Chauchetière, Claude (Jesuit missionary in Saint-François-Xavier, Iroquois and Sault-Saint-Louis, Huron)

Chauchetière, Claude (Jesuit missionary in Saint-François-Xavier, Iroquois and Sault-Saint-Louis, Huron)

Claude Chauchetière’s first mission was the Huron mission at Sault-Saint-Louis in Quebec. Here, he painted a portrait in oils of an Indigenous maiden and wrote a brief biography of the “lily of the Mohawks”. A year later, he moved onto the Iroquois mission at Saint-François-Xavier in Quebec. In 1682, he painted an illustration of the sacraments and of the seven deadly sins, which were put into books for the Indigenous people to bring out into the fields and forests. Later on, he began writing letters describing his missions. He also taught mathematics on his missions and was incredibly interested in scientific concepts, and even wrote about the natural phenomena of his missions.

He worked at the Huron mission in 1677 and worked at the Iroquois mission in 1678.

Person

His first mission, the Huron mission, was in Sault-Saint-Louis in Quebec, and his second was the Iroquois mission in Saint-François-Xavier in Quebec.

N/A

1645

Saint-Porchaire-de-Poitiers, Aquitaine, France.

1709

Quebec

Jesuit missionary; mathematician; artist; and mystic.

French, some Huron.

Claude Chauchetière was an artist, a mystic, a mathematician, and a Jesuit missionary. He entered the Jesuit novitiate at Bordeaux in 1663 on his 18thbirthday, after witnessing the death of a priest who was meant to depart for a mission in Canada prior to his death. Chauchetière came to Quebec for the Huron mission in 1677 and spent a year at Sault-Saint-Louis, before moving onto the Iroquois mission at Saint-François-Xavier. These missions were both meant to convert the Huron and Iroquois populations of New France to becoming Jesuits. Chauchedière continued contributing to the missions until his death in Quebec in 1709.

N/A

“The Lily of the Mohawks” oil painting by Father Claude Chauchetière.

https://goodjesuitbadjesuit.blogspot.com/2012/07/pere-pierre-cholenec-sj-pere-claude.html

Conflict and Change in Early Canadian History (Carleton HIST 1301)

Nina Zajac