Father 'Jean-Pierre Aulneau de la Touche, S.J.' (
21 April 1705 –
8 June 1736) was a
Jesuit missionary
priest active in
Canada and the American Upper Midwest. He is referred to as "
Minnesota's Forgotten
Martyr."
Early life
Jean-Pierre Aulneau was born at his father's chateau at
Moûtiers-sur-le-Hay,
Vendée,
France. He studied at the
minor seminary of
Luçon prior to entering the
Jesuit novitiate at
Pau in
1720. He spent a number of years as an intructor in
La Rochelle and
Poitiers. After his
Ordination to the
priesthood, he sailed for Canada
New France in
1734.
After a stormy and disease-ridden crossing on 'Le Ruby', he landed at
Quebec City in Canada on
August 12,
1734. After recovering his health, he lodged at the Jesuit College in Quebec, preparing for his final examination, which he passed during
Lent of
1735.
Black Robe in the Northwest
After receiving an assignment as
chaplain, he set out for
Fort St. Charles in June,
1735. He sailed through the
Great Lakes to
Fort St. Charles with Canadian explorer
La Vérendrye (Pierre). At the time, Father Aulneau was posted farther west than any other missionary in
North America. His letters to his mother in France reveal that he was deathly afraid of being assigned so far away from his Confessor.
The following year Father Aulneau,
Jean Baptiste de La Vérendrye and 19
French-Canadian voyageurs were sent from Fort St. Charles to
Fort Michilimackinac. The purpose of the mission was to pick up supplies for an expedition to the Mandans in what is today the
North and
South Dakota. In addition, the trip would also allow Father Aulneau a last visit to the
Confessional before accompanying the explorers. Despite his fears of being so far from any other priest, his letters show a man filled with excitement and zealous to evangelize the Indians.
Martyrdom
However, on their first night out they were all massacred by "Prairie Sioux" warriors on a nearby island in
Lake of the Woods. The date was
June 8,
1736. The massacre was allegedly in retaliation for La Verendrye's practice of supplying guns to Sioux enemies, especially the
Assiniboine and the
Cree.
Aftermath
When members of the friendly Cree tribe reported the massacre to La Verendrye, he gave orders for the heads of the 19 voyageurs and the decapitated bodies of Father Aulneau and young La Verendrye to be returned to Fort St. Charles. The bodies of Father Aulneau and young La Verendrye were encased in a rough hewn
coffin and buried beneath the
altar of the fortess
chapel. The 19 heads were deposited in a nearby trench.
The massacre ended, for a time, the project of a mission to the
Mandans as there was no other priest further west than Fort Michilimackinac. In 1741, Father
Claude-Godefroy Coquart, a replacement for Father Aulneau, began his journey west. He would have spent some time at Fort St. Charles and is known to have joined the La Vérendryes at
Fort La Reine (presently
Portage la Prairie, Manitoba) in 1743. In doing so, Coquart was the first recorded missionary in present-day Manitoba and the first to travel beyond
Lake of the Woods, a role which was to have been the task of Father Aulneau.
Legacy
The letters of Father Aulneau were discovered in his family's possession in
1889 and published in an English translation in
1893. In
1908, a party of
Canadian Jesuits from
Saint Boniface, Manitoba, located the site of
Fort St. Charles, just inside the
territorial waters of the
United States, using the letters of La Verendrye and the
oral tradition of the
Ojibwe Indians. The bodies of the martyred priest and his companions were reexumed and examined. The remains of Father Aulneau was recognized by the hook from the top of his
cassock and the remnants of his
rosary, which had been placed at his feet. All human remains and artifacts found at Fort St. Charles, were transferred across the Canadian Border to
Saint Boniface, Manitoba, where they remain to this day.
The site of
Fort St. Charles is currently owned by the
Roman Catholic Diocese of
Crookston, Minnesota and remains a site of
pilgrimage. The precise location of "Massacre Island," where Father Aulneau and his companions were murdered by the Sioux, continues to be debated.
See also
★
Canadian Martyrs
References
★ Lund, Duane R. ''Lake of the Woods: Earliest Accounts''. Nordell Graphic Communications, Staples, Minn.1984
★ ''The Encyclopedia of Canada'', Vol. IV, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948
★ ''The Aulneau Collection'', Edited by Father Arthur Jones, S.J. Published by Saint Mary's College, Montreal, 1893.
External links
★
The Aulneau Collection, Available for Download on "The Internet Archive"
★
Biography at the ''Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online''
★
Manitoba Histoical Society
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