The suppression of the Society wrought havoc in the Philippines, and we are told that in 1836 as many as 6000 people were carried off into slavery by Mohammedan pirates, a disaster that would have probably been prevented had the missionaries been left there. They would have made soldiers out of the natives as they did in Paraguay. It was only in 1859 that they returned to that field of work. They resumed their educational labors in Manila and at the same time evangelized Mindanao with wonderful success. In 1881 there were on that island 194,134 Christians and in 1893, 302,107. Inside of thirty-six years, the Fathers had brought 57,000 Filipinos to the Faith and established them in Reductions as in Paraguay. Great success was also had with the Moros, who were grouped together in three distinct villages. The Spanish War brought its disturbances, but little by little the Jesuits recovered what they had lost and there are at present 162 members of the province of Aragon at work in the Islands.
In the United States, the native races have largely disappeared except in the very far West. With the remnants, the Jesuits are, of course, concerned, and perhaps the most reliable official estimate of the success they have achieved was expressed by Senator Vest during the discussion of the Indian Appropriation Bill before the United States Senate in 1900:
"I was raised a Protestant," he said; "I expect to die one. I was never in a Catholic church in my life, and I have not the slightest sympathy with many of its dogmas; but above all I have no respect for the insane fear that the Catholic Church is about to overturn this Government. I should be ashamed to call myself an American if I indulged in any such ignorant belief. I said that I was a Protestant. I was reared in the Scotch Presbyterian Church; my father was an elder in it and my earliest impressions were that the Jesuits had horns and hoofs and tails, and that there was a faint tinge of sulphur in the circumambient air whenever one of them crossed your path. Some years ago I was assigned by the Senate to examine the Indian schools in Wyoming and Montana. I visited every one of them. I wish to say now what I have said before in the Senate and it is not the popular side of the question by any means, that I did not see in all my journey a single school that was doing any educational work worthy of the name educational work, unless it was under the control of the Jesuits. I did not see a single Government school, especially day schools where there was any work done at all. The Jesuits have elevated the Indian wherever they have been allowed to do so without the interference of bigotry and fanaticism and the cowardice of politicians. They have made him a Christian, have made him a workman able to support himself and those dependent on him. Go to the Flathead Reservation in Montana, and look at the work of the Jesuits and what do you find? Comfortable dwellings, herds of cattle and horses, self-respecting Indians. I am not afraid to say this, because I speak from personal observation, and no man ever went among these Indians with more intense prejudice than I had when I left the city of Washington to perform that duty. Every dollar you give to the Government day schools might as well be thrown into the Potomac under a ton of lead." (Congressional Records, Apl. 7, 1900, p. 7. 4120.)
The most conspicuous of the missionaries among the North American Indians is Father Peter de Smet. He was born in Dendermonde on the Scheldt, and was twelve years old when the booming of the cannons of Waterloo startled the little town. He came out to Maryland in 1821 and after remaining for a short time at Whitemarsh in the log cabin which then sheltered the novices of the Province of Maryland, set out on foot with a party of young Jesuits for the then Wild West. They walked from Whitemarsh to Wheeling, a distance of 400 miles, and then went in flat boats down the Ohio to Shawneetown and from there proceeded again on foot to St. Louis. It was a journey of a month and a half.
His first work was among the Pottawotamis, and then he was sent to the wonderful Flatheads, whom the Iroquois from Caughnawaga had converted. From that time forward his life was like a changing panorama. In the story, there are Indians of every kind who come before us. Gros Ventres and Flatheads and Pottawotamis, and Pend d'Oreilles and Sioux; their incantations and cannibalism and dances and massacres and disgusting feasts are described; there are scenes in the Bad Lands and mountains and forests; there are tempests in the mid-Pacific and more alarming calms; there are councils with Indian chiefs, and interviews with Popes and presidents and kings and ambassadors and archbishops and great statesmen and Mormon leaders, always and exclusively in the interests of the Church. The great man's life has been written in four volumes by two admiring Protestants, and another biography has lately come from the pen of a Belgian Jesuit. In them appears an utterance from Archbishop Purcell about the hero, which deserves to be quoted. "Never," he says, "since the days of Xavier, Brébeuf, Marquette and Lalemant has there been a missionary more clearly pointed out and called than Father de Smet." Thurlow Weed, one of the most conspicuous American statesmen of the day, said of him: "No white man knows the Indians as Father de Smet nor has any man their confidence to the same degree." Thomas H. Benton wrote to him in 1852: "You can do more for the welfare of the Indians in keeping them at peace and friendship with the United States than an army with banners."
Again and again he was sent by the government to pacify the Indians. His mission in 1868 was particularly notable. Sitting Bull was on the warpath and was devastating the whole regions of the Upper Missouri and Yellowstone. They were called for a parley, and de Smet went out alone among the painted warriors. He held a banner of the Blessed Virgin in his hand and pleaded so earnestly with them to forget the past, that they went down into the very midst of the United States troops and signed the treaty of peace that brought 50,000 Indians to continue their allegiance to the government. De Smet in his journeys had crossed the ocean nineteen times and had travelled 180,000 miles by sailing vessels, river barges, canoes, dogsleds, snow shoes, wagons, or on horseback or on foot. "We shall never forget," said General Stanley of the United States Army — and this eulogy of the great man will suffice — "nor shall we ever cease to admire the disinterested devotion of Reverend Father de Smet who at the age of sixty-eight years did not hesitate, in the midst of the summer heat, to undertake a long and perilous journey across the burning plains, destitute of trees and even of grass, having none but corrupted and unwholesome water, constantly exposed to scalping by Indians, and this without seeking honor or remuneration of any sort but solely to arrest the shedding of blood, and save, if it might be, some lives and preserve some habitations."
In Canada, the Indian reservation of La Jeune Lorette, which was established in the early days by Father Chaumonot, is now directed by the secular clergy of Quebec. The Caughnawaga settlement near Montreal was, of course, lost to the Society at the time of the Suppression, but of late years has been restored to its founders. The Canadian Jesuits also look after the Indians of Lakes Huron and Superior. Their latest undertaking is in Alaska which began by a tragedy.
The saintly Bishop Charles John Seghers, who was coadjutor to the Bishop of Oregon, had himself transferred to the See of Vancouver in order to devote his life to the savages of Alaska. In 1886 when he asked the Jesuits to come to his assistance, Fathers Tosi and Robaut were assigned to the work. In July, the bishop, the two Jesuits and a hired man started over the Chilcoot Pass for the headwaters of the Yukon. It was decided that the two Jesuits should spend the winter at the mouth of the Stewart River, while the Bishop with his man hastened to a distant post to forestall the members of a sect, who contemplated establishing a post at the same place. During the terrible 1,100 mile journey the servant became insane and in the dead of night killed the bishop. The result was that new arrangements had to be made and Father Tosi was made prefect Apostolic in 1894. His health soon gave way under the terrible privations of the mission and he died in 1898, although only fifty-one years of age. He was succeeded by Father René of the Society who resigned in 1904, and the present incumbent Father Crimont, S. J., took his place.
The condition of Alaska has greatly changed since the advent of the missionaries. The discovery of placer gold deposits with the influx of miners robbed a portion of Alaska of its primitive isolation. The invading whites had to be looked after, and hence there are resident Jesuit priests at Juneau, Douglas, Fairbanks, Nome, Skagway, St. Michael and Seward. A great number of posts are attended to from these centres. The Ten'a Indians and Esquimaux are the only natives whom the missionaries have been able to evangelize thus far. There is a training-school for them at Koserefsky, where the boys are taught gardening, carpentry and smithing of various kinds, and the girls are instructed in cooking, sewing and other household arts. This work is particularly trying not only because of the bodily suffering it entails, but because of the awful monotony and isolation of those desolate arctic regions. Some idea of it may be gathered from a few extracts taken from a letter of one of the missionaries. It is dated May 29, 1916.
"The Skúlarak district of 15,000 square miles, depending on St. Mary's Mission," says the writer, "is as large as a diocese. It has seventy or eighty villages. The whole country along the coast is a vast swamp covered with a net work of rivers, sloughs, lakes and ponds. There is only one inhabitant to every ten or twelve square miles. There is no question of roads except in winter and then as everything is deep in snow, it is impossible to tell whether one is going over land or lake or river. When we started the thermometer registered 28° below zero, Fahrenheit. We had nine dogs; but two were knocked out shortly after starting. Eleven hours travelling brought us to our first cabins. We rose next morning at five, said Mass on an improvised altar and set out southward. At noon we stopped for lunch, which consisted of frozen bread and some tea from our thermo bottle. It was only at seven o'clock that we reached a little 'village' of three houses at the foot of the Kusilwak Mountains, which are two or three thousand feet high. They served as a guide to direct our course." At another stage of the journey he writes: "At sundown as we lost all hope of reaching any village we made for a faraway clump of brushwood intending to pass the night there. It is full moon and its rays light up an immaculate white landscape, there is a bright cloudless sky, and everything is so still that you cannot even breathe without a plainly audible sound."