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 MISSIONS

389

MISSIONS

their country. The war began on 2S November with a massacre of the French garrison, the first victim Ijeing Father du Poisson, who was struck down, and his head hacked olT, while on his way to attend a dying man. Father Souel was killed on 1 1 December by the Yazoo, who then turned upon the French garrison in their country. On New Year's Day, 1730, the Jesuit Father Doutreleau, on his way down the river with some boatmen, was fired upon at close range by some of the same tribe while saying Mass on shore, but escaped although badly wounded. The war involved the whole lower Mississippi, and ended in the extinction of the Natchez as a people. A part of the refugees having fled to the Chickasaw, a war ensued with that tribe in 17.36, during which a French expedition was cut to pieces, and the Jesuit chaplain. Father Anto- ninus Senat, was burnt at the stake.

In 1730 Father Gaston, a newly-arrived Seminarist, had been killed at the Tamarois (Cahokia) mission. In 1754 the last Seminarist was sent out as a parish priest. The Arkansas mission had been killed by official neglect. The missionary among the Alibamon Creeks was driven out by the French conmiander at Fort Toulouse (Montgomery, Alabama) for his opposi- tion to the liquor traffic. Father Baudouin continued with good effect among the Choctaw for eighteen years until appointed vicar-general in 17.57, when his place was filled by Father Nicholas le Febvre until 1764(?). The Aliliamon mission was restored and con- tinued under Father Jean Le Predour from 175-t until the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1764, which brought the "Louisiana Mission" to a close. The Natchez and Yazoo are long since extinct, but a considerable por- tion of the Choctaw, Quapaw, and mixed-blood Huma still keep the Faith. (See also Caddo Indians; Choctaw Indians; Natchez, Diocese of; Quapaw Indians; Tonica Indians; Yazoo Indians.)

VI. Northern and Central Plains. — The earliest labourer here was the Franciscan Father Juan de Pa- dilla, who with four others of his order accompanied the famous expedition of Coronado in 1540—12, and on the return volunteered to remain behind with the Wichita in the "Province of Quivira", probably in southern Kansas. He was killed soon afterwards, ap- parently by Indians hostile to the Wichita. The latter, reduced to about 300 souls, are represented at the Catholic mission school at Anadarko, Oklahoma (see Wichita).

The pow-erful Sioux, or Dakota, whose territory stretched from the Wisconsin border almost to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, were visited by the Jesuit AUouez as early as 1666, liut tril:)al jealousies interrupted friendly commimication and prevented any mission establishment. In 1680 the Recollect Franciscan, Father Louis Hennepin, spent some months with them as a captive on the upper Mississippi. In 1690 (?) the Jesuit Father Joseph Marest, and in 172S the Jesuit Father Ignatius Guignas, made unsuccessful mission attempts in the tribe, and in 1736 the Jesuit Father Jean-Pierre .\ulneau (or Amand) was one of a party of twenty-one Frenchmen massacred by them on the Lake of the Woods, just beyond the northern Minnesota bomidary. In 1S37 a regular mission was established among the eastern Sioux in Jlinnesota by Father August in Ravou.x and in 1S48 the noted Jesuit missionary Father de Smet first preached to those west of the Missouri. Nearly one-fourth of the tribe is now Catholic (see Sioux Indians).

The famous Flathead mission in Montana, estab- lished by Father de Smet in 1840, the Osage mission, Oklahoma, regularly establisshod about 1847 by the Jesuit Fathers Schoenmaker and Bax, the Kiowa and Quapaw missions, and those among the immigrant Choctaw, Potawatomi, and Miami, also in Oklahoma, those of the Winnebago in Nebraska and the Man- dan and associated tribes in North Dakota are all described elsewhere under the tribal titles. Besides

these, successful mission schools have been established within the past thirty years, and are now in operation, among the Northern Cheyenne (secular), Assiniboin (Jesuit), Crow (Jesuit), Grosventre (Jesuit), and Pie- gan Blackfeet (Jesuit) in Montana; the Arapaho and Shoshoni (Jesuit) in Wyoming; and the Southern Ute (Theatine) in Colorado (see Ute Indians).

VII. Texas, etc. — Texas as a Spanish colony was connected with Me.xico, and was ruled in missionary affairs from Queretaro and Zacatecas, instead of from Havana, as was Florida. Its immense area, four times as great as that of all New England, contained hun- dreds of petty tribes or bands — so many, in fact, that they have never been counted — speaking scores of lan- guages or dialects, but mostly grouped into a few loose confederacies, based upon linguistic afilliation, of which the principal within the mission sphere may be designated as the Caddo, Hasinai, Karankawa, Tonk- awa, Wichita, and Pakawd. Of these, the Caddo group extended into western Louisiana, while the tribes of the Wichita connexion ranged north into Kansas. The total Indian population within the present state limits was proljal^ly originally close to 40,000. The be- ginning of mission work in Texas was made by the Franciscan Father Andres de Olmos. who in 1544 crossed the Rio Grande and, after gathering a large body of converts, led them back into Tamaulipas, where they were organized into a mission town, Olives. In 1685 the French commander La Salle erected a fort on Matagorda Bay, and two years later, after a succes- sion of misfortunes, started to make his way overland to Illinois, leaving behind about twenty men, including the Recollect missionaries. Fathers Zenobius Membr6 and Maximus Le Clercq, and the Sulpician Father ChefdevUle. A Spanish expedition which arrived later to dispossess the French found only blackened ruins and unburied bones. All but two men had been killed by the Indians, among whom the chalices and Brevi- aries of the murdered priests were afterwards recovered.

In 1690 a company of Spanish Franciscans from the Queretaro College, headed by Father Damian Maza^ net, established a mission among the friendly Hasinai (.4sinais, Cenis), in north-east Texas, and projected others, but the work was abandoned three years later. In 1699 the Franciscans of the Zacatecas College began a series of missions along the south bank of the Rio Grande, to which they gathered in a number of In- dians of the Pakawd group in southern Texas. These were kept up until 1718, when the chief mission was transferred to San Antonio in Texas.

In 1715 the two colleges combined to restore the Texas missions, urged by the zeal of the venerable founder of the Zacatecas college, Father Antonio Margil. The Hasinai mission (San Francisco) was restored and another. La Purisima, established among the cognate Hainai (Aynais) in the neighbourhood of the present Nacogdoches. Another (N. S. de Guada- lupe) was founded by Margil himself among the Nacogdoches band of the Caddo in 1716, and others in 1717 among the .4is (N. S. de Dolores) and Adai or Adayes (San Miguel de Linares), the last being within the limits of Louisiana. In 1719, war having been declared between France and Spain, a French expedi- tion under St-Denis plundered the mission at the Adai. In consequence the missions wore abandoned until peace was declared tw-o years later.

In 1718 the mission of San Francisco Solano was transferred to San .4ntonio de Valero. Other missions were established in the vicinity, making a total of four in 1731, including San Antonio de Padua, the cele- brated .Mamo. The principal tribes represented were Caddo and Hasinai from the East; Xarame from the Rio Grande; Pakaw.'l (Pacoa) anrl a few Tonkawa of the immediate neighbourhood. In the meantime a l.ay brother had perished in a prairie fire, and another, Brother .lose Pita, in 1721,-with a small party, had been massacred by the Lipan while on his way to his