Page:Oregon, her history, her great men, her literature.djvu/83

80 missionaries were well received by the natives,many of whom were baptized at Forts Okanogan, Colville and Walla Walla. At Vancouver mass was celebrated for the first time. After visiting the Willamette Valley the Vicar-General established himself (1639) among the Cowlitz Indians, in a log house twenty by thirty feet which was used as a residence and a chapel. Here the activities of the church were instituted at once. The Hudson's Bay Company finally conceding to the missionaries the right to operate in the Willamette Valley, the Vicar-General took up his residence in a Canadian settlement— now St. Paul— where a log chapel had been built in 1856 on a site essentially the same as that occupied by the present church. Here January 6, 1840, "Mass was celebrated for the first time in the Willamette Valley. On the 14th of the preceding October, Rev. Demera, who had been left in charge of the Cowlitz establishment. Installed and rang the first church bell ever heard in the territory. Rev. Pierre J. DeSmet and other missionaries soon came. The Catholic church prospered, and Oregon on December 11, 1843, was erected into an apostolic vicarate by Pope Gregory XVI, who appointed Blanchet archbishop of the territory, Demers succeeding him as vicar-general."

Chinook Jargon. When Lewis and Clark came to Western Oregon they found as many Indian languages as there were tribes. Later there were two languages which were understood by all of them—the Indian sign language and the Chinook Jargon. The sign language was familiar to Indian tribes from the Atlantic ocean to the Pacific. It was very interesting when gracefully rendered, much of it painstaking of the nature of beautiful pantomime. The Indian sign language has gradually gone into disuse until it is almost forgotten, yet there are some who can communicate intelligently by means of its signs and symbols.