dence of Father Blanchet, Vicar General and finally Bishop. Though the Catholic settlers on the Cowlitz and the Willamette were the first care of the two fathers, they travelled widely in the Oregon country and carried their teachings to various Indian tribes, among them the Walla Walla and Cayuse Indians living near the Whitman Mission.
The Catholic ladder. Father Blanchet invented, for this work among the red men, the famous "Catholic Ladder," a pictorial representation of world history from the standpoint of Christianity. This device was very effective in its appeal to the primitive mind, and it was one of the reasons for the marked success of the Catholic teachers as contrasted with that of their Protestant rivals. In the end, the Protestants were induced to use a ** ladder "also, the invention of Mrs. Spalding, wife of Rev. H. H. Spalding, one of the Whitman missionaries.
Father DeSmet. The most noteworthy of the Catholic missionaries in Oregon, during the early period, was the Jesuit Father DeSmet of St. Louis. DeSmet made his first journey west of the Rockies in 1840, answering what is said to have been the third appeal of the Flathead Indians who in 1839 sent Ignace, a Christian Iroquois who lived among them, to St. Louis to ask for a missionary. The work of DeSmet during several successive journeys covered the northeastern portion of the old Oregon country and resulted in the establishment of such permanently important missions as those in the Bitter Root valley
