He is known primarily for the drawings and watercolors he created during his missionary work in the mid-19th century among the Native American peoples in the northwestern United States.
After reading a biography about Francis Xavier, Point entered the order of the Society of Jesus on 28 June 1819 and was ordained a priest on 20 March 1831.
In June 1840 he joined Pierre-Jean De Smet, Gregorio Mengarini, and three Jesuit lay brothers in Westport, Missouri to prepare for the overland journey.
In 1842, he helped establish the Mission of the Sacred Heart along the Saint Joe River in present-day Idaho for the Nez Perce and Coeur d'Alene people.
Although Point's skill was limited by his lack of formal art training, his work is considered valuable by historians and anthropologists because it offers one of the earliest visual records of Pacific Northwest tribes.
[4] In 1847, Point left the Pacific Northwest region and traveled to the Jesuit mission at Sandwich in the Province of Canada, where his brother Pierre was the prior.