LAFITAU, JOSEPH FRANÇOIS

Jesuit author and missionary in New France; b. Bordeaux, Jan. 1, 1681; d. there, July 3, 1746. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1696 and in 1711 he was sent to New France (Canada), where for several years he labored among the Iroquois at Sault Saint Louis. After his recall to France in 1717 he spent his remaining years as a professor and writer. One of his better-known works, familiar to historians and anthropologists, is the two-volume treatise Moeurs des sauvages Américains comparés aux moeurs des premiers temps (Paris 1724), which went through several editions and translations. This is an excellent source work and contains penetrating observations on the liquor traffic of the French traders with the natives. Shortly after his return to France he published also a work on ginseng, species of which had been found in Canada, and was responsible for spreading knowledge of this medicinal root among Europeans. Another major work, Histoire des déouvertes et conquêtes des Portugais dans le Nouveau Monde (Paris 1733), was later translated into Portuguese. This work is a disappointment to an Americanist hoping for contemporary and historical insights into the story of colonial Brazil; the author interprets the "Nouveau Monde" as including the Orient and devotes his study primarily to Portuguese enterprise in that area, rather than to the New World of the Americas. Lafitau was also one of the contributors of his day to the important Jesuit periodical of the 18th century, Mémoires de Trévoux.

Bibliography: l. koch Jesuiten-Lexikon: Die Gesellschaft Juse einst und jetzt (Louvain-Heverlee 1962) 1056–57.

[j. f. bannon]