Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/127

Rh arrival of Lee, a few months afterward increased the anxiety of these faithful Catholics, and in February 1835 a second letter was dispatched to Bishop Provencher for religious instructors. To these letters, Provencher rephed sending the reply to Chief Factor McLoughlin, regretting that no priests could at that time be spared from the work in the east, but that an effort would be made to secure priests from Europe. And as early as the matter could be brought about, the Hudson Bay Company was asked for passage for two catholic priests from Montreal to Oregon. To this mission the archbishop of Quebec appointed Rev. Francis Norbert Blanchet, whose portrait appears on another page, and gave him as an assistant the Rev. Modeste Demers, from the Red River settlement. The trip to Oregon was uneventful, until the party reached the Little Falls of the Columbia, where, in descending the rapids, one of the boats was wrecked and nearly half the company drowned. The priests were received at Fort Colville with the same friendliness as had greeted the Protestant missionaries in eastern Oregon; and during a stay of four days, nineteen natives were baptized, mass was said and much interest taken in the services. The appearance of the priests in their dark robes, the mystical signs of reverence, and unconcern for secular affairs, undoubtedly impressed the savages. Blanchet summed up his labors for the winter of 1838-9, at one hundred and thirty-four baptisms, nine funerals and forty-nine marriages. He not only married the unmarried Indians, but he re-married those that the Protestant ministers had united, to the great disgust of the Methodists; and withdrew many from the temperance society and prayer meetings, organized by the Methodists—and right there the religious war commenced. During the year 1840, the rivalry between the Catholics and Methodists was pushed with bitterness on both sides.

But the really great religious success among the Indians, was accomplished by Peter John De Smet; a member of the Jesuit order who came out in the spring of 1840; and being the first religious teacher to answer the petition of the Flatheads with "the white man's book of heaven," was by them received with great rejoicing. And within two weeks after he had reached that tribe in the Bitter Root mountains, had taught two thousand of them some of the prayers of the church, and admitted six hundred to the rite of baptism. De Smet was a man of great natural force, tact and persuasiveness, and having been sent out by the Jesuit order at St. Louis, he was greatly surprised to hear that Blanchet and Demers were already in western Oregon. Returning to St. Louis for more religious teachers, De Smet prosecuted his work in Oregon with great vigor and success. He even went to Europe for assistance, which he succeeded in obtaining, apparently pursuing his apostolic crusade among the Indians very much like St. Paul did in Asia Minor.

Here now is the proposition. What permanent good did these men accomplish for the Indian? Two Protestants—Jason Lee and Marcus Whitman, and two Catholics, Frances N. Blanchet and Peter John De Smet. They gave to each the entire influence of their respective creeds and churches. And each and all of them, were singularly and remarkably well qualified for the work they had undertaken; and each man, put his whole soul, mind and body into the work he had freely devoted his life to serve. And what effect has it had upon the mind and condition of the Indian. The Indian is here yet subsisting partly upon the bounty of the government, and partly by the shiftless, precarious labor of his hands. One in a hundred rises above his fellows in mental, moral or financial acquirements. But the general average of listless inactivity of mind and body is about the same. Religious teaching is still patiently pressed upon the Indian; but with the exception of Father Wilbur's work among the Yakimas, the results are insignificant. And yet very much the same might be said of religious teaching among the whites. But what has been the uplift to the Indian? We are presenting a question of evolution. This book is presenting that question in various ways.