DELHALLE (De la Halle), CONSTANTIN, priest, Recollet, founder and parish priest of Sainte-Anne du Détroit; d. 1 June 1706 at Detroit.

There is some perplexity over the identity of Constantin Delhalle. Cyprien Tanguay* has confused Delhalle with Father Nicolas-Bernardin Constantin. For his part Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix*, although distinguishing him from Constantin, calls him Nicolas-Bernardin-Constantin De Lhalle. Furthermore, the spelling of his name varies a great deal over the years: Dehalle (Simple Bocquet), De L’halle and Delahalle (Bonaventure Liénard), de L’Halle (Auguste-Honoré Gosselin*), Challe (Édouard-Zotique Massicotte*), de LHalle (Odoric-Marie Jouve).

According to John Gilmary Shea, Delhalle arrived in Canada on 1 June 1696. He was with Lamothe Cadillac [Laumet] at the founding of Detroit and he established Michigan’s first church, which he dedicated to St Anne on 26 July 1701. During a council of the Huron (Wendat) held in the fort at Detroit on 4 Dec. 1701, Delhalle’s absence, Cadillac asserted “that the Black Robes [the Jesuits] do not speak effectively today because they are vexed at my bringing with me a Grey Robe [a Recollet], and because priests are to come who have white collars [priests from the Missions Étrangères]. This annoys them because they would like to be the only ones.”

When Father Delhalle left the pays d’en haut he passed through Champlain: a certificate of baptism in the parish registers, dated 25 Sept. 1701 and signed by him, attests to his presence there. Between November 1701 and the summer of 1702 he acted as the parish priest in Saint-François-Xavier (Batiscan), north of Trois-Rivières. He apparently returned then to Detroit, since Cadillac stressed that he was there in a letter dated 25 September of the same year.

On 5 Oct. 1703 a fire at Detroit destroyed the chapel and the houses of Father Delhalle, Cadillac, and Henri Tonty. The parish registers were also burned. The first act in the new register was the certificate of baptism of Marie-Thérèse, Cadillac’s daughter, which was dated 2 Feb. 1704. According to Shea, “This register, containing only three pages, has been preserved, and is the oldest register of the first French parish in the West . . .”

Father Dehalle was present at several councils held by the First Nations at Detroit, including that of 8 June 1704, when Indigenous attendees accused the governor, Philippe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil, of having deceived them and were thinking of abandoning the post. On 8 March 1706 Le Pesant, the chief of the Ottawa (Odawa) du Sable, complained of the murders committed by the Shawnee, the Sioux, and the Miami and wanted to go to war against them.

Father Dehalle was killed on 1 June of the same year. Charlevoix recounts the event: “The Recollet Father Constantin, chaplain of the fort, was walking in his garden, ignorant of all that was going on. Some Ottawa seized and bound him; but John le Blanc [Outoutagan], one of their chiefs, who had taken part in the assembly at Montreal, where the general peace was signed, unbound him, and begged him to go and tell the Commandant that they had no designs on the French, and that he besought him to stop firing on them. As that religious was about entering the fort, some flying Miami overtook him, and a volley of musketry was fired upon them by Ottawa who perceived them. Father Constantin was struck and fell dead on the spot.”

His body was buried in the cemetery of his parish. A certain veneration became attached to his name (miracles have even been attributed to his intercession), and the Recollets who succeeded one another at this post, particularly Fathers Simple Bocquet and Bonaventure Liénard, took special care of his remains.

Jacques Valois