Armand de La Richardie (7 June, 1686 - 17 March, 1758) was a French Roman Catholic missionary in Canada.
Born at Perigueux, he entered the Society of
Jesus at Bordeaux, 4 October, 1703, and in 1725 was sent to the Canada mission. He spent the two following years
helping Father Pierre Daniel Richer at Lorette, and
studying the Huron language. In 1728 he went to Detroit to re-establish the long-interrupted mission to the dispersed Petun-Hurons in the West. Not a solitary professing Christian did he find, but among the aged not a few had
been baptized. The new Indian church, though "seventy cubits long" (105ft?) was scarcely spacious enough to contain the fervent congregation of practising Hurons.
During the night, 24-25 March, 1746, the father was stricken with paralysis, and on 29 July he was placed in an open canoe and thus conveyed to Quebec.
In 1747 the Hurons insisted on his returning to restore tranquillity to their nation. The father
had almost completely recovered from his palsy, and willingly consented. He set out from
Montreal on 10 September, and reached Detroit on 20 October. From this date until
1751, leaving the loyal Hurons in the keeping of Father Potier at the Detroit village, he directed
all his energies to reclaiming Nicolas Orontondi's band of insurgent Hurons. These had
already in 1740, owing to a bloody feud with the Detriot Ottawas and to the reluctance , if not refusal, of Governor Beauharnais to let the Hurons remove to Montreal, sullenly left Detroit and settled at "Little Lake" (now Rondeau Harbour) near Sandusky. There they had been won over
to the English cause, had openly revolted in 1747, and had
murdered a party of Frenchmen. Early in the spring of 1748 Orontondi set fire to the fort and
cabins at Sandusky, and withdrew to the White River, not far from the junction of
the Ohio and Wabash Rivers. Until his death, which
occurred some time after September, 1749, Orontondi continued to intrigue with the English
emissaries, the Iroquois, and the disaffected Miamis. When
there was no longer doubt of the renegade leader's demise, de La Richardie resolved on a final attempt at conciliation. He had
already at intervals spent months at a time among the fugitives, and now in September, 1750, at the
peril of his life he started, with only three canoe men for the country of the "Nicolites" as they were then termed. The greater
number remained obdurate. It is the descendants of the latter who in July, 1843, removed from their
lands at Upper Sandusky, Ohio, to beyond the Mississippi, to occupy the Wyandot reserve in
the extreme north-eastern part of Oklahoma. The father's failing strength obliged his superiors
to recall him to Quebec in 1751, and on 30 June he bade a final farewell to the Detroit mission.
From the autumn of 1751 until his death he filled various offices in Quebec College. His Huron name was Ondechaouasti. He died at Quebec.
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