Methodist Indian Mission

Several Methodist ministers were active in missionary work in the “Soo” area in the 1830s. John Sunday, an Indian preacher from Canada, began mission work in the Indian settlement at the Sault Ste. Marie Rapids around 1831. The Reverend John Clark followed in his steps two years later. Then a church and log schoolhouse were erected. In 1833 Peter Marksman, son of an Indian medicine man, was converted to Christianity and later became an esteemed minister of the Detroit Annual Conference. By 1834 the school had thirty-five students, and three “Methodist classes” were organized with forty Indians and nineteen whites. The Michigan Conference sent William H. Brockway to the mission as superintendent in 1839. Here he remained for ten years, serving most of that time as chaplain for Old Fort Brady.

[Back]: John H. Pitezel and John Kahbeege continued the ministerial work at this settlement having come to the “Soo” in 1843. Pitezel arrived at what was a flourishing school and a farm with nearly fifty cultivated acres of land. He served as superintendent of the Methodist Indian District from 1848 to 1852, with missions as far away as Minnesota. A mission house was built in 1849 at Naomikong on Whitefish Bay. Little Rapids had been the focal point of the mission, for here were the farm, mission house, chapel and needed supplies. As more white settlers came to the “Soo” in the 1850s, many of the Indians moved away. By 1861 Methodist mission work in the area was concentrated at Iroquois Point near Sault Ste. Marie. The Methodists sold the mission land here in 1862.