Herbalist
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L’Herborisateur | The Herbalist
"Portrait of a Botanist", 1603 oil painting (artist unknown) held at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Wikimedia Commons.
For French colonists arriving in the new world, New France was a vast territory of unknown plants. The herborisateur, or herbalist, collected and catalogued these plants in order to send them to the King's garden back in France. He often sought the help of the indigenous people in order to identify some of the plants.
The first herbalist in New France was the first colonist, Louis Hébert. He was also a cultivator and an apothecary, making medicines from plants he collected from his land. An Italian herbalist named Jacques Cornuti published a book in Paris in 1634 about the plants of New France, enumerating some 80 species of plants. Historians have concluded that only Hébert had enough knowledge of plants at this time to have provided this information.
Another famed herbalist in New France was Hubert-Joseph de La Croix. Like Hébert, he sent at least 2 shipments of plants in order to enrich the garden of the French King. But perhaps the most famous of all herbalists was Michel Sarrazin (or Sarrasin), botanist, surgeon and doctor. In 1697, on one of his voyages back to the colony from France, the ship he was on stopped in Newfoundland. Sarrazin took advantage of the opportunity to study the plants and trees while anchored there. From this point on, he regularly sent shipments of plants back to the King's royal garden. Species he shipped to France still exist today as part of the herbarium of the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris and the Sherardian Herbarium at Oxford University in England.
Sources:
Pascale Girard, "Les métiers en Nouvelle-France", Semaine nationale de la Généalogie (2014); online article, Fédération québécoise des sociétés de généalogie (http://www.semainegenealogie.com/extra/articles/182-les-metiers-en-nouvelle-france).
Jacques Rousseau, “SARRAZIN, MICHEL,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography (2003, vol. 2), University of Toronto/Université Laval; electronic edition, Dictionary of Canadian Biography (http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/sarrazin_michel_2E.html).
Catherine Fortin-Morisset, “LA CROIX, HUBERT-JOSEPH DE,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography (2003, vol. 3), University of Toronto/Université Laval; electronic edition, Dictionary of Canadian Biography (http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/la_croix_hubert_joseph_de_3E.html).