Harold Stansell, S.J.

History of the Catholic Church in Wyoming

FOREWORD

It would be rash to deny that the present state of Wyoming is big and wonderful. However, it was not considered to be very wonderful by those who traveled over the various trails during the years 1840 to 1867. The thousands who moved across Wyoming territory in search of new homes and opportunities in Oregon, California, and Utah were not tempted to establish permanent homes there. The knowledgeable historian of Wyoming, T.A. Larson wrote:

The travelers spent less than thirty days in Wyoming and left little besides ruts, names, and dates on trailside cliffs, a few place names and some graves. . . . Scarcely anyone had shown any interest in making Wyoming his home—except the Indians.¹

One traveler is of special interest to the historian investigating the presence of the Catholic Church in that territory. The first known example of a Catholic priest in Wyoming is Pierre Jean DeSmet of the Society of Jesus. With the notable exception of explorers, fur trappers, traders and Native Americans very few pioneers saw as much of Wyoming as did Father DeSmet during the years 1840 to 1868. He made his first trip across Wyoming in 1840 in response to the persistent efforts of members of the Flathead Indian tribe to persuade the “Black Robes” to send missionaries to evangelize them. DeSmet’s objective was to investigate the possibility of establishing a mission in the land of the Flathead Indian tribe in present day Montana.

In 1840 DeSmet departed from St. Louis and journeyed to Westport (the future Kansas City) where he joined the party of the members of the American Company who were preparing to go to the annual expedition to the Green River Rendezvous in western Wyoming to trade with the Indians. The caravan began the journey over the Oregon Trail on April 30, 1840. In due time the party reached Fort Laramie at the junction of the Laramie and North Platte Rivers. The travelers rested at the fort and replenished their supplies. It was fortunate that they enjoyed the respite because the journey further west became very arduous as the trail led through the mountains. In due time the group arrived at Independence Rock. Of this landmark DeSmet wrote:

It is 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.²

One hundred and nine miles beyond the site of the Rock the travelers enjoyed the exhilarating experience of crossing the continental divide “through a broad valley of gentle slopes, at an elevation of 7,500 feet, known to travelers as South Pass.”³

Eventually they reached Green River valley, the site of the Rendezvous, late in June. A delegation of the Flathead tribe was present at the site to welcome Father DeSmet. The Jesuit took advantage of the festive occasion to offer a public ***Mass. Later he wrote an account of the memorable event:

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.⁴

After the stimulating experience of Mass on the Prairie, DeSmet in the company of his guides continued his journey to the land of the Flathead Indians. After eight days of travel the group arrived safely at the tribal headquarters situated in modern day Montana. The missionary ministered to the spiritual needs of his hosts and was impressed by the sincerity of the Indians in their desire to have “Black Robes” reside in their midst. He remained with the Indians until August, 1840 and in that month he departed for St. Louis proceeding through Yellowstone Country to the Missouri River. He embarked on that river and continued by boat down the river to St. Louis where he rejoined his Jesuit brothers on New Year’s Eve.

During the ensuing months DeSmet worked tirelessly to recruit priests and lay brothers who would be willing to go among the Flathead Indians and bring them the “Good News.” He succeeded in enlisting two priests and three lay brothers for the proposed mission. With the five missionaries he set out for Flathead country on May 10, 1841. The small contingent of dedicated men arrived at their destination after a fairly routine journey over the trail that DeSmet had followed in the previous year. The arrival of this group on September 24, 1841 among the Flatheads marked the foundation of the Rocky Mountain Mission. As superior of the mission from 1841 to 1845 DeSmet expended his energies in efforts to place the mission on a sound basis. He traveled widely in the United States and Europe to recruit priests and lay brothers and to collect funds for buildings and supplies.

However, since the history of the Rocky Mountain Mission which existed outside the territorial boundaries of Wyoming it will not serve the purpose of this undertaking to record the progress of that mission except to note that DeSmet’s association with the mission was terminated in 1845 when he was recalled to St. Louis. During the period of his extensive travels and his activities on behalf of the Indians, during the decade of 1840s, DeSmet gained a reputation of having an extraordinary rapport with the Indians; they trusted him implicitly. In spite of the fact that he never lived with the Native Americans for any length of time nor ever spoke their language, he was always welcome in their midst. One author made the following assessment of the relationship between the missionary and the Indians:

They were bound to him, and he to them by bonds that could never be explained. One might say that DeSmet coming and going from far exotic places, presented the image of some mysterious guru who had dropped from heaven. Deeper than this love and loyalty that showed through his aging, peasant-like face.⁵

It is not surprising, then, that the officials of the Bureau of Indian Affairs requested DeSmet to support the government in initiating a peace policy in 1851. Specifically, D.D. Mitchell, Superintendent of Indian Affairs with headquarters in St. Louis, asked the Jesuit to use his good offices in negotiating with the Indians in a general council of representatives of the western tribes east of the Rocky Mountains - the council to be assembled at Fort Laramie. In accepting this invitation DeSmet was to have an opportunity to see more of Wyoming than most people in those days were accustomed to seeing. After accepting that invitation to attend the council DeSmet left St. Louis by boat on June 7, 1851, moved up the Missouri River on his way to Fort Union, near the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers in Dakota Territory.⁶

DeSmet arrived at the fort on July 14, 1851, met with the representatives of a number of tribes and proceeded overland to Fort Laramie. The missionary wrote an account of the journey in one of his letters:

We numbered thirty-two persons; the greater part were Assiniboins, Minnestares and Crows, who were repairing to the great Indian Council to be held in the vicinity of Fort Laramie, and by the same route that we had chosen, which was scarcely less than 800 miles in length. . . . The four vehicles were in all probability the first that had ever crossed this unoccupied waste. There is not the slightest perceptible vestige of beaten track between Fort Union and the Red Buttes, which are on the route to Oregon and 161 miles west of Fort Laramie.⁷

In the course of the journey the party came upon a lake, situated about ten miles north and a little west of the town of Buffalo. DeSmet, with due modesty, later recorded, “We arrived quite unexpectedly on the borders of a lovely little lake about six miles long, and my traveling companions gave it my name.”⁸

The party reached Fort Laramie in September, 1851, only to learn that the meeting of the Great Council had to be assembled at Horse Creek near the Nebraska border because there was not enough grass around the fort for the horses of the 10,000 Indians who came to take part in the Council. When DeSmet was not needed in the meetings he used every available occasion to evangelize the Indians. He also ministered to the “half-bloods” who were present. He baptized a considerable number of the “little ones” among the Cheyennes, the Brulés and Osage Sioux in the plain of the Great Council and on the river Platte.⁹

The Council ended on an optimistic note and an elated DeSmet wrote:

It will be the commencement of a new era for the Indians—an era of peace. In future, peaceable citizens may cross the desert unmolested and the Indian will have little to dread from the bad white man, for justice will be rendered to him.¹⁰

The dedicated friend of the Indians would live to regret that the hope generated by the agreement of 1851 would be shattered in a series of broken treaties.

In the course of the next twenty years Father DeSmet was available to assist the commissioners of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the officers of the United States Army in their peace negotiations with the Native Americans in spite of the frustrations that attended such efforts. From time to time during those twenty years DeSmet entered Wyoming territory but left no further permanent trace of his presence there. It is fitting that this Catholic priest is memorialized in Wyoming with the enduring presence of the lake that bears his name and with the annual Mass at Daniel. The site of this celebration was near Daniel not far from Pinedale. The Knights of Columbus have erected a monument to commemorate the event.

NOTES

Stansell Forward

1. T.A. Larson, History of Wyoming (Lincoln: University Press, 1965), 10-11.

2. Hiram Martin Chittenden and Alfred Talbot Richardson, Life, Letters and Travels of Father Pierre-Jean DeSmet, S.J., 1801-1873 (New York: Francis P. Harper, 1905), I, 214.

3. Ray Allen Billington, Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier, 4th ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1974), 446.

4. Chittenden and Richardson, I, 262.

5. Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J., Paths to the Northwest: A Jesuit History of the Oregon Province (Chicago: Loyola, 1982), 71.

6. Robert G. Athearn in Forts of the Upper Missouri (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967), 17, describes a successful navigation up the Missouri River on a paddle-wheel keelboat.

7. Chittenden and Richardson, II, 653-654.

8. Chittenden and Richardson, II, 668.

9. Chittenden and Richardson, II, 679.

10. Chittenden and Richardson, II, 684.