< Sacred Heart Province Franciscan Records Index

Selected records of Sacred Heart Franciscan priests and brothers stationed at Indian communities in Arizona, California, Michigan, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin. Included on microfilm is correspondence between missionaries, church and government officials, and native parishioners, parish and friary reports; school and sacramental records; scrapbooks and news clippings; chronicles, monographs and religious writings; and a variety of published materials. Also included are photographs and additional publications. Significant topics include administrative, financial, and political concerns of mission parishes and schools; biographical information on several missionaries and select Native Americans; and cultural and historical information on the Menominee, Ojibwa, and Ottawa tribes in Michigan and Wisconsin. Most records created before 1920 and a minority to about 1940 are written in German, reflecting the German nativity of the early members of the province. 4.2 cubic feet with 43 reels microfilm. In 1982, Marquette University microfilmed the original records after borrowing them and from the Sacred Heart Franciscan Archives, St. Louis, Missouri.

Historical Note

Itinerant Jesuit and  Franciscan missionaries have evangelized the North American interior since the seventeenth century, which initially included Pima, Tohono O'odham, and Yaqui Indians on the northern Mexican frontier and Ojibwa and Ottawa Indians in the western Great Lakes region.  By mid-nineteenth century, the development of mission facilities and linguistic and religious materials in the native languages enhanced the ongoing missionary effort.  Missions were established northward along the California coast and at the principal trade outposts of Tucson, Arizona (1782), Harbor Springs, Michigan (1829, formerly New Abre Croche) and La Pointe, Wisconsin (1835, precedes Bayfield).  Publications by Baraga and others facilitated native language study for subsequent missionaries.

Despite centuries of missionary effort, indigenous belief systems thrived.  After the 1867 expulsion of the Jesuits, northern frontier natives without benefit of clergy managed their own church organizations, which integrated Christian and Native beliefs and practices.  Among the Apache, evangelizing was never initiated, owing to persistent hostilities with Mexico. In the Great Lakes region, the Dream Dance or Drum Religion, a religious revival from the northern plains, swept across the traditional communities enabling non-Christians to effectively resists conversion.

Meanwhile, German Franciscans sought refuge in the United States. They established the Sacred Heart Province (St. Louis, Missouri) in 1879 and soon accepted requests from the bishops of to establish and administer Indian missions, parishes, and schools in the following dioceses.

Mission sites were generally dispersed to correspond with the prevalent native settlement patterns of small widely scattered camps and settlements.  In most places, development of evangelization work required the construction of new schools, churches, and friaries as former facilities were few and frequently inadequate.  Prominent among the friaries were:  Ashland and Bayfield among the Ojibwa, Harbor Spring among the Ottawa, Keshena among the Menominee, and Tucson among the Tohono O'dham, Pima, and Yaqui (established 1913).  At these and other centers, schools were developed and staffed by sisters and occasional brothers and lay persons.  Academic and vocational subjects were standard areas of study.  Unique among the Franciscan schools was the student operated press (1884-1915), publisher of numerous books and periodicals of historic, linguistic, religious, and promotional nature.  Especially prior to 1920, mission stations were ministered catechists.  Finances were provided by donations from numerous sources and erratic but important federal school subsidies (ca. 1885-1910).

During the Great Lakes logging boom (ca. 1880-1910) employment opportunities coupled with expanding native populations attracted many from the rural communities to the towns of Ashland, Bayfield, and Neopit (established 1909) in Wisconsin, and Harbor Springs in Michigan.  Initially, the new mission parishes were frequently mixed native-immigrant congregations with a native majority. Subsequently, in all towns except Neopit, native residents dispersed, seeking employment elsewhere.  As immigrant communities developed, some parishes transferred to diocesan control (Shawano, 1888 and Washburn, 1910).  Meanwhile, a mission station was temporarily established among the Stockbridge (1894-1938) and Phillip Gordon (Ojibwa) was ordained in 1906.  During the 1970's, administration for many of the Michigan and Wisconsin parishes was transferred to the local dioceses.

Scope and Content

The 43 reels of microfilm constitute the bulk of the collection and are numbered consecutively throughout.

Sacred Heart Franciscan Series 1, Localia: "Local Records," reels 1-24, is comprised of the records from the Indian parishes and schools and local Franciscan friaries, which includes a few local-specific publications.

Work in-progress: The Marquette University Libraries are developing bibliographic records for the publications in this collection. This includes all books, pamphlets, magazines, newsletters, prayer cards, published maps, published sound and video recordings, etc., and excludes clipping files and reprints of articles. As they are created, the bibliographic records will appear in Marqcat, the Marquette University online catalog. Furthermore, as an interim and supplemental search tool, most titles to publications in this and related collections appear in the Index to Publications in Native America Collections.  

Reels 9, 15, and 16 are restricted indefinitely because they contain school records, i.e. Holy Childhood School, Harbor Springs, Michigan, and St. Joseph's School, Keshena, Menominee Reservation, Wisconsin. Because Marquette University is an educational institution, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) restricts the attendance records (originals and microfilm) indefinitely, and because it is not an educational institution, comparable student records among Indian Agency records at branches of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration are not restricted. However, the Marquette archives staff will conduct genealogical searches for patrons who fill out the Genealogical Request Form. Sanitized facsimiles, which are photocopies with obliterated confidential information, are available to on-site visitors for some schools as noted in the descriptive inventories.     

Reel 22 includes letters by Reverend Philip B. Gordon, Ti-bish-go-gi-jik (Ojibwa, 1885-1948), written from Reserve, Wisconsin, 1914-1919. Additional letters by Father Gordon are found in the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions Records, Series 1-1 General Correspondence.

Sacred Heart Franciscan Series 2, Realia: "Vital Records," reel 24, in part, focuses on correspondence between Franciscans and the dioceses. It includes reports about the missions, and correspondence between Franciscans and the editors of the Franciscan publications, which published a number of their historical writings.

Sacred Heart Franciscan Series 3, Personalia: "Personal Papers," reels 24-39,  focus on the personal records of Franciscans, which include biographical and personnel records and a variety of local history and native language research notes and writings, a few of which are publications.

Work in-progress: The Marquette University Libraries are developing bibliographic records for the publications in this collection. This includes all books, pamphlets, magazines, newsletters, prayer cards, published maps, published sound and video recordings, etc., and excludes clipping files and reprints of articles. As they are created, the bibliographic records will appear in Marqcat, the Marquette University online catalog. Furthermore, as an interim and supplemental search tool, most titles to publications in this and related collections appear in the Index to Publications in Native America Collections.  

The Reverend Odoric Derenthal, O.F.M., papers contain  sacramental records (Ojibwa?) from Northwest Wisconsin, 1880-1884, which are not restricted.

Sacred Heart Franciscan Series 4, Photography, includes images pertaining to American Indians and the Franciscan missions and parishes.

Selected images from this collection are featured online in the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions Photographs Digital Collection.

Sacred Heart Franciscan Series 5, Publications: reels 40-43, is comprised of the Franciscan Herald, 1913-1981, Annals of the Province of the Sacred Heart O.F.M., 1929-1941, and Lesser Brothers, 1968-1981, all of which include writings by Franciscans about their evangelization of American Indians. The Franciscan Herald was not microfilmed.

Work in-progress: The Marquette University Libraries are developing bibliographic records for the publications in this collection. This includes all books, pamphlets, magazines, newsletters, prayer cards, published maps, published sound and video recordings, etc., and excludes clipping files and reprints of articles. As they are created, the bibliographic records will appear in Marqcat, the Marquette University online catalog. Furthermore, as an interim and supplemental search tool, most titles to publications in this and related collections appear in the Index to Publications in Native America Collections.  

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