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Following the capitulation of New France (Canada) to the British in 1760, Fort St. Joseph was surrendered to a small force of English troops under Ensign Francis Scholosser. During the American Revolution, the fort remained in British hands. On February 12, 1781 a raiding party from St. Louis under the Spanish flag destroyed the fort. It was never rebuilt. Fort St. Joseph has been shown on innumerable maps at the Niles site since 1697. In the United States government survey of Michigan done in 1820, for Section 35, on the east bank of the St. Joseph River in southern Niles, the original surveyor's notes locate and describe "an ancient fort in form of a crescent, banks five feet high, encircled with a ditch eight feet wide." Reference: Government Survey, Book 1, page 211; located in the Berrien County Register of Deeds, County Court House, St. Joseph, Michigan. Jack R. Saylor South Bend Editors note: Fort St. Joseph on Lake Michigan was listed on early maps as Fort Miami and Fort des Miami's (Fort of the Miami's), but there is no literate French term of Fort Miami's. The French coined the name, Miami, translating, my friend. There were also posts named Fort Miami (also Fort St. Philippe) at the Fort Wayne location and along the Maumee (an English corruption of Miami) just upstream from Toledo, Ohio.