Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix

Who was Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix?

Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix was a French Jesuit traveller and historian, often distinguished as the first historian of New France, which then occupied much of North America known to Europeans.

According to Louise Phelps Kellogg, “Charlevoix was not of the temper of the earlier Jesuits of New France. He was by no means a zealot, and had no vocation to deliver himself to a life of suffering and deprivation for the conversion of Indian souls. Rather, he was a man of scholarly temper, interested as an observer in world affairs. […] His was an eager curiosity concerning life, rather than a burning ambition to be himself a moulder of destiny.”