Albert Lacombe

Albert Lacombe (28 February 1827 – 12 December 1916), commonly known in Alberta simply as Father Lacombe, was a French-Canadian Roman Catholic missionary who traveled among and evangelized the Cree and also visited the Blackfoot First Nations of northwestern Canada. He is now remembered for having brokered a peace between the Cree and Blackfoot, negotiating construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway through Blackfoot territory, and securing a promise from the Blackfoot leader Crowfoot to refrain from joining the North-West Rebellion of 1885.

Lacombe was born in Saint-Sulpice, Lower Canada, to Albert Lacombe and Agathe Duhamel on 28 February 1827. Since his parents were farmers, most of his early life was spent on the family farm. However, he was from an early age highly religious. At age 22, he was ordained a priest on 13 June 1849, following studies at the Collège de l'Assomption in L'Assomption, Canada East.

Following ordination, he was sent west to Pembina, Minnesota Territory, where he worked from 1849 to 1851 with the Jesuit priest, Fr George Belcourt. In 1851 he returned briefly to Canada East, where he secured a position as a curate in the town Berthier.

Lacombe was dissatisfied in Canada East, and in 1852 he followed Monsignor Alexandre Taché, then suffragan bishop of Saint Boniface, to the Red River Colony. Later in 1852, Father Lacombe proceeded to Fort Edmonton and Lac Ste Anne, where he overwintered with the Cree and Métis. It was during this time that he began his studies of the Cree language, which ultimately led to a translation of the New Testament into Cree, as well as a grammar and dictionary of the Cree language co-written with fellow Oblate, Constantine Scollen, at Rocky Mountain House in 1870.

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