Jean-Pierre Aulneau de la Touche (21 April 1705 Moutiers-sur-le-Lay, La Vendée, Kingdom of France – 8 June 1736 Massacre Island, Lake of the Woods, New France, now Ontario, Canada) was a Jesuit missionary priest from La Vendée and a pioneering linguist of the Assiniboine and Cree languages.
Shortly after his arrival in New France following an 80 day voyage from La Rochelle and his subsequent ordination to the Roman Catholic priesthood, Fr. Aulneau was assigned as a military chaplain to the legendary Voyageur explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye at Fort St. Charles, on the Northwest Angle of what is now Minnesota.
Only two years after his arrival in North America, Fr. Aulneau insisted on traveling to Fort Michilimackinac, located at what is now Mackinaw City in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, with a pre-winter resupply mission led by the commander's son, Jean Baptiste de La Vérendrye. Fr. Aulneau had hopes of a last visit to the Sacrament of Confession at Fort Michilimackinac, before accompanying a years-long westward expedition in search of both the Mandan people and an overland route to the Pacific Ocean. Instead, he and all others travelling with him were slaughtered by a war party of the Dakota people at what is still known as Massacre Island on Lake of the Woods.
His remains were recovered during an excavation of the ruins of Fort St Charles in 1908 and, in 1961, Father Aulneau was dubbed "Minnesota's Forgotten Martyr" by Fr. Emmett A. Shanahan.[1]
- ^ Edited by Rev. Vincent A. Yzermans (1961), Catholic Origins of Minnesota, Published by the Minnesota Fourth Degree Knights of Columbus. Pages 28-29.
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