Rev. Benjamin Marie Petit, from Rennes, France, arrived in northern Indiana in November 1837 as a Catholic missionary to the Potawatomi, learned much of their language and culture, and instructed and baptized many before accompanying them during their forced removal from Indiana in September 1838 after Bishop Simon Brute of Vincennes consented. Joining them at Danville, Illinois, he ministered to their spiritual and material needs as they traveled from Menominee’s village south of Plymouth down the Michigan Road through Rochester and Logansport, along the north side of the Wabash River into Illinois, across the prairies, over the Mississippi River at Quincy, through Missouri, and into Kansas territory south of Independence. On the journey he baptized dying children, blessed each grave, and shared in the suffering of the Potawatomi as about 40 people, mostly children, died on the march. After entrusting them on Nov. 4, 1838, to Jesuit Father Christian Hoecken at the Sugar Creek Mission in Kansas, Petit, himself weakened by fever and painful open sores, began traveling back to Indiana on Jan. 2 with his Potawatomi friend Abram Burnett but again fell ill, reached the Jesuit seminary at St. Louis University on January 15, and died there 20 minutes before midnight on Feb. 10, 1839, at age 27 years and 10 months. Buried first in St. Louis, his remains were taken back to Indiana in 1856 by Father Edward Sorin and now rest under the Log Chapel at the University of Notre Dame.