Fr. Jules Jetté, SJ ~1864-1927

Volume 55 Number 2 Spring 2017 Some give by going to the Missions Some go by giving to the Missions Without both there are no Missions Jesuit Priest Helped Preserve Language for Alaska Natives Fr. Jules Jetté, SJ ~1864-1927 On March 2nd, Diocesan Coordinator for Library and Archives, David Schienle, was invited to attend the Alaska Anthropological Association Conference, which took place in Fairbanks, Alaska. Julius Jetté, SJ, was featured during talks at this year’s AAAC. Fr. Jetté spent a total of 27 years in Alaska, arriving in 1898. While serving in Alaska, he learned the Koyukon Athabaskan language, and began writing a dictionary which was completed by Koyukon Scholar Eliza Jones in 2000, seventy three years after his death. David recalls that one of the conference highlights was when David Kingma, of the Jesuit Oregon Province Archive, presented a biographical profile on the late Fr. Jetté. Another conference presenter, Dr. James Kari, of the Arctic Native Language Center, and editor of the Koyukon Athabaskan Dictionary, talked about ANLC’s project to produce a complete annotated Koyukon place name database, partly, by utilizing the Jetté map. The conference intention was to present the new findings but also to honor a legendary missionary in Catholic Alaska history— Fr. Julius Jetté, SJ. In Alaskana Catholica, Fr. Louis Renner, SJ, in 2000, wrote: The body of this great missionary and scholar—who 29 years earlier was granted permission to go to Alaska, “at least for a time, as an experiment, to see whether his health is able to bear the rigors of that region”—was laid to rest in the mission cemetery, where it lies buried in the frozen tundra to this day. The written legacy and the memory of the man, however, live on. His published works and his manuscripts still receive much attention, and older people along the Yukon still remember well and speak fondly of Julius Jetté, known to them as “Father Jetty.” The following article first appeared in the Catholic Anchor, in 2015. It provides a wonderful insight into one of our Alaskan pioneer missionaries-- Fr. Julius Jetté, SJ. I am indebted to Editor, Joel Davidson and to Author, Naomi Klouda for allowing me to share it with you. –Patty Walter Fr. Jules Jetté, SJ, in Nulato, Alaska CATHOLIC BISHOP OF NORTHERN ALASKA Special Masses are offered throughout the year for 1312 PEGER ROAD FAIRBANKS, ALASKA 99709 you and your intentions by our Missionary Priests. Phone: 907-374-9532 www.dioceseoffairbanks.org Please pray that God may bless us and our work. By NAOMI KLOUDA REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM UNLIKELY ALASKAN CATHOLIC ANCHOR, JOEL DAVIDSON, EDITOR At the turn of the end of the 19th century, Alaska attracted “Alaska is a thing of the future much more than a thing Catholic priests who embraced the difficult missions of the past,” Jesuit priest Jules Jetté wrote in the 1920s. outlined by their superiors. Jesuit Aloysius Robaut, who “Even of the little that is known, a good part has traveled up the Yukon River and founded the Holy Cross been painted in fanciful colors or inaccurately recorded. Mission in 1887, wrote a harrowing description of life in To take all this for granted and strictly limit myself to the the Alaska mission lands. description of Catholic missionary work in the country “Those winters of seven months with interminable would have been, it seems to me, as setting a real picture nights in houses poorly lit and poorly heated were too in an imaginary frame.” much for those men that psychologically were not equal to Father Jules Jetté (1864-1927) made good on his it. It took a strong physical constitution, a nervous system high standards. As a missionary priest coming to Alaska firmly set on an even keel, a healthy sense of humor, a in 1898, his primary role meant conversions and baptisms character impervious to moodiness and a zeal for the among the Athabaskans, but as a scholar, he wanted to glory of God … To survive, one had to possess them all chronicle the multitudinous complexities of the Koyukon and in a heroic degree.” Athabaskan language and culture. Father Jetté didn’t seem a likely candidate. Born in As a humanitarian who loved the Ten’a people, the 1864 in Montreal, he entered a life of title and privilege. melding of those two vocations meant Father Jetté was His father, Sir Louis-Amable Jetté, served as a judge and uniquely able to bestow a lasting gift on Alaska’s unknown professor before becoming lieutenant governor of Quebec future: An encyclopedic dictionary on the Koyukon — in 1898. His mother, Lady Jetté, founded the order Sisters the most widely spoken Athabascan language in Alaska. of Charity of Montreal. Spoken primarily in the western interior of Alaska, the At 18, Father Jetté entered the Jesuit novitiate, language now has less than 300 speakers and the number wrote his biographer, Jesuit Father Louis Renner, in is steadily falling. Alaskana Catholica. At age 32, Father Jetté was ordained To preserve the language for posterity was no a priest in the Jesuit Order. His studies in the humanities ordinary accomplishment. and natural sciences included a three-year focus in “The Koyukon Athabaskan Dictionary is a great advanced mathematics at the best schools in France potlatch of language,” said Alaska anthropologist Richard and Canada. This was hardly typical training ground for Nelson who is perhaps most known as the host the spending seven months of winter’s interminable nights popular public radio series called Encounters. in houses poorly lit and poorly heated. Speaking to the Catholic Anchor, Nelson said Father Jetté’s dictionary is “arrayed with the gifts of words, NATIVE AT HEART each one as precious — and potentially as fleeting — as the breath it is borne on.” Yet soon after arriving in the Yukon River village of Nulato Father Jetté’s dictionary was not meant to be in 1898, he identified with Interior Alaskans, called the merely a work for academics, but aimed at relaying the Ten’a. heart of the Athabaskans. “I am indeed very much like a native on the point His love of the customs and words come through of sensitiveness, and this gives me a wonderful facility in his tidy calligraphy script. to understand them,” he wrote in a 1899 letter to his Yet time itself was against the man, the priest and superiors. “I have only to treat them as I would be treated the scholar. myself.” His dictionary wasn’t published until 102 years Father Jetté set about learning the language. He after he wrote his first Koyukon vocabulary notation. By visited families and accompanied the Ten’a men on fishing then, he’d elicited a lot of help beyond the grave. and hunting trips, keeping his notebook handy to record The result is the Koyukon Athabaskan Language words and stories. In watching women prepare hides, he Dictionary, by Father Jules Jetté and native speaker Eliza recorded minute details such as how many times they Jones, edited by James Kari. scraped skins for drying. He also undertook a census of The Alaskan Shepherd Newsletter Volume 55 Number 2 Spring Page 2 1,300 names, birth dates and genealogy, as well as geographical names. An old sourdough’s story described Jetté as delicate and “five- feet and a little something. He had the appetite of a mouse and his face like a baby angel’s only tougher, you understand, and possessing a heart as big as his two feet.” A fellow priest described him as wearing the poorest clothes and claiming for himself the most uncomfortable room. “He had made up his mind to make himself Indian with the Indians,” wrote Jesuit Father Joseph Perrow. Within four years, Father Jetté was fluent in Koyukon, Renner wrote. An area the size of Minnesota encompasses this group of language speakers. Father Fr. Jules Jetté, SJ, in Nulato, Alaska Jetté took confessions in the language and celebrated Mass, impressing both the Ten’a and visiting outsiders. DOCUMENTING & LIVING A CULTURE Episcopal Archdeacon Hudson Stuck stayed for a service presided by Father Jetté in 1906 in Nulato. Later From 1908 to 1915, he worked on his 2,344-page Koyukon he wrote, “Here for the first and only time, I listened to dictionary, despite limitations such as frozen ink and a white man so fluent and vigorous in the native tongue scarce sheets of paper. Yet, bent over his manuscripts in that he gave one the impression of eloquence.” his 17-by-17 foot log cabin on the banks of the Yukon Abruptly in 1903, after five fruitful years in Alaska, River, he found genuine satisfaction and peace in his he was sent to leave what he called “this blessed soil” for labors, Renner wrote. a return to Canada by his Jesuit superiors. During this time Father Jetté published “He was perplexed by the summons, all the more “L’Organization sociale des Ten’as,” and an 85-page because his health was good,” Renner wrote. article “On Ten’a Folklore,” as well as “Riddles of the Ten’a Obediently, he left Nulato for the Jesuit college of Indians.” St. Boniface in Winnipeg where he “taught mathematics, On July 18, 1916, he became a naturalized wore Indian moccasins and smoked his pipe in class,” American citizen. His work and popularity among the Renner records. Ten’a gave him a connection few failed to notice in a vast As time allowed, he began to compile a short region. He obtained a camera and began to photograph grammar of Koyukon. By 1904 he was back in Alaska people he served, documenting them for posterity.

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