was a French Jesuit missionary explorer who traveled to New France in 1641, learned the language of the Wyandot, and was soon in charge of many of the satellite missions around Sainte-Marie among the Hurons.
The night before departure he wrote to a friend, In three or four months you may include me in the Memento for the dead, in view of the kind of life led by these peoples, of my age, and of my delicate constitution.
In spite of that, I have felt such powerful promptings and have seen in this affair so little of the purely natural, that I could not doubt if I failed to respond to this opportunity that I should experience an endless remorse.
[5] After his party's canoe was destroyed by a falling tree in mid-October, Ménard wintered with some Ottawas at Keweenaw Bay near what is now L'Anse, Michigan.
He and a fur trader nicknamed L'Esperance walked and canoed down into what is believed to be present-day Taylor County in north central Wisconsin.
[4] Bishop Laval of Québec wrote of Ménard and the fur traders, "Seven Frenchmen attached themselves to this Apostle, they to catch beavers, he to gain souls.