Trails Through Western Woods

by Helen Fitzgerald Sanders

Lake McDonald from McDonald Creek

Father De Smet was a Belgian and he had spent some time with the Pottowatamies, in Kansas. He understood the Indians well and what was most important, he loved them. He remained among the Selish long enough to be assured of their docile nature and sincerity of purpose, then returned to St. Louis to urge the establishment of a permanent mission and to ask for assistance to carry on his work. Monseigneur, the Bishop, listened favourably to his appeal and consequently, in the Spring of 1841, Father De Smet, reinforced with two Italian priests, three lay brothers and some other man, started for the Rocky Mountains. The Selish had promised to meet the party at a given place at the base of the Wind River Mountains, on the first day of July. The Indians waited until they were driven by hunger to hunt in more likely fields. The Fathers, learning of this, sent a messenger to recall them, and they hastened back to greet their apostle and his followers. And of that little band there were Charles and François, the sons of Old Ignace, the Iroquois, Simon, the oldest of the tribe, and Young Ignace of great fame, who, we are told, journeyed for four long days and nights having neither food nor drink, in his haste to make good his promise to meet the robes noires.

So far was the season advanced that the Selish had started on their buffalo hunt. Therefore, the priests whose supplies were exhausted, with their Indian friends, went on to Fort Hall, procured provisions there, and then proceeded to the Beaverhead River to join the tribe. The priests stayed only a few days among the Indians who were absorbed in the chase, and again took up their journey with the Bitter Root valley as the chosen place of permanent rest. There they had determined to build the Mission, "the house of the Great Spirit," and there the Selish promised to join them after the hunt was over in the Fall. Along the course of the Hell Gate River they took their way and at last came safely within the green refuge of the valley to lay down their burden and build their church. They selected a fair spot near the present site of Stevensville and laboured long to fashion the pioneer home of the Faith which they called The Mission of St. Mary's. The good priests went farther still and re-named the valley, the river watering it and the highest peak, St. Mary's, so anxious were they in their zeal to eradicate every trace of the old, pagan beliefs of their converts, even to the names of the valleys, lakes and hills!

The element of incongruity and pity in this, the zealous fathers did not appreciate. That a jagged, beetling crest, the home of the thunder cloud, the womb whence issues glacier and roaring stream, fit to be Jove's dwelling, should bear the mild title of St. Mary's, did not shock their notions of the eternal fitness of things. Happily, the valley with its rose-starred brocade of flowers, is still the Bitter Root and a re-awakening interest is calling the old names from their long oblivion to take their places once again, vesting peak and stream and grassy vale with a significance of meaning totally wanting in the artificial foreign titles forced on them by those who neither knew nor cared for their tradition and sentiment. And even the ancient gods and spirits are no longer despised as evils antagonistic to the salvation of the soul. Lafcadio Hearn expressed pity for the cast-off Shinto gods whose places were usurped by the deities of the Buddhist creed. Likewise, the best Christian amongst us, if he looks beneath the surface into the heart of things, must be conscious of a vague regret for the quaint, mythical lore which cast its glamour over the wilderness; for the poor, vanished phantoms of the wood and the gods who have fallen from their thrones. Sometimes in the remotest mountain solitudes we dare to acknowledge thoughts we would not harbour elsewhere. Under the pensive appeal of the still forests, the heaven-reaching peaks and stream-songs, we wonder if upon the heights, in deep-bosomed caverns, those sad exiles dwell, casting over the cloistered groves a subtle melancholy, evasive as the shadow of a cloud, fleeting as the sigh of the Summer wind.

But the good fathers of St. Mary's had no such thought for the ancient paganism and its symbols. They were busy planting the Cross, building a chapel, the best that their strength and skill could erect, and other structures necessary for their protection and comfort. It was a labour of love, as much a religious rite as the saying of the Mass, and verily, the ring of the hammers must have seemed in the ears of those devoted men, endless aves and pater nosters. Finally the work was done. A comfortable log cabin, large enough to hold nearly the assembled tribe, stood in the valley, and when the Indians returned from the hunt, they were joyful in this, their reward, for all those brave attempts to bring the Light into the Wilderness.

The Mission completed, Father De Smet travelled to Fort Colville in Washington, a journey of more than three hundred miles, to procure seeds and roots, and on his way he stopped among the Kalispehlms, the Pend d'Oreilles and the Cœur d'Alenes, all of whom welcomed him and listened attentively to the message he brought. He took back to his Selish charges at St. Mary's "a few bushels of oats, wheat and potatoes" which he and his brethren sowed. The Indians, like children, watched with wonder, the planting, sprouting, ripening and reaping of the crop, a thing hitherto unknown to them, though husbandry on a small scale had been practiced at an earlier date by some of the Eastern tribes.

But however truly the Indians loved their new teachers, the robes noires, and however sincerely they accepted the tenets of their faith, they still persisted in buffalo hunts, which twice a year took them into the contested country, and upon these expeditions, fired with excitement, alive with all the heritage of passion inspired by the chase, the war path and the intoxication of glory handed down to them through an ancestry so ancient as to be lost in the dimness of beginnings, they forgot for a time, at least, the life of order, industry and religion they had pledged themselves to lead. Therefore, one of the new priests, Father Point, accompanied them on the hunt, but in the abandon of those days when every sense was strained to find the prey, and every nerve was as tense as the bow-string 'ere it speeds the arrow to its mark, it was impossible to preach to them the gentle word of Christianity, so the Fathers gave up these attempts and remained at the Mission awaiting the return of their straying converts, a situation which was to result sadly for St. Mary's. Meantime the work was growing. The Pend d'Oreilles and Cœur d'Alenes had asked for missionary priests and Father De Smet needed more helpers in the new land.

From St. Mary's, the Mother Mission, Father Point and Brother Huet went forth to minister to the Cœur d'Alenes, where they established the Mission of the Sacred Heart. A third Mission, St. Ignatius, was founded amongst the Kalispehlms on the Pend d'Oreille River. With these two offshoots from the parent stem of St. Mary's, it was necessary for Father De Smet to seek re-inforcement abroad, but before he sailed he started westward three new recruits from St. Louis.

It must have been an inspiring sight when this humble priest, fresh from the western woods, the scent of the pines exhaling from him, the breadth of vast distances in his vision, the simplicity of the Indians' racial childhood reflected in his own nature, stood before his August Holiness, Pope Gregory XVI., in the grandeur of the Vatican at Rome, and there, amidst the pomp and ostentation, the wealth and luxury of the headwaters of that Church which sends its streams to the utmost corners of the earth, pled the cause of the lowly Indian. More imposing still, it must have been, when His Holiness arose from his throne and embraced this apostle from the great, New World. The Pope sought to make the priest a bishop, but Father De Smet chose to remain as he was, and certainly in the eyes of unprejudiced laymen, he gained in simple dignity more than he foreswore in ecclesiastical honors.