In 1668, Father Jacques Marquette was sent to the
Bawating native settlement at the mouth of Lake Superior in order to establish a mission. The area was chosen because it was a rendezvous place for a great number of
Native tribes of the whole region and beyond, that gathered seasonally and permanently in order to fish and trade. Father Marquette was responsible for the construction of the mission, which was to be a residence for the missionaries as well as some outbuildings. The whole site was surrounded by a 12 foot pallisade. In 1669 Father Marquette was transferred out of the area, but before he left he changed the name of the settlement from Sault du Gaston, which honoured Gaston the brother of Louis XIV, to Sault de Sainte Marie, which befitting the role of the French settlement as
a mission, honoured the Virgin Mary. No formal claim of European possession had yet been made by 1671, until later that year and in response to English expansion in the fur trade, Simon-François Daumont, Sieur de St. Lusson, claimed all territory west of Montreal in the name of Louis XIV of France. Through an interpreter, St. Lusson informed the curious Natives of this new sovereignty and erected a cross and a cedar pole with the French coat of arms in honour of this declaration. The native Ojibwe soon after uprooted them both and went on, for the time being, with their normal way of life. The European community developed afterward, due mostly to
the fur trade, and remained in place until the present day. Sault Ste. Marie is therefore, one of North America's oldest European communities.
