Trails Through Western Woods

by Helen Fitzgerald Sanders

That pioneer shrine, abandoned on account of the depredations of the Blackfeet, remained dark and silent for sixteen years. The Selish mourned the loss of their friends and teachers, the robes noires. In spite of the absence of the church's influence, save such intermittent inspiration as the occasional visit of a priest, the Selish prayed and waited. And surely, poor, impulsive children that they were, if they had been misled by tale-bearing, mixed breed trappers, their digression was dearly expiated. During those sixteen years they remained faithful to the cause which four delegations of their number had braved danger, privation and death to win.

In the meantime the West was changing. The first stern, ascetic days were passing when the best of men's characters was called into active existence to cope with immediate hardship; when every nerve rang true, tuned to the highest bravery and that magnificent indifference to death which makes heroes. The cry of gold ran through the length and breadth of the land and the headlong rush of adventurers, good and bad, from the four corners of the earth, all bent on wealth, changed the spirit of the western world. In that mad stampede, men, spurred by the lust of gain, pushed and crowded each other, and with such competition, who thought of or cared for the Indian? His day was done; the accomplishment of his ruin was merely a matter of years. Moreover, the lower element of the reckless, pillaging crew of gold seekers brought with it the vices of civilization—drink and the game.

Change the ideal which inspires a deed and the deed itself is changed. That first, stern West which taught men not to fear by surrounding them with danger, made heroes of them because they had braved the unknown for some noble purpose, religion, the simple love of Nature or another reason as good; but in these altered conditions where debauching gain was the one object of their quest, though they spurned death as the pathfinders had done, their bravery sank to bravado and dare-deviltry because their purpose was sordid.

With this invasion of the wilderness the whole aspect of the mission work underwent a change. The masked man on horseback stalked the trails; the bizarre glamour of the dance hall flaunted its coarse gaiety in the mushroom camps' thronged streets; the saloon and gaming house brought temptation to the Indian, and generally he fell. It was also true that in more than one instance the precedent of bloodshed was set by brigand whites, sowing the seeds which were later to bear a red harvest of war.

So, when St. Mary's opened her doors in 1869, it was upon a period of transition. If the placid image of Our Lady, looking through half closed eyelids, could have seen and understood the metamorphosis what a shock would have smitten her sainted soul! The painted, war-bent Blackfeet were gone far back into their fastnesses, but here and there, thick and fast, came the white settler, peaceful, cold, inevitable, overwhelming, bringing ruin to the old life and its people—the beginning of the end. And that calm, just Mother of Mankind would have seen the timid shadow-shapes of the Selish melting into the gathering twilight, at once welcoming the stranger to the land and relinquishing it to him, retiring step by step before the great, white inundation. It is useless to prolong the story. The climax had to come, and come it did, swiftly, cruelly, with a dark hint of treachery that we, of the superior race are too willing to excuse and condone. By the Garfield Treaty, which, by a curious anomaly, never very lucidly explained, bears the sign of Charlot, son of Victor, hereditary chief of the Selish, that he, a man in his sane senses swears he never signed, the tribe renounced all claim to the land of their fathers and consented to betake themselves to the Jocko reservation. During the twenty-two years of the existence of St. Mary's as an Indian Mission, after its second opening, the fathers, among them Father Ravalli, watched over and tended their decreasing charge. The numbers of the red hosts dwindled; the falling off of the people through new and unnatural conditions thinned their ranks, but surer still, was the admixture of the white strain, so corrupting in most cases to the unfortunate in whom the two race strains commingle. But in spite of the Garfield Treaty, notwithstanding the exodus of the main body of the Selish, St. Mary's faithful to the end, drew to her little altar the last, failing remnant of the tribe—the splendidly defiant Charlot and his band. At last, in 1891, they accepted the inevitable and rode away to the land of their exile resigning to the conquering race their blood-right to the Bitter Root. This was the death of St. Mary's. It remained standing, a church of the whites, but an Indian mission no more. In looking back through the years, their mercies and their cruelties, it is a sorrowfully sweet thing to remember that Father Ravalli, guardian spirit of the Selish, lay down to rest before the ultimate change, the final expulsion, while the first light of the wilderness from the altar of St. Mary's still shone, however faintly, to show the way.

The sequel of St. Ignatius is, happily, less pathetic in its unfolding. The life that ebbed from St. Mary's flowed amply into the newer Mission's growing strength and to-day it stands, substantial and prosperous in the valley of Sin-yal-min. Though the same tragedy is about to be enacted, the expulsion, less summary, leaving to the individual Indian his garden patch, St. Ignatius remains a beacon to the dusky hosts, poor frightened children who cling to this last hope, promising as it does a happiness born of suffering, an ultimate reward which not even the white man can take away. A handsome new church, frescoed by an Italian brother, does service instead of the old chapel, venerable with age that hides behind the sheltering trees. In front of the modern church stands the great, wooden Cross erected by the early fathers, which the Indians kneel to kiss before they go to Mass. And to the right, covered with wild grass, and that neglect of which such vagrant growths are the emblem, is the old cemetery where so many weary pilgrims who travelled long and painfully over difficult trails, have sought peace past the power of dreams to disturb.

Here, as we have seen, upon feast days the Indians come, the scattered bands gathering from mountain and valley, clad in gala attire. Their ranks are thinning fast. The once populous nation of the Selish is shrunk to between three and four hundred souls, still the little village often holds a thousand Indians all told, from the different neighbouring tribes. And sometimes, bands from far away, distinguished by diversified language, curious basketry and articles of handicraft, come as spectators to the feasts.

Until a few years ago these religious festivals were preceded by solemn rites of expiation. A kind of open air court was held, the chiefs sitting in judgment upon all offenders and acting in the capacity of judges. The whole tribe assembled to watch with impassive gravity the austere spectacle of the accusation, sentence and chastisement of those who had broken the law. All malefactors were either brought before the chiefs, or spurred by conscience, they came forward voluntarily, confessed their guilt and prayed to be expurgated of sin through the sting of the lash. When the accusations and confessions were finished, the multitude dropped upon their knees and prayed. Then those arraigned were examined and such of them as the chiefs decreed guilty, were sentenced and immediately suffered the penalty. A blanket was spread upon the earth and the offender lay on this, his back exposed to the raw-hide lash which marked in welt-raising strokes the degree of his transgression. Even while he smarted, never wincing under this ordeal, the spectators at the bidding of the chiefs, prayed once again for the culprit's reformation and forgiveness. Such was the practice of the Selish handed down from the earliest days. The time and place of the chastisement were regulated in these later years by the Catholic festivals, but public punishment with the lash was a custom of the tribe before the missionaries penetrated the West. The confession, the judgment and the whipping they believed to be a complete expiation; having suffered, the sin-soiled were made clean, and thus purified, they met and mingled with the best of their brethren on equal terms, without further reproach. This was a simple and summary form of justice, suited to the people whom it controlled,—was in fact the natural outgrowth of their moral and ethical code—and it is a pity that the ancient law, together with much besides that was desirable in the pristine life of the Indian, has been stamped out beneath the master's iron heel.

One cannot take leave of the missions of the Northwest without looking back upon Father De Smet, their founder, and the work which he began. Through his devotion missions were established among many different nations, even the unyielding Blackfeet falling under the spell of gentleness. And he who lived most of his life either in the wilderness or labouring elsewhere for what he believed to be the salvation of its benighted children, died at last at St. Louis in 1873, after meditative and reminiscent years spent in recording his travels and his triumphs.

There are some subtle questions crying out of the silence which are not to be pushed back unspoken, even though we can find no answer to their riddle. How far have the missionaries succeeded? If completely, why does the Christian Indian still dance to the Sun? And did those Fathers in their errand of mercy blindly pass to the people they would fain have saved from annihilation the fate they strove to spare them from? Who can say?