26 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



About thirty or forty years ago, Father Felix Martin, S.J., sought 

 to glean some additional particulars of the massacre, and the result of 

 his researches is summed up in the following note — found among his 

 papers after his death : — ^ 



" We are not in possession of the details relating to Father 

 Aulneau's family, education and vocation to the religious life. 



" He came to Canada in 1730, and six years subsequent to his 

 arrival, he was chosen to accompany an important expedition of dis- 

 covery westward, undertaken by Monsieur de la Véranderie. The 

 latter commanded a party of twenty determined men, one of his own 

 sons being among the number. 



" The explorers had reached the Lake of the Woods, and had 

 landed on an island fer their morning meal. Their camping fires, 

 however, betrayed their presence to a band of Sioux warriors who were 

 prowling about in the neighbourhood. 



" These Indians, notorious for their cruelty and for the implacable 

 war they waged on all those who gave them umbrage, resolved to attack 

 the French. They stealthily landed on the island without attracting 

 notice, and rushed upon the explorers who were off their guard. Many 

 were pierced with arrows or were felled with the tomahawk. Some 

 sought safety in flight, only to perish in the waves. Father Aulneau, 

 wounded by an arrow, fell upon his knees, when an Indian coming up 

 behind him dealt him the death blow with his tomahawk. 



" All the baggage was pillaged, but the Indians dared not touch 

 the body of the missionary. Three weeks after the occurrence, a party 

 of Indians of the Sault (Sauleux), passing by the spot, found his body 

 unmutilated. ISTot being able to dig a grave for it, as the island was all 

 rock, they raised over the body a cairn one or two metres in height. 



" Mr. Belcourt,^ a missionary stationed at Pembino, in 1843, 

 visited the place and saw the tumulus. He gathered on the very spoc 

 the tradition of the massacre from the lips of an Indian, whose father 

 had helped to prepare a sepulchre for the missionary."^ 



Father Aulneau, and intended to toring him to the French settlements to 

 make him undergo thie penalties he so well deserved; (but Grod reserved to 



Himself the punishment of his crime Other heathen tribes rescued 



the Sioux prisoners from the hands of the French and sent them back to 

 their homes." 



^ The Aulneau Collection, p. 90. 



^ Rev. G. A. Belcourt was a well-known missionary in the North-west. 

 He was a relative of the present Member of Parliament tor Ottawa, of the 

 same name. 



^ I fear we cannot put much credence in this explanation of Father 

 Martin's. From the very beginning he is inaccurate. Father Aulneau did 

 not come to Canada in 1730. He landed on the 12th August, 1734. Father 



