Letter : to an unidentified recipient, 1866 Jul 3.

1 item ([3] p.) ; 16 cm.

French

On "Séminaire de Montreal" letterhead.

Purchased from the Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Company on the Walter McClintock Memorial Fund, 2005.

Father Jean André Cuoq, priest, missionary, author and linguist. Cuoq was born in France in 1866, entered the Sulpician order in 1843, and was ordained in Paris in 1845. In 1846, he became a missionary to the Indians at the Lake of Two Mountains near the town of Oka in Canada. After acquiring knowledge of local Iroquois and Algonquin dialects, Cuoq supervised the publication of several religious pamphlets prepared in Algonquin and published an Iroquois dictionary. Other publications included "La Livre des sept nations" (1861); "Jugement erroné de M. Ernest Renan sur les langues sauvages" (1864); and "Études philologiques sur quelques langues sauvages de l'Amérique" (1866). Cuoq died at the Lake of Two Mountains mission on July 21, 1898.

ALS, in French, written by Jean André Cuoq to "Monsieur," answering where and why the Seminary of St. Sulpice established its first missions among the Indians. Cuoq reports that there were several missions, but the only remaining one is the Lake of Two Mountains. He gives a short history of the mission and describes its purpose. The letter mentions that it is accompanied by proof sheets of a book being printed, and requests that the sheets be forwarded to "M[onseiur] Taché", assistant at the Department of Agriculture. The proof sheets are no longer with the letter.

February 14, 2006

J. A. Cuoq, Letter to an Unidentified Recipient. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

J. A. Cuoq, Letter to an Unidentified Recipient. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Priests Canada Québec (Province) 19th century.