Émile-Fortuné Petitot (

Inuk Inuit (singular: Inuk) are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and Subarctic regions of North America and Russia, including Greenland, Labr ...

name, ''Mitchi Pitchitork Tchikraynarm iyoyé'', meaning "Mr. Petitot, son of the Sun") (December 3, 1838 – May 13, 1916) was a French Missionary Oblate who worked in the Canadian northwest as a

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ethnologist Ethnology (from the , meaning 'nation') is an academic field and discipline that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). Scien ...

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linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

, and writer. Returning to France later in life, he served as a

parish priest A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or ...

and wrote of

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Early life and education

Émile-Fortuné-Stanislas-Joseph Petitot was born in Grancey-le-Château-Neuvelle, France. His father, Jean-Baptiste Petitot, was a

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; his mother was Thérèse-Julie-Fortunée Gagneur. Petitot attended the minor seminary and the Collège du Sacré-Cœur in Grancey. In 1859, he took minor orders of the priesthood before joining the Oblates in September 1860. His training occurred at Notre-Dame-de-l'Osier, and on March 15, 1862, he was ordained in

Marseilles Marseille (; ; see below) is a city in southern France, the prefecture of the department of Bouches-du-Rhône and of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the Provence region, it is located on the coast of the Mediterranean S ...

Career

Fourteen days after his

ordination Ordination is the process by which individuals are Consecration in Christianity, consecrated, that is, set apart and elevated from the laity class to the clergy, who are thus then authorized (usually by the religious denomination, denominationa ...

, he left for Canada's

Mackenzie River The Mackenzie River (French: ; Slavey language, Slavey: ' èh tʃʰò literally ''big river''; Inuvialuktun: ' uːkpɑk literally ''great river'') is a river in the Canadian Canadian boreal forest, boreal forest and tundra. It forms, ...

. The young missionary Petitot traveled with Bishop Alexandre-Antonin Taché from Marseilles via Liverpool (where they were joined by another two Oblates,

Constantine Scollen Father Con Scollen OMI. (4 April 1841 – 8 November 1902) was an Ireland, Irish Catholic, Missionary priest who lived among and evangelized the Blackfoot, Cree and Métis peoples on the Canadian Prairies and in northern Montana in the United S ...

and John Duffy) and Montreal to St Boniface (Winnipeg) arriving there on 26 May 1862. He left St. Boniface with the Portage La Loche Brigade June 8 arriving at the

Methye Portage The Methye Portage or Portage La Loche in northwestern Saskatchewan was one of the most important portages in the old North American fur trade, fur trade route across Canada. The portage connected the Mackenzie River basin to rivers that ran east ...

on July 20. By August 1862, he had traveled to

Great Slave Lake Great Slave Lake is the second-largest lake in the Northwest Territories, Canada (after Great Bear Lake), List of lakes by depth, the deepest lake in North America at , and the List of lakes by area, tenth-largest lake in the world by area. It ...

in Canada's

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with the Hudson's Bay Brigade Trail. Petitot was based at Northwest Territories' missions for 12 years, including Fort Norman, Fort Providence, Fort Resolution, and

Fort Good Hope Fort Good Hope (formerly ''Fort Hope'', ''Fort Charles'', also now known as the ''Charter Community of K'asho Got'ine''), is a charter community in the Sahtu Region of the Northwest Territories, Canada. It is located on a peninsula between Jack ...

. Here he collected material for his dictionary of several Athabascan languages. He also collected extensive

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s of the Blackfoot,

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, Dogrib,

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, and Loucheux cultures. From 1864 through 1878, he worked on the design, decoration, and construction of the Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, designated a

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. The late 1860s were troublesome years. In 1866, he was temporarily excommunicated, and in 1868, he developed short bouts of insanity. But in the midst of this, in 1867–68, Petitot became the first European to reach the Tuktut Nogait National Park area. Petitot returned to France in 1874 and published his dictionaries and other works. The following year, in 1875, he spoke at the inaugural

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Nancy, France Nancy is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the northeastern Departments of France, French department of Meurthe-et-Moselle. It was the capital of the Duchy of Lorraine, which was Lorraine and Barrois, annexed by France under King Louis X ...

making a strong case for the Asiatic origin of

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and North American Indians. He was awarded a silver medal by the

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for his

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maps, including the partially traveled Hornaday River, though he referred to it as Rivière La Roncière-le Noury, named in honor of the president of the Société de Géographie. After two years in France, Petitot returned to the North, mostly helping and studying the people of the

area. In late 1881, at Fort Pitt (Sask) he "married" Margarite (Margarita) Valette, a mature Metis woman. In January 1882 he was forcibly taken east by

, an Oblate who had traveled with him and Bishop Tache, to Canada, in 1862. He entered an asylum near Montreal. By 1883, however, his ill health forced him to end his missionary work and return to France. Honoring his scientific contributions, he was awarded the 1883 Back Prize by the

Royal Geographical Society The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), often shortened to RGS, is a learned society and professional body for geography based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical scien ...

. He became a

on October 1, 1886, at Mareuil-lès-Meaux, France. Here, he ministered to the sick, and published books and articles on Northern Canada.

Death and legacy

He died in 1916. * The Petitot River is named in his honor. * Painted circa 1867, Petitot's painting of

Fort Edmonton Fort Edmonton (also named Edmonton House) was the name of a series of Trading post, trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) from 1795 to 1914, all of which were located on the north banks of the North Saskatchewan River in what is now ce ...

hangs in the

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's library. * 1975, a plaque was placed by the Canadian Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs at Mareuil-lès-Meaux to commemorate Petitot's scientific contributions to Northern Canada. * 1980, a copy of Petitot's works were donated to the Institute for Northern Studies,

University of Saskatchewan The University of Saskatchewan (U of S, or USask) is a Universities in Canada, Canadian public university, public research university, founded on March 19, 1907, and located on the east side of the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon, Saskatch ...

. * 2005, selections of Petitot's writings on his time in the Canadian North were edited and translated by John Moir, Jacqueline Moir and Paul Laverdue and published by the Champlain Society.

Selected works

In English

* Moir, John; Moir, Jacqueline; Laverdue, Paul, eds. ''Travels Around Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lakes, 1862-1882'' The Champlain Society. Toronto: Champlain Society, 2005.

In French

* ''Vocabulaire Français-Esquimau'' * ''Les Amérindiens du nord-ouest canadien du 19e siècle selon Emile Petitot préc. d'une prés. gén. des indiens dènè-dindjié'' (''The Amerindians of the Canadian Northwest in the 19th century, as seen by Émile Petitot''), * ''Monographie de Dènè-Dindjié.'', * ''De l'origine asiatique des Indiens de l'Amérique arctique'', * ''Petit vocabulaire sarcis'', * ''Mémoire abrégé sur la géographie de l'Athabaskaw-Mackenzie et des grands lacs du bassin arctique de l'Amérique'', * (1874). ''Outils en pierre et en os du MacKenzie (cercle polaire arctique)'', * (1876). ''Dictionnaire de la langue dènd̀indjié ; dialectes montagnais ou chippewayan, peaux de lièvre et loucheux renfermant en outre un grand nombre de termes propres a sept autres dialectes de la même langue; précédé d'une monographie des dènè-dindjié, d'une grammaire et de tableaux synoptiques des conjugaisons'', * (1884). ''De la formation du langage. Mots formés par le redoublement de racines hétérogènes, quoique de signification synonyme, c'est-a-dire par réitèration copulative'', * (1890). ''Accord des mythologies dans la cosmogonie des Danites arctiques'', * (1911). ''Dates importantes pour l'histoire de la découverte géographique de la puissance du Canada.'',

Musical score

* (1889). ''Chants indiens du Canada Nord-Ouest'',

Filmography

* (2001). ''I, Emile Petitot — Arctic Explorer and Missionary'', a Getaway Films

documentary A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

.http://shandel.ca/blog/film-previews/i-emile-petitot/accessdate=2009-01-12 A one-hour documentary produced by Tom Shandel (who also portrays Petitot in the documentary!).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Petitot, Emile 1838 births 1916 deaths 19th-century French Roman Catholic priests Roman Catholic missionaries in Canada French Roman Catholic missionaries French missionary linguists People excommunicated by the Catholic Church Anthropological linguists 19th-century French cartographers 20th-century French Roman Catholic priests French expatriates in Canada Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate