USA > Washington > Spokane County > Spokane > History of the city of Spokane and Spokane County, Washington : from its earliest settlement to the present time, Volume I > Part 17
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"To show you the good sense, benevolence and foresight of the priests, I will relate a short conversation I had with Father Hoceken, who is the superior of the mission and has been among the people from the first. Says he, 'Doctor, you will scarcely believe it ; surrounded by water as we are, we often have difficulty in getting fish even for our Friday dinner.' I replied. jokingly, 'I suppose, Father, that the Indians find no difficulty in observing a fast on Friday.' He answered immediately : 'I never spoke to them about it: it would not do. Poor creatures, they fast too much as it is, and it is not necessary for them to fast more.'
"The people look up to the father, and love him. They say that if the father should go away, they would die. Before the advent of the missionaries, the in- habitants, although totally destitute of religious ideas, still believed that evil and bad luck emanated from a fabulous old woman or sorceress. They were great be- lievers in charms, or medicine. Every man had his peculiar medicine or charm, which was his deity, so to speak ; and of it they expected good or ill. With some it would be the mouse : with others. the deer. buffalo. elk. salmon. bear, ete. ; and which- ever it was. the savage would carry a portion of it constantly by him. The tail of a mouse, or the fur. hoof, claw, feather. fin or scale of whatever it might be, became the amulet. When a young man grew up he was not yet considered a man until he had discovered his medicine. His father would send him to the top of a high moun- tain in the neighborhood of the present mission. Here he was obliged to remain without food until he had dreamed of an animal ; the first one so dreamed about be- coming his medicine for life. Of course anxiety, fatigue, cold and fasting would render his sleep troubled and replete with dreams. In a short time he would have dreamed of what he wanted, and return to his home a man.
"At the mission they have a small mill, by which the Indians grind their wheat. The mill is turned by hand, and will grind but three bushels a day."
A discovery made near the mission by Dr. Suckley indicates the comparatively recent activity of a volcano in the Inland Empire: "A few inches below the surface of the earth can be found the ashes and eineritious deposit of a volcano. The stratum is about one-third of an inch thick. As you proceed in a north-northeasterly direction, it becomes thicker and thicker. Hence we may infer that the crater was in that direction, and probably can now be found. The inhabitants have never seen it. They do not travel from curiosity, and the direction is among mountains from the very door of the mission. In the tribe there are men and women still living who
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remember the eruption. They say that it came on during the afternoon and night, during which it rained einders and fire. The Indians supposed that the sun had burned up, and that there was an end of all things. The next morning, when the sun arose, they were so delighted as to have a great dance and a feast."
At St. Ignatius mission Dr. Suckley learned that there was an abundance of lead ore on the Kootenai river. Black lead had been found at St. Mary's and gold on Hell Gate river, while copper and silver were said to exist in the mountains north.
"The loud, deep-sounding reports, like the explosions of heavy pieces of ord- nanee, oeeasionally heard in the Rocky mountains, and spoken of by Lewis and Clark in their narrative, are now and then heard. They never oeeur except during the coldest winters. The old trappers thought that these noises were produced by the bursting of silver mines. Their opinion in such a matter is of but little importance to my mind." These detonations he attributed to voleanie eruptions, to the break- ing away of heavy ice masses, or to landslides.
Continuing his descent of the Clark's fork. Lake Pend d'Oreille and the river of the same name. Dr. Suckley, three days after leaving St. Ignatius, arrived at old Fort Colville on the Columbia, where he was kindly entertained by Angus MeDonald. in charge of that post of the Hudson's Bay company.
"Near the fort (continnes his report to Governor Stevens) is the mission. of St. Paul, established among the Kettle Falls Indians, on the left bank of the Columbia, about one mile from the Kettle Falls. I visited the mission establishment three times during my stay at Fort Colville. It is superintended by the Reverend Father Joset. assisted by one other priest and a lay brother. Father Joset received me very kindly. He is a Swiss, and very gentlemanly and agreeable in his manners. To him I am indebted for much valuable information concerning this part of the country. The mission establishment consists of a chapel, a dwelling-house and several other buildings. There is no farm attached to it. The Indians have sufficient to eat which they obtain from other sources. There is, consequently. no necessity requir- ing the missionaries to cultivate land, as they can obtain all they want for their own use from the Hudson's Bay company.
"The Kettle Falls Indians call themselves Squeer-ver-pe. The chief of this tribe is ealled Pierre Jean. He, with most of his followers, live in their lodges around the mission. The number of souls in this band is abont 350. During the summer season the Indians from all the surrounding country congregate at this place to eatch salmon. There are then about 1000 at the falls. The Squeer-yer-pe name for the Kettle Falls is Schwan-ate-koo, or deep-sounding water. Here the Columbia pitches over a ledge of rocks, making a fall of about fifteen feet perpen- dieular. The Indians sow a little wheat and plant some potatoes, of which they are very fond; but their principal subsistence is the everlasting salmon. They come up annually in great numbers, on their way to the headwaters of the Columbia. The Indians kill hundreds of thousands of these fish by spearing them. The myriads of salmon that aseend the rivers of the Pacific coast are almost ineredible. In many places the water appears alive with them, and the shores are thickly lined with the dead and dying fish. This, according to De Smet, is partienlarly noticed on the small lakes of the upper Columbia, in the vicinity of Martin's rapids."
Just before his arrival at St. Ignatius, Dr. Suekley. reduced to the point of famine, lodged one night with a band of Pend d'Oreilles. "Our provisions are out,"
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says his journal, "the ground is covered with snow, and the sky obseured by clouds. The weather is excessively cold. Our tent is wet, as indeed it has been for a week or more. Our robes and some of our blankets are in the same condition; and, on the whole, our situation is quite uncomfortable. Under these circumstances I con- cluded to lodge all night with the Indians. Our hungry stomachs were quite willing to partake of any hospitality they might offer in the shape of food. With these feelings I entered the lodge of All-ol-Sturgh, the head of the eneampment. The other lodges are principally occupied by his children and grand-children. They provided us with dried camas and berries, also a piece of raw tallow, which tasted very good. Shortly after our entrance All-ol-Sturgh rang a little bell; directly the lodge was filled with inhabitants of the camp, men, women and children, who im- mediately got upon their knees and repeated, or rather chanted. a long prayer, in their own language, to the Creator. The repetition of a few pious sentences, an invocation, and a hymn, closed the exercises. In these the squaws took as aetive a part as the men. The promptness, fervency and earnestness all showed, was pleasing to contemplate. These prayers, etc., have been taught them by their kind missionary and friend, the much-loved Father Hoceken (S. J.). The participation of the squaws in the exercises, and the apparent footing of equality between them and the men, so much unlike their condition in other savage tribes, appear remark- able."
CHAPTER XIV
CATHOLIC MISSIONS-CONTINUED
FATHER DESMET JOURNEYS IN A BARK CANOE, TO THE HORSE PLAINS IN MONTANA- RETURNS TO KALISPEL BAY AND FELLS THE FIRST TREE FOR TIIE MISSION-DISCOV- ERS LIMESTONE CAVE ON LOWER PEND D'OREILLE-GOES TO WILLAMETTE VALLEY FOR SEEDS AND IMPLEMENTS-RETURNS AND ERECTS A LITTLE CHAPEL OF BOUGHS -POETIC DESCRIPTION OF KETTLE FALLS-ESTABLISHIES MISSION OF ST. REGIS IN COLVILLE VALLEY-MEETS PETER SKENE OGDEN IN THE NORTHERN WILDERNESS- EXPRESSES HIS OPINION OF THE OREGON QUESTION-HOW THE CAMAS ROOT WAS PRE- PARED-DESMET RANGES FAR, TO THE HEADWATERS OF THE COLUMBIA-INTEREST- ING BLACKFOOT TRADITION- AN INDIAN HEAVEN-MISSIONARY'S REMARKABLE JOURNEY FROM THE ATHABASCA TO KETTLE FALLS-HOW THE ARROW LAKES WERE NAMED.
P AUSING a few days at St. Ignatius for rest and reeuperation, Father De Smet voyaged in a bark canoe about 120 miles from St. Ignatius to the Horse plains in Montana, where he was "among his dear Flatheads and Pend d'Oreilles of the mountains during the Pasehal time, 1845, and had the great consolation of finding them replete with zeal and fervor in fulfilling the duties of true children of prayer. The solemn feast of Easter," says he in a letter to Bishop John Hughes of New York, "all the Flatheads at St. Mary's devontly approached the most blessed saerament during my mass; and about 300 Pend d'Oreilles, (the greater number adults) belonging to the station of St. Francis Borgia, presented themselves at the baptismal font. How consoling it is to pour the regenerating water of baptism on the furrowed and scarified brows of these desert warriors,- to behold these children of the plains and forests emerging from that profound ig- noranee and superstition in which they have been for so many ages deeply and darkly enveloped ; to see them embrace the faith and all its saered praetiees with an eagerness, an attention, a zeal, worthy the pristine Christians!"
Sixteen days of laborious work with paddle and pole had been required to take the missionary from St. Ignatius to the mission in Montana. Returning with the current, the long and devious way was covered in four. "On returning to the bay, (DeSmet always referred to St. Ignatius as Kalispel Bay) accompanied by Rev. Father Hoeeken and several chiefs, my first care was to examine the lands belong- ing to this portion of the tribe of Kalispels, and seleet a fit site for ereeting the new · establishment of St. Ignatius. We found a vast and beautiful prairie, three miles in extent. surrounded by cedar and pine, in the neighborhood of the cavern of New
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Manresa, and its quarries. and a fall of water of more than 200 feet, presenting every advantage for the erection of mills. I felled the first tree, and after having taken all necessary measures to expedite the work. I departed for Walla Walla. where I embarked in a small boat and descended the Columbia as far as Fort Van- couver."
The significance of De Smet's mention of "the cavern of New Manresa" becomes more apparent on recalling that he was of the Society of Jesus, and that Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, while undergoing austerities, passed a year in a cave near the town of Manresa in northeastern Spain. Limestone abounds along the lower Pend d'Oreille, and a remarkable cavern, probably that which the mis- sionaries located near St. Ignatius, is one of the natural wonders of that region.
DeSmet's purpose in returning to the Willamette was to secure ploughs, spades. pickaxes, scythes and carpenters' tools for the new missions in the interior, and a few weeks later we find him bringing a pack-train of eleven animals, ladened with these implements. over the Indian trail which penetrates a pass in the Cascade moun- tains by the base of Mount Hood. a trail that even then had been put to extensive use by the immigration that was pouring into Oregon, and which has passed into history as the Barlow road. For companions he had "the good Brother MeGean. and two metis or mongrels," and the little party encountered many difficulties from the melting snows which sent a thousand rills and torrents rushing down the mountainsides into the narrow valleys. The missionary noted, as have thousands since him who have traveled over this historic route, the extensive groves of rho- ilodendron, which at that season "displays all its strength and beauty. It rises." says the missionary author, "to the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and entire groves are formed by thousands of these shrubs, whose clustering branches entwine themselves in beautiful green arches, adorned with innumerable bouquets of splendid flowers, varying their hues from the pure white, to the deepened tint of the erim- soned rose."
He noted, too, traces of the distress and hardships suffered by pioneers who had struggled through these mountain defiles while on the last stage of their long over- land journey to Oregon, for his "path was strewed with the whitened bones of horses and oxen, melancholy testimonies of the miseries endured by other travelers through these regions." Twenty days were required to pass, in this way, from the Wil- lamette to Walla Walla, a journey now made by railroad train in half as many hours.
"About the middle of July." runs the DeSmet narrative. "I arrived safely with all my effects at the Bay of Kalispels (the mission of St. Ignatius). In my absence the number of neophytes had considerably increased. On the feast of the Ascen- sion. Father Hoecken had the happiness of baptizing more than 100 adults. Since my departure in the spring. our little colony has built four houses, prepared con- strueting materials for a small church, and enclosed a field of 300 acres. More than 100 Kalispels, computing adults and children, have been baptized. They are all animated with fervor and zeal; they make use of the hatchet and plow, being re- solved to abandon an itinerant life for a permanent abode. The beautiful falls of the Columbia, called the Chaudieres, in the vicinity of Fort Colville, are distant two days' journey from our new residence of St. Ignatius."
These falls are now known as the Kettle Falls of the Columbia. Thither
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went Father DeSmet to celebrate the feast of St. Ignatius, and he found 800 or 900 Indians assembled for the salmon fishing. "Within the last four years," he eon- tinucs, "considerable numbers of these Indians were visited by the 'black gowns,' who administered the sacrament of baptism. I was received by my dear Indians with filial joy and tenderness. I caused my little chapel of boughs to be placed on an eminenee in the midst of the Indians' huts, where it might not inaptly be com- pared to the peliean of the wilderness, surrounded by her young, seeking with avidity the divine word, and sheltering themselves under the protection of their fostering mother. I gave three instruetions daily ; the Indians assisted at them with great assiduity and attention.
"More than 100 children were presented for baptism, and eleven old men, borne to me on skins, seemed only waiting regenerating waters, to depart home and repose in the bosom of their divine Savior. A solemn mass was celebrated, during which the Indians chanted eantieles in praise of God. The ceremonies of baptism followed, and all terminated in the most perfect order, to the great delight and gratification of the savages. It was indeed a most imposing spectacle; all around contributed to heighten the effect. The noble and gigantic roek, the distant roar of the cataracts breaking in on the religions silence of that solitude, situated on an eminence overlooking the powerful Oregon river, and on the spot where the im- petuous waters, freeing themselves from their limits, rush in fury and dash over a pile of rocks, casting upwards a thousand jets d'eau, whose transparent columns reflect, in varied colors. the rays of the dazzling sun !"
Gathered at the falls, besides the Chaudicres or Kettle Indians, were several San Poils and Spokanes, the latter tribe termed by Father DeSmet the Zingomenes. a varied spelling of "Sinkomans," a name given the Spokanes by some of their neighboring tribes.
"I gave the name of St. Paul to the Shnyelphi nation." adds DeSmet. "and placed under the care of St. Peter the tribe inhabiting the shores of the great Columbia lakes, whither Father Hoeeken is about to repair, to continue instructing and baptiz- ing their adults. My presence among the Indians did not interrupt their fine and abundant fishery. An enormous basket was fastened to a projeeting rock, and the finest fish of the Columbia, as if by fascination, cast themselves by dozens into the snare. Seven or eight times during the day, these baskets were examined, and each time were found to contain about 250 salmon. The Indians, meanwhile, were seen on every projecting rock, piercing the fish with the greatest dexterity.
"I left Chaudiere or Kettle Falls August 4th, accompanied by several of the nation of the Crees, to examine the lands they have selected for the site of a village. The ground is rich and well suited for all agricultural purposes. Several buildings were commenced ; I gave the name of St. Francis Regis to this new station, where a great number of the mixed race and beaver hunters have resolved to settle with their families."
This mission is in the Colville valley, about seven miles from the present town of Colville. Thwaites, who edited a more recent edition of DeSmet's letters, says that on the missionary's next visit to St. Regis he found settled there about seventy half breeds, and adds that "the station does not appear to have been con- tinuous, but to have been reestablished after the Indian wars. Later it became a
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flourishing mission, with schools for boys and girls, and was frequently visited by Spokane and Colville Indians from the neighboring reservations."
From St. Francis Regis Father DeSmet set out. August 9, on a circuitous journey into the country of the Kootenays, in eastern British Columbia. As the roads were inundated by a great freshet, he resolved to return to Lake Pend d'Oreille and ascend the Clark or Flathead river, cross country by trail, and strike the Kootenai river near the border between Idaho and Montana. This river, known to the fur traders as the MeGillivray, the missionary designated the Flatbow (Arc-a-plat) and the Kootenay tribe he gave the same designation. On this journey, in the depths of the forest, he had the good fortune to meet Peter Skene Ogden, famous explorer, adventurer and chief factor of the Hudson's Bay company.
"As we approached the forests, several horsemen issued forth in tattered gar- ments. The foremost gentleman saluted me by name, with all the familiarity of an old acquaintance. I returned the gracious salutation. desiring to know whom 1 had the honor of addressing. A small river separated us, and with a smile he said: 'Wait until I reach the opposite shore, and then you will recognize me.' He is not a beaver hunter, said I to myself; yet under this tattered garb and slonched hat. I could not easily desery one of the principal members of the Hon. Hudson's Bay company, the worthy and respectable Mr. Ogden. I had the honor and good fortune of making a voyage with him, and in his own barge, from Colville to Fort Van- couver, in 1842. and no one could desire more agreeable society. It would be nec- essary for you to traverse the desert, to feel yourself insulated, remote from brethren, friends, to conceive the consolation and joy of such a renconnter."
Ogden, who had been on a voyage to England, had returned in April. accom- panied by two British officers-Captain Henry J. Warre, nephew and aide-de-camp of Sir R. Downer Jackson, commanding the British forces in America, and Lieu- tenant M. Vavasour of the British engineer corps. They had a commission, says Thwaites, from the government, perhaps not as extensive as is reported by DeSmet, but doubtless ample in case of war. They were also secretly commissioned by the Hudson's Bay company to report on Dr. MeLoughlin's attitude in regard to the American settlers, and their adverse account was answered by him in detail. after his resignation.
According to DeSmet, "It was neither curiosity nor pleasure that induced these two officers to cross so many desolate regions, and hasten their course towards the month of the Columbia. They were invested with orders from their government to take possession of Cape Disappointment (at the mouth of the Colombia), to hoist the English standard, and creet a fortress for the purpose of securing the entrance of the river in case of war."
At this period the long-standing boundary dispute between the United States and Great Britain had approached a crisis. Publie sentiment was inflamed against England, and newspapers and politicians clamored for a vigorous and exacting policy by our state department. In the presidential campaign of 1844, the catch phrase, "Fifty-four-forty or fight," had served as a political slogan for the winning party, expressive of a popular desire that the government of the United States should treat with England on no other basis than fixing the international boundary on that line of latitude, giving to the stars and stripes the greater part of the present province of British Columbia. But, as was aptly said a little later, we didn't get
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THE OLD MISSION ON THE COEUR D'ALENE RIVER BUILT BY THE JESUITS NEARLY SEVENTY YEARS AGO
IL NEW PUBLIC LIBRARY ١
Tla NUAIUNE
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54-40, and we didn't fight. DeSmet evidently regarded the attitude of the United States as large part bluster, for he remarked at the time:
"In the Oregon question John Bull, without mueh talk, attains his end, and seeures the most important part of this country; whereas Uncle Sam displodes a volley of words, inveighs and storms." It wasn't nearly so bad as that, for the treaty of 1846 really gave Unele Sam "the most important part of the country." al- though the award threw to Britain the rich and beautiful province of British Colum- bia.
DeSmet deseribed the country between Lake Pend d'Oreille and the Kootenai as one of dense forests, the trail mueh obstrueted by fallen trees, "morasses, fright- ful sloughs, from which the poor horses with mueh difficulty extrieate themselves; but having finally surmounted all these obstaeles, we contemplate from an eminenee a smiling and aeeessible valley, whose mellow and abundant verdure is nourished by two lovely lakes, where the graceful river of the Arcs-a-plats winds in such fan- tastic beanty that it serves to make the weary traveler not only forget his past dangers, but amply compensates him for the fatigues of a long and tiresome journey."
Of the subsistenee of the Kootenai Indians he wrote: "These lakes and morasses, formed in the spring, are filled with fish; they remain there, enelosed as in a natural reservoir, for the use of the inhabitants. The fish swarm in sueh abundanee that the Indians have no other labor than to take them from the water and prepare them for the boiler. Such an existenee is, however, precarious : the savages, who are not of a provident nature. are obliged to go afterwards in quest of roots, grains, berries and fruits; such as the thorny bush which bears a sweet, pleasant blackberry ; the rosebuds, mountain cherry, cormier or serviee berry, vari- ous sorts of gooseberries and eurrants of excellent flavor ; raspberries, the hawthorn berry, the wappato (sagittafolia) a very nourishing, bulbous root; the bitter root, whose appellation sufficiently denotes its peculiar quality, is, however, very healthy ; it grows in light, dry, sandy soil, as also the eaious or biseuit root. The former is of a thin and eylindrieal form; the latter, though farinaeeous and insipid, is a sub- stitute for bread; it resembles a small, white radish; the watery potato, oval and greenish, is prepared like our ordinary potato. but greatly inferior to it: the sweet onion, which bears a lovely flower resembling the tulip. Strawberries are common and delicious.
"I ean not pass over in silenee the camash root (the camas) and the peculiar man- ner in which it is prepared. It is abundant, and, I may say, the queen root of this elime. It is a small, white, vapid onion, when removed from the earth, but becomes black and sweet when prepared for food. The women arm themselves with long, erooked stieks, to go in search of the camash. After having proeured a certain quantity of these roots, by dint of long and painful labor, they make an excavation in the earth, from twelve to fifteen inches deep, and of proportional diameter to contain the roots. They eover the bottom with elosely eemented pavement, which they make red hot by means of a fire. After having earefully withdrawn all the coals, they cover the stones with grass and wet hay; then place a layer of camash. another of wet hay, a third of bark overlaid with mold, whereon is kept a glowing fire for fifty, sixty, and sometimes seventy hours. The eamash thus aequires a consisteney equal to that of the jujube. It is sometimes made into loaves of vari-
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