Foreword: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH came to Detroit with Cadillac. He chose the site for Fort Pontchartrain and his settlement on July 24, 1701. The following day was spent in hauling supplies up the steep river bank. On the morning of the 26th, the feast day of St. Anne, the colonists gathered around an improvised altar to offer the Holy Sacrifice, and to chant their grateful devotion to the beloved Patroness of the St. Lawrence fisher folk who had seen them safely to their journey's end. The author has set the story of the diocese in true historical perspective by depicting in vivid detail the heroic labors of the French missionaries who brought Christ to the Indians in the forests that rimmed the inland waterways of New France. These chapters will be of particularly wide interest because they cite and interpret little known documents of high value to the student of American colonial history. To my mind Father Paré has done well to limit himself to painting against this colorful background the beginnings of organized Catholic activity in Michigan, and the development of the Diocese of Detroit under the direction of Bishops Rese, Lefevere, and Borgess. To have gone further at this time would almost inevitably have made the latter part of this work a mere chronicle rather than discriminating history. For it is difficult to write critical history, history that evaluates character and action, within the life span of those who have been contemporaries of the persons involved.

George Paré

The catholic church in Detroit 1701-1888