Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/205



PLACE OF RIVER IN NORTHWEST HISTORY 185

The Indians made rapid progress in all of the white men's ways even to his sharp practices. As an illustration of this, when Spalding had by infinite toil and patience quarried the stones which he shaped into the burrs for his grist mill, to be used in grinding the Indians' corn, the Indian wanted Mr. Spalding to pay for the stones.

The missionaries soon learned the Indian language and the here by Mr. Spalding to be used in translating some of the books of the New Testament into the Nez Perce language. Mrs. Spalding drew readily and she illustrated many scenes of the Bible in this way. The mission grew in power and num- bers until the Whitman massacre when it was abandoned for about twenty-five years.
 * first printing press west of the Rocky Mountains was brought

The Spaldings lie buried in a little cemetery within a few rods of where they began their work. Considered from a material standpoint, not a vestige of their work remains. The printing press is held by the Oregon Historical Society. The old mill stones are in the rooms of our State Historical So- ciety. The fences which enclosed the farm have long since fallen into decay. The houses and other buildings are in ruins, but the good which these noble missionaries did will shine out in the lives of the Nez Perce Indians until the end of time.

Another Christian to answer the Macedonian cry for help was Father DeSmet, a Jesuit priest stationed at Council Bluffs when the Flatheads previously mentioned were on their way east. In 1840 he left Westport, Missouri, for the Flathead country. He went with a fur trading party which was met at Green River, Wyoming, by a band of Indians. On Sunday, July 5th, mass was celebrated and an altar was erected on an elevated place and decorated with the boughs of the cotton wood and fresh flowers of the plains.

From here DeSmet was escorted by a party of Flatheads to their country, when he was met by a band of sixteen hundred Indians at Pierre's Hole, some of whom had come eight hundred miles and were from Northern Idaho. The Sunday after his

"'See note'on page 195