History of Dakota Territory, volume I, Part 134

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1198

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Father St. Jacques, for whom the James River was named, is credited with being one of the earliest missionaries in the southern portion of the terri- tory known as Dakota. He was a French missionary of the Roman Catholic Church, as were nearly all the missionaries who came among the Indians of this portion of the Northwest following the establishment of the Hudson's Bay Com- pany in the Winnipeg and Red River country in 1740 though Father St. Jacque's labors were in the Big Sioux and Red River valleys largely. These mis- sionaries were not all of the Society of Jesuits, but belonged in every instance to Catholic orders, St. Francis being one, and the Society of Oblates of St.

FATHER PETER JOHN DE SMET Missionary among the Sioux, 1>40 to 1>60

مصدرجيد

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Mary Immaculate, another. The Society of Oblates conducted the cathedral, convent and college at St. Boniface, Can., in 1684 and later, sending out mis- sionaries to the Indian tribes inhabiting that portion of the Northwest.

The fur trading interest demanded the construction of substantial forts as posts for barter and storage along the Red River and its tributaries, particularly the Pembina River, which runs near to and nearly parallel to the international boundary line. Posts were also erected on the Missouri River, and some of its tributaries, and many of these posts became the center of a mission, where the missionary would make his headquarters when not absent in his field of labor.

Selkirk, though a Protestant, sought every opportunity to assist the mission- aries and used his influence to secure those of the Roman Catholic faith to work among the people of his settlement in the Pembina country. Among the names of the pioneer clergy of the last century to the northern portion of Dakota we find Father Tabeau, a Canadian; Father Provencher, and Father Dumoulin, both Canadians.

FATHER DESMET

In 1830 the Rev. Father DeSmet began his labors among the Mandans and other tribes of the Upper Missouri. DeSmet belonged to the Jesuits, otherwise known as the Society of Jesus.

Rev. Peter Johann DeSmet has linked his name most worthily with the work of civilizing and Christianizing the savage nations of the Upper Missouri. While other mis- sionaries as faithful and devoted preceded him by many scores of years, he came upon the field at a time just anterior to the great wave of emigration which swept across the Missis- sippi, and has largely covered the great plains between the Father of Waters and the Rocky Mountains. His mission began when there were no white settlers west of the Missouri and north of the Platte, and few north of the Kaw. He was quite well known, personally, to many of the early settlers of Dakota Territory, and more intimately by such pioneers as Todd. Galpin and Culbertson, who held him in high esteem.

Among the Dakota Indians he won his way to a position of commanding influence not alone as a Christian missionary but as a most valuable counsellor and devoted friend. His observations taught him, aside from his evangelical work. that the Indians were, in most cases, "more sinned against than sinning." and he exerted himself to improve the methods which governed the intereourse of the Government and the whites with the savages. There is no doubt that through his instrumentality the Indian policy of the Government took on a more useful and humane character because of his earnest and unself- ish efforts. In this way, and by exhibiting to his savage charge the nobleness of his charac- ter, he accomplished much for the race. He performed the most difficult task of smoothing the way for his successors; removed many of the prejudices held by the Indians against the white race generally. So highly was he regarded by them and with such affection, that violence was never offered him, though accustomed to journey freely and alone through the Indian country, visiting the people in their villages, camping with them on the chase. and not infrequently becoming, though not intentionally, the honored guest of a war party. His rare intelligence, industry and unselfish devotion, combined with his unostentatious piety and lofty mission, enabled him to discern more closely and accurately the Indian character than many others who had expended almost a lifetime among them, and he finally became the repository of many of their most important confidences. He was acquainted with the secret of the gold deposits in the Black Hills for many years, but did not divulge the matter, apprehensive that it would at the time work more harm than good.

DeSmet was a man of rare courage, coupled with his sublime faith, which he displayed in efforts to assist his fellowmen when they were most in need: seldom being called upon to protect or defend himself, relying confidently upon the protection of his Divine Master, whom he zealously served. In illustration of his exalted heroism, and that he had learned the lesson of the Good Samaritan, it is authentically related that during a voyage up the Missouri River in 1851, upon which occasion he was accompanied by Father Hoecken. the cholera appeared among the passengers and crew, who were very numerous, numbering nearly one hundred, made up largely of persons who were employed or were In be employed at the different trading stations along the river. Within a brief time the con tagion spread until nearly one-half the people aboard were ill with it. Father DeSmet ha ! studied medicine as an aid to him in his missionary work among the savage people, and he and Father Hoecken exerted themselves in caring for and administering to the sick until the latter was stricken and died. DeSmet was attacked but recovered in tim 1. of great service in nursing his fellow passengers who had been unable to resist the disease There were nineteen fatal cases before the contagion had spent its force, which it dil Feiere

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the boat had reached what is now Dakota. There was a terrible scourge of smallpox among the Sioux the same year, and it was estimated that over one thousand Indians died of it. DeSmet gave himself up to caring for the stricken savages, though himself a partial invalid from the effects of his contest with the cholera.

At the time of Harney's expedition in 1855 Father DeSmet was appointed chaplain, and accompanied the expedition for a time, but did not continue with it in its march to Fort Pierre.

He was born at Dendermonde, in Belgium, January 31st, 1801, and died at Florissant, near St. Louis, in May, 1873. He came to America at the age of 21.

He was educated partly in Belgium, in Maryland, and at Florissant, near St. Louis, at which place he arrived in 1823. After spending several years as a teacher in the Catholic schools of St. Louis he was sent as a missionary to the Pottawatomies and Kickapoos, then living near Council Bluffs, Jowa, and here commenced his long career among the Indians, the most remarkable and successful of any missionary of the nineteenth century. In 1841 he was sent west of the Rocky Mountains, among the Flatheads and other western tribes, starting from where Kansas City now stands, with the annual expedition of the American Fur Company, and until within a year of his death his labors were continuons. In the prosecution of his work he made seven different voyages to Europe in aid of contributions for the missionary work. On one of these trips he chartered a vessel, loaded it with his contributions and brought them by way of Cape Horn to the mouth of the Columbia River. His labors were mainly with the Shoshones, Blackfeet, Flatheads, Mandans, Pawnees, Potta- watomies, Sampeetehes, Pen d'Oreilles, and affiliated tribes.

He published several works on Indian missions, among them: "Western Missions and Missionaries ;" "Oregon Missions," and "Letters and Sketches." On his last trip to Bel- gium he was made a Knight of the Order of Leopold, by the hands of Leopold II, as a recognition of his great merits. For some years prior to his decease he held the position of treasurer of the province, which includes all of the Jesuit houses from the Alleghenies to the Rocky Mountains.

He never sought the aid of either military or commercial interests in his work. but alone he traveled over the whole Indian county, with nothing but the word of God in his hand, and his black gown the only badge of his office, and it was by this name, "Black Gown," that he was known all over the Indian country. He possessed a charming simplicity of character, united to a resolution that was indomitable. He was also a man of remarkable physical strength and endurance, and had it not been for an accident on shipboard during his last trip to Europe by which he had three ribs broken and received internal injuries, he might have had his life prolonged for a score of years longer.

DeSmet was a man of diversified scientific knowledge; but his specialty was botany. He was a good topographical engineer and draughtsman, and there are many of his maps and surveys of the Rocky Mountains and Oregon which he made in the establishment of missions, that are considered authentic and of great value.

He was buried in the cemetery of St. Stanislaus, at Florissant, where fifty years before he felled trees to erect the log houses of the novitiate. He was said to be the last of his order of the Jesuits in North America, all of whom became distinguished for their Chris- tian zeal and wanderings among the savage tribes of the West. The rapid extension of settlement and the construction of railways has changed the character of their work as well as Indians themselves. Like the hunters, trappers and voyagers, the missionary as he was known in early times, has disappeared, and with him has gone the romance and poetry of life and adventure among the aboriginal races.

By the writer of the foregoing biographical sketch, who knew DeSmet, and was familiar with his life, it is claimed that in the long list of Jesuit Fathers who have left the impress of their work and history upon the annals of the West, the name of Father DeSmet will stand out as one of the purest, most zealous, self-sacrificing and disinterested among them all. He was beloved and trusted, and respected by the Indian, the trader, the trapper, the soldier, the emigrant, the Catholic, the Protestant ; and has passed away with only the blessings of all to follow him. He was simply and only a Christian.

Father George Anthony De Balcourt began his labors in the Red River Val- ley as early as 1830; he was a native of Canada, and later in 1846 settled on the Pembina River, built a chapel and convent, set up a grist-mill and a portable saw- mill. He called his settlement St. Joseph. He also built a chapel north of Pem- bina Village. The inhabitants of the country during Balcourt's mission were largely French mixed-bloods and Indians who had learned the French language. Balcourt proved to be a very useful man in various matters ; of great enterprise and courage, and withal a zealous missionary. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States, and placed himself on record as a very zealous friend of the people on the American side of the boundary in the Red River country. In

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1854 because of repeated aggressions of British subjects and the Hudson's Bay Company upon the persons and property of the people on the American side who were, in their church associations, under the charge of Father Balcourt, the reverend missionary was sent as a delegate to Washington for the purpose of laying before the President the grievances of his people. Arriving at the capital, he was requested to reduce his complaint to writing, which he did, stating :

They (his people) complain against the Ihudson's Bay Company and the British subiects. who come two or three times a year over the line, being four or five weeks at each time, hunting about on the Indians' hunting ground, to the great detriment of the Indians, par- ticularly in the fall. When the Indians have made a choice of winter quarters, from the appearance of buffaloes being abundant, then the British half-breeds would come, hunt, load their carts, and set to flight all the buffaloes, leaving behind them our Indians in starvation and despair. Now, for my part, 1 will complain in the name of philanthropy of this inhuman traffic in intoxicating liquors of the Hudson's Bay Company. Our laws in regard to liquors not to be introduced on Indian lands are well observed on the part of our traders among the Pembina Indians, but the importation of rectified spirits by the Hudson's Bay Company this year is one-third of their whole importation. This rum is to be sold by their emissaries to our Indians whenever they find them over the line; by this way of conduct impoverishing and demoralizing our Indians, frustrating our traders of the produce of our country, and rendering useless the philanthropic laws that the wisdom of our Government has enacted for the welfare of our Indians. Nothing but an agree- ment between the two governments could ever put a stop to that ever-cursed branch of commerce, For the sake of humanity do use your credit to shut the door of misery and heli.

Moreover, as commissioned by the half-breeds of the Pembina country, numbering over two thousand, I have to humbly represent that being American citizens and so recognized in our territory, we invoke the protection of the Government against the encroachments of the Hudson's Bay Company and British subjects on our territory. We earnestly appeal to that part of the Constitution that gives to every citizen the privilege of being protected against the encroachments or the insults of the strong.

This counsel with the authorities had a beneficial effect and there was less complaint from these grievances and less cause for complaint from that time. Balcourt died in New Brunswick in 1874, having retired from the work in North- ern Dakota about 1860, serving thereafter in the province of Quebec. His evan- gelical labors, however, had been wisely done and their beneficial influence was permanent, as those who came after him gladly testified.

Father Revoux and Father Thinbault were also foremost and zealous in the work. Father Martin Marty, who became an early bishop of the Diocese of Southern Dakota, served as a missionary among the Indians of the North, be- ginning as early as 1845. Marty was contemporary with Father John DeSmet.

Father Jean Baptiste Marie Genin was another Catholic missionary of great zeal, courage and enterprise, equalling Balcourt in his industry and success among the pagan people who were in his field of labor. Genin was a native of old France and came into the mission field of the northern part of the Territory of Dakota about 1860. He was successfully identified with the work through all the troublous years of the Indian wars beginning in 1862 with the Little Crow outbreak, and used his best efforts to restore peace between the Government and its recalcitrant subjects ; while he possessed the confidence of the Indians, who recognized in him a faithful friend, he was unable to bring the Indians to realize that the whites were disposed to treat them fairly, they holding up the broken treaty pledges and the dishonesty of Government officials, as evidence of the wrongs they had suffered. Genin realized, as did many other prominent clergymen, that the Indians had good ground for complaint, and in some instances had almost been goaded into hostilities, but he also realized that the only safe and sensible course for the Indians to pursue was to seek redress through peaceful channels. because war inevitably brought him into condition much worse than those from which he would try to extricate himself by a show of force and such barbarous and cruel practices as accompanied an Indian insurrection.

Concerning the Christian Indians who were members of the tribes engage 1 in the Little Crow hostilities of 1862, in Minnesota, there exists a statement made

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by Rev. John P. Williamson, a Presbyterian missionary, who at that time with Rev. S. R. Riggs, both for two score years since conducting Christian missions at the Santee Agency, opposite Springfield, Dakota, and at the agency of the Yankton Indians, was living at Yellow Medicine Agency or on the Yellow Medi- cine Reserve, in Minnesota, and had charge of the religious instruction of the Sioux engaged in that insurrection.

There were 4,000 Sissetons and Wahpetons on the Yellow Medicine Reserve, and there were also about twenty-four hundred Mdewakantons and Wahpekatus who, at the time of the massacre, had their agency at Redwood. Their principal chiefs were Little Crow, Little Six, Mankato, Wabashaw, Wakute, and Red Legs. It was the Mdewakantons who commenced the massacre. There were but few Christian Indians at that time. Not half a dozen among the Redwood Indians, and not over a score among the Yellow Medicines were members of the church. I have not seen the evidence that one of these was con- nected with the massacre.

Subsequently Reverend Williamson stated :

I have seen the evidence that a large number of them were very actively engaged in their efforts to befriend the whites. Taopi, Good Thunder, and Napesin, the most active friends of the whites among the Redwood Indians, were the Christian men of that tribe. And among the Yellow Medicine Indians, Otherday is noted as having rescued a party of over sixty. Caske Hopkins and Big Fire aided another party of over forty in their escape. Lorenzo rescued two captive families and led them for days through hostile ground until he reached our lines. Simon recovered a captive woman and children and took them fifty miles to Fort Ridgeley, at great peril. Paul, in the face of the death penalty, rose in public council and pleaded the cause of the whites.

These were prominent members of the church at Yellow Medicine. As all of these tribes had been removed to Dakota, some of them to reservations where they were being taught the arts of civilization, while others were in the hostile force that was led by Sitting Bull in the far North, the statement of the reverend missionary was made partly with the view of showing that the tribes occupying reservations in proximity to the settlements were of the better sort of Indians and not at all inclined to insurrection. Reverends Williamson and Riggs worked under the auspices of the Presbyterian Missionary Society.

The Catholics were in the majority in the settlements on Red River country which were located principally on the Pembina River. Rev. Father Balcourt estimated that the Selkirk colony consisted of about seven thousand souls, prob- ably nine-tenths of them partly Indian, and that they were divided among religious denominations in the proportion of a little more than one-half of the whole num- ber Roman Catholics; the remaining nearly one-half, divided between the Church of England (Episcopal), Presbyterians and Methodists.

Among the Sioux Indians west of the Missouri River, the Roman Catholics appeared to be most in favor, if one is permitted to judge this preference from the frequent expressions and requests of the leading chieftains, nearly all of whom who spoke of the matter requesting that Catholic missionaries be sent to them.

The Sioux east of the Missouri, including the Santees, Yanktons and Sisse- tons were favorably inclined toward the Presbyterians.

The Catholics, however, had gained an ascendancy with the red people of the generation existing during Dakota's early territorial days through the labors of such zealous priests as DeSmet, Marty, Balcourt, and probably Genin, and many less distinguished, who appeared to push their missionary work with un- flagging industry, tireless in their adventures from tribe to tribe and village to village. They were, moreover, friends of the savage in every commendable way, acting as physician, for the body as well as the soul, always counseling peace, and interceding with the Government at times for leniency toward the warlike but penitent. The Catholics were sincere advocates of the peace policy when counseling the Indians, illustrating before them in every way that would

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appeal to their understanding, how they were always the losers by hostilities, and gainers by remaining at peace.

The Indian in his wild, untutored state appears to have an intelligent concep- tion of a Great Spirit-a Supreme being, and a future home which he calls the Happy Hunting Ground, to which he will journey when he dies. He must therefore have a belief in the immortality of his spirit. And it would seem from the aggregate of his religious beliefs in a future, that he has received them from an ancestry who had a clearer and more perfect conception of the future life as Christians view it, than is now found among the unenlightened aboriginal peoples. This leads to connecting the race, at some carly period of the world's history, before it found its way to this continent, with a higher civilization and enlightenment.

In the following sketches from the real life of the native American Indian, he is shown as having a religious side, and the interesting statement of Spotted Tail's theology exhibits him as something of a profound student of theological sub- jects. When the question is asked. how can a human being having any regard for a humane religion be guilty of the atrocities committed by Indians upon helpless whites in war or when out on their predatory excursions? It can be answered, as the Indian views it that these inhuman butcheries of the whites are not wrong, and no more do the whites regard as wrong the inhuman cruelties practiced in emergencies by whites upon brother whites. Spotted Tail's statement of his religious belief, herewith given, indicates that he does not regard the killing of a white person by an Indian as wrong.

SPOTTED TAIL'S THEOLOGY

The famous Indian chief, Spotted Tail, grand sachem of the Oglala Sioux. and together with Red Cloud of the Brules, the most influential Indians and chieftains among the Sioux, had a theology somewhat original and indicated that he had given considerable thought to religious matters. He was induced to state his belief during the trying times which accompanied the negotiations prelimi- nary to opening the Black Hills and the removal of the Sioux to the Indian Ter- ritory was being discussed by both the Indians and the Great Father and his advisers at Washington. Through an interpreter of his own choosing, he said :

Most Indians believe in the Great Spirit-in a heaven and in a hell. But some are unbelievers, and think that when they die they are no more, just like the dog and the horse. There are but two worlds-the one in which we live, and that one where the Great Spirit dwells. The Spirit World is more than ten thousand times larger than this; its hunting fields have no end, and the game there is inexhaustible. Its flowers are more beautiful and fragrant than any we have ever known, and its maidens are as lovely as the color of the clouds before a setting sun, and never grow old. The land does not have to be culti. vated there ; but every kind of good fruit, and in the greatest abundance, hang upon the trees and vines, waiting to he plucked. Nothing ever dies there, and the wants of all who go there are constantly and forever supplied without the necessity of any work. All good men, whether they are white or red, go to heaven ; but a great difference will exist between the conditions of the races of men and individuals there and what they are here. Every- thing nearly will be reversed. The wealthy here will be poor there; the powerful and great here, will be humble there. The Indians who have been overpowered by the intelli- gence and skill of the white man here, will have a better chance there. Everything which has been taken from them here will be given to them there. Here the Great Spirit has been on the white man's side: there He will lean to the cause of the Indian, and then we'll fight it out, and we will not be driven from our hunting grounds like the sneaking. savage wolf. Then had men of all nations will go down into the center of the earth and be excluded from the Spirit Land.

Ilere the speaker was interrupted by one of his listeners, who remarked . "Yen know that when your people die, they rot like the horse and dog, and their bodies go into th earth, the air and water. How is it that you are to go to the Spirit Land and de every- thing there as individuals very much after the same manner that you do here?" t which the chief replied :

"We go there as spirits, and there get new bodies, which the white man cann + k 11."

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The chief was then asked if he had not heard through the missionaries of Jesus Christ, the son of the Great Spirit? to which he answered :

Yes, I have heard all about Him; how good He was; what great things He did; how He would help the bad man to be good ; how He would lead all who would listen to Him to the Great Spirit, His Father; and 1 have also heard how the white man killed Him. The Indian never would have done that; he never would have murdered the Son of the Great Spirit. He would rather have loved Him better than his own life; would have given Him anything and all he had, and for Him would have gone upon the warpath and conquered the world. It was for a long time after [ first heard about Jesus Christ, that I did not understand how the white man could have killed Him; but when I got better acquainted with the whites, when I realized the fact that they had no respect for the rights of the Indian; would take away his home where he was born, murder him and his children, despoil his women, and rob him of his winter's food, I then very readily understood how they would even kill the Son of the Great Spirit, as they did.

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History of Dakota Territory, volume I, Part 134

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920 Publication date: 1915 Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company Number of Pages: 1198

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1198