Grace Period

Grace Period: The Advent of Christianity in Bonner County, Idaho reports the results of my research into the nineteenth century evangelization efforts of Jesuit missionaries in what is now the Inland Northwest region of the American West. After learning that Jesuit missionaries had lived and worked in my home place, Bonner County in northern Idaho, I began a years-long study of the advent of Christianity in the Inland Northwest, the region in which northern Idaho is located. Specifically, Grace Period is meant to describe the sequence of events that put two Jesuits at a Qlispe winter camp on the Pend Oreille River in the northwestern part of Bonner County in the fall and winter of 1844 and 1845.

Idaho, Bonner County in red

The Qlispe are the Indigenous People of the region in which Bonner County is located. In English, the Qlispe are known as Kalispels or as Pend d'Oreilles. Jesuits are members of the Society of Jesus, a Catholic male religious order. The Inland Northwest is “a ruggedly majestic 150,000 square miles of interior land lying between the Cascades and Rocky Mountains and extending southward from the Canadian border for about 300 miles.” The region “encompasses present eastern Washington, northeastern Oregon, the northern panhandle of Idaho, and Montana west of the Continental Divide.” Bonner County, the second northernmost county in Idaho, is a land of mountains, rivers, and lakes, including Lake Pend Oreille, the largest lake in Idaho and one of the largest in the American West. (Josephy, xv)

1866 Colton Map of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana

Three hundred years after the Society of Jesus was founded in 1540, the American branch of the order established the Rocky Mountain Mission to administer its missionary efforts among the Indigenous citizens of what are now the states of Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Between 1841 and 1844, the Rocky Mountain Jesuits established three missions in the present Inland Northwest: St. Mary's among the Salish (Flatheads, formerly) of western Montana's Bitterroot Valley, 1841; Sacred Heart among the Coeur d'Alenes of northern Idaho, 1842; and St. Michael's among the Qlispe of northern Idaho and northeastern Washington, 1844

Grace Period is organized into the following chapters:

1. Before the Missionaries
2. The Delegation of 1831
3. The Salish Delegations
   
4. Rocky Mountain Jesuits
5. Interchange Begins
6. St. Mary's Mission
7. Crisscrossing
8. St. Michael's Mission

The first chapter of Grace Period is an overview of the era before the arrival of missionaries. It begins at Time Immemorial with a short description of Traditional Qlispe Lifeways, then summarizes the consequences of the Columbian Exchange on the Native people of the Columbia River Plateau, and ends with an examination of how the seeds of Christianity were sowed throughout the Inland Northwest. 

Chapters 2 through 4 cover the period between 1831 and 1840 when the seeds of Christianity sowed in the Inland Northwest produced fruit. During these eight years, four separate groups of Native men left their Inland Northwest homelands to travel to St. Louis. Historians of the American West generally refer to these groups as delegations, the first of which was formed in 1831. The second delegation took place in 1835, the third in 1837, and the fourth in 1839. While the composition and purpose of each delegation was different, all contributed to the opening of the Pacific Northwest to the white settler colonization in the 1850s. 

Chapter 2 examines the Delegation of 1831 and its aftermath – the arrival of Christian missionaries in the Pacific Northwest. Chapter 3 covers the delegations the Bitterroot Valley Salish sent to St. Louis in 1835, 1837, and 1839. Chapter 4 provides a mini-biography of Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, known to history as the Apostle of the Rocky Mountains, and an overview of De Smet’s order, the Society of Jesus. The chapter also summarizes the order's proselytization model. 

Chapters 5 through 8 examine the period between 1839 and 1844, a grace period of sorts when Native communities and the Jesuit missionaries were united in purpose and cooperating in the establishment of several missions in the Inland Northwest. Chapter 5 chronicles DeSmet’s arrival in the Rocky Mountains, and the founding of St. Mary’s, the first Catholic mission in the Rocky Mountain region, is covered in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 describes how a handful of Jesuit missionaries traveled throughout the Pacific Northwest region, seemingly oblivious to the perils of crisscrossing what is still one of the most difficult regions in the nation to navigate. Grace Period concludes with Chapter 8, which is devoted to the founding of St. Michael’s Mission on the Pend Oreille River. 

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Steadfast to ancient prophecies that foretold the arrival of men with white skins who wore black robes, Inland Northwest Natives wholeheartedly welcomed Jesuit missionaries into their communities. The Jesuits, steeped in their own prophetic belief system, interpreted the welcome as an opportunity to fulfill a concept of evangelization that had gripped the imagination of their order for over two centuries. The harmony that characterized these initial interchanges, however, did not persist. As early as 1845, in fact, Inland Northwest Natives were beginning to suspect that a mistake had been made and, by the end of the decade, were ready to shake the dust of Christianity from their feet.

Quote Sources:

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, p. 468.

Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1965. 

Images, in order of appearance:

Wikimedia Commons: File:Map of Idaho highlighting Bonner County.svg, last visited December 11, 2022.

Wikimedia Commons. File:1866 Colton Map of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana (w- Wyoming) - Geographicus - WAORIDMT-colton-1866.jpg, last visited December 11, 2022.