Brébeuf

Jean de Brébeuf was the first Jesuit missionary to Huronia in the 1630s. Brébeuf’s facility with languages was astounding. He attempted to create an ethnographic record of the Huron’s, as a way to better understand their culture and thereby convert them to Christianity. Brebéuf was captured, tortured and killed by the Iroquois in 1649, as a result of wars between the Mohawk and other tribes. Brébeuf is credited with composing Canada’s oldest Christmas song, the “Huron Carol.” Whether one is religious or not, Brébeuf and his fellow missionaries left an invaluable record worth reading – the Jesuit Relations. These letters from the missionaries form one of the only written evidences of what First Nation life was like, pre-contact with Europeans in the 1600s.