Jean-Pierre Aulneau

Jean-Pierre Aulneau de la Touche (21 April 1705 Moutiers-sur-le-Lay, La Vendée, Kingdom of France – 8 June 1736 Massacre Island, Lake of the Woods, New France, now Ontario, Canada) was a Jesuit missionary priest and pioneering linguist of the Assiniboine and Cree languages from La Vendée.

Shortly after his arrival in New France following an 80 day voyage from La Rochelle and his subsequent ordination to the Roman Catholic priesthood, Fr. Aulneau was assigned as a military chaplain to the legendary explorer and Voyageur Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye at Fort St. Charles, on the Northwest Angle of what is now Minnesota. Two years after his arrival in North America, Fr. Aulneau was murdered in 1736 by a war party of the Dakota people on Lake of the Woods, while traveling to Fort Michilimackinac with a winter resupply mission led by the commander's son, Jean Baptiste de La Vérendrye. Fr. Aulneau had insisted upon joining the mission in the hopes of a visit to the Sacrament of Confession at Fort Michilimackinac, before accompanying a years long westward expedition in search of both the Mandan people and the Northwest Passage.

His remains were recovered from the ruins of Fort St Charles in 1908 and, in 1961, Father Aulneau was dubbed "Minnesota's Forgotten Martyr" by Fr. Emmett A. Shanahan.