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 19
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"The next day," continues DeSmet. "we found about a dozen Indian lodges, called the Palooses, a portion of the Sapetan (Sahaptin) or Nez Perce tribe. We proenred from the Indians here some fresh salmon, for which we made them ample return in powder and lead. But as the grass was withered and seanty, and the pil- fering dispositions of these Indians rather doubtful, we resolved on proceeding right or ten miles farther, and eneamped late in the evening on the Pavilion river (now the Palouse).
"On the fifth day of our departure from Walla Walla, we reached the Spokane river. and found a good fording for our animals. You will see with pleasure the chart I have made of the headwaters of this river, which, though beautiful and interesting, is yet, like all the other rivers in Oregon, almost an unbroken sueces- sion of rapids, falls and eascades, and of course ill-adapted in its present condition to the purposes of navigation. The two upper valleys of the Coeur d'Alene are beautiful, and of a rich mold. They are watered by two deep forks, running into the Coeur d'Alene lake, a fine sheet of water, of abont thirty miles in length by four or five broad, from which the river Spokane derives its source. I ealled the two upper forks the St. Joseph's and the St. Ignatius. They are formed by in- numerable torrents, descending from the Pointed Heart mountains, a chain of the Rocky mountains. The two upper valleys are about sixty or eighty miles long, and four or eight miles broad. I counted upwards of forty little lakes in them. The whole neighborhood of the Spokane river affords very abundant grazing. and in many sections is tolerably well timbered with pines of different species."
DeSmet probably followed the old Indian trail leading from the Walla Walla valley to Colville, which crossed the Spokane about twenty miles below the falls, and passed through the Tshimakain valley, now Walker's prairie, where Eells and Walker maintained their Protestant mission from 1839 to 1818. "On leaving the river," he says, "we ascended by a steep Indian path. A few miles ride across a pine forest brings you to a beautiful valley leading to Colville, agrecably diversified by plains and forests, hemmed in by high wooded mountains, and by huge pie- turesque rocks towering their lofty heads over all the rest. Fountains and rivulets are here very numerous. After about thirty miles we arrived at the foot of the
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Kalispel mountain, in the neighborhood of St. Francis Regis, where already about seventy metis or halfbreeds have collected to settle permanently."
From St. Ignatius, under date of July 25, 1846, Father DeSmet wrote to Mrs. S. Parmentier, a Brooklyn woman who had made a liberal donation for the support of his missions. "I am indeed ashamed," he begins, "at not having heen able sooner to answer the letters which you had the kindness to write me on the 2d of Septem- her and the 7th of December. 1844." Evidently the mail service was no better for the Catholie missionaries than it had been for the Protestants, who regarded as one of their chief hardships the long delays involved in communication with eastern friends. Father DeSmet explained that this lady's letters "reached the Rocky mountains only the year after, while I was engaged in a distant mission among the Indians, so that I received them only in the month of July, 1846. . . I have given directions to the Indians of these different tribes to reeite, every week, the Rosary for one of their great benefactresses, meaning yourself. Now, you ean not but be aware. that, among the Indians, the heads are reeited in each family, so that I am already assured, and I have the consolation of saying to you, that many thousand pairs of beads have already been offered up to God and his august mother for you. Those good Indians-those children of the forest-so dear to my heart, will continue to display their gratitude till I tell them to ecase, and that will not be very soon. . How happy should I be, my dear, excellent Madam, eould I give you to understand how great, how sweet, how enrapturing, is their devotion to the august mother of God. The name of Mary, which, pronounced in the Indian language, is something so sweet and endearing, delights and eharms them.
"The usual place of residence of the Kalispels-that in which the reduction of St. Ignatius is now established-is an extensive prairie, ealled the Bay of the Kal- ispels. thirty or forty miles above the mouth of Clark or Flathead river. A beau- tiful grotto exists in the neighborhood of the mission, which I have named the grotto of Manresa, in honor of our Holy Founder. It is very large, and might, at small expense, be fitted up for a church. May the Indians gather in erowds into this new Manresa. and after the example of their patron, St. Ignatius, he penetrated with a feeling sense of heavenly things, and inflamed with the love of God.
"I shall always remember with pleasure the winter of 1844-45, which I had the happiness of spending among these good Indians. The place for wintering was well ehosen, pieturesque, agreeable and convenient. The eamp was placed near a beautiful waterfall, eaused by Clark's river being bloeked up by an immense roek, through which the waters, foreing narrow passages, precipitate themselves. A dense and interminable forest protected us from the north winds, and a countless number of dead trees, standing on all sides, furnished us with abundant fuel for our fires during the inelement season. We were eneireled by ranges of lofty moun- tains, whose snowelad summits reflected in the sun, their brightness on all the surrounding country." From this deseription, it seems probable that the rendez- vous just described was at Albani Falls, near the present town of Newport.
"The place for wintering being determined, the first care of the Indians was to ereet the house of prayer. While the men eut down saplings, the women brought bark and mats to eover them. In two days this humble house of the Lord was
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completed-humble and poor, indeed, but truly the house of prayer. to which pure, simple, innocent souls repaired, to offer to the Great Spirit their vows, and the tribute of their affections.
"The great festival of Christmas, the day on which the little band was to be added to the number of the true children of God, will never be effaced from the memory of our good Indians. The manner in which we celebrated midnight mass. may give you an idea of our festival. The signal for rising, which was to be given a few minutes before midnight, was the firing of a pistol, announcing to the In- dians that the house of prayer would soon be open. This was followed by a gen- eral discharge of guns, in honor of the birth of the infant Savior, and 300 voices rose spontaneously from the midst of the forest, and entoned in the language of the Pend d'Oreilles. the beautiful canticle: 'Du Dieu puissant tout annonce la gloire.' -- "The Almighty's glory all things proclaim.' In a moment a multitude of adorers were seen wending their way to the humble temple of the Lord-resembling, in- deed, the manger in which the Messiah was born. On that night, which all at once became bright as day, they experienced, I know not what. that which made them exclaini aloud, 'Oh, God. I give Thee my heart.'
"On the eve the church was embellished with garlands and wreaths of green boughs, forming, as it were, a frame for the images which represent the affecting mysteries of Christmas night. The interior was ornamented with pine branches. The altar was neatly decorated. bespangled with stars of various brightness. and covered with a profusion of ribbons-things execedingly attractive to the eye of an Indian. At midnight I celebrated a solemn mass. the Indians sang several cantieles suitable to the occasion. That peace announced in the first verse of the Angelic hymn. 'The Gloria-Peace on earth to men of good will,' was, I venture to say. literally fulfilled to the Indians of the forest.
"A grand banquet. according to Indian enstom, followed the first mass. Some choice pieces of the animals slain in the chase had been set apart for the occasion. I ordered half a sack of flour and a large boiler of sweetened coffee to be added. The union, the contentment, the joy, and charity, which pervaded the whole as- sembly, might well be compared to the agape of the primitive Christians."
"Fathers Mengarini and Serbinati (the last-mentioned father has since died). had the consolation to see the whole tribe of the Flatheads, among whom they had been Jaboring, approach the holy table on this day. Twelve young Indians, taught by Father Mengarini, performed. with accuracy, several pieces of musie during the midnight mass. Fathers Point and Joset had. also, the consolation of admitting for the first time, nearly the entire tribe of the Coeur d'Alenes. on this anspieious day, to the Holy Communion. The Christmas of 18Et was, therefore. a great and glorious day in the Rocky mountains.
"I will close this already lengthy letter with a few words more concerning the Pends d'Oreilles of the Bay. Early in the spring of 1815, they began to build upon the spot selected for the Reduction of St. Ignatins, and to open fields. On Ascension day of the same year. Father Hoecken administered baptism to upwards of a hundred adults. At my last visit, which I paid them in July Jast, they had already put up fourteen log houses, besides a large barn, had the timbers prepared for a church, and had upwards of 300 acres in grain, enclosed by a substantial fence. The whole village, men, women and children, had worked most cheerfully.
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1 eounted thirty head of horned eattle-the squaws had learned to milk the eows and churn; they had a few hogs, and some domestie fowls. The number of Chris- tians had doubled sinee Christmas, 1844."
August, 1846, found DeSmet at St. Mary's mission in Montana, deseribing, in a letter of August 10, a journey from St. Ignatius mission by way of the Colville country and the Spokane valley, to the mission of the Sacred Heart on the Coeur d'Alene river. "We had beautiful weather, and a path remarkably frec from those obstruetions so annoying to travelers in the mountains. Towards the middle of our day's journey, we reached a beautiful lake surrounded by hills, and a thick forest of lareh (tamaraek). I have named it the Lake DeNef, as a token of grati- tude towards one of the greatest benefactors of the mission. It discharges itself through a narrow passage, forming a beautiful rapid called the Tournhout-torrent, at the termination of which it joins its limpid waters to those of the river Spo- kane." In the opinion of Thwaites, who edited a revised volume of DeSmet's eor- respondence, this was the present Blake's lake in northern Spokane county, "which discharges by the West Branch into Little Spokane river."
The missionary forded the Spokane river, just below the main falls, and fol- lowed up the south bank to Lake Coeur d'Alene. "A few words descriptive of our eneampments during wet weather may not be out of place," says his narrative of this journey. "The tent erceted in haste-saddles, bridles, baggage, etc., thrown into some sheltered spot-large heaps of lareh branches or brushwood are eut down and spread over the spot of ground destined for our repose-provision of as mueh dry wood as ean be collected is now brought forth for the whole night; on this occasion we made a fire large enough to roast an ox. These preparations com- pleted, our meal (dinner and supper the same time), consisting of flour, eamash roots. and some buffalo tallow, is thrown into a large kettle nearly filled with water. The great heat requiring the eook to stand at a respectable distance from the fire, a long pole serves as a ladle to stir about the contents until the mixture has acquired the proper density, when a vigorous attack is made upon it after a singular fashion indeed. On the present oceasion we were six in number, trusting to a single spoon, but necessity soon supplied the deficiency. Two of the company used pieces of bark ; two others strips of leather; and the fifth, a small turtle shell."
As the missionary's compagnons du voyage were natives-two Kalispels and three Coeur d'Alenes, it may be surmised that they graciously awarded the single spoon to the hlaekrobe. "Grace being said," continues the father, "a circle is formed round the kettle, and the instruments plunge and replunge into it with as much regularity and address as a number of smiths' hammers plying at the anvils ; a few moments, and the contents of the large kettle are gone, leaving not a vestige be- hind. We found this repast delicious, thanks to our keen appetites. Making due allowanee for the taste of others. I confess I have never enjoyed a feast more heartily than such as I have now deseribed, prepared in the open air, after the Indian fashion. All the refined inventions of the art culinary, as sauees, pickles. preserves, pies, ete., designed to quicken or restore weak appetites, are here utterly useless. Loss of appetite, which among the wealthy forms the reigning complaint, furnishing abundant employment to apothecaries and doetors, is here unheard of. If these patients would have the courage to abandon for a time their high living. and traverse the wilds of this region on horseback, breakfasting at daybreak and
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dining at sunset. after a ride of forty miles, I venture to predict that they will not need any refined incitements to relish as I did a simple dish prepared by the In- dians."
The seene here deseribed with such good humor and sound, practical philosophy Iny in our beautiful valley of the Spokane; and the dietary truths so pleasingly advanced by the pioneer of the gospel and the eross, are as sound today as two- thirds of a century ago. Now, as then, health and the zest of keen appetite may be had for the seeking in our mountain vales and by our wooded waters; but the tribe of apothecaries and the elan of physicians flourish in our midst.
"llaving dried our blankets, and said night prayers, our repose was not less sound for having fared so simply, or lain upon a rough eouch of brushwood," the good father adds contentedly.
At the Coeur d'Alene mission DeSmet was cordially received by Fathers Joset and Point. All the Coeur d'Alenes of the neighborhood came to welcome him. "The fervor and piety of these poor Indians filled me with great joy and consola- tion," remarks the missionary. "especially when I considered how great the change wrought in them since their conversion to Christianity. Previous to their conversion, these Indians were shunned by the other tribes, on account, it is said, of their great power in juggling and other idolatrous praetiees. A single instance will serve to give you some idea of the objeets of their worship, and the facility with which they adopt their manitous or divinities. They related to me that the first white man they saw in their country wore a calico shirt, spotted all over with black and white, which to them appeared like the smallpox; he also wore a white eoverlet. The Coeur d'Alenes imagined that the spotted shirt was the great manitou himself-the great master of that alarming disease, the smallpox- and that the white eoverlet was the great manitou of the snow: that if they could obtain possession of these, and pay them divine honors, their nation would never afterwards be visited by that dreadful scourge; and their winter hunts be rendered successful by an abundant fall of snow. They accordingly offered him, in exchange for these. several of their best horses. The bargain was eagerly elosed by the white man. The spotted shirt and the white coverlet became thenceforward, ob- jects of great veneration for many years. On grand solemnities the two manitous were carried in procession to a lofty eminenee, usually eonseerated to the perform- ance of their superstitious rites. They were then respectfully spread on the grass: the great medicine pipe offered to them, with as much veneration as it is customary with the Indians, in presenting it to the sun, the fire. the earth and the water. The whole band of jugglers, or medieine men, then entoned eantieles of adoration to them. The service was generally terminated with a grand danee, in which the performers exhibited the most hideous contortions and extravagant gestures, aceom- panied with a most unearthly howling."
Father Nicholas Point, who labored long among the Coeur d'Alenes, is authority that this tribe was partly converted to Christianity, about the year 1830, by an Iroquois chief called Ignatius. They had heard, in an imperfeet way from the fur traders, that in the faith of the white man there was but one God, who had an invisible place called heaven as abode of good people after death. and an invisible place of torment called hell, where the wieked spirits were consigned. That God's son in heaven. beholding all men running in the road to the bad place, deseended
PETER JOHN DE SMET The great apostle of the Indians
1
AFUNS
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to earth to point them to the good road, but that in order to effect this, it was required that he die upon the eross.
"One evening," says Father Point, in an extended letter recording the details of the conversion of the Coeur d'Alenes, "all the families, who were dispersed in different directions, for fishing, for hunting, and for gathering roots, assembled upon the ground of an old chief called Ignatius, to see the author of this news. Regardless of fatigne, they prolonged their sitting to the silence of the night, and listened to all the details of the glorious message."
While the tribe halted between two opinions, hesitating whether they should abandon their old beliefs and accept the doctrine of the white men, a death-infliet- ing disease came among them, probably small-pox, and at the moment it raged with greatest violence, one of the dying, afterwards called Stephen, announced that he had heard a voice from heaven, saying, "Cast down thy idols ; adore Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be cured."
"The dying man," says Father Point, "believed the word and was cured. He went about the camp and related what had taken place: all the sick who heard him imitated his example, and recovered their health. I have this fact from the mouth of the savages who heard the voice from heaven, and the same has been confirmed by eye-witnesses."
However, remarks Father Point, as neither constancy nor reflection is to be found in the savage, the greater part of the Cocur d'Alenes relapsed into idolatry, hastened in this reactionary tendency by the influence of the medicine men.
"Such," says Father Point, "was pretty nearly the condition of the people when Providence sent among them the Rev. Father DeSmet. His visit disposed them so much in favor of the Blackgowns, that it was determined I should be sent to their aid. Three months after, that is, at the close'of the bunting expeditions of the autumn of 1812, I left St. Mary's to place the new converts under the pro- teetion of the Sacred Heart of Jesus."
Father Point arrived among the Coeur d'Alenes" the first Friday in November, and on the first Friday in December, lifted, with chant and prayer, the eross on the shore of a lake where the savages had gathered for fishing. As the first mission of the Sacred Heart was reared on the banks of the St. Joseph river, this lake was probably the Cocur d'Alene, or Chatcolet lake adjacent to the mouth of the St. Joseph. Soon these Indians "spoke no more of their assemblies of imposters, their diabolical visions, nor superstitious ceremonies, which had before been so common; and most important of all, gambling, which had always occupied a great portion of their time, was two weeks afterwards abandoned; the conjugal bond, which for centuries, perhaps, had known among them neither unity nor indissolubility, was brought back to its primitive character; and a beautiful sight was presented by the medicine men themselves, who, with their own hands, did justice to the wretched instruments hell had used to deceive them. During the long nights of that period it will not be necessary to tell how many sacrifices were made of feathers, wolves' tails, stags' feet, deer's hoofs, wooden images, etc."
With the advent of early spring the Indians assembled at the chosen site for the mission, and with enthusiasm and industry set about the building of a village, formed upon the ancient plans in Paraguay, under which each one contributed ac-
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cording to his strength and industry. Trees were felled for cabins, roads opened, a church erected and the public fields enclosed, broken and planted.
From the 9th of September to the date of this letter, a period of six months, "not one single fault which can be called serious," adds Father Point, "has been committed in the village of the Sacred Heart of Jesus; and a great many who reproached themselves with light failings, cease not to make public confession in terms of grief. I have seen husbands come after their wives, and mothers after their daughters. not to excuse the accusations they had made. but to acknowledge that their want of patience and humility were the canse of the failings of others.
"It is worthy of remark that of all the adults who had not yet received baptism, and all who united to prepare for their first communion, not one was judged m- worthy to receive the sacraments. Their simplicity, piety. charity, and especially their faith. were admirable. And truly all these virtues were necessary for these good old men, who, for the sake of learning their prayers, had to become the scholars of their children, and for the children to enable them to do violence to their natural vivacity, while they slowly communicated to their old parents and grandparents, a part of what they had learned; and the chiefs would rise at the dawn of day, and sometimes in the middle of the night, to exhort their people to weep over their sins."
Father Point has left us an affectionate description of the sacrament of the holy communion, conferred in the little church in the wilderness by the venerable Father Joset, whose labors have entered so extensively into the early history of the Catholic church in Spokane:
"The church was small; it measured in length fifty feet, and in breadth twenty- four. It was indeed poor, but from every part of the wall and ceiling. were sus- pended rich festoons of leaves. While the stars were still shining in the firmament, the chant, Lauda Sion, was heard. But who sung that divine canticle? The sav- ages who lately addressed their prayers only to the animals of their mountains. It was Father Joset who had the happiness to distribute to them the bread of life- a happiness so much the more felt. as he had just arrived among them. Before they approached the holy table, he addressed them a few words; but the tender piety apparent in all at the moment of communicating, made him fear to spoil the work of God by adding more words of his own, and he left them to their own devotion."
As repeated floods in the St. Joseph river showed that the first site of the mis- sion had been unfortunately chosen, the church and village of Sacred Heart were moved in 1816 to a more salubrious spot on the Coeur d'Alene river.
VISITED BY GOVERNOR STEVENS
When Governor Isaac I. Stevens came into this country in 1853, in the three fold capacity of governor of Washington territory. Indian commissioner to treat with various tribes between Dakota and Puget Sound, and searcher out of north- ern routes for a transcontinental railroad, he visited this beautiful mission. Late on an October evening with Antoine Plant for guide, he came to the mission door and sought hospitality of the fathers then in charge. "The mission." said Stevens in his official report to the secretary of war, "is beautifully located upon a hill
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overlooking extensive prairies stretching to the east and west toward the Coeur d'Alene mountains and the Columbia river. About 100 acres of the eastern prairie adjoining the mission are enclosed and under cultivation, furnishing employment to thirty or forty Indians-men, women and children. I observed two ploughing, which they executed skilfully ; others were sowing wheat, and others digging po- tatoes.
"Pere Gazzoli received me with the most pleasing hospitality. Associated with him are Pere Ravalli, now absent to secure supplies, and Brothers Charles Huett and Magin. The latter, however, is a lay brother, attached to the Pend d'Oreille mission, who is here at this time to assist in harvesting.
"Towards evening I witnessed the burial of an Indian chief. The funeral serv- iees were conducted after the Catholic form, and I was struck with the harmonious voices of the Indian choristers, and with their solemn observance of the ceremonies.
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