LAFITAU, JOSEPH-FRANÇOIS. - Jesuit, missionary, and writer, born in Bordeaux on 1 January 1681, died there on 3 July 1746. Sent to Canada in 1711, he carried out his ministry among the Iroquois of the Pellervosa tribe at the Sault-St-Louis mission (Caughnawaga), carefully studying their customs, traditions, and character.
He returned to France in 1717 to plead the cause of the mission and to obtain a decree prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages to the Indians. He took advantage of the opportunity to make known the qualities and usefulness of a plant he had discovered in Canada: *Mémoire... concernant la précieuse plante Ging-Seng de Tartarie* (Paris 1718; *Mémoires de Trévoux*, 1718, pp. 485-509). Despite the great stir raised around this discovery, as if it were a new gold vein for commerce, nothing came of it, due both to the scarcity of production and to the depreciation of the product, which had been prepared using overly rapid drying processes. He was to return to Canada (where he was much desired for his knowledge of the Indians and their language), but he was kept in France as procurator of the mission.
He then composed an ethnological work of great value: *Moeurs des sauvages américains comparés aux moeurs des premiers temps* (2 vols., ibid. 1724; cf. ibid., 1724, pp. 1565-1609; 2001-29; 1725, pp. 197-239). Drawing on the extensive information provided by Fr. Julien Garnier, a missionary for 60 years among the Algonquins, Hurons, and Iroquois, and supplementing it with the results of his own careful on-site studies, he produced a work that makes him the true creator of the comparative ethnographic method, so fruitful in the field of sociology. In it, he was the first to argue that by studying the customs and rites of contemporary primitive peoples, one can explain the rites and customs of classical antiquity, because in the material collected one must distinguish what is common to all peoples—attributable to the primitive revelation of God to Adam—and what is more particular, more characteristic, which must be explained by direct or indirect relations among the various peoples. Another valuable work: *Histoire des découvertes et conquêtes des Portugais dans le Nouveau Monde* (2 vols., ibid. 1733; cf. ibid., 1734, pp. 97-225; 505-21).
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