CARHEIL, ÉTIENNE DE, Jesuit priest, missionary, and teacher; baptized 23 Nov. 1633 at Carentoir, France; son of François de Carheil and Jeanne de La Bouexière; d. 27 July 1726 in Quebec City.

Étienne de Carheil entered the Jesuit noviciate in Paris on 30 Aug. 1653 and went on to teach grammar, classics, and rhetoric in colleges at Amiens, Rouen, and Tours. Gifted with a certain literary talent, he gained attention in 1662 when he wrote a poem honouring the birth of the dauphin. After being ordained in 1666 he set out for Quebec, where he arrived on 6 August. After two years of preparation, Carheil was assigned in 1668 to work among the Cayuga at the mission of Saint-Joseph. He laboured there for the next 15 years and then was expelled from the community. He had gained few converts. Carheil believed that Indigenous people generally rejected Christianity because they feared that baptism brought sickness and death to communities where it had been accepted; as well, neophytes were required to abjure former beliefs and hitherto accepted codes of morality. Father Charlevoix*, who knew Carheil personally, reported that despite the missionary’s lack of success in attracting converts, he was highly esteemed by the Indigenous people who knew him.

In 1683, Carheil, together with other Jesuit missionaries working among the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee), was recalled to Quebec because of the threat of war between the French and the Iroquois. On his return, Carheil was assigned to teach grammar in the town’s Jesuit-run college. In 1686, he was sent as a missionary to the Ottawa (Odawa) and Huron (Wendat) and stationed at the mission of Saint-Ignace near the Straits of Mackinac.

After four years at Saint-Ignace Carheil had gained sufficient influence that he was able to dissuade the Indigenous people from forming there was sufficiently effective for him to be able to dissuade them from forming an anti-French alliance with the Iroquois. In a lengthy letter, dated 17 Sept. 1690, Carheil outlined to Governor Buade* de Frontenac why the Ottawa wavered in their loyalty, pointing out that the Iroquois, by a series of raids, had seemed to demonstrate that the French could hardly defend themselves much less aid their allies. However, Carheil succeeded in inducing the Ottawa to meet with Frontenac during the summer of 1690, and at the parley they assured the French that they had no intention of forming an alliance with the Iroquois. During these exchanges Carheil regularly acted as an intermediary between Indigenous groups and the colonial authorities. Eleven years later, in 1701, Governor Callière sought to effect a general peace among the First Nations; the eloquence of the Huron chief Kondiaronk, whom the French called Le Rat, won the day for the plan. According to Charlevoix, Kondiaronk, who had embraced Christianity under Carheil’s instruction, declared that he respected only two Europeans: Frontenac and Carheil.

With the exploration of the Mississippi Valley, Saint-Ignace became a rendezvous for French traders who had an unfavourable influence on the Indigenous people frequenting the mission. Before 1690 Carheil and other missionaries were able to exclude from the area those who they believed encouraged debauchery. That year Fort Buade was built quite near the mission, and members of the fort’s garrison consorted with local people to the latter’s moral detriment. The missionaries complained that, instead of protecting the mission, soldiers were doing business with Indigenous traders and plying them with liquor. The situation grew worse when Cadillac [Laumet], who cordially disliked the Jesuits, became commandant in 1694. Two years later matters came to a head when the crown ordered that the western posts be closed. Cadillac, however, had no intention of compliantly abandoning his opportunity to reap the rich profits that his position offered. Returning to France, he procured permission to establish a post at Detroit, using his own funds. When the new centre opened in 1701, Cadillac induced many Indigenous people from Saint-Ignace to move there. Fearing they would receive little encouragement to lead Christian lives, Carheil and most of the Jesuits opposed the migration. On 30 Aug. 1702 Carheil wrote a lengthy letter to Callière, outlining why the Jesuits objected to the situation. Despite the Jesuits’ efforts so many left that the mission near the Straits of Mackinac had to be abandoned and the mission buildings burned to the ground. A few years later the French erected Fort Michilimackinac on the southern shore of the strait and the Jesuits established a mission there. But by this time Carheil’s career as a missionary was over. During the remainder of his life, he devoted himself to the care of the French in Quebec City and Montreal.

Charlevoix notes that Carheil’s contemporaries considered him a man of great talents and solid virtues. He is said to have spoken the Iroquois and Huron languages with as much ease as his native French. Carheil left a two-volume treatise on Huron called Racines Hurones, which was preserved by the copy made by Pierre-Philippe Potier*

Joseph P. Donnelly