Jean-Pierre Aulneau

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Father Jean-Pierre Aulneau (21 April 1705 – 8 June 1736) was a Jesuit priest active in Canada. Aulneau was recruited from France in 1733. He came to Fort St. Charles with La Vérendrye (Pierre) in 1735. The following year Father Aulneau, Jean Baptiste de La Vérendrye and 19 French voyageurs were headed from Fort St. Charles to Fort Kaministiquia via Fort St. Pierre. On their first night out they were massacred by Sioux warriors on a nearby island in Lake of the Woods. The date was June 8, 1736.

When their bodies were discovered, the heads of the 19 paddlers and the bodies of Jean-Pierre and Jean-Baptiste were returned to Fort St. Charles and buried under the altar of the chapel at that location.

The massacre ended, for a time, the project of a mission to the Mandans as there was no other priest with the party. 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 as he is known to have joined the La Vérendryes at Fort La Reine 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 had been the task of Father Aulneau.

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[edit] See also

Canadian Martyrs

[edit] 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