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Louis Hennepin was born in the Spanish Netherlands in 1626. He became a Catholic priest and missionary of the Franciscan order. In May 1675 King Louis XIV of France requested that four missionaries be sent to New France (in North America). Hennepin was accompanied by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, on this mission.
He sailed with La Salle through the Great Lakes to explore further west, and in 1680, started a Catholic settlement near the upper falls of the Mississippi River. Hennepin was one of the first Europeans to see the falls, which had held significance for Dakota and Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) people for many years. Hennepin gave the falls their English name, St. Anthony Falls, and European Catholics soon began to settle nearby. Catholic immigration to the region increased in the 1800s.
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