In the early 1600s, a group of French Jesuit priests, well educated and well born, gave up their earthly comforts for the wilds of America.

Paddling and hiking through southern Canada, they established missions, schools and infirmaries. Some were tortured and killed by In dians hostile to the friendly tribes they were serving, but on they came.

Some landed at what is now Sault Ste. Marie in the upper peninsula of Michigan, across St. Mary's River from the Canadian city of the same name. The area is now called “the Soo” by local residents. Sault is French for “leap,” and leap St. Mary's does. The Soo Locks were built to allow huge ships and sightseeing boats alike to travel in elevator fashion from Lake Superior to the other Great Lakes.

Among the most famous of the early Jesuit Fathers were St. Isaac Jogues (one of eight Frenchmen known as the North American Martyrs) and Jacques Marquette, whose name is carried today in cities and by the noted university. After being tortured and maimed, Father Jogues had to return to France — only to come back to North America to save his murderers.

With only vague school-day memories of Father Marquette and the French, I traveled to northern Michigan last year to spend Christmas with an array of cousins I had not seen in years. One morning before Christmas, my always-game cousin Joyce agreed to drive two hours to the Soo, where I was eager to see the land these heroic men had inhabited.

Snowy Sanctity

Snow was whirling around the cross-tipped tower when we arrived at the Soo. Dashing inside, we found parishioners trimming a handsome tree at the altar. Several churches had stood here before this one was built in 1881, with a wood frame under a brick veneer. Officially the Holy Name of Mary Pro-Cathedral, because it was the first cathedral parish of its diocese, St. Mary's parish is the third-oldest Catholic parish in the United States (after St. Augustine in Florida and Santa Fe in New Mexico).

St. Mary's pastor, Father Theodore Brodeur, showed us around the church, noting improvements that had partially restored the church to its pre-Vatican II splendor. In the renovations that oft-misunderstood council was thought to inspire, St. Mary's had lost not only its saints but also its hanging lamps — which were replaced with neon. Today the church is reverent and charming. As we walked, Father Brodeur revealed a far more exciting history of the area than I had anticipated.

The French Jesuits landed at the Soo in 1641. Father Isaac Joques and Father Charles Raymbault offered Michigan's first Mass and created a new mission for Indians here. They had been working from the Huron Indian Mission Post in present-day Ontario, but their mission was devastated by the Iroquois Indians during their attacks on the Hurons.

In 1668, Father Louis Nicholas was joined by Father Jacques Mar quette, who founded and named the city of Sault Ste. Marie. Father Marquette be came one of the great explorers of the American wilderness. The priests and Native Americans built a cedar stockade; this enclosed a residence for the priests, a church for Christian Indians, an infirmary and a space for animals. That church and two successive ones fell to fire and, later, the excesses occasioned by the French Revolution.

About 200 years after the French landing, Bishop Frederic Baraga, native of Slovenia, landed at the Soo. It was still a pretty rugged area of timber and fishing. He had another church built, but anti-Catholic zealots burned it. The worst of the harassment was over, though, and soon the present St. Mary's emerged.

Wearing snowshoes much of the year, toting a tin box for his priestly necessities, notebooks and perhaps his daily ration of potatoes, Bishop Baraga carried the faith he loved to the Ojibwe Indians. In the process, he wrote the first grammar and dictionary of Ojibwe, transcribing the oral language he heard into script. The language was opened to the English world, and many translations of religious texts followed. His writings are too numerous to list, but the interested reader will find fascinating information on the Internet. His proposed canonization, the cause for which is presently under way, has inspired excellent research.

The Best of Baraga

Simple but important relics of the life of Bishop Baraga are arrayed near St. Mary's East Entrance. Called the Snowshoe Priest for his intrepid snowshoe journeys through the diocese, sometimes covering many miles a day, Bis hop Baraga is remembered here with a display of his snowshoes, his tin box, a chair made for him by Indians and samples of his literary work

Next to this shrine, the Mary Room glows beneath a stained-glass window depicting St. Mary as Our Lady of Sorrows. It was or dered from Belgium by Bishop Ba raga. In the same room, a replica of the pre-Vatican II St. Mary's is faithfully depicted in dollhouse scale, with the original altar and saints.

By now my cousin was eyeing the accumulating snow, as we had a long drive home ahead of us. We took our leave of Father Brodeur and this inspiring place. We drove through protected forests, noting a wide-eyed deer watching from the side of the road. Farther along came a turnoff to St. Ignace, where The Father Marquette National Memorial tells the history of the French and Native American cultures. (I made a note of its location for another day.) From St. Ignace, the Mackinac Bridge, the world's longest suspension bridge, rises majestically; it connects the upper peninsula to lower Michigan.

The snow, raging about the car, slowed us to a careful speed, although plows were out and we had nothing to fear. But it was not hard to imagine the indefatigable Bishop Baraga — head down against the icy flakes, snowshoes crunching, trudging through the diocese thinking of the Masses he would celebrate and the priests, Ursuline teachers and parishioners he would visit. His presence must have inspired them, as it had me in the brief time I'd spent at the Soo.

Barbara Coeyman Hults is based in New York City.