Jacques Gravier, SJ (17 May 1651 – 17 April 1708) was a French Jesuit missionary in the New World.
[1] Gravier carried out important tasks for the Jesuits in New France, including the founding of the Illinois mission.
In 1689 Gravier was assigned to succeed Claude-Jean Allouez in the mission to the Illinois in the Mississippi Valley.
[3] First he worked among them at Starved Rock on the Illinois River, where he started compiling a grammar and dictionary.
The work was finally edited and published in 2002 by Carl Masthay, providing an invaluable source of the historic Kaskaskia Illinois language.
[6][7] In November 1700 Gravier traveled by canoe to minister to French settlers and Native Americans in Mobile, La Louisiane, the colony along the Gulf Coast.
There he befriended explorer Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, later the founder of New Orleans, who impressed him with his knowledge of Indian languages.
[2] Although Gravier sought treatment, the wound became infected and long caused him problems, through a return to Mobile, Alabama, then a trip to France.