Marquette League

From 1904 to 1991 the Marquette League served as a Roman Catholic fund-raising organization in the United States that supported Catholic missions and schools among Native Americans in the United States.

History

Henry Ganss of Lancaster, Pennsylvania founded the League in New York City, in May 1904, and two months later, it received a papal blessing from Pius X. Ganss was a fundraiser for the "Preservation Society" of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, and he founded the League as a fundraising auxiliary of the Preservation Society. However, the Preservation Society ceased in 1922, while the League continued to thrive.

In collaboration with the Bureau, the League distributed the funds and in-kind donations it raised for missions, mission schools and students. It built new missions and satellite chapels and maintained them with supplies; it trained and maintained catechists; and it provided scholarships to students and clothing to the needy.

The League had a lay directorate of 25 members, chosen at first from among local councils of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. To further its work, it established branch organizations in several northeastern U.S. cities, including Baltimore and Washington, D.C. It charged an annual membership fee of $2.00, and published "The Calumet" as a fundraising newsletter from 1913 to 1958. Notable members included:

• John J. Wynne
• Eugene A. Philbin
• William Flynn (Director General, 1925–1936)
• Bernard Cullen (Director General, 1937–1957)

During its first six years (to 1910), aid from the League provided for the establishment of mission chapels in several states. They included:

• Arizona among the Navajo people
• South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation among the Oglala people
• South Dakota on the Rosebud Indian Reservation among the Brulé Lakota people
• Nebraska on the Winnebago Indian Reservation among the Winnebago people
• North Dakota on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation among the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation

From 1952 to 1958, the League also recruited lay volunteers to serve at missions and schools throughout the United States. The League disbanded in 1991.

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Marquette League — A society founded in New York, in May, 1904, by Rev. H.G. Ganss, of Lancaster, Pa., with a directorate of twenty-five members chosen at first from the councils of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, as a layman's movement to co-operate with the ecclesiastical authorities in helping to preserve the Faith among the Catholic Indians of the United States and convert those still living in paganism; to assist in the support of the mission schools; to supply funds for establishing new missions, building chapels and maintaining trained catechists; and to endeavour in every legitimate way to improve the condition, spiritual and material, of the American Indian. During the first six years of the League's existence (to 1910) it established mission chapels at Holy Rosary and St. Francis missions, South Dakota; for the Moquis Indians of Northern Arizona; for the Winnebagoes of Nebraska; and two chapels on the Fort Berthold Reservation, North Dakota. Several catechists were kept in the mission field, and many gifts of clothing and money were sent each year to the mission schools and almost daily offerings for Masses to the missionary priests, together with vestments and chalices for the different chapels built by the League. The League works in harmony with the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, Washington, and its work extends into almost every state in the union. The League is governed by a president and a board of directors, consisting of twenty-five men of New York and Brooklyn, membership in a St. Vincent de Paul Society being no longer a necessary qualification. The principal office is in New York, with organizations in Brooklyn, Washington, Philadelphia, and Worcester.

Annual Reports, Morque League; Catholic News (New York), files; Indian Sentinel (Washington), files.

Bibliography

• "The Calumet", 1913–1958

Attribution

• Annual Reports, Marquette League
• Catholic News (New York), files
• The Indian Sentinel (Washington) files

Further reading

• Marquette League Records, Historical Note/Scope and Content, Marquette University Special Collections and University Archives, Marquette University,
• The Indian Sentinel, 1905–1937.