For the greater glory of God.
‘The head is very large; the forehead is flat, and a foot and a half bet- ween the horns,” wrote the priest. Fr Jacques Marquette, a French Jesuit, joined the explorer Louis Jolliet on a canoe journey along the Mississippi River in 1673. Marquette’s prose could be mistaken for an adventure tale: the bison they spotted “are very fierce”; “when attacked, they catch a man on their horns if they can, toss him in the air, and then throw him on the ground, trample him under foot, and kill him”.
