Brother Van

by Stella Wyatt Brummitt

Entering Helena to-day, you will find a thriving, bustling city, proud of one of the finest hotels in the Northwest. The hotel stands on the spot where the miner stuck in his pick. Enough gold was found in the soil to pay for the excavation, and this was taken from the “tailings,” or discarded earth handled by the early miners. But Helena was a typical mining town when the Eastern tenderfoot came. He was at the mercy of the hard element. Only the rare good judgment and a sense of the fitness of things saved the preacher and made his ministrations possible.

Brother Van made a short stay there, and then, as a missionary to “everywhere,” he pressed on to Bozeman. There he found the only Methodist Church building in Montana Territory. It was a brick church and it had been built through the enterprise of the Rev. Thomas C. Iliff. This missionary was a greatforce in the new West. He brought a dainty, cultured, Eastern bride to the unsettled territory. Through the inspiration of her companionship and tactful assistance, together with his own natural courage and ability, he became a notable power for good in the development of the West.

Dr. Iliff had come to Helena in Eastern finery, and appeared on the streets adorned with an immaculate linen frock coat, fancy vest, striped trousers, and silk hat. As he came along the streets, cries of “Fresh fish! Fresh fish!” greeted him. The silk hat seemed particularly to annoy the deriding miners who closed in around the preacher. His fighting blood was up, and the new preacher continued his way, apparently undaunted by the jeers of the crowd. But early next morning he stole forth to a hatter’s and purchased a wide-brimmed hat, which style of hat, by the way, he wore to the day of his death. With the aid of the obliging haberdasher, the silk hat was wrapped to resemble a joint of stove-pipe and it afterward became a relic of by-gone splendor. Brother Van and the hero of the tall hatstory became fast friends, and had many an adventure together in the years of roughing it that followed.

A pony had been given to Brother Van during his visit at Helena. He was now in reality a circuit-rider, and as he became familiar on the plains, he and his steed began to be known everywhere as the “Gospel Team.” They traveled through a large section of the state and when the anniversary of Brother Van’s arrival in Montana came, it was an experienced preacher who celebrated it. Such a wonderful year it had been! Hardships were forgotten in the triumphs, for many “first services” had been conducted, and scores of “first members” had been received. The year had brought friends, and his faithful pony seemed to be a real partner in service. Into the preacher’s pocketbook had gone exactly seventy-five dollars as the year’s salary, but there was no thought of quitting because of the lack of stipend. The West had called him and had claimed him.

On the day that marked the end of his first year in Montana, Brother Van received fromthe Conference an appointment as Junior Preacher to the Rev. F. A. Riggin. The appointment read: “To Beaver Head and Jefferson District.”

Virginia City in the southwest corner of the state was the center of this circuit. Beaver Head, Madison River, and Salmon City, one hundred and fifty miles away, were its three points. Montana had been set off from Idaho and erected into a separate territory in May, 1864. Brother Van’s circuit, therefore, extended across the Rocky Mountains into Idaho as far as Salmon City. The region provided variety in its characteristics. There were lonely trails to travel over for the pony and Brother Van, and for his co-worker, Mr. Riggin. There were only eighteen members of the church in all that large region. The junior and senior preachers so arranged their work that one man took care of the regular appointments while the other did the evangelistic work. By this plan a continuous series of evangelistic meetings was held for seven months. At the end of their first year in the district, seven new societies had been organized, and one hundredand fifty new members received into the church.

Among the long rides which the Gospel Team took was one to the town of Butte. In describing the occasion Brother Van remarked dryly: “We had all but ten of the whole town in our congregation on that first night.” This would be a remarkable statement if it were made to-day; but at that time the population of Butte was exactly fifty people. The city is now the most important railway center in the state. It has been called the “greatest mining camp in the world.” Brother Van’s visit was at the very beginning of the history of what is now a city of great interest to America.

When the snow cleared away the Gospel Team penetrated to the National Park, and one day on coming into the Upper Yellowstone Valley, Brother Van found a large congregation waiting. One man said: “If a herd of wild buffalo had run through the streets of St. Louis it could not have caused more comment than that a preacher had come to the Yellowstone.” The National Park was then but a year old, and the grandeur of the “Wonderlandof America” was beginning to be appreciated. It was in the famous place of geysers, deep canyons, and waterfalls, where nature had combined many influences to produce the beauty of the surrounding scene, that Brother Van conducted the first Protestant religious service held in the new park. The missionary continued to go about steadily from section to section and at the close of his five years of work in Montana as missionary to everywhere, he received the appointment of local deacon. It was just about the date of this recognition, that the trouble brewing between the Indians and the white men developed into the Indian wars.

The settlers lived in small isolated communities. Some of the pioneers had seized the opportunity to return east to visit their old homes while the Centennial Exhibition was in progress in Philadelphia in the year 1876. In the spring of that year gold had been discovered in the Black Hills of Dakota, an almost unknown region girt around by what is known as Bad Lands, or “Medicine Country,” as the Indians called it. At once there was a rush ofminers out of Montana to the new fields. This move helped to reduce the white population. A spirit of rebellion had been steadily rising in the minds of the red men until it reached the open hostility soon to give to American history the fearful story of the Custer Massacre.