By the 1740s, French Catholic missionaries had come to this area, known to the Odawa as Waganakising, to minister to local tribes. Later, missionary work was taken up by others, including Bishop Frederic Baraga (1797-1868), who dedicated a church at this site on August 1, 1833. The present St. Ignatius Church was constructed in 1889 to replace one destroyed by fire that same year. The cemetery next to the church contains the graves of generations of area Odawa and dates to before the present church. In the 1970s an Odawa caretaker of the cemetery placed the white wooden crosses to denote the many unmarked graves.