Adrien Rouquette

Adrien Rouquette (February 26, 1813–July 15, 1887) was a Louisiana Creole writer, poet, and Catholic priest who served as a missionary to the Choctaw Native Americans, among whom he was also known as Chahta-Ima (Choctaw: "Like a Choctaw").

Biography Adrien Emmanuel Rouquette was born February 26, 1813, in New Orleans, Louisiana, the third of five surviving children. His father, Dominique, had emigrated to New Orleans from Fleurance, France, in 1800, where he soon married a Creole woman named Louise Cousin. Dominique fought under the command of General Andrew Jackson during the Battle of New Orleans and, four years later, committed suicide by drowning in the Mississippi River.

Following his father's suicide, Rouquette moved with his family to the Bayou St. John area, just outside New Orleans. He and his siblings would play games together and, as Rouquette's older brother later recalled, it was a "golden age of life", and referred fondly to the "free and happy years of my half savage childhood".

The writings of the Rouquette family were soon well-known both in Louisiana and in France; in addition to Adrien's writings, his older brother François-Dominique published a book of poetry, as did his younger brother Térence. In Louisiana, Rouquette soon became editor of Le Propagateur Catholique. Before long he was ordained as a Catholic priest. Assigned to duty at the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, he served for fourteen years as a priest in the city, then suddenly, in 1859, he severed all connection to it.

He then made his home for twenty-nine years as a missionary with the Choctaws. He anticipated that other enlightened Christians would join him to escape modern commercialism but, failing that, he established a mission community among the several thousand Choctaws then living in the forests beside Lake Pontchartrain.

Publications Les Savanes, Poesies Americanines (1841) Discours Prononce a la Cathedrales de Saint-Louis (1846) Wild Flowers: Sacred Poetry (1848) La Thébaïde en Amérique, ou Apologie de la vie Solitaire et Contemplative (1852) L'Antoniade, ou la solitude avec Dieu (1860) Le Vingt-cinquieme Anniversaire du Pontificat de Pio Nono, 17 Juin, 1871(1871) Catherine Tehgahkwitha, The Saint of Caughnawaga (1873) La Nouvelle Atala, ou La Fille de L'esprit, Légende Indienne (1879) Critical Dialogue between Aboo and Caboo on a New Book or a Grandissime Ascension (1880)