CHAUMONOT, PIERRE-MARIE-JOSEPH. — Jesuit, missionary among the Canadian Amerindians, b. near Châtillon-sur-Seine on 9 Aug. 1611, d. at Québec on 21 Feb. 1693. Having fled from home in search of adventure, after much wandering he was received into the Society of Jesus in Rome (1632), whence he departed in 1639 for Canada. There he devoted 54 years to the conversion of the Hurons, Algonquins, and Iroquois; he witnessed the marvellous flourishing and the ruin of the Huron mission, later accompanying its survivors in their shifting abodes. On the Île d'Orléans he founded with them a village reminiscent of the reductions of Paraguay (1651); at Côte-St-Michel, near Québec, he erected the first masonry church, dedicating it to Our Lady of Foy (1668); moving deeper into the forest, he built the sanctuary of Our Lady of Loreto (1673), an exact replica of the Holy House of Loreto, which soon became a celebrated pilgrimage destination. By his people and fellow missionaries he was revered as one of the noblest figures of the Canadian Church.
Besides several letters and reports on his work, he left a kind of autobiography, published later: La vie du p. J.-M. C., écrite par lui-même sur l’ordre de son supérieur, l’an 1688 (ed. M. G. Shea, New York 1858); Suite de la vie... par un p. de la C. de J., avec la manière d’oraison du ven. Père, écrite par lui-même (ibid., 1858), reprinted more accurately in A. Carayon, Documents inédits concernant la C. d. J., XIII (Poitiers 1869, pp. 1-197).