Excerpt from Father Pierre François Pinet, S. J., And His Mission of the Guardian Angel of Chicago (L'ange Gardien), A. D. 1696-1699: A Paper Read Before a Joint Meeting of the Chicago Historical Society and the Evanston Historical Society in the Chicago Historical Society Building, November 27, 1906

It is my purpose to tell you what I have been able to learn of one of these men, a Jesuit missionary pierre francois pinet, and of his Chicago mis sion, the mission OF the guardian angel, where, over two hundred years ago, near the western shore of Lake Michigan, he began his labors among the Indian tribes of our state.

Two and a half centuries form but a brief epoch in the histories of many countries of the old world. A like space of time not only covers the entire written history of Illinois, but reaches into such remote antiquity that we find no record. We all know that the written history of Illinois begins with the expedition of Father Marquette and Joliet in the year 1673. The histories of Illinois also tell us that twenty-seven years later, in the year 1700, the first permanent settlements in our state began with the founding of two Catholic missions by Father Pinet at Cahokia and Kaskaskia, but the writers fail to record the fact that on the western shore of Lake Michigan, which in these modern days of Chicago's greatness we call The North Shore, and within two miles of the city limits of Evanston, this same Father Pinet in the year 1696, twenty-three years after the first expedition of Marquette, four years before Cahokia or Kaskaskia were thought of, ninety-four years before the first perma nent white settler* built his log cabin at Chicago, and over thirty-five years before the birth of Washington, founded his first Illinois Mission among the Miami Indians on the bank of what was then an inland lake and which in these days we call The Skokie, - with one exception the oldest mission in the state of Illinois.

Father Pinet, who founded this North Shore mission, was a typical member of the Society of Jesus and of that great company of Jesuit missionaries who played such important parts in all the history of New France, and especially in that of the Northwest. It will therefore.

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