Revised December 22, 2022
Introduction:
In 1844, as he had in 1842 and 1843, Pierre-Jean De Smet, Superior of the Rocky Mountain Mission, continued to expand his mission. In July, he introduced a new batch of recruits to the region, and in the early fall, he directed two of the priests who had arrived in the Rocky Mountains the year before to establish a third mission in the Inland Northwest. De Smet would spend Christmas at this mission, St. Michael's, in fellowship with the people for whom it was established, the Qlispe.
Epidemic
Throughout 1844, a “contagious, flulike ailment” plagued the Pacific Northwest. De Smet,
three Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, and one of the new Jesuit missionaries, Father John Accolti, contracted the disease
shortly after their landing in the Pacific Northwest toward the end of July. De
Smet and the other Europeans recovered, but many region's Indigenous people did not. “Hundreds of Indians,” writes
Carriker, “died, and countless other persons were
immobilized by the infection.” Father Anthony Ravalli, another of the Jesuit
missionaries that De Smet had recruited in Europe, was put to work almost as soon as he arrived in the Willamette Valley. A skilled physician and
pharmacist, Ravalli visited Native communities throughout the area, attempting to
treat those suffering from the illness. (Carriker, 75)
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| Father Anthony Ravalli, S.J. |
Sadly, this “mysterious malady” was but one of several infectious
diseases that struck the Pacific Northwest in the 1840s. Robert Boyd in “The
Pacific Northwest Measles Epidemic of 1847-1848,” writes that chicken pox “was
first noted among Nez Perce and Cayuse Indians in the spring of 1840; scarlet
fever appeared among the children of the Lapwai (near present Lewiston, Idaho) and Tshimakain (near present Spokane, Washington)
missions in the autumn of 1843; and whooping cough was epidemic at the Wascopam
(The Dalles, Oregon) Mission and points downstream in the winter of 1844.” He adds that
epidemic dysentery, “apparently introduced by boat from Hawaii, was prevalent on
the lower Columbia in the autumn of 1844.” (Schoenberg, HCC, 85; Boyd,
9)
Crisscrossing Continues
Likely ignorant of the “super-spreader” phenomenon, the Rocky
Mountain Mission Jesuits, and their messengers, continued to crisscross the Pacific Northwest
as soon as weather made travel possible. Carriker writes that De Smet, while
still in the Willamette Valley, sent a message to Mengarini at St.
Mary’s in present Montana telling him “to come to the Willamette [Valley] and
assist him in transporting the supplies he had brought from Europe to the
interior missions.” (Carriker, 75)
Schoenberg, in A History of the Catholic Church in the
Pacific Northwest, writes that De Smet also “summoned” De Vos “from the
Coeur d’Alene in Idaho” to the Willamette Valley. De Vos had replaced Father
Hoecken at the mission because he, like Father Point before him, had had a
falling out with the Schitsu’umsh. De Vos, explains Carriker, was to “take up
permanent residence at Saint Francis Xavier,” a “complex” De Smet had
established on “a bend of the Willamette River” near present-day Portland.
(Schoenberg, HCC, 85; Carriker, 75)
St. Michael’s is Founded
De Smet directed De Vos to perform an additional duty before
leaving northern Idaho. In Paths to the Northwest, Schoenberg writes
that De Smet told De Vos to meet with Hoecken to select a site for a mission among
the Qlispe.
In early September, according to Fahey in his book, The Kalispel Indians,
the two missionaries did as they were told and met at the “Kalispels’ main camp on the
Pend Oreille [River].” This “main camp” could be the one Nancy Renk identifies in her
book, Driving Past: tours of historical and geological sites in Bonner
County, Idaho, as the Qlispe winter camp near Albeni Falls in present Idaho.
Renk explains that the Salish term for the place was “sxwe’uwi,” which
translates in English to “portage around the falls.” While the exact site of
the mission site is unknown, it was probably located near this camp. Neither the location of the mission, nor that of the
camp, can now be determined because the area was flooded in the early 1950s
when the Albeni Falls Dam was constructed. De Vos and Hoecken named the
mission, St. Michael’s, in honor of St. Michael the Archangel. (Fahey, The
Kalispel Indians, 7; Renk, 24)
With the groundwork for the Qlispe mission on the Pend Oreille
River in place, De Vos headed west to assume his new assignment on the coast of
what is now Oregon. On the way there, he ran into De Smet who was making his
way east from the Willamette Valley to St. Mary’s in present Montana. Accompanying
De Smet was Father Mengarini, whom De Smet had earlier summoned from St.
Mary’s, and a Canadian man named Peter Biledot. While on the "west side," De Smet had hired Biledot to install two large Belgian buhrstones to grind
wheat for flour at the Salish mission. On their journey west to St. Mary’s, De Smet, Mengarini, and Biledot stopped at Fort Walla Walla in present Washington State. There, they met Father Tiberius Soderini, a new recruit to the Rocky Mountain Mission. De Smet persuaded Soderini to join the party bound for St. Mary’s.
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| Belgian millstones, St. Mary's Mission, Montana |
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| Map of area around Newport, Washington, 1908 |
To and From St. Michaels
From Fort Walla Walla, De Smet’s caravan traveled north to Fort
Colville and then east toward the Pend Oreille River. Somewhere in the Calispel
Valley of present northeastern Washington, writes Carriker, the group ran into Father
Hoecken. Having heard of De Smet’s approach from “other travelers,” Hoecken had
left the fledgling Qlispe mission to travel west to greet the party. With
Hoecken as escort, De Smet and the other travelers arrived at the Qlispe main
camp near Albeni Falls on November 6. “Flustered as much as flattered” by the
joyous welcome the Qlispe gave him, adds Carriker, De Smet decided to spend a
few days at the mission, while Father Mengarini and Biledot “continued on to
Saint Mary’s with the bulk of the mission’s supplies.” Father Soderini decided
to stay with De Smet and Hoecken at St. Michael’s. (Carriker, 79)
In mid-November, “a little deputation” of Coeur d’Alenes appeared
at the Qlispe camp and convinced De Smet to visit the Schitsu’umsh at the
mission on the St. Joe River. Traveling in torrential rain and soggy snow, De
Smet and the deputation reached the mission on November 12. A week later, rain
and snow falling unceasingly, De Smet and a group of four Coeur d’Alenes left
the mission to return to St. Mary’s. After several days on the trail, however,
the travelers turned around. Two Nez Perce men coming from the opposite
direction had given De Smet and the others such a “terrifying description of
the state of the trail” that the group decided to return to the Schitsu’umsh mission. (Chittenden and Richardson, v.
1, 464)
“But,” writes Carriker, “De Smet had no intention of tarrying” at
the Schitsu’umsh mission. “With St. Mary’s his goal once again, he returned to
the trail on December 4, planning to travel overland to the Qlispe camp and
then “take the Clark Fork River to the Bitterroot Valley.” Within days,
however, De Smet and “a team of Kalispel paddlers” found the river “choked with
ice,” so much so that the party was forced to return to the Qlispe winter camp.
There, writes De Smet, the Qlispe “seemed to have nothing more pressing to do
than to procure me the best lodge in the camp, and to make all arrangements to
make my stay among them as agreeable and comfortable, as the place and their
poor circumstances permitted.” In another act of generosity, a Qlispe man
“offered to carry a message to St. Mary’s, on snowshoes” informing Father
Mengarini of De Smet’s change in plans. (Carriker, 83; CR, v. 1, 466)
Christmas at St. Michael’s
“I shall always remember with pleasure the winter of 1844-5,”
wrote De Smet. “The place for wintering was well chosen, picturesque, agreeable
and convenient. The camp was placed near a beautiful waterfall, caused by Clark
river [Pend Oreille River] being blocked up by an immense rock, through which
the waters, forcing narrow passages, precipitate themselves. A dense and
interminable forest protected us from the north winds, and a countless number
of dead trees standing on all sides furnished us with abundant fuel for our
fires during the inclement season. We were encircled by ranges of lofty
mountains, whose snow-clad summits reflected in the sun their brightness on all
the surrounding country.” (CR, v. 1, 466-467)
De Smet also describes how the makeshift community of
three Jesuits and their Qlispe hosts celebrated “the great festival
of Christmas.” “The manner in which we celebrated midnight mass,” wrote De
Smet, “may give you an idea of our festival. The signal for rising, which was
to be given a few minutes before midnight, was the firing of a pistol…This was
followed by a general discharge of guns in honor of the birth of the Infant
Savior, and 300 voices rose spontaneously from the midst of the forest, and
entoned in the language of the Pend d’Oreilles the beautiful canticle: “Du Dieu
puissant tout announce la gloire.” – “The Almighty’s glory in all things
proclaim.” The mass was celebrated in a newly-constructed church made of
fresh-cut posts, “covered with mats and bark,” and “embellished with garlands
and wreaths of green boughs.” And afterward, a “grand banquet, according to
Indian custom,” was held. (CR, v. 1, 468)
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| Winter scene, Idaho Panhandle National Forest |
Winter Dances
Perhaps it should not be surprising that the Qlispe embraced, with their whole hearts, the Christmas traditions the Jesuits
celebrated. As it is with Christians in northern climates worldwide, winter was
also a “ceremonial season” for the Qlispe and other Inland Northwest Native
communities. In fact, it was during winter that “the most important ceremonial
event of the year” took place. “From December to February,” writes historian
Larry Cebula in Religious Change and Plateau Indians: 1500 - 1850, “the winter dances
were held.” During the winter dance season, individuals sought to remember “the
details of their spirit quest years before” and to confirm and to renew their
relationship with their guardian spirits. (Cebula, Religious change and Plateau Indians: 1500 -1850, 18)
According to Cebula, the winter dances served several
functions. Spiritually, they were a way for the community “to take stock of its
collective spirit power” and to make “known the needs of the community” to the
spirit world. On a practical level, the dances also were a means for
identifying individuals who “might prove useful in different tasks in the
coming year.” In addition, social relationships between individuals, and
between communities, were reinforced. during the winter dance season. As in the
Christian winter holiday tradition, there was much visiting, feasting, and
gift-giving. During the winter months, writes Cebula, villages “made ritual
visits” to neighboring villages “to
work out old disagreements and to plan communal activities for the coming year.”
(Cebula, Religious change and Plateau Indians: 1500 -1850, 47-48)
In
describing his celebration of Christmas with the Qlispe that winter of 1844, Father
De Smet compared the “union, the contentment, the joy and the charity which
pervaded the whole assembly” to the “agapé of the primitive Christians.”
If the Qlispe, too, felt the presence of divine love during the celebration of
Christ’s nativity, there is no record; yet, it is clear that they were receptive,
at least initially, to the message. Like the Jesuits, the Qlispe turned to
religion to understand and appreciate when momentous events were taking place.
Conclusion:
During
the grace period of interchange between the Qlispe and non-Natives, perhaps
Natives adopted the spiritual practices of white men in the hope that they
would be the key to solving the second part of the ancient prophecy that had foretold
the coming of Black Robes. The prophets Shining Shirt and Circling Raven had revealed
that the arrival of the Black Robes would have serious consequences for their Peoples. Just as the Pend Oreille River would sweep away St. Michael’s, and the St. Joe the Schitsu’umsh mission, so would an
“irresistible flood of Whites” inundate their homelands. (CR, v. 1, 469;
Burns, 16)
Text Sources:
Burns,
Robert Ignatius, S.J. The Jesuits and the Indian Wars of the Northwest.
Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1966.
Carriker, Robert
C. Father Peter John De Smet: Jesuit in the West. University of Oklahoma
Press, Norman and London, 1995.
Cebula, Larry. "Religious change and Plateau Indians: 1500 -1850" (2000). Dissertations, Theses, and
Masters Projects. Paper 1539623971, last visited September 2, 2021.
Chittenden,
Hiram Martin and Alfred Talbot Richardson. Life, Letters and Travels of Father
Pierre-Jean De Smet, S.J., 1801-1878, Vol. 1, Francis P. Harper, New York, 1905.
Fahey, John. The Kalispel Indians, University of
Oklahoma Press, Norman and London, 1986.
Palladino, L.B., S.J. Indian and White in the Northwest;
or A History of Catholicity in Montana. John Murphy & Company, Baltimore,
1894.
Renk, Nancy Foster, Driving past: tours of historic sites in
Bonner County, Idaho. Bonner County Historical Society, Sandpoint, Idaho,
2014.
Schoenberg, Wilfred P., S.J. A
History of the Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest 1743-1983. The
Pastoral Press, Washington, D.C., 1987.
Schoenberg,
Wilfred P., S.J. Paths to the Northwest: A Jesuit History of the Oregon
Province. Loyola University Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1982.
Image Sources: (in order of appearance)
Anthony Ravalli illustration in Anthony
Ravalli, S.J. Forty Years a Missionary in the Rocky Mountains, Memoir by L.B.
Palladino, S.J. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the
year 1884, by L.B. Palladino, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington, D.C., p. 5 of pdf, last visited September 6, 2021.
A. Zeese & Co., millstone illustration in Indian and White in the Northwest; or A History of Catholicity in Montana, Palladino, L.B., S.J. John Murphy & Company, Baltimore, 1894, inset between p. 46 and 47.
Wikimedia
Commons. Newport, Washington map, 1908, last visited September 2, 2021.
Wikimedia
Commons. Winter scene near the Lookout Pass Ski Area,
Idaho Panhandle National Forest,
last visited September 6, 2021.
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