Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 37/Religion Among the Flatheads

by Thompson Coit Elliott

RELIGION AMONG THE FLATHEADS^[1]

By T. C. Elliott

The religion referred to in the above title is that of the white men, not of the natives, and the Indians are, in particular, the four who appeared at Saint Louis in the fall of 1831 and designated as Flatheads, but, in general, the several tribes residing west of the Rocky Mountains.

The year 1934 was centennial in Oregon, commemorative of the arrival of Jason Lee and his group of Protestant missionaries one hundred years before. They built a mission and home on the bank of the Willamette River near the present city of Salem. Ninteen hundred and thirty-six is centennial in Washington and Idaho. In December, a century ago, Doctor Marcus Whitman and the Reverend Henry Spalding and their wives, Narcissa and Eliza, established missions and homes in the valleys of Walla Walla and Lapwai, among the Cayuse and Nez Perce Indians. The missionary societies of the Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational churches in New York and Boston were then in a period of religious fervor in behalf of missions to foreign and distant lands. Suddenly they were called upon to send men and women across the Rocky Mountains to christianize and civilize the Indians there. This urge arose through a highly colored report of the presence in Saint Louis in the fall of 1831 of four Indians from that region in search of religious teachers to reside among their tribes. The presence of the Indians at Saint Louis is beyond dispute; two of their number died and were buried in the cemetery of the Catholic cathedral and permanent record made of their decease. All were innocently described as Flatheads. Thus the missionary movement to Oregon was started, publicity concerning which helped to hasten the pioneer movement a few years later.^[2]

Pertinent to the above facts and to this centennial year is inquiry as to what opportunity had come to the Indians residing west of the Rocky Mountains to obtain (prior to the year 1831) knowledge or inklings of knowledge of the God and the religion of the white men. Some such knowledge would have been requisite as incentive for such a long and unusual journey by these four Indians, provided it was undertaken for religious reasons. Of necessity any such knowledge would have come through the channels of the fur trade and our inquiry must include brief mention of the tribal habits and customs at that period.

During uncounted years previous to 1831 herds of buffalo ranged over the treeless plains of the upper Missouri and Snake River valleys and the Indians from as far west as the Columbia River were accustomed to engage in an annual buffalo hunt during spring and summer, not in large numbers, however, because this hunting carried them into the Blackfoot country at considerable hazard. These tribes included the Cayuses, Walla Wallas and Spokanes, but more numerously the Nez Perces and Flatheads. As early as 1822 American fur traders from Saint Louis penetrated into the Green River valley by way of South Pass and soon afterward spread into the Snake River and Salt Lake regions. These were before the time of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, Ashley, Henry, Jackson, the Sublettes and Jedediah Smith, and their hunters. About 1825 they put into operation that remarkable mart of trade known as "rendezvous;” usually held for a week or ten days in July in the Green River valley near the western end of South Pass. At rendezvous the packs of food stuffs, trading goods, etc., from Saint Louis were opened and sold or distributed to the field hunters and trappers then living in the mountains the entire year, and to the Indians. The pack animals were reloaded with furs for the return journey. To this lively, festive and hilarious occasion the Indians above mentioned were attracted and welcomed, and among them in 1831 were the four who journeyed to Saint Louis.

Rendezvous! What a scene for an artist in either words or colors. A replica of Prairie du Chien,^[3] Wisconsin, during the days of early fur trade on the Mississippi, sixty years before, from Michillimacinac as a base when Saint Louis was just beginning to exist. Rendezvous in Green River valley has been described by Mrs. Victor, in The River of the West, and the reader is referred to her for the picture. But it may be safely said that there were no prayer meetings or Sunday services at rendezvous to offer inspiration to anyone. There were horse racing, gambling, shooting and drinking along with the trading, but religious functions were not a part of the life of the fur hunter or trader, American or Canadian. Individually, many of those men were from sturdy pioneer families and of moral integrity. This will be discussed later in this study.

Our inquiry now turns to the records of the remarkable Hudson's Bay Company. Governor George Simpson of that company came to the Columbia late in the fall of 1824, bringing with him Doctor John McLoughlin to be chief factor in charge of the district. Fort Vancouver was built that winter. Simpson returned up the river the following spring and his copious journal affords very interesting reading. At Fort Walla Walla a council was held with a group of chiefs of the Cayuse and Walla Walla tribes, and over two hundred Indians. Later, when camped at the mouth of Spokane River, April 9, he recorded as follows: "Two Nez Perces Chiefs arrived to see me from a distance of between 2 & 300 miles; my fame has spread far and Wide and my speeches are handed from Camp to Camp throughout the Country; some of them have it that I am one of the 'Master of Life's Sons' sent to see 'if their hearts are good' and others that I am his 'War Chief' with bad Medicine if their hearts are bad.”^[4] This bit of the record is quoted to show how news traveled among the Indians. Doctor McLoughlin was a humane and religious man. At Vancouver he soon established the custom of services on Sunday, one for the servants and voyagers and families, and another for the officers. He often read the service himself, that of the church of England.^[5] The news of such observance could have been carried to the Flatheads and Nez Perces before 1831.

Governor Simpson's journal on April 8, the day previous, reads as follows: "Had a long interview with Eight Chiefs belonging to the Flat Head Coutonais Spokan and other tribes who assembled here for the purpose of seeing me; they appeared much pleased with all that was told them and promise well. Made them a present of a little ammunition and Tobacco. The Spokan & Flat Head Chiefs put a Son each under my care to be Educated at the Missionary Society School Red River and all the Chiefs joined in a most earnest request that a Missionary or religious instructor should be placed among them; I promised to communicate their request to the Great Chiefs on the other side of the Water with a recommendation from myself that it should be complied with."^[6] This suggests at least that even before 1825 these tribes had some knowledge of a white man's religion, and talked about it among themselves. Simpson had received a similar request for missionaries from a chief at Fort Okanogan a few days before.

Among the Hudson's Bay Company traders in conference with Governor Simpson at Spokane Forks was Finnan McDonald, born in Scotland and of the Catholic faith. Finnan had been among the Spokane, Pend d'Oreille and Flathead Indians fifteen years and had joined in at least one buffalo hunt. His name is tradition among the Flatheads of even the present day, and his feats of strength and bravery are still related among them.

Finnan's wife was a Pend d'Oreille Indian, a neighboring tribe to the Flatheads. When he retired, about 1827, his family accompanied him to the Glengarry district in Canada, and while en route he insisted that they all be baptized by the first Catholic priest they met at Lake Winnipeg. With such a mind for the spiritual needs of his family, could he not have communicated to them, and through them to other Indians, some ideas concerning the church of his boyhood, although never devout in his personal habits?

An important service in the gathering of furs for the Hudson's Bay Company was performed by trappers classed as "free-men." They came from Canada, intermarried and lived with the Indians. Many of them were Iroquois of full or part blood, their language was French, and their early religious contacts had been Catholic. These freemen were grub-staked, to use a miner's term; that is, furnished at the trading post with traps and food which were to be paid for with skins during, or at the end of, the season. The late Father L. B. Palladino, resident of the Bitter Root valley in Montana for many years, and author of Indian and White in the Northwest, wrote that the Flatheads obtained their knowledge of God from these Iroquois freemen and the four Indians went to Saint Louis in search of "Black Robes." The writer of this study had a slight personal acquaintance with Father Palladino and holds high regard for his astute service and opinion, but thinks there may have been confusion of these four Indians with others of a few years later, whose visit resulted in the coming of the famous Father DeSmet to the Flatheads and other tribes.

The request made at Spokane Forks to Governor Simpson for missionaries was unheeded. The two boys who accompanied him to Red River were named Spokane Garry and Kootenay Pelly. The latter died but Garry returned to his people, just when has not been positively ascertained. Recently a copy of a Bible has been found in the possession of his great-granddaughter, near Spokane, a well thumbed and marked book which belonged to him and which he may have made use of in the tribe. But he soon returned to the usual Indian life. Governor Simpson passed through the country again in 1841 and tells of finding Garry playing cards in a tepee and unwilling to even come out to greet his former benefactor.^[7]

With the history of the Missionary Society School at Red River the writer is not familiar, but he suspects the use there of a Cree grammar, edited by one Joseph Howse, who had been in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company fifteen years earlier than 1825. A copy of this book in the library of the writer mentions the warm interest its author, when in London, took in the missionary work of his (Protestant) church. In the fall of 1810 Joseph Howse was sent from the Saskatchewan across the Rocky Mountains in charge of an exploring party into the Kootenay and Flathead countries. He spent the winter of 1810-11 near Flathead Lake and was one of the first white men the Indians of that tribe ever came in contact with. Whether he communicated to them anything about the God of the white man is entirely conjectural, but possible.

The first white man known to have had actual contact with the Indians of the Flathead tribe in their own country and camps was David Thompson, of the North West Company of fur traders. He built a trading post on what is still known as Thompson's Prairie in November, 1809, and spent the winter of 1809-10 there; also that of 1811-12. He explored and mapped Flathead Lake and the Missoula country. He had discovered the source of the Columbia River and in 1811 surveyed that river from source to mouth. David Thompson was one of the most noted men connected with the history of the Columbia, and now rated as one of the greatest land geographers the British race ever produced. He was a devout man during his entire life.

In 1817, David Thompson was employed in the International Boundary Commission as their engineer in marking the line of the boundary between the United States and Canada from the Saint Lawrence River west to the Lake of the Woods. The commission also employed a naturalist, J. J. Bigsby, and the following is what Mr. Bigsby wrote in his book, Shoe and Canoe: "Mr. Thompson was a firm churchman; while most of our men were Roman Catholic. Many a time have I seen these uneducated Canadians most attentively and thankfully listen, as they sat upon some bank of shingle, to Mr. Thompson, while he read to them in most extraordinarily pronounced French, three chapters out of the Old Testament and as many out of the New, adding such explanations as seemed to him suitable."^[8]

There is nothing in the journals to indicate daily worship or Sabbath observance, except that Mr. Thompson, when journeying down the Pend d'Oreille River in the spring of 1810, and with no time to lose, made the following entry: "April 22nd, A beautiful Easter Sunday. Rested all day." This was the first known observance of Easter in the state of Idaho.

Reverting now to the American fur trade from Saint Louis. This was carried on by the traders themselves, who furnished the capital, (some of them came out every year to rendezvous, while others remained in the field) and the one hundred or more active young men who came to the mountains through their solicitation and spent the entire year there in adventurous hunting and life in the open. These men were not desperadoes or escaped convicts, though the life naturally developed feelings of bravado and reckless daring; they were in frequent danger from the roving bands of Blackfoot Indians. Some of them came to Oregon as highly respected and able pioneers designated as mountain men. This distinctive term did not apply elsewhere than in Oregon, and descendants of that group should feel proud of the honor. In 1830 the original organizers sold the business and the partnership known as Rocky Mountain Fur Company was formed.

One of them in particular could have been an example of Christian living to the Flatheads and Nez Perces. Since the day of Pocahontas no long period of our history has been without its hero by the name of Smith. This one was Jedediah S. Smith, already mentioned. Smith is reported^[9] as spending the entire winter of 1824–25 among the Flatheads to ascertain whether competition there with the Hudson's Bay Company would be desirable. Again in the spring of 1829 he passed through their country, traveling from the Columbia at Fort Colville to Pierre's Hole. Here is what Chittenden says of him: "Smith was a bold, outspoken, professing and consistent Christian, the first and only known among the early Rocky Mountain trappers and hunters. No one who knew him well doubted the sincerity of his piety. He had become a communicant of the Methodist church before leaving his home in New York... and in Saint Louis he never failed to occupy a place in the church of his choice.” Smith's career may be compared with that of David Thompson. He left the Rocky Mountains in the summer of 1830, when the Rocky Mountain Fur Company took over the business of himself and associates. He seems to have been the one among fur traders most likely to have influenced the Indians, but he was not at rendezvous in 1831.

In this study the writer does not offer much that is new to the close student of the fur trade period of our history, of which this visit of the four Indians is only a romantic incident. He has assembled some, probably not all, data as to personnel and events which could have occasioned any organized movement, large or small, among the tribes immediately west of the Rocky Mountains, to send Indians to Saint Louis in 1831, or later, to inquire about religious teachers of either Protestant or Catholic faith.^[10]

1. Informal address at annual meeting of Washington State Historical Society, Tacoma, February 1, 1936 (amplified for publication).
2. The importance of this visit has been unduly emphasized and the details embellished; see “Evolution of a Lament,” in Washington Historical Quarterly, vol. II, pages 195-208.
3. See Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, vol. 18, page 341.
4. Frederick Merk, Fur Trade and Empire, 1931, page 136.
5. Doctor McLoughlin did not return to the faith of his boyhood (Catholic) until November 18, 1842.
6. Merk, page 135.
7. George Simpson, Narrative of a Journey around the World, vol. I, pages 144-45.
8. Quoted in David Thompson's Narrative, edited by J. B. Tyrrell, Champlain Society, 1915, page lvii.
9. See Chittenden, History of the American Fur Trade, page 271 and elsewhere as to Smith.
10. By many students the accepted motive for the journey is adventure or curiosity. Doctor Whitman said in his letter to the American Board at Boston that the Indians traveled in company with a trader named Fontanell; (Oregon Historical Quarterly, XXVIII, 256). This would have been Lucien Fontenelle, an independent trader who made his first trip to rendezvous in 1831, for whose biography see Chittenden, 395. A very natural occurrence would have been that when they fell sick at St. Louis this trader would have called upon the church of his faith to minister to them.