50 Dollars - Elizabeth II Father Jacques Marquette

Jacques Marquette was a French Jesuit missionary who, with Louis Jolliet, paddled down the Mississippi River in 1673 — the first Europeans documented to have done so from the north. He died two years later at roughly age 37, somewhere on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, likely of dysentery. His remains were later exhumed by Indigenous converts and reinterred at Saint Ignace, Michigan, where a university now carries his name.

The Cook Islands issued a substantial run of commemorative silver dollars throughout the early 1990s covering explorers and missionaries of this type — this piece sits within that broader program, struck to .925 fineness at a weight matching the standard modern commemorative ounce format.

Jacques Marquette was a French Jesuit missionary who, with Louis Jolliet, paddled the length of the upper Mississippi in 1673 — the first Europeans documented to have done so from the north. He died the following year near the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, likely of dysentery, aged around 37. His remains were later reinterred at Saint Ignace by Indigenous converts who had carried them by canoe.