Joseph Marcoux

A missionary among the Iroquois, b. in Canada, 16 March, 1791; d. there 29 May, 1855. He was ordained 12 January, 1813, and spent the remaining forty-two years of his life evangelizing the Iroquois, first at St. Regis and later at Caughnawaga, or Sault-St-Louis. In addition to his fruitful efforts towards the betterment of the spiritual and social condition of the Indians, he acquired such proficiency in the Iroquois tongue as to attain a high rank among philologists through his Iroquois grammar and his French-Iroquois dictionary. For his flock, whom he had provided with church and schools (1845), he translated into Iroquois Pere de Ligny’s “Life of Christ”, and published in their own language, a collection of prayers, hymns, and canticles (1852), a catechism (1854), a calendar of Catholic ritual, and a number of sermons. He died in 1855 of typhoid fever, at that time epidemic among the Iroquois.