Western Jesuits

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Western Jesuits

“Black Robes.” During the 1830s four delegations of Plateau Indians made the long journey to St. Louis, generally seeking religious instruction and assistance. The representatives of the Flatheads, influenced by the Catholic Iroquois who had settled among them, directed their appeals specifically to the Jesuit “Black Robes.” In 1839 one group found Jesuit priest Pierre-Jean De Smet, who had been making little headway among the Osages

and was elated at the prospect of an enthusiastic audience. With the approval of his superiors, De Smet embarked in 1840 on a grand tour of the Western tribes. Among those he visited were the Cheyennes, Mandans, Kansas, Lakotas, Crows, Blackfeet, Snakes, Bannocks, Kalispels, Nez Perces, Flatheads, Kutenais, and Coeur d’Alenes. The Belgian priest cut an imposing figure in his black cassock, and word spread among the Native Americans about this new spiritual leader. In the Pierre Hole Valley of present-day Wyoming, De Smet conducted an open-air mass among nearly fifteen hundred Plateau Indians, whose curiosity had drawn them from the fall hunt. The Belgian priest who spoke the “Great Prayer” (the Catholic Mass) also presented each headman with a medal bearing the likeness of Pope Pius IX—the Great Chief of all the Black Robes. De Smet capitalized on the mystique that surrounded his tour, turning extraneous developments to his advantage. An Oglala leader asked him to intercede on behalf of his daughter, who had been taken prisoner by the Crows. De Smet wrote that when the child escaped, “the report flew quickly from village to village, and this coincidence, that Divine Providence permitted for the good of the Ogallallahs, was to them certain proof of the great power of Christian prayer.”

Jesuit Plans . Since Secretary of State John C. Calhoun had first invited the Jesuits to minister to the indigenous peoples beyond the Mississippi in the 1820s, the Society of Jesus had nurtured the hope that it could replicate in North America the reducciones (or reductions) organized among the Guarani Indians in Paraguay. The Jesuit plan of reduction gathered the Indians into self-sustaining towns, where, isolated and protected from outside influences, their economic, social, and religious development could be closely monitored. De Smet was convinced that an Oregon reduction was not only possible but would be even more successful than those in Paraguay. Appointed as head of the project, he set out for the Northwest in 1841 with a small group of fellow priests to establish a mission to the Flatheads. For several years St. Mary’s (in the Bitterroot Valley of what is now northwestern Montana) was the showpiece for Catholic efforts among the North American Indians.

The Mission at St. Mary’s . At St. Mary’s the Jesuits applied time-tested strategies for work among the heathen. Father Gregory Mengarini immediately began to prepare a Salish grammar, and Father Nicholas Point relied on sketches to breach the language barrier. To the Plateau Indians, Catholic sacramentalism offered a familiar form of religious expression. The cross, the saints, and the rote prayers found parallels in the medicine bundles, the ancestral spirits, and the chants. To the drums and whistles used in ceremonies the Flatheads added the musical instruments brought by Father Gregory Mengarini across the Plains—accordian, clarinet, and piccolo. And no radical change was involved when the Feast of Corpus Christi was celebrated at St. Mary’s, since it fell in line with other community rituals and processions. Given their limited personnel and resources in the Northwest, the Jesuits were unable to prevent syncretic adaptation, though they recognized that the Indian understanding of Catholic rites was superficial. As Father Nicholas Point wrote during his time among the Flatheads, “with the Indians particularly, ‘tis better to graft than to fell.” Because of their own engagement with prophecy, the Flatheads were eager to gather for prayers, hymns, and the catechism. Catholic practices supplemented rather than replaced their traditional ways. As the Jesuit fathers observed, the prayers of the Flatheads “consisted in asking to live a long time, to kill plenty of animals and enemies, and to steal the greatest number of horses possible.” The Jesuits pushed their influence as far as it would go; for example, they admonished those who sought their “medicine” to refrain from scalping.

The Limits of Success. At their peak in the early 1840s, the Jesuits had four central missions (among the Kalispels, the Flatheads, the Okanagans, and the Coeur d’Alenes) and possibly five outlying stations, although sites might open and close with the migration of the tribes whom they served. The reaction of the Plateau Indians was fairly consistent: adopting the outward forms of Catholicism did not necessarily involve any alteration of their underlying religious perspective. Some Indians did choose to withdraw from polygamous unions and have their vows to one spouse consecrated by the priest. Across the board, however, the Indians resisted Jesuit efforts to turn them into farmers, and the priests had to accompany

them on their hunting migrations if they hoped to continue their instruction. Perhaps more disturbing to the Jesuits than the persistence of seasonal nomadism was their inability to bring peace to the region. In fact, their presence seemed to make matters worse, given that success in battle against adversaries was one of the primary reasons many groups sought out white medicine. Jesuit policies actually promoted this association since St. Mary’s kept a supply of gunpowder on hand to ensure that “their” Indians could defend themselves against warring neighbors. The Flatheads seemed to gain such bellicose confidence after the Jesuits arrived that their historic enemies, the Blackfeet, extended their own invitation to the Black Robes.

The Blackfeet. The Blackfeet, the undisputed masters of the northern plains, centered their existence around the buffalo. Although traditional ways had been modified by the adoption of horses and European tools and weapons, the Blackfeet had remained autonomous, selectively incorporating change rather than capitulating to it. Content with their own medicine, then, the Blackfeet had generally remained aloof from Jesuit overtures and continued their raids on the Flatheads after the establishment of St. Mary’s. Yet one band of Blackfoot Indians, the Piegans, had developed a trading relationship with the Flatheads. The Piegans apparently witnessed a victory of the Flatheads over the Crows: “While the battle lasted, we [the Blackfeet] saw their old men, their women and children, on their knees, imploring the aid of heaven; the Flatheads did not lose a single man—one only fell, a young Nez Perce, and another mortally wounded. But the Nez Perce did not pray.” They were so impressed that they allowed the priests to baptize eighty of their children, and they served as intermediaries to the other Blackfeet, relaying their belief that the Black Robes had powerful medicine available for the asking. In 1846, encouraged by the success among the Piegans, De Smet and Point went in search of the main body of Blackfeet, hoping to effect a truce between them and the Flatheads so that a mission could be started. Satisfied when the Blackfeet presented the calumet to a Flathead representative, De Smet decided that Father Point would remain among the Indians for a season. His was the longest missionary sojourn with the Blackfeet until after the Civil War. Point’s report contained much that was promotional rather than factual, but he claimed that as a result of his efforts, “there is scarcely any camp among the Black-Feet in which the sign of the cross is not held in veneration.” The Jesuit declared that the various camps argued among themselves as to which would be patrons of the priest and the mission, because “they think that all other imaginable blessing will come with them; not only courage to fight, but also every species of remedy to enable them to enjoy corporeal health.” The Blackfeet considered the Flathead adoption of prayer over the “medicine-sack” as the possible explanation for their increased bravery and protection from disease. Point followed the Blackfeet on the hunt and baptized more than six hundred children, but he would not baptize the adults, who sought the ceremony because they believed “that when they have received baptism they can conquer any enemy whatsoever.”

Conflict within the Society. In the late 1840s conflict within the Society of Jesus began to affect its activities. In 1848 De Smet was relieved of his position as superior general of the Oregon mission. From the first, it was clear that De Smet was less a missionary than a promoter. He never lived among the Indians for any length of time and never mastered any native language. Instead he was continually on the move, writing reports of his travels and experiences in order to raise funds from European patrons and raise interest among the Catholic hierarchy, which was reluctant to enlarge its commitment to the Indian missions. Other Jesuits complained about De Smet’s wanderings and his expansion of the reduction program against their advice. Father Point disagreed so strongly with De Smet about the viability of a reduction among seminomadic tribes that he transferred to a Canadian station. De Smet’s ambitious goal of a huge Western reserve under Jesuit control came at a time when anti-Catholic nativism was rising in the East. His reassignment to an administrative post in St. Louis was intended to offset Protestant fears of the papacy’s greedy intentions. Meanwhile, Jesuit associates in the field warned that their work had already been undermined by De Smet’s actions. At St. Mary’s one priest wrote, “We are expecting other distressing things to occur very soon by reason of the lavish promises which Father De Smet scattered about him everywhere in his journey, and which neither he nor others will be able to keep.” The alienation of the Flatheads had actually begun as a consequence of the peace with the Blackfeet in the fall of 1846. The idea that the Jesuits would share their medicine with enemies was taken as a betrayal. As a consequence of the Whitman massacre, there was a general estrangement between the Plateau Indians and all missionaries. As time passed, the Flatheads refused to protect the Jesuit stations against raids. St. Mary’s was abandoned in 1850, and the superior general reported to Rome that “the idea of renewing the miracle of Paraguay” among the Rocky Mountains appeared hopeless.

De Smet’s Legend. By the late 1850s De Smet had essentially become a government functionary. Because of his high profile among the Plains Indians, officials asked him to sit in on treaty negotiations, including the Fort Laramie treaties, hoping that his mere presence would reassure the tribes of the government’s fidelity. He achieved renown at this task and remained loyal to federal policies as the best hope for the Indians despite the betrayal of treaty promises. De Smet’s journal of his earlier Western travels was published in English in 1863, but by then his primary purpose of depicting the natives’ need for Jesuit missions was moot. Instead his descriptions of idolatry and savagery may have added fuel to the suspicion that the Indians were beyond the pale of voluntary conversion, leaving coercion and extermination as the next logical strategies.

Jesuit Legacy in the West. The encounters of the Jesuits with the Blackfeet and Flatheads suggest the variable impact of white religion among Western indigenous peoples. Searching for the fulfillment of prophecy, the Flatheads were willing to entertain Catholic introductions for a time, but they then rejected the Jesuits when their expectations were unmet. By its end, St. Mary’s had a sawmill, twelve frame houses, a flour mill, and fertile fields, but like the Indian embrace of Catholicism, it was something of a false front. Jesuit power was limited to persuasion, and the Indians participated in their medicine but never to such an extent that they forsook their traditional ways. The Blackfeet were interested observers of the passing parade, yet they felt no urgency to participate unless it presented some advantage, some access to heretofore untapped religious power. Jesuit logs carefully counted baptisms as a record of their success, but until the 1850s the resilience of Plateau culture limited the penetration of Catholicism to form over substance. Yet the work of the Jesuits in the 1840s laid the foundation for the reinvigorated mission thrust of the Catholic Church after the Civil War, when external factors weakened the Indians’ ancient tethers and created an opening for a more intrusive sacred encounter. By then even Blackfoot autonomy had begun to shudder under the impact of devastating epidemics, the extermination of the buffalo, and unstoppable white immigration.