Jean de Lalande was a young Norman volunteer of about twenty-six who came to New France as a donné (lay associate of the Jesuits) some time in the early 1640s. He was assigned to accompany Father Isaac Jogues on his second mission to the Mohawk in October 1646 — Jogues having returned (after his 1642–43 captivity, his escape, and his year recovering in France) to consolidate the small peace he had negotiated between New France and the Mohawk in spring 1646.
The peace had been broken between Jogues's two missions: the Mohawks had blamed an epidemic and a crop failure on a small black box (a Mass kit) that Jogues had left at Ossernenon at the end of his spring visit. When Jogues and Lalande arrived back in mid-October 1646, they were arrested almost immediately. On the night of October 18 a Mohawk struck Jogues with a tomahawk; on October 19 Lalande was killed at the same village as he tried to recover Jogues's body. Their heads were displayed on the village palisade. Canonized 1930 as part of the eight Canadian Martyrs.