Known as the Snowshoe Priest during his lifetime, Venerable Bishop Frederic Baraga was a lifelong missionary to Native American people in the Northern Midwest of the United States. As an immigrant to the United States and to the native populations he was stationed with, he’d often choose to use the mode(s) of transportation used by those he served. This devotion resulted in him trekking hundreds of miles every year using the Ojibwe’s main forms of transportation — snowshoes and canoes.
 
Barga was an incredibly skilled linguist. He understood the importance of knowing the written and spoken language of whatever community he served and, so, became fluent in Ojibwe and Odawa, a dialect of Ojibwe spoken by the Ottawa people. He authored the very first Ojibwe-English dictionary and he also authored the first ever book published in the Ottawa language. His love for languages was inspired, in part, by his love of the people he served. Over his lifetime he converted over 1000 people, natives and European settlers, to Christianity. He became the first bishop of Marquette, seated in the Upper Michigan Diocese in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Upon his death only a couple years after being ordained bishop, even a snow blizzard couldn’t keep hundreds of friends and mourners from paying their respects in person.​
 
After his death, devotees started the Bishop Baraga Association. Over one hundred years later, in 1972, the Association presented reams of research and testimony to an official Church committee in Marquette to open the Cause for his sainthood. Following this, the Vatican officially recognized Baraga as a "Servant of God," and he is now being considered for Catholic sainthood.