Pierre Raffeix

Missionary, born at Clermont, 1633; died at Quebec, 1724. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1653, and came to Canada in 1663. In 1668 he established near Montreal a settlement for converted Iroquois (now Caughnawaga). In 1671 he replaced Father Carheil in the Cayuga mission, and afterwards went to the Senecas until 1680, receiving an ample share of the hardships and dangers inseparable from the Iroquois mission. Raffeix was a learned cartographer, as the following maps still preserved in Paris bear witness: (a) “Carte des regions les plus occidentales du Canada”, dated 1676, and bearing a legend relating to the voyage of discovery of Marquette and Joliet; (b) “Le lac Ontario avec les pays adjacents et surtout les cinq nations iroquoises”; (c) “La Nouvelle-France, de l’Océan au lac Erié, et, au sud, jusqu’à la Nouvelle-Angleterre”. After his return to Quebec he acted as procurator to the mission. He spent two years at Jeune-Lorette (1699-1700), shortly after the final migration of the remnants of the Huron nation.