Claude Dablon

Background

Claude Dablon was born on January 21, 1619 in Dieppe, Seine-Maritime department, Normandy region, northern France.

Career

Claude Dablon began his novitiate at Paris in 1639. From the beginning of his career he had a great desire to enter the foreign field. Sent to Canada in 1635, he was almost immediately designated for the Iroquois mission, the most difficult and dangerous in North America. Dablon was at this time in early middle life.

He left Montreal in the autumn of 1635 together with Father Chaumonot and a party of Iroquois. His diary expresses his delight in the wilderness and in the beauties of nature. “I sleep, ” he wrote en route, “as well on the ground as I did on a mattress or as I would in a feather bed”. The winter was passed among the Onondaga at the present Liverpool, New York.

In the spring, it being necessary to consult the authorities in Canada, Dablon went thither on foot, March 2-30, a terrible journey over melting ice and softening snow-fields.

At Quebec it was determined to accede to the request of the Iroquois for a French settlement in their midst, and Dablon became leader of a colony of fifty Frenchmen, who for months lived among these Indians in central New York.

Then, having learned that the Indians meditated treachery and massacre, the entire group succeeded in escaping in March 1638, and reached Canada in safety.

Dablon remained three years thereafter at Quebec in civilized surroundings.

He was, however, always eager for distant explorations and in May 1661, with Father Druillettes, undertook an excursion up the Saguenay and across to Lake St. John on a mission to the Crcc tribe.

In 1669 he was sent to the Northwest as superior of the Ottawa mission, where Allouez and Marquette were already laboring. He made headquarters at Sault Ste. Marie, and thence he sent Allouez late in the same year to explore the region around Green Bay and begin missions among the tribes there.

The next autumn Dablon himself accompanied Allouez on a visit to central Wisconsin. His descriptions of his journey are full of enthusiasm; he likened the passage of the rapids of the lower Fox River to the steps up to Paradise.

Into that river the missionaries threw a stone idol, worshipped by the neighboring Indians. Dablon also gave a detailed description of the Lake Superior copper mines, and of the pageant whereby France in June 1671 took possession of the region of the upper Great Lakes. Chosen Superior of all the Canadian missions while still in the Northwest, Dablon returned to Quebec to take office July 12, 1671. It was he who appointed Marquette to accompany Joliet on his voyage of discovery to the Mississippi and who reported that discovery to the authorities in France.

Dablon never again left Quebec; his first term as Superior ended in 1680, but he served again in that office 1686-93.

Achievements

• Dablon gave a detailed description of the Lake Superior copper mines. He was the Superior of all the Canadian missions.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Relation of the Voyages, Discoveries, and Death, of Father James Marquette, and the Subsequent Voyages of Father Claudius Allouez

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Relation de Ce Qui S'est Passé de plus Remarquable Aux Missions des Peres de La Compagnie de Jesus en La Nouvelle France Les Annés 1672 et 1673 (French Edition)

    (Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)

  • Mission du Canada. Relations inedites de la Nouvelle-France (1672-1679) pour faire suite aux anciennes relations (1615-1672), Tomes I et II

Personality

Dablon was a person with vigorous intellect and keen powers of observation, and withal physically fit and the possessor of unsurpassed endurance. He was one of the most energetic, able and conscientious of the Canadian missionaries; his zeal and endurance were notable, and his judgment was excellent; his delight in nature and in the conquering of obstacles distinguished him; and his writings are a source of information about natural phenomena and the habits and customs of the natives.