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“Blackrobe” Father DeSmet

La Messe de la Prairie

July 5, 1840

Father DeSmet wrote: “On Sunday, the 5th of July, I had the consolation of celebrating the holy sacrifice of the Mass sub dio. The altar was placed on an elevation, and surrounded with boughs and garlands of flowers; I addressed the congregation in French and in English, and spoke also by an interpreter to the Flathead and Snake [Shoshone] Indians. It was a spectacle truly moving for the heart of a missionary, to behold an assembly composed of so many different nations, who all assisted at our holy mysteries with great satisfaction. The Canadians sang hymns in French and Latin, and the Indians in their native tongue. It was truly a Catholic worship. . . . This place has been called since that time, by the French Canadians, la prairie de la Messe.”

How had this Mass come to be celebrated? Peter Jan DeSmet of the Society of Jesus was the first known Catholic priest to actually make it to Wyoming, and typically he was on his way somewhere else. In 1840 Father DeSmet was sent by Bishop Joseph Rosati of St. Louis and his provincial to the Flathead Indians around present day Missoula in answer to one of the repeated Indian requests for “blackrobes” to teach them the Catholic faith.

Indian missions passing through Wyoming to St. Louis began in 1831, when a delegation of four Nez Percè Indians, from the Flatheads, passed through on their way to St. Louis to ask for a “blackrobe” to come and instruct them. Two members of this delegation, Narcissus and Paul, died in St Louis and were buried there by Fathers Saulnier and Roux; the other two, “Rabbit Skin Leggins” and “No Horns On His Head” embarked in May, 1832, on the steamboat “Yellowstone,” but died after reaching the mouth of the Yellowstone River. Again, in 1837, another ill-fated mission led by Ignace La Mouse, Sr., an Iroquois, and including three Flatheads and a Nez Percè were noted to have arrived at Fort Laramie on their way to St, Louis to ask for a “blackrobe.” All were shortly afterwards killed by Sioux at Ash Hollow, Nebraska. But, finally we read that in November, 1839, Peter Gaucher, an Iroquois, returned through Wyoming from St. Louis with the good news that a “blackrobe” would come the following spring. The Christian names of the Iroquois must mean that they were certainly acquainted with Jesuits in Canada, but how they came to the Flatheads is something to wonder at. Captain *** Bonneville, who spent considerable time wandering around Wyoming as the leader of an exploring and fur trading expedition on his own account in the years 1832-1833, left some remarks about the religious observances of the Nez Percè Indians who had been made acquainted with Catholic practices by the French traders and the Catholic Iroquois Indians who had drifted west from Canada and New York. Perhaps these Iroquois were lay evangelizers whose mission bore fruit.

In 1840 DeSmet departed from St. Louis for Westport (the future Kansas City) where he joined the party of the members of the American Fur Company who were preparing to depart on the annual caravan to the Green River Rendezvous in western Wyoming to trade with the Indians. Under the leadership of Captain Andrew Drips of St. Louis, the American Fur Company caravan began the journey over the Oregon Trail on April 30, 1840. Their first destination was Fort Laramie at the junction of the Laramie and North Platte rivers where the travelers rested and replenished their supplies. Continuing west, Father DeSmet left a famous description of Independence Rock as “the great register of the desert: the names of all the travelers who have passed by are there to be read, written in coarse characters; mine figures among them, as that of the first priest to reach this remote spot.” A hundred miles further west, up the North Platte and Sweetwater rivers is the easiest pass through the continental divide, approached “through a broad valley of gentle slopes, at an elevation of 7,500 feet, known to travelers as ‘South Pass’.” On the other side they reached the Green River valley and the site of the Rendezvous late in June. A delegation of the Flathead tribe came to the Rendezvous to welcome Father DeSmet and guide him to their land. The Jesuit took advantage of the festive occasion to offer the memorable first public Mass celebrated in Wyoming, of which DeSmet left the account quoted above and which is now commemorated annually with a Mass at the site. After the “Mass on the Prairie,” DeSmet continued with his guides on the further eight day journey to the land of the Flathead Indians in Montana. DeSmet stayed with the Flatheads, ministering to their spiritual needs until August, 1840, when he returned through the Yellowstone country and took a boat down the Missouri to St. Louis where he rejoined his Jesuit brothers on New Year's Eve, 1840.

DeSmet worked tirelessly to recruit priests and lay brothers who would be willing to go among the Flathead Indians and bring them the Gospel. He succeeded in enlisting two priests, Fathers Point and Mengarini, and three lay brothers for the proposed mission, of which DeSmet was named superior. Following the same route DeSmet had taken, they departed for Flathead country on May 10, 1841, arriving September 24, 1841, and founded the Rocky Mountain Mission at St. Mary’s near present Missoula. DeSmet went to St. Louis to report and to brief more Jesuits who were to go to the Flatheads. DeSmet returned north in 1843, with Jesuit Fathers P. Devos and Adrien Hoecken, who were followed in 1844 by Fathers Zerbinati and Joset and Brother Magri. The history of the Rocky Mountain Mission does not concern us beyond noting that as superior of the mission DeSmet expended his energies in efforts to place the mission on a sound basis and on another far ranging trip, DeSmet founded a mission in the Willamette valley of Oregon, then visited the Blackfoot confederacy near Fort Edmonton, Alberta, in 1844. In 1845 DeSmet was recalled to St. Louis. In 1847, Father DeSmet was at Fort Laramie on his way to St. Louis from Oregon and, in 1849, Father DeSmet was among the Sioux Indians in eastern Wyoming near the northern boundary of Nebraska where he baptized many Indian children. His last missionary journey, in 1870, was to establish a mission among the Sioux. During the next twenty years DeSmet traveled widely in the United States and Europe to recruit priests, religious brothers and sisters, and to collect funds for buildings and supplies for the missions. Father DeSmet was also called upon seven times in those twenty years to assist the commissioners of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the officers of the United States Army in their peace negotiations with the Indians in spite of the frustrations that attended such efforts. In spite of the fact that he never lived with the Indians for any length of time nor ever spoke their languages, he was always welcome in their midst, having gained a reputation of having an extraordinary rapport with the Indians; who trusted him. A measure of that trust may be seen in the fact that in 1864 he alone was allowed to enter the camp of Sitting Bull.