2
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50
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jesuits of the Middle United States
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="%20http%3A//id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069941.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004994.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Reproduced with permission of Loyola University Press.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
PDF
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
JA-Garraghan
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
BX3708 .G3
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Loyola University Press.
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
Authentic story of the Society of Jesus in Illinois; Kansas; Louisiana; Maryland; Missouri; Ohio; and Oregon from 1673. Extensive discussion on the Indian missions of the Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Osage, and Blackfeet, and of Father De Smet and the Oregon missions.
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
2016-08-30
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
Three volumes
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1938
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
hardcover book
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Chapter 36: St. Joseph's College, Bardstown
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
PDF
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
JA-Garraghan-038
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
BX3708 .G3
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Relation
A related resource
JA-Garraghan
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
Description
An account of the resource
Chapter 36 of Jesuits of the Middle United States by Gilbert Garraghan. Volume III. Pages 291-348.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Reproduced with permission of Loyola University Press.
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Loyola University Press.
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
2016-10-7
Date Copyrighted
Date of copyright.
1938
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
62 pages
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jesuits of the Middle United States
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="%20http%3A//id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069941.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004994.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Reproduced with permission of Loyola University Press.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
PDF
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
JA-Garraghan
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
BX3708 .G3
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Loyola University Press.
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
Authentic story of the Society of Jesus in Illinois; Kansas; Louisiana; Maryland; Missouri; Ohio; and Oregon from 1673. Extensive discussion on the Indian missions of the Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Osage, and Blackfeet, and of Father De Smet and the Oregon missions.
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
2016-08-30
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
Three volumes
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1938
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
hardcover book
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Chapter 35: Educational Ventures in Louisville
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
PDF
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
JA-Garraghan-037
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
BX3708 .G3
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Relation
A related resource
JA-Garraghan
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
Description
An account of the resource
Chapter 35 of Jesuits of the Middle United States by Gilbert Garraghan. Volume III. Pages 253-290.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Reproduced with permission of Loyola University Press.
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Loyola University Press.
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
2016-10-7
Date Copyrighted
Date of copyright.
1938
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
40 pages
19th century
American History
American religious history
education
explorers
higher education
History
Jesuit missions
Jesuits
Kentucky
Louisville
Middle West
Missions
Native Americans
religious education
Society of Jesus
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jesuits of the Middle United States
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="%20http%3A//id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069941.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004994.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Reproduced with permission of Loyola University Press.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
PDF
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
JA-Garraghan
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
BX3708 .G3
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Loyola University Press.
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
Authentic story of the Society of Jesus in Illinois; Kansas; Louisiana; Maryland; Missouri; Ohio; and Oregon from 1673. Extensive discussion on the Indian missions of the Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Osage, and Blackfeet, and of Father De Smet and the Oregon missions.
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
2016-08-30
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
Three volumes
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1938
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
hardcover book
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Chapter 34: St. Louis University, 1833-1867
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
PDF
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
JA-Garraghan-036
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
BX3708 .G3
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Relation
A related resource
JA-Garraghan
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
Description
An account of the resource
Chapter 34 of Jesuits of the Middle United States by Gilbert Garraghan. Volume III. Pages 203-252.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Reproduced with permission of Loyola University Press.
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Loyola University Press.
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
2016-10-7
Date Copyrighted
Date of copyright.
1938
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
52 pages
19th century
American History
American religious history
education
explorers
higher education
History
Jesuit missions
Jesuits
Middle West
Missions
Missouri
Native Americans
religious education
Saint Louis
Saint Louis University
Society of Jesus
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jesuits of the Middle United States
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="%20http%3A//id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069941.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004994.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Reproduced with permission of Loyola University Press.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
PDF
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
JA-Garraghan
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
BX3708 .G3
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Loyola University Press.
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
Authentic story of the Society of Jesus in Illinois; Kansas; Louisiana; Maryland; Missouri; Ohio; and Oregon from 1673. Extensive discussion on the Indian missions of the Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Osage, and Blackfeet, and of Father De Smet and the Oregon missions.
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
2016-08-30
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
Three volumes
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1938
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
hardcover book
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Chapter 33: St. Xavier College, Cincinnati
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
PDF
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
JA-Garraghan-035
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
BX3708 .G3
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Relation
A related resource
JA-Garraghan
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
Description
An account of the resource
Chapter 33 of Jesuits of the Middle United States by Gilbert Garraghan. Volume III. Pages 157-202.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Reproduced with permission of Loyola University Press.
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Loyola University Press.
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
2016-10-7
Date Copyrighted
Date of copyright.
1938
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
48 pages
19th century
American History
American religious history
Cincinnati
education
explorers
higher education
History
Jesuit missions
Jesuits
Middle West
Missions
Native Americans
Ohio
religious education
Society of Jesus
St. Xavier College
-
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Jesuits of the Middle United States
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<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="%20http%3A//id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069941.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004994.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
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<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
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Reproduced with permission of Loyola University Press.
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PDF
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eng
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Text
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JA-Garraghan
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BX3708 .G3
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Loyola University Press.
Abstract
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Authentic story of the Society of Jesus in Illinois; Kansas; Louisiana; Maryland; Missouri; Ohio; and Oregon from 1673. Extensive discussion on the Indian missions of the Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Osage, and Blackfeet, and of Father De Smet and the Oregon missions.
Date Available
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2016-08-30
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Three volumes
Temporal Coverage
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1938
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hardcover book
Dublin Core
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Title
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Chapter 32: A Jesuit College in Louisiana
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<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
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Text
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PDF
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JA-Garraghan-034
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BX3708 .G3
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eng
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JA-Garraghan
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<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
Description
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Chapter 32 of Jesuits of the Middle United States by Gilbert Garraghan. Volume III. Pages 129-156.
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2016-10-7
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1938
Extent
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30 pages
19th century
American History
American religious history
education
explorers
higher education
History
Jesuit missions
Jesuits
Louisiana
Loyola University
Middle West
Missions
Native Americans
New Orleans
religious education
Society of Jesus
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Jesuits of the Middle United States
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="%20http%3A//id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069941.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004994.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
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<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
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PDF
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eng
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Text
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JA-Garraghan
Source
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BX3708 .G3
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Loyola University Press.
Abstract
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Authentic story of the Society of Jesus in Illinois; Kansas; Louisiana; Maryland; Missouri; Ohio; and Oregon from 1673. Extensive discussion on the Indian missions of the Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Osage, and Blackfeet, and of Father De Smet and the Oregon missions.
Date Available
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2016-08-30
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Three volumes
Temporal Coverage
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1938
Text
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hardcover book
Dublin Core
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Title
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Chapter 31: Educational Problems and Conditions
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<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
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Text
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PDF
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JA-Garraghan-033
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BX3708 .G3
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eng
Relation
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JA-Garraghan
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<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
Description
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Chapter 31 of Jesuits of the Middle United States by Gilbert Garraghan. Volume III. Pages 111-128.
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Reproduced with permission of Loyola University Press.
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Loyola University Press.
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2016-10-7
Date Copyrighted
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1938
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22 pages
19th century
American History
American religious history
education
explorers
higher education
History
Jesuit missions
Jesuits
Middle West
Missions
Native Americans
religious education
Society of Jesus
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Jesuits of the Middle United States
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="%20http%3A//id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069941.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004994.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
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<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
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Reproduced with permission of Loyola University Press.
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PDF
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eng
Type
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Text
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JA-Garraghan
Source
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BX3708 .G3
Rights Holder
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Loyola University Press.
Abstract
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Authentic story of the Society of Jesus in Illinois; Kansas; Louisiana; Maryland; Missouri; Ohio; and Oregon from 1673. Extensive discussion on the Indian missions of the Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Osage, and Blackfeet, and of Father De Smet and the Oregon missions.
Date Available
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2016-08-30
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Three volumes
Temporal Coverage
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1938
Text
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hardcover book
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Title
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Chapter 30: Peter De Smet - Personal Aspects
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<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
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Text
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PDF
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JA-Garraghan-032
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BX3708 .G3
Language
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eng
Relation
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Jesuits of the Middle United States
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
Description
An account of the resource
Chapter 30 of Jesuits of the Middle United States by Gilbert Garraghan. Volume III. Pages 66-107.
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1938
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Reproduced with permission of Loyola University Press.
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2016-10-7
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Loyola University Press.
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49 pages
19th century
American History
American religious history
education
explorers
higher education
History
Jesuit missions
Jesuits
Middle West
Missions
Native Americans
Pierre-Jean De Smet
religious education
Society of Jesus
-
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PDF Text
Text
PART IV {Continued)
THE INDIAN MISSIONS
��CHAPTER
XXIX
ST. MARY'S OF T H E POTAWATOMI, II
§ I . T H E SLAVERY AGITATION
In April, 1853, Bishop Miege, still a member of the Society of
Jesus though in episcopal orders, set out from St. Mary's to represent
the vice-province of Missouri in a general congregation of the order to
be held in Rome. Father De Smet was his companion on the journey.
On the return voyage the pair met with a thrilling experience. The
Humboldt, on which they took passage at Havre, was wrecked, December 6, 1853, a few miles off the coast of Nova Scotia. A. fisherman,
who represented himself to be a pilot, maliciously, so at least it was
reported, directed the steamer onto some hidden rocks known as the
"Sisters." The Humboldt took water heavily and as the pumps proved
ineffective the captain determined to run her ashore. The steamer
struck the rocks a second time, this time sticking fast but happily in
shallow water. The passengers were promptly rescued and conveyed to
Halifax, where Bishop Miege and Father De Smet enjoyed the hospitality of the local prelate, Bishop Walsh. The two Jesuits saved all
their boxes from the wreck with the exception of one, which contained
five chalices and two ostensoria.
On reaching St Mary's in March, 1854, Bishop Miege was given
a demonstrative welcome by his flock. He brought with him chalices,
vestments and relics of the saints for his cathedral, together with a
great quantity of precious articles including rosary-beads blessed by
Pius IX. One thing in particular amazed the Indian parishioners. This
was an organ, of which Father Gailland wrote. "This instrument has
been so contrived by Father Lambillote that merely by touching it
with the fingers one produces with ease the most agreeable music."
Another of the Bishop's gifts to his log cathedral was a painting of the
Immaculate Conception of more than ordinary artistic merit, reputed to
be by an Italian painter, Benito. It still adorns the walls of the parish
church of St. Marys.
A few months after the return of the prelate to his vicariate in the
wilderness an event occurred that quickly converted the peaceful valley of the Kansas into a seething cauldron of political passion culminating in civil war. On May 30, 1854, President Pierce put his signature to
1
�2
T H E JESUITS O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D STATES
the Kansas-Nebraska bill of Senator Douglas, which provided for the
erection of the country between the Missouri River and the Rocky
Mountains into two territorial units, to be thrown open to white settlers
and, when a specified population had been reached, to be admitted as
states into the Union. Prior to this date that splendid stretch of country
had been closed to slavery by the Missouri Compromise Act of 1820,
now, as a result of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, the Missouri Compromise
was repealed and the question whether the new territories were to be
slave or free was to be decided by a majority vote of their inhabitants.
T h e principle which Douglas invoked in his historic measure was that of
popular sovereignty, or, as it was styled in the political lingo of the
day, "squatter sovereignty," the right, to wit, of the settlers in the new
territories to decide for themselves by an exercise of the ballot and
without dictation from Congress whether the commonwealths now in
process of formation were to authorize or to prohibit slavery within
their borders. T h e pro-slavery and the free-soil forces in political life
at once joined issue on the burning question and "bleeding Kansas" became the storm-center of a conflict that hung in the balance down to
the last year of the Civil War.
In Nebraska no attempt was made to force the issue either way,
it Was in Kansas that the battle was to be fought out H e r e was a great
stretch of the finest farming land in the world, dotted here and there
with Indian reserves, mission-centers and government forts, but otherwise altogether unsettled. In width it measured two hundred and eight
miles and in length it ran from the Missouri to the Rockies No sooner
had the Douglas bill become law than thousands of immigrants, not
only from the border states, but from localities as remote as Massachusetts and Connecticut, poured into Kansas to stake out claims, build
homes and lend their votes to the settling of the momentous issue of
freedom or slavery in the new territory. On August 1, 1854, Kansas
could claim three government forts, a half-dozen mission centers and
two or three stopping-places on the Santa F e trail, as E l m Grove and
Council Grove, but there was nothing within its four sides that deserved to be called a town x Before the year had run out, thirty or forty
towns had been platted and the incoming throngs of immigrants were
quickly clustering into settlements of importance. In the beginning of
1858 a roster of Kansas towns, all sprung up as by a stroke of magic,
included Wyandotte, Delaware, Douglas, Maryville, Iola, Atchison,
Fort Scott, Pawnee, Lecompton, Neosho, Richmond, Lawrence,
Doniphan, Paola, Indianola, Easton, Leavenworth and others 2 T h e
1
2
E E Hale, Kanzas and Nebraska (Boston, 1854), p 128.
CR, De Smet, 3 1192
�ST. MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , I I
3
majority of the settlers proved to be free-soilers and were insistent in
their demands for a free constitution, but it was not until 1861, when
the pro-slavery party ceased to dominate Congress, that Kansas was
admitted as a free state into the Union.
Events of such far-reaching importance could not but react on the
fortunes of St. Mary's Mission. In April, 1853, Bishop Miege wrote to
the Jesuit vicar-general in Rome " T h e United States Government
voted before the adjournment of Congress the sum of $50,000 for
making a treaty with the Indians of Nebraska [Territory]. This treaty
would take in all the tribes between the 36th and 43rd degrees of latitude and would have as its object to purchase from the Indians all thenlands with the exception of the portions the Government would grant
to such among them as should wish to live peacefully in the midst of
the whites. Your Reverence sees already that this is the death-sentence
of the greater part of my poor diocese, a sentence, however, that was
feared for a long time and hence astonishes nobody. What will become
of the two established Missions?" 3 As to the Kansas-Nebraska bill, De
Smet was of the opinion that it "virtually destroyed all the Indian
nationalities." H e graphically describes the Indians as surrounded on all
sides by the immigrant whites, "their reserves forming little more than
islets amid the ocean." Formerly they could wander on their hunts over
boundless tracts of unsettled land; now they were to be pent up in
reserves, of which their tenure was most uncertain. Soon they would be
called upon to divide and sell their lands or else be forcibly dispossessed of them. " I t is not difficult to descry from afar that grand event
which must engulf in one common wreck all the Indian tribes. T h e
storm which has just burst forth over their heads was long preparing,
it could not escape the observing eye. W e saw the American Republic
soaring, with the rapidity of the eagle's flight, toward the plenitude
of her power. Every year she adds new countries to her limits. . . .
H e r object is obtained. All bend to her sceptre; all Indian nationality
is at her feet." 4
Father Gailland, commenting on the territorial bill of 1854, c o n soled himself with the reflection that what looked so portentous might
perhaps be the very thing needed to promote the welfare of the Indian.
Hitherto the missionaries could scarcely reach the more distant tribes
on account of the difficulties of travel. Now that American colonists
were everywhere occupying the land, access to the Indians would become easier. Moreover, the example of the white farmers would have
a stimulating effect upon the Indians and rouse them to activity and to
8
4
Miege au Vicaire-General, April 15, 1853 (AA).
C R , De Smet, 3 1196-1198.
�4
T H E JESUITS O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D STATES
an effectual desire to make the fertile earth yield its fruits. T h e civil
war that blazed out all over Kansas in 1855 over the question of slavery
furnished Gailland food for pious reflectionBut as all these things have already become public and are foreign
to our vocation, there is no reason why we should stop to narrate them
This only we wish to observe that we embrace with equal charity in our
Lord all parties and were greatly astonished to see men at the entire neglect
and even hazard of their eternal salvation and life itself devote themselves
so ardently to perishable things Would that the sons of light labored as
eagerly to obtain a never-fading crown' Would that we members of the
sacred army devoted ourselves with equal courage to our own perfection
and the salvation of our neighbor.5
Father Duermck's opinion of the territorial changes of 1854 w a s
expressed in his report for that year to Major G. W . Clarke. " W e have
hailed with pleasure the organization of the territories, anarchy and
arbitrary power will be proscribed, and salutary laws and the fear of
punishment will restrain the wicked and lawless offenders. Peace, order
and justice will prevail and reign in the land." 6 It is unnecessary to
say that peace and order were not the outcome, at least immediate, of
the Kansas-Nebraska bill. T h e Potawatomi reserve, though legally immune from all trespassing on the part of the whites, did not pass unscathed through the Kansas civil war of 1855. General Lane's so-called
"northern army" invaded the reserve, committing depredations on the
property of the Indians and plundering the trading-house of A. G.
Boone at Uniontown as also the residence of the Potawatomi Agent,
Clarke, a pro-slavery sympathizer, who was robbed of his household
effects and official papers. But the mission property was left unharmed.
" T h e civil war of Kansas," Father Duennck was able to say in a report
to government, "with all its acts of violence and bloodshed, has not
caused us to relax our efforts in the cause of education." 7
5
Gailland, History of St Mary's Mtssion. (Ms ) (F)
RCIA, 1854, no 40
7
Duerinck to Clarke, October 20, 1856 (H) A postscript to a letter of Duerinck's, June 25, 1855, addressed probably to Major Clarke, touches on conditions at
the moment west of St Mary's "The little town of Pawnee said to be on the
Military reserve of Fort Riley, is not blown up yet Everybody tells me that Generals Churchill and Clarke and Col Montgomery repaired to the Fort [Riley] some
4 weeks ago—examined the case, investigating the claims, etc,—it is said that it
has been spared Perhaps Generals Churchill and Clarke have reported to the President, awaiting the answer The legislature is to meet at Pawnee on July 1st, next. It
is said that the 4 Dixons, Brothers, who have claims below Pawnee (160 acres each)
had their houses pulled down and destroyed by the military last week, under the
pretext that they were on the military reserve Pawnee is losing ground, buildings
6
�ST. MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , I I
5
A picture of St. M a r y s , as it appeared at t h e t i m e t h e Kansas
troubles were at their height, is presented in a letter of Gailland's to t h e
vice-provincial, F a t h e r M u r p h y
St. Mary is no more in a desert, as it used to be, actually it is a
place much frequented by all kind[s] of people, red, black, white T h r o u g h
its streets there is a continual going and coming of carriages and wagons,
of gentlemen and farmers, of Southern and Northern men, of pro-slavery
and anti-slavery men, of freesoilers, of abolitionists, of fusiomsts, of Disunionists, etc. T h e y are all well disposed, all devoted to the welfare of
the country, all coming out with a better plan to make of Kansas one of
the most flourishing States of the Union. . . . It is no trifling annoyance
to us to hear continually the wild cries of ox drivers, those American
oxen are so slow in understanding the orders of their masters,, unless they
receive on the head a shower of curses they could not go right. W e are
now surrounded but unmolested by the, Whites, people are not as wicked
here as in England Let the Indians behave well and the new settlers
will deal fairly with them T h e present administration is very favorable to
the Indians As far as it depends on themselves, they cause the rights of
all the Indian tribes to be respected, although we fear, in some instances
they will be bound to yield to the multitude. T h e squatter wishes to * play
sovereign and follow that maxim of constitutional France le Rot regne
mats tl ne gouverne fas.8
O w i n g to t h e disorders incident on t h e Kansas war Bishop M i e g e
was unable to u n d e r t a k e t h e j o u r n e y which he h a d l o n g contemplated
going up are suspended in some cases" (H) An entry in Duennck's Diary II the
following year (September 2, 1856) reveals that trouble was still abroad "Sent
[Brother ( ? ) ] McNamara to Grasshopper Falls to buy some cattle, but owing to
the troubles of the times he returned the same day at noon deterred by rumors of
robberies, horse stealing, etc."
From the beginning of territorial organization St Marys and the neighboring
district were strongly anti-slavery. In the first election held m Kansas Territory,
November 29, 1854, to choose a delegate to Congress, Lawrence and Big Blue
Crossing, in the latter of which St Marys was included, were the only two
precincts of the state thaf did not go for Whitfield, the pro-slavery candidate Onehalf of Whitfield's vote, however, is accounted to have been illegal The second
election m the state, which was for members of the territorial legislature, was held
March 30, 1855. A voting booth was installed at St Marys m the house of R C.
Miller Of the eleven votes cast here, seven went to M F Conway, anti-slavery
councilman, and four to John Donaldson, his opponent The Times {St Marys,
Kansas), July 14, 1876, gives E P McCartney as the name of the free-state
candidate. The poll-list of the election of October 5, 1857, held at Louisville,
includes the name of Father Duennck, who cast his vote for Pairott, the antislavery candidate. Louisville township declared August 2, 1858, against the
Lecompton (slavery) constitution by a vote of 37 to 1
8
Gailland to Murphy, November 12, 1855 (A)
�6
T H E JESUITS OF T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D STATES
to the Indian tribes of the upper Missouri. Early in 1857
the Father General
ne
wrote to
In our part of the country some sort of peace seems to be reigning just
now, but what the future is to be no one says or can say. Our fears and
anxieties are far in excess of our hopes This one thing is certain, that we
have seen pretty hard times especially in August and September when
thieves, robbers and murderers were able to perpetrate with impunity whatever they pleased. It became entirely impossible for me to visit the various
parts of the vicariate, as I wished to do, owing to imminent dangers from
thieves or from armed gangs who held almost the entire territory in their
grip. For a while I didn't even know what was before us in Leavenworth
City. God and His most Blessed Mother saved us We also, if it be allowed
to say so, played our little part by procuring on the advice of friends all
sorts of weapons and using them as necessity dictated but "with the moderation of legitimate self-defense" (moderamine inculfatae tutelae) as the following instance proves. One night following a very exciting day in consequence of murders committed publicly in the city, as I was fast asleep, I
was awakened by an unusual sound under my window Proceeding at once
with caution to a spot where I could make out the cause of the noise, I saw
part of an object which I took at the moment for a thief Immediately
grabbing my revolver and aiming at the object in sight, I fired But what
was my surprise to see a hog scurrying off on all fours, minus however
his tail, which with a grunt he left behind for me as a trophy Though
always prepared, I have never after this egregious exploit made use of
weapons and hope I never shall 9
In the changed conditions that ensued in the valley of the Kansas
by reason of the Territorial Act of 1854 the mission-village of St.
Marys lost the importance that once attached to it. There were new
settlements, Leavenworth in particular, that could show a more substantial claim than the Catholic Potawatomi mission to be the headquarters of the vicariate. Accordingly, on August 9, 1855, Bishop Miege,
accompanied by Brother Francis Roig, left St. Marys to take up his
residence in Leavenworth. On his arrival in the town he found only
seven Catholic families. H e began without delay the erection at the
southwest corner of Kickapoo and Fifth Streets of a church twenty-four
by forty feet, which soon proved inadequate for the rapidly growing
population. Two years later, in 1857, n e D U 1 ^ a larger church, in size
forty by eighty feet. These edifices were apparently of frame, modest
forerunners of the imposing Romanesque cathedral which the Bishop
was to erect later on. 10
9
Miege ad Beckx, January 12, 1857 (AA)
Kans Htst Coll, 9 155. The date of the first Mass in Leavenworth is in
dispute "The first Mass in Leavenworth was said in 1854 by Bishop Miege at
10
�ST. MARY'S OF T H E POTAWATOMI, II
7
§ 2 . A STRUGGLING VICARIATE
For five years, from his arrival in Kansas in 1851 until he took up
his residence in Leavenworth in 1855, Bishop Miege was, superior of
the Jesuits residing in his vicariate and this even in their strictly domestic concerns. "Although a bishop," so Father Roothaan advised the
vice-provincial, Father Murphy, "he [Miege] remains a religious of
the Society and as regards the direction of Ours in his Mission ought
to come to an understanding with the Vice-Provincial. However, the
direction of the Mission in as far as it is a Mission, belongs to him
and for this he depends only on Propaganda. There is nothing then
to do but to get along with one another in harmony." 1X In 1853 anc^
again in the following year Miege himself proposed that the office
of superior of the Jesuits be disassociated from that of vicar-apostolic,
but this change was effected only on his removal to Leavenworth.
Meanwhile it was incumbent upon him to secure the needed personnel
and the material means for the upkeep of the Osage and Potawatomi
missions and the extension of missionary service to other tribes of his
jurisdiction. He petitioned St. Louis to send him Fathers Coosemans,
De Coen, Eysvogels, Baltus, none of these were assigned to him, but
Fathers Van Hulst and Schultz, excellent men both, were among those
sent to Kansas. The good Bishop, like Father De Smet, was inclined to
make it a grievance that certain subjects who had a particular aptitude
and desire for the Indian missions were detained in the colleges. He
pointed out to the General the case of Father Baltus, who had petitioned to come to America solely with a view* to the Indians, but was
now for the third successive year being employed in the class-room.
The Bishop himself was an instance of the policy in question as Father
Roothaan recalled to Father Murphy. "Father Miege was sent to
Missouri for the Oregon Missions. They kept him at St. Louis, they
the house of a Mrs Qumn " Cutler, History of Kansas, p 431. "The first Catholic
church was built and the first Mass said (as I remember) by Rev Fr Fisch of
Weston, M o , m the early summer of 1855 at the house of Andy Qumn on the
south side of Shawnee Street in the middle of the block on lot 29, block 23, city
proper A bureau was used as an altar for the service " H Miles Moore, Early
History of Leavenworth Ctty and County (Leavenworth, 1906), p 187 An unpublished letter, May 25, 1884, of Father Defoun, associated with Miege in
his first years at Leavenworth, states that the Bishop said his firsl Mass in that
city August 15 (1855 ? ) "in the house of Andrew Quinn, having an audience of
nine persons, all that was Catholic in the town " (A) Miege in a letter of July
4, 1855, reproduced in this chapter, speaks of his intention to put up a frame
chapel in Leavenworth, hence, there was apparently no Catholic house of worship
in the town at the date of the letter
1X
Roothaan a Murphy, October 30, 1851 (AA)
�8
T H E JESUITS OF T H E MIDDLE U N I T E D STATES
employed him there and see now what has happened. [He is available]
neither for Oregon nor for the Vice-Province, but in a manner for
both." 12 The needs of the colleges were undoubtedly pressing and
available workers were all too few. It is therefore not easy to see in the
policy pursued by the superiors a lack of broad and generous treatment
of the missions. On the other hand praiseworthy zeal for the foreign
missions has often led Jesuit superiors to staff them with men whose
services according to merely human calculation could be ill dispensed
with in the educational work of the order.
Not only priests, but coadjutor-brothers were eagerly sought for by
the vicar-apostolic of the Indian Territory. The first request he made
to the newly appointed vice-provinqial, Father Druyts, was for two
brothers, a cook and a school-teacher, neither of whom it was possible
to supply. When Father Roothaan, alarmed at the defection from the
order of certain coadjutor-brothers in Oregon, had informed Bishop
Miege that no more members of this grade would be sent on the missions, the latter wrote to express the anxious hope that his Paternity
would revoke this "terrible proposition." "Where shall we get our carpenters, our farriers? There is less danger for a Brother in the two
Missions [Osage and Potawatomi] than in the colleges or other houses
of America." 13 When Brother Toelle in a fit of mental aberration lost
his life at the Osage Mission by drowning, he was replaced by a hired
carpenter at a dollar a day, which outlay Miege apparently considered
a rather heavy drain on the resources of the mission.
As long as the Bishop remained at St. Mary's the finances both of
the mission and of the vicariate were under his control, being administered jointly and not under separate accounts. The Lyons Association
of the Propagation of the Faith, the providential Lady Bountiful to
the struggling pioneer Catholic Church of the United States, came to
his aid on more than one occasion with contributions. In 1852 Father
Roothaan allotted him twenty-six hundred and thirty dollars out of the
funds of the association placed at his disposal. That same year the
Bishop petitioned the association for an extra grant in view of the universal drought that had prevailed in Kansas. Being in Lyons the following year, he again ventured to petition the association for an appropriation in excess of the usual one, but without result, whereupon he
appealed to the General- "The wooden churches or chapels which we
have in the Indian Territory cannot protect us against the snow, rain
and wind. In winter time it is scarcely possible to say Mass. Moreover,
the cathedral is threatened with ruin." 14 In 1856 the association began
12
13
14
Roothaan a Murphy, October 30, 1851 (AA).
Miege a Roothaan, August 17, 1852 (AA)
Miege a Beckx, September 30, 1853 (AA)
�John Baptist Miege, S J (1815-1884), Vicarapostolic of the Indian Territory east of the
Rocky Mountains and Bishop of Messema in
farttbus
Felix Livinus Verreydt, S J (1798-] 883), first
superior of St Mary's Potawatomi Mission, the
site of which he selecled
�Maurice Gailland, S J (181 5 - 1 8 7 7 ) , historiographer of St Mary's Potawatomi Mission and
adept in Potawatomi, of which language he
compiled a dictionary
John Francis Diels, S J ( 1 8 2 1 - 1 8 7 8 ) , superior
of St Mary's Potawatomi Mission during the
sixties.
�ST. MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , I I
9
to remit its subsidies direct to Bishop Miege and not through the
Father General. " T h e Lyons Association," he wrote to Beckx in January, 1857, "assigned me 20,000 francs [$4,000] for the past year, but
this will scarcely enable me to pay the debts contracted during the
year." 15 In such manner was the old world with edifying generosity
coming to the relief of the new. At the same time domestic relief bodies
similar in scope to the Catholic Church Extension Society and the
Catholic Indian Bureau of later days were projected on occasion but
never actually set on foot. Thus in 1849 Father De Smet pVoposed the
creation in the United States of an association for the sole purpose of
aiding the Indians. Archbishop Kennck of St Louis approved the plan,
which it was proposed to set before the bishops at the impending
Seventh Provincial Council of Baltimore. Nothing apparently came of
the proposal. A suggestion made in the First Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1852, that the Lyons Association of the Propagation of the Faith
be established in the United States, the money thus collected to be distributed by the American bishops, was objected to by Bishop Miege,
probably because he felt his vicariate would fare better li the money
were distributed from the general headquarters of the association.16
In general, the Osage and Polawatomi Missions managed to maintain themselves on a sound financial basis. In 1850 they were reported
to be without debts. In 1854 their financial status was declared satisfactory. In 1855 a report of De Smet credited them with sixteen thousand, nine hundred dollars on deposit in St. Louis, of which sum nine
thousand dollars belonged to Miege. As was already seen, in addition
to the grants made in their favor by the Association of the Propagation
of the Faith, the missions were dependent for their support on government school-money, on the revenue from surplus live-stock and farmproducts and on occasional aid from the vice-province, the General, or
other benefactors in Europe and America. Shortly after his arrival at
St. Mary's Bishop Miege wrote to the Father General- "Rev. Father
Provincial [ M u r p h y ] , who seems admirably disposed towards the
Indian missions, advised me in his last letter to ask your Paternity to
allow him to have 4 [ ? ] Masses said by the Fathers of the Vice-Province, the money [offerings] for the same to be applied to the missions.
T h e thing is easy to suggest, but I doubt if it be as easy to obtain." 17
In another connection Father Roothaan had occasion to manifest in a
practical way his interest in Bishop Miege's missions. T h e creditor's
claim to twenty thousand dollars, which had been borrowed by the viceprovince from the generous Belgian benefactor, M . De Boey, had been
15
16
17
Miege a Beckx, January 12, 1857 (AA)
Miege a Roothaan, July 9, 1852 (AA)
Miege a Roothaan, October 24, 1851 (AA)
�io T H E JESUITS OF T H E MIDDLE U N I T E D STATES
conveyed by the latter in his will to the Father General (Chap. XV,
§ 2). Roothaan in his turn relieved the vice-province of any obligation
to pay the principal, but required that a sum equivalent to the interest
on the amount involved be annually applied to the Indian missions.
"You will employ the equivalent income of this sum in favor of the
Indians," he instructed Father Elet, "either by sending them effective
aid or by training subjects for these missions. . . . The Vice-Province
can make use of [this money] for the Novitiate and Scholasticate,
which furnish subjects to these missions." Beginning with April 1, 1852,
one-half the income of the De Boey loan went at the instance of Father
Roothaan to Bishop Miege. This meant an annual subsidy to him of
five hundred dollars.18
In the early rush of immigrants to Kansas in the wake of the
Kansas-Nebraska bill Catholics participated scarcely at all. Later their
numbers increased. "I should wish to be able to count on numerous
Catholics among them [the immigrants]," Miege comments in 1854,
"but in numbers they amount to nothing. The really small number of
them that come to us are scattered in every direction and at such distances one from the other that it is almost impossible to find them, or
at least to visit them regularly. Here is the chief reason for the large
number of defections in America, especially in the new States." 19 The
Indians were being adequately looked after by the Jesuits j but the
spiritual care of the immigrant white Catholics, especially when their
numbers began to grow in the mid-fifties, presented a serious problem,
the only solution of which was the recruiting of a diocesan clergy. Here
precisely was the difficulty. The Jesuits, to repeat, could be relied upon
to serve the Indian population of the vicariate; but they were not in a
position to meet at the same time the spiritual needs of the growing
white population of the country. Miege appealed to the General for
priests "for the salvation of the German and Irish population which is
18
Roothaan a Elet, July 30, 1850 (AA) In 1859, by which time Miege
had been residing in Leavenworth some four years, Druyts, the vice-provincial,
requested that this subsidy be no longer paid to the prelate as it was originally
allotted to him as superior of the Indian Missions and not as bishop At Leavenworth Miege's interest lay with the whites, not the Indians, while he annually
received a liberal appropriation from the Lyons Association, from which quarter no
help whatever was now being received by the vice-province It was finally agreed
between the Bishop and the vice-provincial (1859) t n a t t n e yearly subsidy in
question of five hundred dollars be assigned to St. Mary's until a loan of three
thousand dollars obtained by the Bishop from Duennck be paid off, after which
time the disposition of the money was to be determined by the Father General
Finally, in 1863, Father Beckx applied this subsidy to the so-called area seminarn
or seminary fund for the support of the novices and scholastics of the viceprovince.
19
Miege a Beckx, October 28, 1854. (AA)
�ST. MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , I I
n
coming in among u s " , and he appealed likewise for clerical recruits to
Propaganda, which on June 30, 1856, requested from Father Beckx an
expression of opinion on the Bishop's petition. In the event there were
always one or more Jesuit priests residing with the Bishop as long as
he remained in Leavenworth, to say nothing of the direcl ministerial
service rendered to the settlers by St. Mary's through Father Dumortier
and others. But in the first years of the vicariate there was not overmuch, so it would appear, to engage the time and energy of a young
and enterprising bishop. In fact, Miege when in Rome in 1853 represented that the outlook for the vicariate was so unpromising that it
ought to be suppressed. " T h e Archbishop of St. Louis," he informed
the Father General in February, 1854, "has made me a proposition,
namely, that he give me the half of his diocese and that I establish my
see at St. Joseph and administer [from there] the Vicariate, in which
there will not be much to do for some years to come. I answered him
that having myself asked him for St. Joseph in order to have some
occupation during the winter time, I would willingly accept it if he
should agree to cede it to me as part of the Vicariate, but that I should
not desire either St. Joseph as a see or the half of his diocese, which
he had offered to me. As the holy Archbishop renewed his overtures
on the question, I thought I ought to say a word to your Paternity about
it." 20 One may be confident that the Father General was not any more
ready than the Vicar-apostolic to see the Society assume charge of a
regularly organized diocese among the whites. As a matter of fact,
when in 1855 the Second Diocesan Synod of St. Louis petitioned the
Holy See to erect the vicanate-apostolic of the Indian country into a
titular diocese with Miege as Ordinary, Father Beckx intervened successfully to have the measure postponed. A letter written by the Bishop
to the Father General a few weeks before his removal to Leavenworth
is illuminating on conditions in the vicariate at this juncture
St Mary's of the Potawatomies
July 4, 1855.
Here I am just back from a long trip to Nebraska, [which I undertook] to obtain more or less exact information regarding the Catholic
population of this new Territory. I found Catholics almost everywhere
but not in sufficient numbers to provide for the support of a resident priest
among them As the population goes on growing every day, I have accepted or bought lots in the principal little towns begun since last Autumn.
These towns in Nebraska are Omaha City, Bellevue, Platteville, Karney
[Kearney] City, Nebraska City I gave $500 towards a chunh in Omaha
City, where there is already a good number of Catholics, and I paid
Miege a Beckx, February 8, 1854 (AA)
�12 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E
MIDDLE
UNITED
STATES
two hundred dollars for 8 lots in Karney [Kearney] City. I n the other
places there were liberal donations of the necessary ground for church and
schools
T h e Omaha tribe, which last year occupied the lands on which these
towns are being built, has reserved for itself 50 miles further into the
interior a rich portion of land on which they wish to have schools kept by
black-robes, so they say T h e y no longer want the Presbyterians, who have
been with them for several years T h e fund appropriated for their school
is 14,000 dollars a year irrespective of the number of pupils I have written
to Father Murphy begging him to accept this offer for two reasons principally. i ° T h e school having a good income will give little trouble on
the temporal side. 2 ° T h e Fathers being only 50 miles from the principal
points where the whites are settling will easily be able to visit them and
give them at least the strictly necessary instruction Many Catholics are
settling in the two new territories and I have no priests to give them I
have written to Ireland, France and Savoy for help N o answer yet If
the Society does not come to my aid, I see no other way than to take
my gun and a mule and go and hide myself in some corner of the Rocky
Mountains where it will be impossible for me to hear any more about the
wants of Kansas and Nebraska I have journeyed or run rather, by mulesteamer, you will of course understand, almost without interruption from
mid-March to the end of J u n e , visiting a good part of the two territories.
Trouble, fatigue, embarrassment are never wanting in this sort of expedition, but all this would assuredly be nothing if the heart did not overflow
with pain in consequence of the isolation and miseries of so many poor
souls to whom the Vicar-Apostolic solely by himself can afford no relief.
T h e Vice-Province of Missouri, so I believe, has scarcely done for
many years what it might have, but it is poor in subjects and cannot possibly
assist me according to my needs May I be permitted, Very Reverend
Father, to ask you whether some of our flourishing provinces of Europe
could not supply Kansas and Nebraska with a few missionaries for the salvation of the German and Irish population which is arriving among us?
Such a proposition, however, must not be made to Reverend Father Ponza
for he seems firmly resolved to take away from me Father Ponziglione,
who has now been four years with the Osage. I have asked Reverend
Father Murphy to answer him that if I am unfortunate enough not to be
able to obtain either [Jesuit] Fathers or secular priests, I shall have to hold
the five that I have to labor up and down the 14 degrees of latitude, to
say nothing of the longitude He can cry, make a fuss, do and say anything
he pleases, I am more than determined to hear neither with the nght ear
nor the left, and I have with all that the firm hope that your Paternity
will have the goodness to pardon me this whimsical sally, really pardonable
only in a poor Vicar-Apostolic who allows himself to indulge it.
T h e excitement caused in Kansas Territory by the slavery question makes
the Territory an object of attention on the part of the United States T h e
two parties are in contention over it and each is sending its contingent
of immigrants Everything sold by the Indians has been occupied a long
�ST. MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , II
13
time back All our plains and forests are now occupied by faims or newborn towns. T h e principal ones are Leavenworth, Delaware, Atchison,
Doniphan on the Missouri, Laurence [ L a w r e n c e ] , Franklin, Lecompton,
Benicia, Topeka, Fremont, Whitfield, Indianola, St. George, Manahatan
[ M a n h a t t a n ] , Pawnee, Reeder, Montgomery on the river of the Kants
[ K a n s a s ] , Awsakee, Osawatomie, lola, Nemaha, Jacksonville, Fort Scott
on various small rivers of the territory 2 1 At Doniphan they are building
a church, for which I have given 300 dollars At Pawnee I paid 150 dollars
for a few lots and gave out a coniract for a small house and chapel of
stone, which will cost 1300 dollars At Leavenworth, which is and will be
the best town of the whole territory, I have bought 23 lots for which I
paid 1675 dollars Moreover, at one mile from the town I bought 40 acres
for 255 dollars A house is in course of construction Though of frame it
will cost me 1100 dollars, a frame chapel which I am going to put up
there as soon as the house is finished will come to 800 dollars and the stable
will be an extra 300 dollars As your Paternity sees, it is a good deal of
money for a town which still counts only 900 inhabitants and six months of
existence T h e r e will be further embarrassments to face in order to obtain
titles to the lots and claims purchased, for everything happens to be on
prohibited land, that is to say, land on which the Government has forbidden
the whites to settle People to the number of 4000 or 5000 have squatted
on it, the Government has strongly remonstrated, but has taken no effective
measures to drive them off. This has encouraged others and I have been
of the number, following the advice of the Fathers of the Mission and of
numerous well-informed persons who have done the same as myself 2 2 W e
shall probably be given a quit-claim on payment of a little additional sum,
which will satisfy the Government and leave us with the advantages of
the first purchase.
Very Reverend P'ather Roothaan allowed me 500 dollars a year from
the interest on a sum which a Belgian gentleman made over to him and
which he [Roothaan] had allocated to the Vice-Province of Missouri. . . .
These 500 dollars have always been and always will be applied to the missions of the Society in the Vicariate My expenses this year will be at least
8000 dollars and verily I am frightened over the coming year Everything
is yet to be done, to be created, so to speak, and if by the strictest economy
of four years I had not succeeded in getting together a few thousand
dollars which now draw me out of embarrassment, the post would not be
21
Many of these towns are now extinct Cf "Some Lost Town of Kansas,"
Kans Hist Coll, 12 472-490
22
For an account of the Delaware trust lands on which the cily of Leavenworth was laid out in violation of a treaty with the Delaware tribe reserving them
from preemption, cf Andreas (ed ), History of Kansas (Chicago, 1883), p 421
Squatters on the trust lands were eventually allowed to purchase their claims at a
price fixed by the government Evidently Bishop Miege realized that Indian tenure
of the land had become impossible and that there was nothing unethical in securing an inchoate land-title which would according to every probability be later
recognized as a valid one in law.
�14 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D S T A T E S
tenable at all A letter I wrote in April, if I am not mistaken, must have
given the information your Paternity might wish to have in this matter
I hope that the allowance for last year, of which I have so far heard nothing, will make it possible for me to provide for the interests of the Vicariate
I am hardly preaching for myself when I speak in this manner I am an
ox or a horse which is merely breaking ground, nothing more I wish to
try to do good in order that my successor may have better days and more
time to work for the salvation of souls 23
Prior to Bishop Miege's arrival in Leavenworth the spiritual needs
of the few Catholic whites settled in what is now the state of Kansas
had been attended to from the Jesuit mission-centers. T h e Catholic
soldiers at Fort Leavenworth were visited as early as 1836 from the
Kickapoo Mission, those at Fort Scott were visited first from Sugar
Creek and afterwards from the Osage Mission. In 1854 a t the invitation
of the commandant, Major Ogden, a father from St Mary's began to
hold services once a month at Fort Riley, where a number of German
and Irish soldiers were stationed. In 1855, when cholera broke out at
the fort among the soldiers and the workmen engaged there in building
a new barracks, the visiting priest, probably Father Duennck, was indefatigable in charitable attentions to the sick. T h e cholera was of a
particularly virulent type, claiming in the short space of ten days a
hundred victims, among them Major Ogden himself. When the scourge
had passed away, the soldiers made up a purse of two hundred and
sixty dollars which they presented in token of gratitude to the visiting
23
Miege a Beckx, July 4, 1855 (AA) An important feature of Bishop Miege's
episcopal ministry was his confirmations Confirmations administered by him at
St Mary's numbered as follows 1 8 5 1 , 1 7 5 , 1854, 9 4 , 1859, 1 8 4 , 1862, 1 2 1 ,
1866, 1 3 8 , 1867, 3 9 , 1868, 5 0 , 1 8 7 1 , 1 0 9 , 1872, 5 0 , 1873, 5 0 , 1874, 48
T h e names of those receiving the sacrament reveal the varied complexion of the
population in and around St Mary's T h e list for 1859 includes the names of
Juliana Bruneau (residing with J Lassely), Aloysius Chochkikabat, a Kickapoo,
William, a Sioux, adopted son of Basil G n m a r d , Alexander Rencontre, a Sioux,
Mathilda Pratt, Archangela Allen, Emilia Beaubien, Maria Burnett, one-time
adopted daughter of Charles Beaubien, Josephine and Maria Higbee, David, Peter
and Theresa H a r d i n , Maria Wilmet, Julia Beaubien, Maria Joanna Burnett,
Aloysius Wabansi T h e group confirmed at St Marys, May 4, 1862, included the
following students at the mission school Francis Palmer, Dionysius Riordan,
T h e o d o r e David,—Loughton, Francis Vuillemet, Louis Oliver,—Darling, Peter
Mousse (Kwokitchis) and John Baptist Leclerc T w o Negro girls, servants of
Francis Bourbonnais, made their first communion at St Mary's, January 6, 1861
M a n a n n a , "a free negress," made her first communion also at St Mary's, February 3, 1861 On J u n e 27, 1854, twenty were confirmed in the Church of the
Sacred Heart at Soldier Creek, among them Peter M a n n , John B. Letendre,
James Ayot, David Vieu and Anthony Delaurier First Communion
and Confirmation Register, 1851-1887
(F)
�ST. MARY'S OF T H E POTAWATOMI, II
15
priest from St. Mary's. Subsequent to Bishop Miege's departure from
St. Mary's the country along the upper Kansas, Smoky Hill and Republican Rivers began to receive small knots of Catholic settlers, who
were to form the nuclei of future parishes. The Catholic ministry in
central Kansas may be said to have been put on an organized basis about
1859 W l t n t n e arrival at St. Mary's of Father Louis Dumortier, who
was to identify himself with itinerant missionary service among the
whites as Gailland identified himself with a similar service on behalf of
the Indians.
In eastern Kansas the task of ministering to the Catholic immigrants
fell to the diocesan priests and to the Benedictines. In 1858 Fathers
Heimann and Defoun, with a Jesuit, Father Converse, were stationed
at the Leavenworth cathedral. In the spring of 1855 the Benedictines
began to attend the Catholics settled in and around Doniphan on the
Missouri above Leavenworth. They built St. John's Church at Doniphan in 1856 and a church at Atchison in 1860, where in later years they
were to erect a splendid abbey and college. Lecompton, Wyandotte and
Lawrence had their resident priests before i860 while in Leavenworth
a second parish, St. Joseph's, was organized for the German population.
The visitation of his immense vicariate led Bishop Miege north
into Nebraska Territory and west into what is now Colorado. In i860,
with Brother John Kilcullin as companion, he travelled in his own conveyance over the plains to Denver. "Our Right Rev. Bishop is expected
back here about the 27th inst.," wrote the diocesan priest, Father Theodore Heimann, to De Smet, June 18, i860. "One of his mules died on
the road—he fears that his carriage—so famous for age arid journeys
will not be strong enough to bring him back here [Leavenworth City].
He has visited the Gregory diggings. On the 4th he met the Catholics
of Denver City to devise means ior the building of a church in that
place. Matters look very bright, says the Bishop, who intended to start
for Colorado City on the 6th inst. and to be back in Denver in about
twelve days." 23a
23a
(A). According to Defoun, Miege was in Colorado again in 1865, visiting
on this occasion the gold diggings of Pike's Peak The same author relates the
following incident which apparently occurred when Miege was in Colorado "One
day they were surprised by the arrival m the camp of a lonely stranger, with
beard unshaven, wearing a summer linen coat and carrying a gun upon his shoulder
The stranger was tall and muscular and there is no denying that they felt ill at
ease. He spoke French to them and they were glad to find an American with
whom they could converse He asked them who they were, whither they were
going, why they were camping there instead of being on their journey while the
weather was fine He asked them many more questions and thus rendered them
uneasy They told him all He finally smiled and told them he was acquainted
�16 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D S T A T E S
Five years before, in 1855, Bishop Miege had administered confirmation in Omaha, apparently the only occasion on which he visited'
the future metropolis of Nebraska. T h e Second Provincial Council of
St. Louis, which convened in 1855, proposed to the Holy See the separation of the two territories, Kansas and Nebraska, the former to be
erected into a diocese with Miege as Ordinary, the latter to be erected
into a vicanate-apostolic with De Smet as incumbent. Neither recommendation was acted upon except that two years later Nebraska Territory was organized into a vicariate though not under De Smet. This
measure was executed in deference to the wishes not only of the Second
Provincial Council of St. Louis but also of Miege In 1856 he represented to the Propaganda that it was impracticable for him to attend to
Nebraska Territory, which needed absolutely its own vicar-apostolic.
Later, in January, 1857, he wrote: " I was able to send only one priest to
Nebraska, I haven't another one to send and yet there are many thousands of Catholics in those parts." In 1858 Nebraska City was being
attended from Doniphan in Kansas Territory and Omaha from St.
John's Settlement in Nebraska, where Reverend Jeremiah Trecy, the
only resident priest in the upper territory, had built St. Patrick's Church
H o w anxious Bishop Miege was to have Nebraska Territory detached
from his vicariate appears from a letter which he addressed early in
1857 t 0 t n e General
I wrote last year to the Propaganda that it was utterly impossible for
me to attend to the other part of the Vicariate, which is called Nebraska,
and I ended the letter by saying "Since the necessity of assigning a vicarapostohc to these parts has been made known at Rome, I am not bound
before God to answer for the souls who reside there, the responsibility is
on those who fail to afford relief though they are able to do so " So far
I have received no answer to this letter nor do I hear that a vicar apostolic
has been appointed If they only realized or could realize at Rome the pressing need of the situation as I know it to be, I do not doubt that they would
apply an immediate and effective remedy. If your Paternity could say a
good word for me and Nebraska to his Eminence Cardinal Barnabo, he
would perform a most meritorious and merciful deed.24
with their bishop, e t c " The visitor turned out to be Bishop Miege himself
James H Defouri, Historical Sketch of the Catholtc Church m New Mexico
(San Francisco, 1887), p 47 Miege, as vicar-apostolic of territory subsequently
taken over by Bishop Lamy, figures in Willa Cather, Death Comes to the Arch*
btshof. For a letter of De Smet to Governor Gilpin of Colorado, who had asked
for Catholic priests to care for Mexicans settled on a large estate of his m the
San Luis Valley, Colorado, cf CR, De Smet, 4 1523 For Miege's own account
of his visitation of Colorado in i860 cf Mid-America, 18 266 et seq (1936)
24
Miege a Beckx, January 12, 1857 (AA) In 1855 Bishop Miege confirmed
m Omaha, this being apparently his first and only visit to the town He was in-
�ST. M A R P S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , I I
17
T h e representations made by Miege to Propaganda had their effect.
Early in 1857 Nebraska Territory was erected into a separate vicanateapostolic, which Miege was directed to administer pending the appointment of a vicar Two years later, in May, 1859, t n e Right Reverend
James O'Gorman, formerly prior of the Trappist abbey of New
Melleray, was consecrated the first Vicar-apostolic of Nebraska. The
upper portion of the Indian Territory, since organized into the states of
Nebraska, Wyoming, the two Dakotas and Montana (east of the
Rockies), was thus withdrawn from Bishop Miege's jurisdiction.
Ever since Miege fixed his residence at Leavenworth he had ceased
to concern himself with the Indians, giving all his attention to the
rapidly growing white population of the vicariate " I t was Father Duermck's duty," he wrote to Father Beckx in July, 1858, "to make known
to superiors the real state of his affairs, not my duty, whose interests
for two years back have been entirely separated from those of the Mission " 25 In fact the Bishop, "ever since he fixed his see at Leavenworth," so Father Druyts informed the General in 1859, n a cl "done
nothing for the Indian Missions, neither for those depending on the
Vice-Province, nor any other." 2 6 Apparently the Bishop was of the
mind that with the Indians, at least the Osage and Potawatomi, cared
for by the Jesuits, his own services and those of whatever priests he
could summon to his aid were necessarily to be bestowed on the groups
of Catholic immigrants now beginning to take shape in various parts of
Kansas. Meanwhile, one or other Jesuit father was associated with
Miege in pastoral duties at the Leavenworth cathedral. His episcopal
house in that city was in fact regarded as at least a quasi-Jesuit residence,
and as such was regularly entered in the official register of the Missouri
Vice-province beginning with the issue of 1857. I n t n a t y e a r Father
Beshor or Bouchard was residing in Leavenworth, he was followed
the succeeding year by Father James Converse. In 1859-1860 there was
no Jesuit father with the Bishop, but in 1861 he was having the services
of Father Francis X. De Coen and, in 1862, those, also, of Brother
John Lawless. Stationed at Leavenworth in subsequent years were the
Jesuit fathers Laigneil, D e Meester, Coghlan, Corbett and Schultz, the
last named being withdrawn in 1873. "Ours in Leavenworth," wrote
formed by the territorial governor, Cummmgs, that two lots had been offered for a
Catholic church and that more could be procured if necessary "Being well pleased
with the site of Omaha, I promised to send them a priest as soon as possible and
meanwhile I requested Father Tracy oi St John's [now Jackson] opposite Sioux
City to do what he could in Omaha " Cited in J Sterling Morton, History of
Nebraska (Lincoln, 1913), 2 458
25
Miege ad Beckx, July 26, 1858 (AA)
26
Druyts a Beckx, January 17, 1859 (AA).
�18 T H E JESUITS OF T H E MIDDLE U N I T E D STATES
Father Druyts in 1861, "are not in a normal position Fortunately,
Father De Coen and Brother Lawless are excellent religious." The
point was that the Leavenworth residence, being primarily a bishop's
headquarters, did not afford its Jesuit occupants adequate facilities for
the observance of their rule. "Bishop Miege has often asked me," said
Father Coosemans in 1869, " t o establish at Leavenworth a permanent
residence, which would be independent of his own. But the consultors,
to whom I submitted his request on two different occasions, showed
themselves opposed to the project. This is why I have given it up
altogether." 27
§ 3 . BISHOP MIEGE's RESIGNATION
Within two years of his consecration Bishop Miege was making
efforts to resign his vicariate. "What is to be done," he wrote to the
Jesuit vicar-general in April, 1853, apropos of the impending opening
up of Kansas to the whites, "with this horde of persons of all nationalities who are going to fling themselves on this territory? Surely civilized
folk would never have thought of me as a vicar-apostolic. I believe God
is permitting all this to put me back in my place. I feel within me a
very sincere desire to profit by this permission, the more so as the ViceProvince will scarcely be willing or able to furnish priests for places
were they will be needed. And I am so poorly made to command
Jesuits. What would be the situation if I had to get along with secular
priests? I am hoping that all these considerations, without taking other
things into account, will smooth the way." 28
Ten years later, in 1863, Miege again expressed his desire to be
relieved of his episcopal charge "on account of the impossibility, physical and moral," in which he found himself "of doing justice to the
duties of this high position." 29 In 1866 and again in 1868 he renewed
his efforts in the same direction. "I take advantage of the occasion of
good Father Keller's journey [to Rome]," he addressed Father Beckx
in September, 1868, "to commend anew to your Paternity the humble
petition which I submitted to you now nearly two years ago. I no longer
have either strength or courage and the good cause must necessarily
suffer from the incompetence of the bishop in a country where the
greatest vigor and the most ardent zeal are absolutely necessary " 30
27
Coosemans a Beckx, May 4, 1869 ( A A ) .
Miege au Vicaire-General, April 15, 1853 (AA)
29
Miege a Beckx, M a y 10, 1863 (AA)
80
Miege a Beckx, September 20, 1868 (AA) Father Keller, writing to Bishop
Miege from Rome December 3 1 , 1868, informed him that he had delivered his
letters to the Father General and made the desired representations as to the state
of the prelate's health " I f indeed it were in my power to do so, I would deliver
your Reverence from the burden at once But, as I wrote back to you on another
28
�ST. MARY'S OF T H E POTAWATOMI, II
19
Coosemans expressed himself to the General as being in favor of the
Bishop's petition. "He is very anxious to be relieved of this charge. I am
convinced that his resignation would make not only for his own happiness, but also for the good of the Society and perhaps even for the good
of religion in these parts. For the Catholic population is growing daily
and requires secular priests for its spiritual needs. Religious alone
cannot suffice for the work."
The following undated petition appears to have been addressed by
Miege to the Congregation of the Propaganda
1. T h e Sacred Congregation is perfectly aware with what reluctance he
[the petitioner] undertook the episcopal office unexpectedly imposed upon
him and with what prayerful insistence he attempted to decline it. He finally
undertook it through a motive of obedience as there was question at the
time only of the aborigines, who were to be brought from the worship of
idols to the Catholic faith. But now this territory, which was bought by
the Government in 1854, begins to be occupied by new settlers from every
quarter of the globe, who daily grow in numbers and, with numerous cities
and towns already built, have increased now to 500,000. T h e aborigines,
on the other hand, who number 8000 at the most, are so falling away by
degrees that they will apparently disappear altogether in a short time. T h e r e
is no reason therefore why the Vicariate among the heathen should still be
retained Rather should there be erected, in the judgment of the Sacred
Congregation, an episcopal see with a diocese of definite limits assigned
to it.
2. But whether it be decided to maintain the Vicariate as it now is or
to erect a diocese, either charge appears to be an excessive burden on our
shoulders and must be resigned As the result of continual labors of almost
twenty years we are now broken down in health and with the ailments
we have already contracted aggravating with old age, our health must
continue to deteriorate day by day. Moreover, so broad are the limits of
the Vicariate that they extend 600 miles from east to west and 300 from
north to south, hence it seems impossible [for us] in this state of feeble
health to make the customary visitations, undertake painfully long journeys
and do whatevei else is necessary ex officio, these things all requiring good,
sound health 3 1
3 I n addition to all this, the secular priests engaged in the Vicariate
are all young in years and well minded to discharge their ministry faithfully, but they need a Pastor to set them an example and at the same time
labor strenuously with them in everything, a thing not to be hoped for
except from a bishop still in the prime of life and physical strength.
occasion, the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda does not seem
at all inclined to allow this and hence there is further need of patience until it
shall please Divine Providence to arrange otherwise "
31
Miege's vicanate extended west to the mountains until the erection in 1868
of the Vicanate-apostolic of Denver
�20 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D S T A T E S
4 Finally, there seems to be no necessity for the head of this Vicariate
to belong to the Society of Jesus The Society has only two missions among
the natives, one among the Potawatomies and the other among the Osage,
and these missions will soon be reduced to the level of the normal civil
life [of the country]. Members of other religious families in number greater
than the Jesuits are exercising the sacred ministry. Hence no inconvenience
can ensue, especially as the assent of the [Jesuit] General will be obtained,
should one who is not a member of the Society succeed [the petitioner] in
the charge of the Vicariate or Diocese 32
Meantime, in 1859, Bishop Miege had represented to Cardinal
Barnabo, Prefect of the Propaganda, the possibility of his obtaining
financial aid in France toward building a new cathedral. " T h e Abbe
Pillon, editor of the Roster de Mane, encouraged me in the hope that
he will obtain from his subscribers enough money for building a fine
sanctuary in honor of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. H e suggests
that I visit France, where I should obtain considerable alms. I leave
the decision to you." T h e prefect, after conferring on the matter with
Father Beckx, declined to sanction the proposed visit to Europe. Some
years later the Bishop was enabled to begin an imposing cathedral of
Romanesque design on the southwest corner of Fifth and Kiowa Streets.
James F . Meline, a visitor to Leavenworth in 1866, saw the church in
process of construction. "On a high and commanding site a Catholic
cathedral of substantial brick is now going up and is almost ready for
roofing. Judging by the eye I would say its size was one hundred and
eighty feet by ninety." 33 Excavations for the edifice were begun in
the spring of 1864, the corner-stone was laid in September of the same
year, and the finished cathedral was dedicated December 8, 1868, under
the title of the Immaculate Conception. T h e cost was between one hundred and fifty thousand and one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. T h e contractor was James McGonigle, who arrived in Leavenworth in 1857 from his birth-place in the immediate vicinity of the
Giants' Causeway in Ireland. H e went to work at once at three dollars
a day of ten hours, and in a few months had risen to be a builder and
contractor on his own account.
I arrived in Leavenworth May 6, 1857, where I made the acquaintance
of Bishop Miege, whose friendship was given to me and which is one
of the most pleasant memories of my life. My business association, con82
A copy of the document, in Latin and without address or date, is in the
Missouri Province Archives
33
James F Melme, Two Thousand Miles on Horseback, Santa Fe and back,
A Summer Tour through Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado and New Mexico, m the year
1866 (New York, 1867), p 2
�ST. MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , II
21
sisting in the construction of the cathedral from the foundation to its entire
completion, was mutually satisfactory I had a strong affection for him
when living and his memory is cherished with great appreciation . . Trie
Bishop possessed an artistic and architectural mind, which the great work
he accomplished shows The architectural proportions of the cathedral are
perfect The sanctuary is the largest of any cathedral in this country. He
often remarked that he wanted a large one so that the largest ceremonies
of the church could be held with comfort. Bishop Miege secured the best
fresco artist in the United States, Leon Pomarede The figures in fresco
are perfect and even today the expressions and colors are good The stained
glass figures show that they were made by a first-class artist, as the colors
are as fresh and clear today as when executed thirty-seven yeais ago. The
cathedral is of the Romanesque style of architecture and has no superior
of that Style in this country. The size of the cathedral is 94 feet front,
and 200 feet long and about 65 feet high to square of building The towers
when completed will be about 190 feet high 34
Meline visiting Leavenworth in 1866 saw the town in the heydey
of its prosperity. "Of hotels there is no lack and Leavenworth, too, has
its Tremont, Everett, Planters and Astor. . . . Immense numbers of
teams and wagons for transportation of merchandise from government
stores in Utah, New Mexico, Nebraska and Montana are fitted out
here, giving employment to a small army of drivers, merchants and
contractors." 35 Leavenworth in 1866 was claiming a population of
twenty-five thousand. Then came the collapse of its short-lived boom,
the town being outstripped by Kansas City in the race for commercial
ascendancy in the region marked by the big bend of the Missouri. But
in the sixties Leavenworth promised to develop into metropolitan
proportions Bishop Miege had unbounded faith in it as he showed
by building his cathedral on so imposing a scale. T h e unexpected turn
of tide in the fortunes of the town was a heavy reverse for the prelate,
who soon found a crushing debt of some hundred thousand dollars
weighing on the cathedral. 36 As there were no prospects of paying it
off without help from outside, he asked in the fall of 1868 to be excused from attendance at the impending Vatican Council in order that
he might solicit aid in person from the Catholics in Europe. " I consider this absolutely necessary in the circumstances in which I find myself and I hope that our Divine Master will inspire you [Father Beckx]
as also Cardinal Barnabo to grant me this favor which duty alone constrains me to ask." Though Miege was not excused from attendance
at the Vatican Council, he was permitted on its dissolution to visit South
84
35
36
Kans Htst. Coll, 9 156, 159
Melme, of ctt., p. 2
This is the figure given by McGonigle, Kans Hist Coll, 9 1 56
�22 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D S T A T E S
America, wKere he spent two years-appealing to the generosity of the
Latin-Americans and with noteworthy result H e brought back with him,
according to report, some fifty thousand dollars. His travels were not
without risk to life, on crossing the Andes he was blindfolded as was
also the mule which he rode and which was led by a guide 37
Before leaving the United States in the summer of 1869 Bishop
Miege had named Father Michael Corbett, a Jesuit member of his
household in Leavenworth, temporary administrator of the vicariate
with the understanding that, if his own resignation were accepted, he
would relieve Father Corbett of the charge and appoint another administrator not of the Society. Father Coosemans, the provincial, would
have wished another arrangement "Bishop Miege, who thinks of sailing for Europe in September or October, wishes to make Father Corbett
the administrator of his Vicariate during his absence. I offered my objections and suggested that he name rather a secular priest or the
Superior of the Benedictines, for apart from the fact that this nomination seems to be contrary to the spirit of the Society, I am afraid that
the evil of a Jesuit Vicar-Apostolic in our Province may be perpetuated
if Bishop Miege should happen to be shipwrecked or succeed in ridding himself of his charge." 38 Father Corbett, unaccustomed to executive tasks, found his position as administrator a trying one. " I t is useless
to tell you," he wrote to Coosemans, "how much I desire to be withdrawn from here." 39 Father Coosemans in turn informed the General
in July, 1870, that the dogma of papal infallibility having been proclaimed, as he had just read in the papers, Bishop Miege ought to return at once to his vicariate where his presence was sorely needed. 40
T h e problem was solved by the appointment of a coadjutor to Miege
in the person of the Benedictine, Father Louis M . Fink, a Bavarian,
who on June 4, 1871, was consecrated Bishop of Eucarpia m farttbus
in the Benedictine church of St. Joseph in Chicago. It was the first episcopal consecration to take place in that city. Four months later the
87
Miege a Beckx, September 20, 1868 (AA) Kans Htst. Coll, 9 158.
Coosemans a Beckx, 1868 ( A A ) .
39
Coosemans on returning from a visitation of St Mary's in 1869 stopped at
Leavenworth, where he found Corbett in great distress over Bishop Miege's
finances T h e r e were heavy obligations and no money at hand to meet them or pay
off depositors Coosemans hoped the Bishop would secure aid in Europe, "otherwise
the sooner he returned the better it will be for his own credit and also, I believe,
that of R e l i g i o n " Coosemans a Beckx, October 19, 1869 (AA) " D u r i n g Father
Corbett's administration of the diocese he exercised great ability and sound j u d g ment and retired from his responsibility having given satisfaction to the priests
and people of the diocese " James McGonigle m Kans Htst Coll , 9 159
40
Coosemans a Beckx, J u l y 9, 1870 (AA)
38
�ST. MARY'S OF T H E POTAWATOMI, [I
23
church which witnessed it was swept away in the Great Fire that became
historic in the annals of Chicago.
The idea of securing a coadjutor to Bishop Miege with a view to
relieving the situation in the vicariate would appear to have originated
with Father Beckx. At any rate, in a communication to the prelate
under date of July 1, 1869, he expressed a desire to aid him in his
difficulties by resorting to this expedient. He was unwilling to see a
Jesuit appointed to the dignity, but he counseled the Bishop to gather
data concerning some competent priest outside of the Society and propose him to the Sacred Congregation.41 When Bishop Fink's appointment was announced, the General expressed to Miege his keen satisfaction over the news>
I received your letter with greal interior joy on the very day on which
a year ago the decree of Infallibility was confirmed. But how things have
changed since that time' First of all, I rejoice with you and sincerely congratulate you on having at last got a Coadjutor such as you have desired, a
man religious, prudent, pious, full of apostolic zeal, knowing the country,
eager to go ahead with the good works you have taken in hand and able
to bring them to a happy issue I hope that with your joint efforts you will
devise means foi gradually relieving the necessities which render you so
anxious But I do not think it proper for you to contemplate giving up
your place before the debts have been paid or at least so pro\ided for that
they will not seem to be a burden upon your successor.
. . I should like
to learn at some opportune time to what Province or house you would
prefer to retire after you have given up your position and this [ should wish
to know in order that 1 may meet your wishes as far as in me lies 4 2
The funds collected by Miege in his South American trip enabled
him to meet a large part of his obligations. In a document signed at
Leavenworth, June 5, 1874, by Bishop Fink at the request of Bishop
Miege, the former, after witnessing that a considerable part {partem
notabilem) of the debt on the cathedral had been discharged, engaged
himself to make every effort to pay off the remainder. A few months
later, November 8, 1874, Pius IX in an audience granted to Cardinal
Simeoni, Prefect of the Propaganda, accepted Miege's resignation The
decree was forwarded to him at Leavenworth on the 16th of the same
month and was received in December of the same year, 1874. Immediately on its receipt he bade farewell to his episcopal city and resumed
the long sought for status of a simple member of the Jesuil province of
Missouri. No one could have managed his relinquishment of a high
ecclesiastical office with more effective secrecy. The Coadjutor-bishop
Beckx ad Miege, July i, 1869 (AA)
Beckx ad Miege, 1871 (AA)
�24 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D S T A T E S
was absent and no one at the episcopal residence was aware of what
had occurred until Bishop Miege was on his way to St. Louis. Father
Defouri, the diocesan priest stationed at the Leavenworth cathedral
in its early years, ever afterwards preserved with jealous care the
simple written message which he received from Bishop Miege on this
occasion. "Dear friend, when you will receive this letter I will be far
away. Thank you for your kindness to me and pray for me. J. B
Miege." 43 T h e episcopal cross was missing from the signature.
At a meeting of the Catholics of Leavenworth held on January 10,
1875, resolutions were adopted expressing their deep regret over the
departure of their beloved Bishop "from a diocese which has so richly
reaped the benefit of his untiring zeal, his fervent piety and his keen
penetrating sagacity exercised during more than twenty years of arduous
duty which had brought out of a chaotic wilderness a living tangible
spiritual power." T h e resolutions declared that esteem and regard for
him were by no means confined to his coreligionists "Our love and
respect for him as Catholics is shared by the people of Kansas generally,
who in the past twenty years have learned to love him for his sterling
worth and energy in the upbuilding of the material interests of the
State, his devotion to its people and to their interest and honor during
the many struggles that have marked the history of our growing commonwealth." 44 Miege's long years of untiring labor for the upbuilding
of the Catholic Church in Kansas had indeed made a deep impression
on the laity. T h e clergy associated with him were not behindhand in
recognition of his worth as a man and his achievement as a bishop. " H e
is a business man," wrote Father Defouri, "with the highest attainments
of the heart and mind. . . . Everything he left behind him was a
monument; but he never referred to anything that might flatter him.
H e worked for God and from God he expected the reward." In view
of his long years of intimacy with the Bishop, the testimony of Father
Paul Ponziglione, the Jesuit Osage missionary, is of particular significance*
It was my lot to accompany Father Miege in many of his travels, especially when he went to give confirmation, and I always found him kind,
amiable and m all respects edifying At that time we generally traveled in
parties of three or four together and he would always show himself as
sociable and accomodating as one could be Once we had picked up a place
for camping he would go out with his double-barreled gun and look around
for some game and as he was a good hunter he always would supply us
43
Cited in Defouri to Ponziglione, May 25, 1884 (A)
The resolutions were signed by D W Thomas as president, and P Geraugftty
as secretary of the meeting Twelve other signatures, including that of James McGonigle, are affixed to the document. (A).
44
�ST. MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , [I
25
with fresh venison. Ostentation he had none and far from claiming any
distinction on account of his high character he would help us in cooking
the meals and would go through all the drudgery of camp life In spite of
all the distractions indispensible with those who are bound to be so much out
of doors, he was always very careful to give due time to mental prayer and
to the recital of his breviary. Charity, the characteristic virtue of a bishop,
was eminent in him. The poor knew it and were very familiar with him
At home as well as abroad he was always willing to listen to them, to give
them advice and to divide with them whatever he had, so that the calls
he used to receive from such people were very frequent, for they knew
they were welcome at his house. Kansas will remember him for years to
come. The Cathedral, the Academy, the Hospital and the schools he put up
are standing monuments that speak for him more brilliantly than any tongue
can do But of all the monuments he leaves the Christianity which he established in Kansas will be that which more eloquently than any other
[thing] shall speak of him to future generations 45
Bishop Miege on retiring from Leavenworth doffed all his episcopal
insignia and became known merely as Father Miege. His first assignment was to the office of spiritual director of the Jesuit seminary opened
a few years previously at Woodstock in Maryland. From there he was
called back in 1877 to the West to become the first president of Detroit
College, later Detroit University. In 1880 he returned to his former
post of spiritual director at Woodstock College, where he died in his
eightieth year, January 21, 1884.
§ 4 . T H E POTAWATOMI TREATIES AND T H E MISSION
T h e movement for the breaking up of the Potawatorm reserve on
the lines indicated above (Chap. X X V I I I , § 10) culminated in a treaty
made at the agency, November 15, 1861, between the "chiefs, braves
and headmen of the Potawatomi nation" and William W . Ross, acting
as commissioner on the part of the United States. T h e treaty was ratified by the senate April 15, 1862 and a few days later, April 19, was
proclaimed by President Lincoln. Each chief was to receive a section
of landj each headman, a half-section, each other head of a family, a
quarter sectionj and each person not included under the foregoing categories, eighty acres of land. Undivided quantities were to be set out
for such among the Indians as still desired to hold their land in common while the unallotted portion of the reserve was to be sold for the
benefit of the tribe. Moreover, the treaty provided that St. Mary's
Catholic Mission and the Baptist Mission be each allotted a half-section
or three hundred and twenty acres of land. Said article six*
Ponziglione to Bushart, May 7, 1884 (A)
�26 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E
MIDDLE
UNITED
STATES
T h e r e shall be selected by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs three hundred and twenty acres of land, including the church, school-houses and fields
of the St Mary's Catholic Mission, but not including the buildings and
enclosures occupied and used by persons other than those connected with
the Mission, without the consent of such persons, which shall be conveyed
by the Secretary of the Interior to John F Diel [Diels], John Summaker
[Schoenmakers], and M . Genllain [Gailland] as trustees for the use of the
society under whose patronage and control the church and school have
been conducted within the last fourteen years, on condition, however, that
so long as the Pottawatomie Nation shall continue to occupy its present
reservation or any portion thereof, the said land shall be used and its products
devoted exclusively to the maintenance of a school and church for their
benefit And there shall be reserved and conveyed in like manner and upon
like conditions, three hundred and twenty acres of land, including the Baptist
Mission buildings and enclosures, such conveyance to be made to such persons as may be designated by the Baptist Board of Missions " 4 6
T h e treaty, t h o u g h acceptable to t h e majority of t h e tribe, h a d
not g o n e t h r o u g h without protest, especially on t h e p a r t of t h e P r a i r i e
B a n d . Opposition to it was led by t h e eloquent S h a w g u e e . Y e t t h e n a m e
of this I n d i a n orator a n d chief was t h e first signed to t h e t r e a t y as it
was also signed to t h e subsequent t r e a t y of 1867. F a t h e r G a i l l a n d ' s account of Shawguee's stirring invective against t h e a l l e g e d injustice of
t h e g o v e r n m e n t ' s requiring t h e I n d i a n s to sell their lands a n d m o v e
to a n o t h e r reserve deserves reproduction. H e seems to h a v e been present at t h e council, which was h e l d at t h e agency.
O n the day appointed for the meeting, all the Indians were at the
Agency, sitting on the sod After the preliminary preparation, Commissioner
Dole arose, and said " M y friends, by order of the President I have called
you 1 to this meeting to induce you to sectionize your land and come under
the law as citizens of the United States, or to sell out here entirely, and
take in exchange another reservation, which shall be assigned to you farther
46
Kappler, Indian Affairs Laws and Treaties, 2 827 The treaty was amended
in 1866 so as to extend its provisions to all heads of families and adults without
distinction of sex. Kappler, of cit, 2 916 A Potawatomi delegation was in
Washington at the time the treaty of 1861 was ratified "1862, April 2 Today
six of the Potawatomies in company with Major Ross started for Washington to
have the treaty ratified in Congress They were the chief Mionio, Hygie, Ben
Bertrand, John Tipton, George Young, Wiwasy, Medard Beaubien, Louis Ogee, J
Bourassa" Duennck's Diary I (F) According to Andreas, History of Kansas,
p 1338, the treaty of 1861 was concluded at the Potawatomi agency on Cross
Creek near Rossville For a while the agency was at St Marys, certainly so in 1869,
when George W Fisher attended a payment there. Kans Hist Coll., 14 552 A
small stone building still occupied and standing near the college buildings on the
west continues to be pointed out as the old agency house
�ST. MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I ,
[I
27
west." Hereupon Shahgwee [Shawguee] came to greet the delegates all
eyes were on him He is painted, wears a feather cap, he has bioad shoulders
and high breast, that gives his lungs and the magnitude of his heart free
and easy play His full Indian attire adds solemnity to the circumstances.
T h e n standing in front of the delegation our speaker said "Gentlemen of
the delegation, I too come before you to speak in the name of my fellow
Potto wattomies I tell you, Messrs Commissioners, we cannot accept either
of these propositions, we are not prepared to sectionize our land and come
under the law, it is only now we begin to see into the habits of the white
men W e r e I to make that step now, the whites would immediately surround me by the hundreds, and by a thousand artifices get hold of my
pioperty, like so many leeches they would suck my blood, until I should
be dead of exhaustion. No, we are not advanced enough in civilization to
become citizens." "But then the laws will protect you," said M r . Dole
"Ah, the law protect m e ' " answered Shahgwee, "the law protects him
that understands it, but to the pooi and ignorant like the Indians it is not
a shield of protection, on the contrary it is a cloak to cover the lawgiver's
malice " T h e Commissioner replied "If you do not think proper to become
citizens, then choose the other alternative given you, sell out to the Government this reservation and purchase another farther west, where you will be
unmolested by the whites, we will pay you well " "You will pay me well'
Ah, not all your gold can buy from us this our sweet home, the nearest to
the graves of our ancestors. Here we have been born, here we have grown
up and reached manhood, here we shall die But ye white men, why are you
so covetous, so ravenous of this my poor limited home? Behold with what
liberality I treated thee I was once the undisputed owner of that vast region,
which lies around the lakes and between the great rivers, [ ceded them
to thee for this paltry reservation in the barren west I gave to thee Michigan,
Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and thou begrudgest me this little spot, on
which I am allowed to rest and labor' Is this thy return to my beneficence'1
Is this the character of thy mercy? T h o u hast driven my forefathers from
the shores of the Atlantic, are you going to pursue me until I disappear
in the waters of the Pacific'' O h ' for God's sake have mercy on m e ; cease
to hunt me from desert to desert like a wild beast Show us barbarians that
civilization has softened your hearts as well as enlightened your minds."
Hereupon Commissioner Dole reminded the speaker that the President wished
them for their own good either to sectionize the land or move away from
Kansas Shahgwee [Shawguee] answered " I do not thank the President
for such a desire, I think we know our interests as well as the President*
when he is enjoying himself with his friends, what does he care about us
poor, benighted, forlorn Indians? One thing I wonder at, that the President, who should be like a rock, immovable in his mind and convictions,
changes so often and so quickly To-day he thinks and says the contrary
of yesterday. O n the same subject he speaks one thing to me and another
to you T h e President told me, when he assigned me this reservation, I
remember it well, he told me that tips land should be my last and permanent
home W h a t business has he to tell me to change my abode? This place
�28 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E
MIDDLE UNITED
STATES
is mine: I can leave it or keep it as I please " Thereupon one of the delegates remarked that this country being settled by the whites as well as by
the Indians, "it is but right that in our regulation we consult their wishes,
otherwise there will be no peace, no harmony between the two races "
Shahgwee [Shawguee] replied " A pretty thing this is Suppose a stranger
comes into your home, and declares himself dissatisfied with the way your
domestic affairs are managed, would you listen to his whims' 1 W h a t have
we to do with the whites that are settling among us? If our manner of
acting displeases them, why do they come in our way? Let them allow
us to manage our own affairs, and we will let them manage their own "
Here Com Dole called the speaker's attention to the division of parties that
were among them. "You were once," said he, "a great nation, formidable
to your enemies T h e name of Pottowattomy was a terror to the Sioux and
the Osages, unite once more, reconcile the different parties for your common interests, and you will be again a great and happy people " Shahgwee
[Shawguee] quickly retorted "You have the brass to exhort us to peace
and union, whilst at home you take up arms against each other and fight
to the knife T h e South is arrayed against the North, the son fights against
the father; the brother against the brother Your country is turned into
one vast battlefield, and those rich plains that once produced so abundant
crops are laid waste and reddened with the blood of American citizens
Sir, restore peace and union among yourselves, before you come and preach
it to us." These words provoked Com Dole, who betrayed his emotion
He quickly arose and said " W h e t h e r you like it or no, you must sign the
treaty " T h e orator, no less excited and indignant, several times repeated
the words, "you must, you must," adding, "this is an imperious c o m m a n d , "
then in a doleful tone he said to the Commissioner " A h ' thou art the
strongest, I am the weakest " After which, turning himself and casting
an angry look at the young men seated on the sod, in a thundering voice
he said " Y e braves of the Pottowattomy nation, why do you not rise; but
no, the braves are all dead, you are but mere children." 4 7
By the authorities of St. Mary's Mission the wording of article
six of the treaty of 1861 was felt to be unsatisfactory, as not definitely
guaranteeing to them a title in fee-simple to the allotted half-section.
"This [the grant of the half-section]," wrote Father Coosemans August
21, 1862, "is so worded in the treaty that our Fathers might be subject
in the future to many quibblings and perhaps to the loss of lands,
47
WL, 6 78 Commissioner Dole was in Kansas in i860 and apparently attended one of the Indian councils which preceded the signing of the treaty
However, Shawguee's reference to the Civil War as then in progress dates his
"talk" sometime between the spring of 1861 and November 1 5 of the same year,
when the treaty was signed Whether or not Dole was m Kansas in 1861 has not
been ascertained Possibly Dole is mistakenly named in Gailland's account for
some other official Gailland's version of Shawguee's "talk" probably amplifies
freely the orator's actual words
�ST. MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I ,
[I
29
48
i m p r o v e m e n t s , buildings etc."
G a d l a n d in his m s History
of St.
Mary's Mission ventures t h e opinion t h a t t h e article in its actual form
was probably inserted in bad faith to t h e prejudice of t h e mission a n d
this view appears to have been shared by D e Smet writing in 1862
" S t . M a r y ' s Mission is placed in d a n g e r by conditions and quibbles
which t h e G o v e r n m e n t A g e n t caused to be p u t in t h e last t r e a t y . " 4 9
I n his anxiety to secure an interpretation of t h e article in question
F a t h e r Diels addressed a communication to Commissioner of I n d i a n
Affairs D o l e
1st It is admitted, I believe, on all hands that our Mission has done
much, very much, towards improving the condition of the Pottawatomies
2nd I n endeavoring to effect this good, we have expended much money
and labor, in building a church without any assistance from the Government,
and in erecting, at our own cost, several buildings, enclosing fields, setting
out orchards etc. without any compensation, except the scanty allowance
of $50 00 and of late years of $75.00 per annum, for clothing, boarding
and educating, throughout the year, each boy and girl sent to our schools.
3rd. This we have done voluntarily and cheerfully, and this we should
gladly continue to do if we are not prevented by untoward circumstances
But to be able to do this well, we should have to expend before long several
thousand dollars, in addition to the expenses already made, since our fences
are mostly worn out and our housing for dormitories and school purpose [s] is
insufficient. Now, to be justified to incur these necessary expenses, we should
be sure that either the land and improvements are to be our own, or at
least, that we shall be duly paid for the improvements made, in concurrence
with the views of the U S. Government, for the benefit of the Indians
For these considerations we should deem it a great favor to be allowed, with
the consent of the Government, instead of accepting the grant as a gift
with a title that might be disputed or give rise to difficulties, rather to purchase it at the rate of $1 25 per acre from the Indians, who at the first
signing of the Treaty had expressly given it to us m fee-stmfle and who
even now, together with their agent, understand the present Article 6th,
as intended not 1o check but to encourage our operations 5 0
48
Coosemans a Beckx, August 21, 1862 (AA) "1862 April 29 The Washington delegation returned Article 6 sounds quite unfavorably for ihe Mission, so
May 8, Diels leaves for St. Louis to buy provisions for the Mission, but particularly
to consult with Provincial about the treaty May 9 Ben Bertrand comes to speak
about the treaty June 18 On this day the Commissioner of the Indians assembled
[the Indians] at the Agency to speak about the article of the treaty Was said to
have been their intention to give j/2 section in fee simple Asked by writing from
the Secretary of the Interior whether he would convey it under such title, yet it
was still worded ambiguously." Duennck's Diary I. (F)
49
De Smet a Beckx, August, 1862. (AA). Cf, however, tnfra, Father Diels's
petition and Ross's indorsement of the same.
50
Diels to Dole, June 13, 1862. (H)
�30 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D S T A T E S
Father Diels then proposed a series of six questions touching *the
interpretation of the article. H e asked in question three, "are the words,
'the said land shall be used and its products devoted exclusively to the
maintenance of a school and church for their benefit,' so to be understood that in future we should no longer, as heretofore, be allowed to
labor, by means of our school and church on the land in question, for
the benefit of the whole population, though that mutual intercourse
should evidently be rather an advantage than an injury to the Pottawatomies ? " T h e last statement is an interesting one in view of the
usual contention of the missionaries that the Indians were almost inevitably demoralized by contact with the whites. Diels's communication to Dole was indorsed by Agent W W . Ross
He [Diels] has said correctly that this Mission has done much towards
elevating the character and alleviating the condition of the Pottawatomies
It has become in fact one of those established institutions of the country
which the Nation would be very loath to part with at any time, much
less at the present. But it is thought by the Superiors that they would not
be justified in making the necessary outlays of money in rebuilding and
enlarging their buildings and fences unless they can have a title in fee-simple
of the 320 acres of land granted to them by the 6th section of the treaty
of November 15, 1861 And if in your judgement the proper construction
of that section will give them a warranty deed, it will be very gratifying
to the Indians, who without doubt desire to give the land for past services
If this cannot be done, it would be but a mere act of justice to provide if
possible a way by which they can purchase the land upon which their improvements are made 5 1
Six years were to elapse before the desired warranty-deed to the
half-section was in the possession of the mission. In the interval
the 1 attitude of the Potawatomi on the question at issue had found
expression in a petition to the government signed October, 1862, by
eighty-seven of their leading men, including Chiefs Joseph Laflamboise (Lafromboise), MaShee, Joseph Wewesa, Peter Chawee and the
mixed-bloods, Peter Moose, J H . Bertrand, Samuel L Bertrand,
Thomas Evans, Thomas Bourassa, Amable Toupin and Napoleon Bertrand. T h e petition also bore the indorsement of the business committee
of the nation, Joseph N . Bourassa (president), George L. Young, B. H .
Bertrand, Louis Vieux, M B Beaubien and John Tipton
Whereas we, Chiefs, Braves and Headmen of the Pottawatomie Nation
of Indians acknowledge that the St Mary's Catholic Mission established in
our midst has for at least 14 years, with great labor and expense, maintained
a church and school amongst us, to our great benefit, and whereas it was
Ross to Dole, June 17, 1862 (H)
�ST. MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , II
31
our desire and intention in giving to the representatives of said Mission a
grant of 320 acres of land (according to the 6th article of a treaty concluded
with the United States, November 15, 1861) that the said representatives
of the St Mary's Mission should acquire full possession of and an m-feesimple title to the said 320 acres of land, and whereas we now desire to
remove certain conditions and restrictions found in the said 6th article, which
render it difficult for ihe Mission to make new improvements on land not
held with an absolute title, W e hereby petition the United States and our
great Father, the President and the United States officers, to convey to the
said representatives John F Diels, John Schoenmaker and M Gailland, the
said 320 acres of land, including ihe church, school-houses and fields of
said Mission, with an absolute and unconditional title, so that the said representatives may receive, as soon as possible, an m-fee-simple warranty deed
of said land, to be acquired either as a gift or to be purchased by them at
the rate of one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, according as it will
seem best 5 2
O n representations presumably m a d e by t h e newly appointed Potawatomi agent, D r L u t h e r R . P a l m e r , t h a t t h e rights of t h e mission
were after all sufficiently safeguarded u n d e r t h e treaty, t h e Jesuit Mission B o a r d at St Louis gave article six their unanimous approval F e b r u a r y 27, 1863 " f o r it is plainly g a t h e r e d t h e r e f r o m t h a t t h e p r o p e r t y
in question will revert in full r i g h t to t h e Society if at any time t h e
P o t t o w a t o m i e should disappear as a nation a n d m i n g l e with other citizens in r e g u l a r enjoyment of a civilized status." 5 3 A t t h e same t i m e ,
however, it was not by any means assumed by t h e missionaries t h a t t h e
treaty w o u l d p r o v e a blessing to t h e P o t a w a t o m i . I n M a y , 1862, F a t h e r
Coosemans r e p o r t e d to t h e G e n e r a l
Father Gailland continues to work with much patience and with his
usual tact for the con\ersion of the heathen and the perfection of the converted Indians But the future is dark enough and can afford him little
courage T h e treaty made by the Potowatomies with the Government on
the subject of their lands will probably prove the ruin of the tribe Those
who lived around the church and went there every day for mass and several
times a month for the sacraments have already moved off several miles so
that they cannot attend divine services as regularly as before It is to be
feared that they will soon lose their fervor and regularity 5 4
T o t h e interval between t h e two P o t a w a t o m i treaties belongs an
appeal m a d e by t h e nation t h r o u g h their delegates Joseph Bourassa, B
52
(A) The petition was indorsed by Ross in a letter to the Indian Office,
October 9, 1862. ( H ) .
53
Ltber Consultattonum (A)
54
Coosemans a Beckx, May 16, 1862 (AA).
�32 T H E JESUITS OF T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D STATES
H. Bertrand, and Anthony Navarre, to the Congress of the United
States for money and supplies alleged to be due to them from the government. The claim was made by the Indians that the government
owed them $160,540.48 and, in addition, 11,000 pounds of tobacco, 567
of iron, 855 of steel, and 672 of salt. Moreover, they made complaint
that the commissioner of Indian affairs in his report to the secretary
of the interior had thrown up to them the part they took in the War
of 1812, and they quoted against the commissioner the first article of
the treaty of 1815. "Every injury or act of hostility by one or other
of the contracting parties against the other shall be mutually forgiven
and forgotten." They admitted that they had fought against the Americans in 1812, but pleaded in explanation that they were deceived "Men
from Canada came and told us lies and gave us presents. Some, but not
all of our people, fought against you " The appeal continued
Look over the treaties under which we claim this amount and you will
find that we have by them given you millions of acres of the best lands in
the country, and that, again and again, we have been removed from our
rich hunting grounds, our fertile fields and our pleasant homes Lands have
been given us and taken away again Under the treaty of 1846 we bought
the lands where we now live and they were guaranteed to us a "home forever " But even now you are asking us to go away and leave them, to go
to a new and strange country, buy other lands and begin again.
In the treaty of 1846 you gave us "promise of all proper care and
parental protection " Yet you have made our lands a highway Multitudes
of your people have been crossing our reservation ever since we went upon
it T h e y have taken our horses and cattle, they have destroyed our fences
and crops and cut down our lumber, and in no way has your "care and
parental protection" been extended to us W e have borne it all patiently,
and while bearing it, we have given you "assurance of our fidelity and friendship" by shedding our blood to save your country.
But afterwards we made peace, and for more than fifty years no one
of our people has lifted his hands against the white man W e have not only
been at peace with the United States ever since, but when wicked men
tried to break up your Government our young men went with your army
and fought for you. And before that time our young men fought for you
in the Sac and Fox war. This was over a quarter of a century ago All
the white men who fought in that war were long ago rewarded with land—
T h e y have chosen their land—rich and beautiful as any in the world—all
around our reservation. W h a t has been our reward? Nothing 5 5
Certain influences hostile to the mission appear to have been .frequently at work during the sixties necessitating on the part of its man55
A copy of the appeal, in pamphlet form, is in the Congressional Library,
Washington.
�ST MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , II
33
agers an attitude of ceaseless vigilance Father Gailland declared that
most of the United States agents for the Potawatomi weie unfriendly
to the mission, often commending it outwardly but secretly working
against it H e is particularly severe on Agent Ross, affirming that the
latter made an attempt, which his own friends frustrated, to organize a
delegation of chiefs to go to Washington to make some or other additions to the treaty, presumably to the prejudice of the mission " H e
is very much opposed to our mission and to our schools especially
More than once he tried to have us migrate with the Indians as if we
were a nuisance to him here " 5G
Ross was succeeded in 1863 by Dr Luther R. Palmer During the
six years that the latter presided over the agency the Catholic schools
reached their highest level of prosperity. "Many people m high stations
passing by ask to be allowed to see them and bestow high praises on
them " So Father Gailland in his chronicle for 1865 57 "But," he adds,
"we have enemies even in the city of Washington, who would fain see
them suppressed Senator Pomeroy" was obliged to take up their defence
H e did it nobly." Senator James Lane also finds mention in Gailland's
account as having come to the defence of the schools. In opposition to
them was said to stand Secretary of Interior Harlan, who, however,
soon disappeared from office in some political shake-up at Washington
Intrigue against the schools was apparently renewed at intervals, efforts
being made to supplant Palmer as agent by a Protestant clergyman In
1865 the doctor was in Washington in the interest of the schools.58
In 1866 he was at the head of a delegation of chiefs who visited the
national capital to arrange some minor matters concerning the treaty of
1861. The following year, 1867, n e w a s again in Washington, this time
to participate as United States commissioner in negotiating a second
treaty with the Potawatomi. This treaty was signed at the capital on
February 27 of that year, the United States being represented by "Louis
G. Bogy, commissioner of Indian Affairs, W . H Watson, special commissioner, Thos Murphy, supt of Indian Affairs for Kansas, and
Luther R Palmer, U . S. Indian Agent, duly authorized," and the Potawatomi by "their chiefs, braves and headmen, to wit Mazhee, Mianeo,
Shawgue, B H Bert rand, J N Bourassa, M B Beaubien, L H Ogee
56
Gailland, Htstoiy of St Mary's Mission (Ms) ( F ) There is no evidence
in Ross's correspondence with the Indian Office as far as examined of any unfriendly attitude on his part towards St Mary's Mission Petitions to the office from
Father Diels and the Indians on behalf of the mission were readily endorsed by
him
57
58
WL, 6 79
T h e r e is probably some confusion of dates in Gailland's chronicle
may have been in Washington only once during the period 1866-67.
Palmer
�34 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D S T A T E S
and G. L. "Young." According to the terms of this agreement the
Indians were authorized to purchase out of the proceeds of the sale of
their surplus or unallotted lands in Kansas a reservation south of the
state. Moreover, provisions were embodied touching such important
matters as the admission of the Indians to citizenship, tribal funds,
annuities, subsequent sale of unallotted lands etc The half-sections
allotted in the treaty of 1861 to the Catholic and Baptist missions were
to be conveyed to them in fee-simple. "Moreover," reads article eleven,
"the said John F . Deils [Diels], John Schoemaker and M . Gillaud
[Gailland] shall have the right to purchase in a compact body ten hundred and thirteen 54-100 acres of the unallotted lands at the price of
one dollar per acre, to be paid to the Secretary of the Interior, for the
use of said tribe, and when the consideration shall be paid as aforesaid
the President shall issue patents to said purchasers therefor, and in
selecting said ten hundred and thirteen 54-100 acres, said purchasers
shall have the preference over all other parties " 59 T h e words "in a
compact body," occurring in this article were alleged to have been interpolated without the knowledge of the chiefs by some unauthorized
person, with a view to forcing the mission to pick up its thousand acres
on hilly ground as all the land around St. Mary's was supposed to be
preempted Happily there were left in the elbow of the Kaw about
seventy acres unpreempted, which enabled the mission to take up a
thousand acres in "a compact body," from the mission buildings down
to a big bend in the river. 60
T h e article authorizing the mission to purchase a thousand and
more acres of the reserve land had not appeared in the treaty of 1861,
though at its signing the Indians had already expressed their desire to
have this land conveyed to the mission and even, so it appears, as an
outright gift. T h e St. Mary's house diary, 1862, records, as evidence
of Indian gratitude, that twelve hundred acres had been granted in
open council to the mission and in absolutely fee-simple Only a month
before the treaty of 1867 was signed at Washington the mission, anxious
to secure its title both to the half-section and to the additional thousand
acres, memorialized the government to this effect. That the appeal was
successful was very probably due to the fact that D r Palmer was among
the negotiators of the treaty
January 19, 1867
I n behalf of St Mary's Mission we beg leave to petition the government
for the following favors
I—to obtain a patent or deed in fee simple to the 320 acres of land
granted by treaty to John Schoenmaker, Maurice Gailland and John F
59
Kappler, of at., 2 973.
WL, 6 81
eo
�St Mary's Potawatomi Mission, St Marys, Kansas One of a series of photographs of Kansas scenes taken m 1868 by Alexander Gardner
of Washington, D. C Library of Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas
�Group of Potawatomi Indians, St Mary's Potawatomi Mission, St Marys, Kansas One of a series of photographs of Kansas scenes taken
in 1868 by Alexander Gardner of Washington, D C Library of Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas
�ST. MARY'S OF T H E POTAWATOMI, II
35
Diels (the names are mispelt in the printed copies of the treaty) as representatives of the Society under whose charge the Mission is
2—to acquire in fee simple deed to other lands convemenl to said Mission amounting to upwards of 1000 acres, part of which are improved land
of the Mission, all which lands were likewise promised to the aforesaid
John Schoenmaker, Maurice Gailland and John F Diels at the making of
the above alluded to treaty of i 8 6 0 [ 1 8 6 1 ] , as same represent and receive
for the Mission [ ms. ? ] , with the understanding that as this grant was not
expressed in the treaty, the R R. Company that would have a right to acquire the Pottowatomie lands not otherwise allotted would lease these lands
for the St Mary's Mission Now to avoid all delay and future misunderstanding, if there should be any difficulty in acquiring now the desired titles
to those lands, the St. Mary's Mission would consider it a favor to be able
to purchase said lands at the same price at which they are offered to the
R R Company, viz $ i 25 per acre
3—that the St Mary's Mission may continue to be useful in any event
and benefit the Indians even at a distance, we should suggest that the
government would make such arrangements in behalf of St Mary's Mission
that all such Indians as should wish to send their children could send them
to St. Mary's to have them educated out of the Indian educational fund 6 1
Though the treaty of 1867 met with the wishes of the Indians,
difficulties appear to have been thrown in the way of its ratification
by the senate. This did not take place until July 25, 1868, almost a
year and a half after the treaty had been concluded at Washington.
With a view to having it carried through Dr. Palmer in the course of
1867 led a Potawatomi delegation to the capital. The step was not taken
without difficulties. A clique unfriendly to the mission had won over
the principal chief Wewesa and with his backing had contrived to bring
about a choice of delegates favorable to their designs. In view of this
development it was felt at St. Mary's that the interests oi the mission
would fare badly at Washington. The main body of the Indians resented the trickery that had foisted upon them an unrepresentative delegation and one of the St. Mary's priests personally appealed to the chief,
but without success, to withhold his approval. Thereupon the Indians
were summoned in council, on which occasion John Pomnie (Pamahmee), a secondary chief, sharply rebuked the head-chief, Wewesa, for
having played into the hands of the enemies of the mission. "You are
not," said he, "invested with the authority of chief to act according to
your notions, but to promote the welfare of the community over which
you have been placed. Now, what interest is dearer to us than to possess
in our midst the Fathers to watch us and direct us, the Catholic schools
61
(H) The 1014 13 acres, all in township 10, irange 12, comprised eighteen
different lots
�36 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D S T A T E S
to educate our children, and you would take as our representatives at
Washington men of such description ? " John Pomnie then pleaded that
at least M r . "Beny" Bertrand be allowed to join the delegation as the
representative of the Catholic party 62 The latter's name was accordingly proposed to the council with the result that he was chosen a delegate by acclamation At Washington D r Palmer made known to the
Department of the Interior that Bertrand truly represented the great
majority of the sectionized Potawatomi while all the other delegates
together represented only a small minority of the tribe As a result
Bertrand's views on all measures affecting the mission prevailed with
the department The senate having ratified the treaty on Julv 25, 1868,
President Johnson proclaimed it the following August 7 On September 1, 1868, Father Diels telegraphed from Topeka to Father Maguire,
rector of Gonzaga College, Washington "Please acquaint at once Secretary Interior that we claim and purchase for St Mary's Mission the
land that the Pottawatomie Treaty entitles us to W e are notified too
l a t e " 63 In the course of the following year, 1869, President Johnson
put his signature to the patent securing to St Mary's Mission both the
half-section granted by the treaty of 1867 and the thousand odd acres
purchased by the mission in accordance with the terms of the same
treaty.
§ 5
SPIRITUAL MINISTRY AMONG T H E WHITES
Together with the Indians the few white Catholics settled here and
there on the Potawatomi reserve, most of them government employees,
shared the spiritual ministry of the Jesuits of St. Mary's White settlers
who arrived prior to 1853 include D r Luther R Palmer, Alexander
Peltier, Basil Gnmore, William Martell, Francis Bergeron, Antoine
Tescier, J B Frappe, Robert Wilson, Joseph Truckey, Alvah Higbee,
P Polk, Baptiste Ogee, Mrs Zoe Ducharme, later Mrs Wilson, Mrs
E A Bertrand, A P Bertrand, Clara Bertrand, and Mrs Amable
Bertrand, later Mrs Luther R Palmer 64 Some of these, the Bertrands,
for instance, had a strain of Indian blood
Most conspicuous perhaps among the white settlers was D r Luther
R Palmer, who arrived from his native state, New York, at St Marys
on September 20, 1850, in quest of health "During the fifties and early
part of the sixties he was recognized as Pottawatomie County's most
distinguished citizen " 65 Shortly after his arrival on the reservation
62
WL, 6 81
(H)
64
Tiibune (Wamego, Kans ), June 6, 1879 The list has not been verified
Most of the persons named were Catholics Citations from Kansas newspapers ire
from clippings in the library of the Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka
65
Times (St Mirys, Kans), July 14, 1876
63
�ST MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , I I
37
the Potawatomi drew up and submitted to the superintendent of Indian
affairs at St. Louis, Major Mitchell, a petition for the removal of Dr.
Johnston Lykins and the substitution in his place of Dr. Palmer as government physician to the tribe. Mitchell having transmitted the petition
with his indorsement to Luke R. Lea, commissioner of Indian affairs,
Palmer received the appointment of physician to the tribe and was
subsequently advanced to the post of agent. 66 H e was a member of the
first free state territorial council from the district of which Pottawatomie
County afterwards formed a part and also had a seat in the Wyandotte
constitutional convention, which drafted the Kansas state constitution.
H e was the author of the petition for the erection of a separate county
to be known as Pottawatomie out of the territory embraced in Riley
County, which had been organized by the Pawnee legislature in 1855.
The petition was granted by the Lecompton legislature in 1857, t n e
seat of the new county being first fixed at St. George. Dr. Palmer's son,
Francis Xavier, born March 17, 1851, was, by report, the first white
child born in Pottawatomie County. Some time after his arrival at St.
Marys the doctor married the relict of Amable Bertrand, one of
the group of mixed-bloods who had moved up with the Indians from
Sugar Creek. D r Palmer was a convert to the Catholic Church. 67
Prominent also among the pioneer white settlers of Pottawatomie
County was Robert Wilson, who with his family migrated with the
Indians from Sugar Creek, where he had been government blacksmith.
On August 12, 1853, n e entered the first government land in the
county, s. e. quarter of section 20, township 9, range 10. His log house
at Louisville on the Fort Riley Military Road, said to have been the
first dwelling in the county built outside the reserve, was a favorite
stopping place for travellers and was reputed to be the first hotel opened
in Pottawatomie County. 68
St. Mary's in the mind of its founders and pioneer promoters was
an Indian mission and nothing else. T h e Jesuit mission board at St.
Louis declared in 1864 " W e have no mission on behalf of the whites
in Kansas." And yet by the pressure of circumstances St. Mary's was
called upon to extend its beneficent hand no less to the whites that
66
Mitchell to Lea, April 3, 1851 Records of St Louis supei intendency of
Indian affairs, Kansas Historical Society, Topeka
^Tribune
(Wamego, Kans ), June 6, 1879.
68
Recorder (Westmoreland, Kans ), July 12, 1906 Francis Xavier Wilson,
third son of Robert Wilson, was reputed the first white child born in Pottawatomie
County, a similar claim having been made for Francis Xavier Palmer The St.
Mary's Baptismal Register (p 240), records Francis Xavier Wilson's date of birth
as June 22, 1846, at which time Robert Wilson was still residing at Sugar Creek
Mrs. Wilson was a Catholic, but not, 1 would appear, her husband
1
�38 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D S T A T E S
came within its reach than to the Indians Already in the fifties the
building of Fort Riley had attracted a number of Catholics in that direction. They were employed in the construction of the new fort and on
its completion took advantage of the offers made by the government to
turn homesteaders and preempt tracts of land in the highly fertile valley of the upper Kaw. At first without the necessary money to improve
their claims, they sought employment with the government or government contractors, or wherever else there was an opening, even at points
as far distant as Kansas City and Leavenworth Only once or twice in
a twelve-month would they return to look after their isolated homesteads.
To travellers and immigrants as they made their way west during
these years over the California and Pike's Peak Trails, St Mary's was
showing itself a friendly hospice. A St. Mary's Jesuit, writing at the
beginning of the seventies, stresses the fact that the mission won the
lasting good-will and gratitude of numbers of settlers, especially in
northwestern Kansas, by kindly services in their regard
Father Duennck has done more for the conversion of many a family
by his prudence and liberality than many would now admit Many a heart
in the far West beats warm today for the Fathers at St Mary's on account
of the kindness of the generous old [ ? ] priest They know what it is to
meet a kind and liberal friend in a wild and desert place, far from friends
and home, without shelter and protection against the elements The settlers in the neighboring counties were liberally assisted by St Mary's Seeds
were furnished, cattle of a superior stock given on credit, besides many a
munificent present All this exercised a powerful influence on the Northwest
[of Kansas] and prepared a heartfelt welcome for the later missionaries
Both Catholics and Protestants for months would watch the coming of the
priest on his gray mustang to invite him to their cheerful hearth and to
repay him the kindness received in former days at St Mary's 69
While the building of Fort Riley had already drawn numerous
white settlers towards its locality, with the construction in the sixties
of the Kansas Pacific Railroad from Kansas City to Denver a really
considerable tide of immigration began to flow towards central Kansas
In 1864 the Kansas Pacific ran its first train from Wyandotte (Kansas
City, Kansas) to Lawrence In 1865 it had reached St Marys In 1867
it was at Rome in Ellis County about half way across the state Among
the immigrants following in the wake of the railroad were to be found
Catholics in no inconsiderable number, their presence on the prairies in
(F)
�ST. MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , I I
39
small groups scattered here and there at wide intervals added much
to the difficulty of the ministry undertaken on behalf oi the Kansas
settlers by St. Mary's Mission. The Jesuit especially identified with the
spiritual care of the Catholic pioneer families settled in the Kansas
counties above St Mary's was the Frenchman, Father Louis Dumortier
H e was born near Lille in 1810, entered the Society of Jesus in Belgium, finished his novitiate at Florissant and was engaged as professor
in the Jesuit colleges of Cincinnati, Bardstown and St. Louis, his
favorite subjects of instruction being physics, chemistry and mathematics. H e was portrayed by one who knew him as of cheerful temper,
alert and witty in conversation and altogether companionable. But he
suffered from a weakness of the nerves, which at one time became so
acute as to issue in temporary mental derangement. Towards the end
of the fifties he returned to his native France in search of health, which
as a result of this change of environment was greatly restored. On his
return to America he was at once assigned to St. Mary's Mission. " H i s
nervous temperament," wrote De Smet, "needed corporal exercise and
fatigue, which by weakening the body, might allow the mind more
liberty and vigour. H e could not support the sedentary life of the colleges , nothing was more hurtful to his health. Providence, always wonderful in its designs, had formed Father Louis for the life, a wandering, but pious one, of the Prairies " 70
In the seven years that he spent at St Mary's Father Dumortier
filled out a noteworthy apostolic career. Wherever he could find two
or three Catholic families, he formed them into a little congregation,
converting some shabby cabin into a chapel in which he baptized, heard
confessions, gave insi ructions and celebrated Mass. T h e limits of his
parish expanded more and more until it comprised an area some two
hundred miles in length and fifty in width. "As his parish increased,"
so it appeared to Father Gadland, "the soul of the Father seemed also
to grow larger." "So ardently did he desire the salvation of souls,"
recorded the same chronicler, "that the acutest cold or the intense heat
of summer was no impediment to his labors. Even when the coldest
blasts of winter were blowing on all sides, when huge snow drifts obstructed the roads, or when the fields were inundated with continued
rains, Father Louis was found at his designated place on the day appointed, nay, I might almost say on the very hour." 7 1 Almost every
70
Sketch by De Smet in the Linton Album (A)
Gailland, Hist St Motifs Mission (Ms ) (F) Dumortier's baptisms for
1859 , m d i860 were at McDowell's Creek, Lyon Creek, Chapman's Creek, Reily
City (sic), Fort Reily (sic), Black Jack, St George, Rock Creek, Louisville,
William's Creek, Clark's Creek, Black Vermilion. At Fort Riley nine baptisms were
71
�40 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D
STATES
day saw him on horseback covering thirty, forty, fifty, sometimes sixty
miles. Arriving at the place where he was to lodge for the night, instead of taking at once a well-earned rest, he mounted his horse again
and scoured the countryside to announce to the scattered settlers the
next day's services. For lack of shelter he often took his night's rest in
the open, while the sheer physical discomfort of protracted hours in the
saddle must have been extreme. More than once was his life in peril
as he forded swollen creeks and rivers or crossed them on the ice or
made his way alone over the snows of the prairies with frozen ears or
feet. T h e issue of his strenuous ministry was that hundreds of Catholic
families were saved to the Faith and the foundations of the Church in
central Kansas laid on firm and enduring ground.
In the summer of 1866 D e Smet while on a visit to St. Mary's
requested Father Dumortier to furnish him a brief account of the work
he was doing on behalf of the Kansas settlers. Reluctantly, for the modest missionary was always reticent on the subject of his ministry, he
penned the following lines in the form of a letter, dated St Mary's
Mission, July 1, 1866
You ask me to send you some details of our apostolic labors I think I
cannot better satisfy your request than by sending you a little geographical
sketch which will put you au courant with our Kansas missions You will
see from it our successes and our difficulties. T h e bank of the Kansas and
its tributaries offer scarcely anything else but forests and virgin soil A number
of small missions have now been established. T h e faithful gather around
them, here they come with their families to make their permanent residence
so that even now these missions form so many Catholic centers T h e great
difficulty that presents itself is the lack of missionaries O u r labors here are
beyond the strength of a single missionary T h e great distance separating the
different stations, the heavy snows of winter, the thaws of springtime, the
river floods, bad roads and the absence of bridges are so many handicaps of
my journeys I cannot visit my good Catholics except every five or six
weeks I n the course of my ordinary rounds I have succeeded in building
four little churches of stone
.
each of the churches costs pretty near two
thousand dollars T h e liberality of our poor settlers is our only resource,
so that, my Reverend Father, I think I may recommend myself to the generosity of your acquaintances and benefactors, hoping that our good Catholics,
who have so often by their liberality shown you the interest which they
administered by Father Schultz, 1854-1856 At Louisville, he baptized October
25, 1857, Helen Genett (Jeanette), daughter of John Palmer and Helene Perkins,
born August 25, 1857, witnesses being Robert and Mary Elizabeth Wilson At
Fort Riley, April 12, 1854, Thomas Simpson White and Mary Joanna Riordan
were married by Father Duennck, the following July 2 John Welsh and Mane
Hore (Hoar ? ) were married by Father Schultz.
�ST. M A R Y ' S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , I I
41
take in our Indians of the North, will once more stretch oul a charitable
hand to the poor missions of Kansas "'2
T h e region covered by Dumortier in his missionary rounds included
at least fourteen counties, Pottawatomie, Jackson, Marshall, Washington, Nemaha, Riley, Clay, Ottawa, Saline, Davis, Lyon, Morris, Chase
and Waubansee. This section of central Kansas lay-roughly between
St. Mary's and Fort Harker, the Verdigris and the Otoe Mission Numerous small congregations, some twenty-five in all, were organized in
these counties. In the space of two years five churches were erected, each
costing about two thousand dollars except the last built by Dumortier,
that in Junction City, which cost four thousand Both Catholics and nonCatholics lent him substantial aid. Subscription lists were opened and
the money readily came in The churches which he built, most of them
on or near the railroad, where the larger groups of Catholics had
settled, were St Joseph's in Rockingham, St. Patrick's at the Elbow,
Pottawatomie County, the Assumption in Ogden, Riley County, St.
Francis Xavier in Junction City, Geary County, St. Michael's at Chapman's Creek, Davis County, and the Immaculate Conception in Solomon, Dickinson County Congregations without churches were organized in Holton, Jackson County, on the Black Vermilion, Nemaha
County, in Marysville, Marshall County, in Salina, Saline County, at
McDowells Creek, Davis County, in Alma, Waubansee County, and
in Council Grove, Morris County. These parishes and stations were
eventually taken over by diocesan priests, Ogden in 1876 and Alma in
1878. The only points served fiom St. Mary's in the early nineties
were Silver Lake and Rossville, both of them Union Pacific stations
east of St. Mary's.
In the summer of 1867 Asiatic cholera made its appearance in the
western counties of Kansas Among the troops of the Eighteenth Kansas Volunteer Battalion organized to protect the western settlements
against Indian depredations it was particularly destructive
In their
camp at Fort Harker Company C alone lost thirteen men in two weeks
from the dreadful scourge Father Dumortier was prompt to lend his
services to the stricken members of his scattered flock. Through a
number of days he heard the confessions of the Catholics whom he
could reach and answered every call from the dying Worn with hunger and fatigue he contracted the cholera himself and died of it at the
midnight of July 25, 1867, at Ellsworth in the immediate vicinity of
72
Dumortier a De Smet, July 28, 1866, in Linton Album (A) Of the four
stone churches (Elbow, Chapman's Creek, Ogden City, Rock Creel), the one at
Elbow Creek, finished in 1865, was not yet plastered
�42 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D S T A T E S
Fort Harker 73 As to the shelter he found in his dying moments, accounts vary, one saying it was a tent, another a workmen's hut, and
still another an abandoned water-tank by the road-side. But all accounts
agree that he met death with characteristic courage. T h e circumstance
is stressed that he died unattended for he had made signs to warn off
anyone from approaching him, probably through fear of passing on
the contagion to others. Father Dumortier had made the supreme
sacrifice, having measured up to the Gospel standard of perfect love
by laying down his life for his fnqnds in Christ. 74
T h e passing of the devoted priest who more than any one else had
planted the Cross in the upper Kansas Valley by no means brought a
summary end to the work which he had inaugurated. One by one
successors followed in his footsteps T h e names of Fathers Colleton,
Sweere, Schmidt, Van den Bergh and Rimmele are especially mentioned. Father Philip Colleton, Dumortier's immediate successor, was
later to distinguish himself as founder of numerous pioneer parishes in
southeastern Kansas. On May 31, 1868, Bishop Miege confirmed fourteen Catholic soldiers stationed at Fort Harker. On the same day there
were twenty-seven confirmations at Rock Creek, on June 2 following,
thirty-five at Ogden, and on June 7, fifty at St. Mary's.
Father Joseph Rimmele, who was cultivating Dumortier's ministerial field with energy and zeal in 1869 and at the beginning of the
seventies, was at this time a secular priest. A petition he made to be
admitted into the Society of Jesus was at first rejected on the ground
of a mental infirmity under which he labored and which it was feared
might impair his usefulness, but it was proposed to allow him to take
what are called "vows of devotion," which in no way place the order
under obligations toward the person taking them. Later, however, in
18*72, he was admitted definitely as a novice at Florissant, returning
thence to St. Mary's to become prefect of studies in the growing school
and later discharge other important duties with success. Of his previous
work as itinerant missionary in the mid-western Kansas counties we get
passing glimpses in letters of his to De Smet, who with characteristic
benevolence had offered to obtain Mass vestments for Rimmele's needy
parishes. "There is an immense influx into Kansas from all directions
and more than a proportionate share of Catholics," Rimmele wrote in
December, 1869. " W e need a large supply of priests. If succor were
sent, Kansas might be the first Catholic state in less than fifty years,
because we have the start and everything else is for us. If you can do
73
In Pere Vivier's Jesuit Necrology, 1814-1894 (Pans, 1897), Dumortier's
death is recorded for July 26, which is also the date occurring in the Jesuit
Menology, Missouri Province sufflement (St Louis, 1893), p 13
74
Precis Historiques, 18 450 et seq.
�Sketch-map of his Kansas Valley missionary-circuit by Louis Dumortier, S J , 1866.
A copy by De Smet m the Linton Album from the original in the Archives of the
Missouri Province, S J., St Louis.
��ST. M A R Y ' S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , II
43
a n y t h i n g for t h e country you w o i k e d for in t h e p r i m e of life, d o it."
Again, h e wrote in F e b r u a r y , 1870
This will be a great Catholic state if help of [in] priests will arrive
in due time, they are more needed than vestments Now as you are acquainted with and descended from a generous people, the Belgians, try to
obtain succor from your native land, more laborers than anything else. In
three short trips of about three weeks, I baptized seven Protestants or modern
heathens Besides, I heard a great many confessions of 8, 10, 15, and
20 years standing I instructed childien and grown up people for confession,
paid debts, begged money, built churches, attended the sick and dying, prepared some for baptism and others lor the reception of other sacraments I
travel alone over 3600 square miles and say Mass in more than twenty
places I cannot see all of them every month, not even eveiy six months
Do therefore, dear Father, what you can for this state of Kansas, the Heart
of the United States 7 5
75
Rimmele to De Smet, December 2, 1869, February 8, 1870 (A) A letter
of Rimmele's to De Smet affords the following particulars about stations in his
circuit "I asked vestments for eight places only, where arrangement has been
made to build churches which surely will be built
1 Marysville, church of St Mary's, 60 ft long by 30 ft wide, almost one
hundred families. Local resources but nominal, actually none
2 Pardon's Creek (on the Republican), Church of St Henry, 60 by 36, almost 70
families, local resources $100 per annum
3 Hanover (on the Little Blue), Church of the Seven Sorrows of the Holy Virgin,
45 hy 30 ft , about 30 families, local resources none.
4 Rock Creek, Rockingham, Pott C o , Church of St Joseph, 40 by 25, about 70
families, local resources $100 per annum.
5 Ogden, Reily [Riley] C o , Church of the Immaculate Conception, 30 by 18,
about 25 families, local resources $50 per annum
6 McDowells Creek, Church of St Ann, 36 by 25, about 30 families, resources
$50 per annum
7 Mill Creek, Church of St Agatha, 60 by 36 ft , about 80 families, local
resources none so far
8. Watnego, Church of the Holy Family, 60 by 36, about 30 families, local
resources none Only two of the above churches are finished, the churches in Rockingham and Ogden The income of the places is for the support of the poor
priest who is traveling over thousands of square miles on horseback "
The following is a contemporary list (A) of the stations visited by Father
Rimmele in the seventies with the number of families in each Waubansee CountyNewbury ( 8 ) , Alma ( 5 0 ) , Davis County-McDowell's Creek (25); Clark's Creek,
at mouth ( 7 ) , Pottawatomie County-Vienna, Vermilion ( 8 ) , Adams Creek ( 1 0 ) ,
Louisville ( 1 2 ) , Wamego ( 2 4 ) , St. George ( 3 ) , Elbow ( 3 0 ) , Rock Creek ( 4 5 ) ,
Spring Creek ( 8 ) , Marshall County-Ewing ( 7 ) , Marysville ( 4 0 ) , Washington
County -Hanover ( 9 ) , French Settlement ( 1 2 ) , Parson's Creek ( 3 0 ) , Republic
County-Erin ( 6 ) , Belleville ( 1 0 ) , Jewell County, White Rock ( 1 0 ) , Cloud
County-Clyde ( 1 6 ) , French Settlement ( 6 0 ) , Pipe Creek ( 1 0 ) , Concordia ( 1 6 ) ,
Clay County-Mulberry Creek ( 2 0 ) , Clay Centre ( 1 0 ) , Fancy Creek, head ( 6 ) ,
Riley County-Ogden ( 2 7 ) , Fancy Creek (10), Wild Cat ( 1 0 ) , Manhattan (6)
�44 T H E JESUITS OF T H E MIDDLE U N I T E D STATES
§ 6. FROM INDIAN SCHOOL TO COLLEGE
With the sectiomzing of the reserve, the gradual loss by the Potawatomi of their tribal status and the influx of white settlers, the
transformation of the Potawatomie Manual Labor School into a school
for white boys was inevitable Already in November, 1861, Thomas
Riordan of Solomon Creek, aged sixteen, and Francis Xavier Palmer,
aged ten, a son of Dr. Palmer, Potawatomi agent, were being educated
alongside of the Indian boys Young Palmer's schooling was paid for
by the government, while the rate charged Riordan was five dollars
a month. James Conway, subsequently a St. Louis Jesuit of note, was
entered December 18, 1863, he was followed July 24, 1864, by his
brother, John, and September 24 of the succeeding year by another
brother, Thomas.76 "The Americans realize so keenly the value of the
religious education which we give to the young," wrote De Smet from
St. Mary's in the summer of 1866, "that they are constantly imploring
the Directors of the schools to admit their children, but all the places
are taken and were we to double the capacity bf our houses they would
soon be filled." 77
The idea, however, of working for the whites of Kansas either in
the ministry or in education after the disappearance of the Indians was
by no means steadily taken for granted by the Jesuits of St Mary's
or at least by the mission board in St. Louis. At a meeting of the board
September 10, 1863, the matter came under discussion "Among the
Pottawatomies there is question of a school for the sons of whites living
in the neighborhood, such schools to be maintained even after the departure of the Indians. The plan does not commend itself to the Consuitors as the Mission is for the Indians." In October of the same year,
so Father Coosemans informed the General, the Jesuits were already
confronted with the problem "Shall we stay here and work for the
whites or follow the Indians. Opinions are divided." 78 Later, March
Total number of families in these stations, 545 "There are several more families
scattered up in Jewell, Smith, Marshall, Washington and Reily [Riley] Counties,
which are seen once in a long while " Holton and James Crossing appear on later
lists An interesting study in the complex character of Kansas immigration at this
period is suggested by Rimmele's distribution of his stations according to nationality
Germans were predominant in Alma, Rock Creek, Fancy Creek, Parsons Creek,
Mulberry Creek, Newbury and Vermilion, Irish in Ogden, Flbow, McDowell's
Creek, Washington and Pipe Creek, French in Clyde and Concordia, Poles and
Bohemians in Hanover and Belleville
76
Account-books, St Mary's College (F) The first white boy to attend the
Indian school at St Mary's appears to have been James Graham, 1856 O'Connor,
of at.y p. 173 (supra, Chap XXVIII, note 50).
77
De Smet a Pere
, August 30, 1866, in Linton Album (A)
78
Coosemans a Beckx, October 20, 1863 (AA).
�ST. MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , I I
45
28, 1864, the board went on record against undertaking any permanent
work for the Kansas settlers. "News comes from the Osage Mission
that the Indians will soon leave for their new home What shall we do ?
Shall we follow the Indians or remain with the whites on the old site?
There were various answers, but finally all seemed to settle on the
view that we should wait and see what is to become of them [the
Osage] and the other Indians, if any hope is offered of a flourishing
mission in the new place, one central mission might be established there
for all the Indians from Kansas. But as to the whites in Kansas, we have
no mission on their behalf."
No law in human affairs realizes itself with greater frequency than
that circumstances alter plans. Though at St Louis in the mid-sixties a
decision seemed to have been reached to restrict Jesuit enterprise on
the Kansas prairies to missionary work among the Indians with no
prospect of expansion into other fields, the sixties were not to run their
course before the Jesuits, with the Indian populations melting away
on all sides, were to commit themselves, both at St Mary's and at the
Osage Mission, to the venture of higher education for the whites. As
early as 1864 the missionaries at St Mary's, as the house diary records,
were considering the "project of a college since the Indian schools cannot last." ™
Meanwhile [ndian education at St Mary's went on piospering all
through the sixties. In 1861 an additional building to provide for the
increased registration of over a hundred boys was deemed to be necessary. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Dole having visited St. Mary's
and manifested a cordial interest in the schools, Father Diels appealed
to him November 4, 1861, for a government subsidy toward meeting
the expense of the projected building
The fact is we have done what we could to make the Mission and the
schools prosper, and success, exceeding our most sanguine expectations, has
crowned our labors The consequence is that children are pouring in from
all quarters and new applications continue to be made. I have already fitted
up some more rooms ior school purposes Still, we cannot accomodate the
number of applicants I hate to refuse admittance to poor, untutored Indian
children craving for means of education I think it is likewise the wish of
the Government that as many children should be educated as are desirous
of receiving instruction With this view I intend to put up forthwith a building capable of supplying the present want in the hope that your Honor
being acquainted with our circumstances will let us draw the arrears due
to the Mission for past educational services May I confidently hope that,
as you are aware that we ourselves have put up at our own expense about
Yz of the Mission buildings, your powerful influence will obtain for us from
79
St Mary's House Diary, p 69 (F).
�46 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D S T A T E S
the Government, ever generous and liberal in promoting the extension of
knowledge and civilization, a due compensation of the expenses we are going
to incur to favor the views of Government and the well-being of the poor
Indian. 80
Father Diels's appeal to the commissioner was indorsed by Agent
Ross under the same date as that borne by the missionary's letter " I t
gives me pleasure to recommend again to your favorable consideration
the St. Mary's Mission School whose existence in our midst has done
much, very much, towards bringing about the state of civilization which
it has always been the aim of our beneficient government to encourage. . . . They now desire to increase their accommodations so as to
keep pace with the thirst for knowledge which is gradually taking possession of the better portion of the Indian nation and as surely undermining their heathenish practices and customs." 81 T h e new building
was erected in 1862 but, it would seem, without federal aid.
By an outcome curious enough, the education of Indian youths at St
Mary's touched its high-water mark, both in the number enrolled and
in results obtained, at the very time the reserve was breaking up and
the Christian Potawatomi of Kansas were disappearing as a nation T h e
nearer they approached their doom, the more eager they seemed to
secure for their children the benefit of an education. Diels's report for
1866, though perhaps somewhat overrating the capabilities of the Potawatomi children, presents a picture of things which is not without
corroboration from other sources. 82 In 1865 Senators Foster and Doolittle were visitors at the school, examined the pupils and forwarded
to Washington appreciative accounts of what they witnessed. 83 T h e
precincts of the schools, so Brother De Vnendt avers, were cleanliness
itself. Not a scrap of paper, not a splinter of wood could be seen lying
around in the well-kept playgrounds. Discipline among the pupils was
well-nigh perfect. T h e brother records the astonishment, not to say
scandal of the boys as they saw travellers from the East pick up from
the ground the apples which the boys had been taught not to appropriate without formal permission. Dr. Palmer reported in 1866
The St. Mary's Mission School is still in successful operation The teachers of this school seem ready at all times to astonish visitors by exhibiting the
little Pottawatomies, showing their advancement in the studies taught in
school and the facility with which Indian children are made to comprehend
80
Diels to Dole, November 4, 1861 (H)
Ross to Dole, November 4, 1861 (H)
82
RCIA, 1866, no 129
83
St Mary's House Diary (F) The author has found no mention in government reports of Foster and Doolittle's visit to St Mary's Very probably they did
not visit the mission m any official capacity
81
�ST. MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , I I
47
the difficult problems which stand in the way of the advancement of all
children in the study of the natural sciences and the higher mathematics.
The efforts of teachers in this school have been directed mainly to the
instruction of Indian children, first in their knowledge of their obligations
to their Creator as accountable beings, then in such necessary branches of
common school education as it is thought will be found most useful to them
in after life and conducive to their success in the world, but in teaching the
more common branches there has been an aptness shown by Indian children
which argues so well of success in the higher branches, that they have been
encouraged at this Mission to prosecute their studies while they are permitted to remain in school, so far as their time and opportunities will allow
If the Pottawatomies today are in the enjoyment of any advantages of civilization or material prosperity beyond what is enjoyed by some other tribes
in Kansas, they are indebted in a great measure for such advantages to
the unceasing devotion and labors in their interest of the St Mary's Catholic
Mission, and the devoted religious who accompanied the Pottawatomies
in their emigration to this reserve The Mission school has been kept in
operation, it may be said, through war, pestilence, and famine, never having
been discontinued for a day on account of the discouraging circumstances
which have at times rendered the carrying on of such an institution an exceedingly laborious and difficult matler. 84
From Atchison, October 6, 1866, Major Thomas Murphy, superintendent of Indian affairs for the central supenntendency, reported to
Washington " T h e Pottawatomies are in a more prosperous condition
than any other tribe in Kansas. They cultivate large farms and encourage education and religion. They have an institution of learning, called
St. Mary's Mission, which is the most excellent in the State, and would
be an ornament and a credit to any State, [and] which I think has
tended largely to advance this people in all that leads to moral and
social improvement." 85 By this time the success of the St. Mary's Mission schools was apparently taken as a matter of course at Washington,
as E. E. Taylor implies in his report of July 5, 1866, to Commissioner
Cooley. Taylor, a Baptist clergyman, who was later corresponding secretary of the Baptist H o m e Mission Society of New York, had just
completed a round of inspection of western Indian schools in the capacity of special agent of the government. " T h e St. Mary's Mission School
is, I need not say, admirably conducted, and in the matter of secular
education probably accomplishes all that the friends of the red man
could desire. I was much interested in the exercises of the children and
youth in both the male and the female departments and regard their
84
RCIA, 1866 p 264 Palmer's statement that the mission schools were never
discontinued "for a day" is not literally correct They were suspended during the
cholera visitation of 1849
85
RCIA, 1866, p 246
�48 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D S T A T E S
progress as alike commendable to both teacher and pupil. I do not see
any reason why they should be required to keep their children at the old
price of $75 per annum, though with all their present appliances it
probably costs them much less than it would any other Society to conduct their schools " 86
Though the government annual allowance of fifty dollars per pupil
had been increased in Duermck's time to seventy-five, with the increased
cost of living incident on the Civil W a r this sum by no means represented an adequate compensation for the expenses involved. In September, 1864, Father De Smet appealed to Commissioner Dole on
behalf of the Osage and Potawatami schools. H e asked that the allowance be raised to one hundred and ten or one hundred and twenty dollars. "This is hardly an equivalent of what they used to receive. They
labor arduously and with zeal to keep up their respective establishments
and do their utmost to keep the nations loyal to the Government." 87
E. E. Taylor, who inspected St Mary's in 1866, reported, as was said,
in favor of an increase allowance for the school, while Major Murphy
recommended to Commissioner Mix in 1868 that the subsidy per pupil
86
Taylor to Cooley, July 5, 1866 ( H ) E E Taylor, in charge of the Baptist
Potawatomi School, wrote to Commissioner of Indian Affairs Bogy, December 5,
1866 " I t is not true as Agent Palmer states that the Pottawatomies do not desire
the [Baptist] school building to be put m good repair T h e Catholic population
of the immediate vicinity of the St Mary's Mission very likely would prefer that
the only school among their tribe should be their own I know, however, from personal knowledge—if the Honorable Commissioner wishes the evidence, it shall be
forth commg—in direct contradiction to Agent Palmer's statement—that a very
large minority, to say the least, of the Pottawatomies (many Catholics included
among their number) are dissatisfied with St Mary's School and have been most
importunate in their calls upon me personally and upon our teachers to open a
school for the benefit of their children I beg leave also in this connection to
most respectfully protest against the representations made to your department that
the Pottawatomies are all Roman Catholics and wish their school-money to be all
expended under their direction at St Mary's I know such representations to be
u n t r u e " ( H ) Cf also E E Taylor to Bogy, December 4, 1866 " W e ask simply
from your Department this small appropriation, which has been so long unjustly
withheld by Agent Palmer (to the very serious detriment of our school and
mission), m no sense as a favor to the Baptists, but as the just right of the
largest denomination of Christians in the country It is neither just nor Catholic
[stc] that this Government appropriation should be withheld from us who are
engaged in the same work side by side with the St Mary's Mission while to them
has been annually paid thousands of dollars for their benevolent services I am
sorry that opposition to such an appropriation should have come to the Department
from such a quarter T h e y are certainly the last to complain of the pittance to the
Baptist Board who have been so long and so liberally aided in their work by the
Government " ( H ) In the absence of documentary evidence bearing on the point,
it is difficult to evaluate the merits of Taylor's complaints
87
De Smet to Dole, September 2 1 , 1864 (AA)
�ST. MARY'S OF T H E POTAWATOMI, II
49
for the St. Mary's school be fixed at one hundred dollars.88 Nothing,
however, it would appear, came of these recommendations As long as
the education of the Indian children at St. Mary's was paid for by
government money, the appropriation made for them never went beyond the seventy-five dollar rate.
The first decisive step making for the metamorphosis of St. Mary's
from Indian school to college came as a surprise to Father Gailland
and his associates as he records with a not unhappy venture into
prophecy
W h e n on May 12, 1869, the Reverend Joseph Keller, Socius of Father
Provincial, arrived here and told us that it was the settled purpose of
Superiors to build a college at St. Mary's, we were all astonished and considered the thing to be a dream. But soon we learned by the arrival of
Father Provincial [Coosemans] that the thing was decided upon by the
Provincial Board of Consultors, it was even urged upon us by the orders
of Superiors to make all necessary preparations for the erection of a college
in the following Spring W e indeed, who are already far advanced in years,
shall not see the splendor and the glory of the college to be erected, for
nothing of any moment is finished in a hurry T h a t this place is suited in
every way for the building of a college every one will allow F o r the State
of Kansas, located at the very center of the great Republic, is rich in resources and within a few years will stand out in population and wealth
among the leading stales of the Union Further, the Mission lies on the
railroad which reaches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and, besides, the
house possesses more than 2000 acres of highly fertile land Hence boarders
can be admitted here at a far lower price than in any other place, in
which event a large number of students will flock hither to go through
their studies These boys, the sons of farmers, will be stronger in body
and more innocent in morals than those who are educated more delicately
- in the cities, and so a far greater number than elsewhere following higher
and purer aspirations will enlist among the members of the Society or of
the secular clergy Wherefore Mary Immaculate, through the medium of
the college which is to be built and the patronage of which she has undertaken, will undoubtedly through a long succession of years be the glory
of the region and the honor of the Christian people, an issue which is the
object of our prayers and hopes in God 8 9
In September, 1869, Father Walter Hill, pioneer American writer
of text-books on scholastic philosophy, who had just retired from the
presidency of St Xavier College, Cincinnati, was appointed to the post
of socius or assistant to the provincial, Father Coosemans. He had a
hand in the first organizing of St. Mary's College.
Murphy to Mix, June 6, 1868 (H)
Gailland, History St. Mary's Mission (F)
�50 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E
UNITED
STATES
I n December, 1869, I accompanied Father Diels to Kansas, being
sent there to procure a charter for the proposed college at St Mary's Mission W e went from St Louis to Leavenworth, where I preached on the
Sunday before Christmas Before leaving St Louis I wrote down what
I thought the charter should in substance be O n reaching Leavenworth
we got a lawyer, a M r Carroll, to put the charter in due technical form
W e then went over to St Mary's I found that the main portion of the
Pottowatomy tribe still remained around the mission O n Christmas day
and on the following Sunday I listened to a sermon in the Pottowatomy
language, spoken by Father Gailland I found that language perculiarly
sweet to the ear, Father Gailland told me that it possesses peculiar power
and richness During Christmas Father Diels and myelf went to Topeka
to get our charter out in due form we stopped at a hotel and then applied
to Judge Morton, to counsel us as to whether it was in due form He was
then on the bench trying a criminal case, but said he would come to our
hotel at night and examine the charter H e came after supper and examined it thoroughly T h e clause in it exempting all property owned by the
college from taxation, he said, "will be litigated some day, and the case may
come before me, is most likely to do so I cannot now see what my decision
of it will be, but you must by all means leave that clause in your charter,
so that if the decision be given in favor of its validity or the constitutionality
of such exemptions, you may have the benefit of it " I t so happened that a
few years later that law under which the charter claimed exemption from
taxes for all property of St Mary's College, Kansas, was actually contested before Judge Morton, he decided adversely to the exemption After
Judge Morton examined our charter, and he was engaged in it till eleven
o'clock at night, we left it at the state-house the next day for record and
returned to St Mary's where we at once organized the first faculty Father
Diels would have me be first president, I submitted to his judgment as
otherwise there would not be members enough there to organize legally.
I * then at once resigned my position and came home to St Louis This
charter was the model on which charters were then formed for the Sacred
Heart Academy at St Mary's Mission, and also for the boys' school and
the Loretto Academy at Osage Mission 9 0
On December 4, 1869, Father John Francis Diels was succeeded as
superior at St. Mary's, which he had successfully managed for nearly
ten years, by Father Patrick W a r d . Diels remained at the mission for
some time after being relieved of the supenorship as procurator and
superintendent of the farm. Later Father John Tehan was assigned to
St. Mary's to give the benefit of his ability in economic and financial
affairs to Father W a r d , who was without experience in this regard
though on him was now to devolve the responsibility of erecting the
college building that had been planned. Father Diels was withdrawn
10
Reminiscences of Walter Hill, S J (A)
�ST. MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , II
51
definitely from St. Mary's towards the end of 1870. After being engaged in the interval in the parochial ministry he died in Milwaukee
December 17, 1878, at the age of fifty-seven. H e had seen St. Mary's
through the most critical period of its history, including the Civil W a r
days, the treaties and consequent breaking up of the Potawatomi reserve, and the birth of the college. H e knew Potawatomi thoroughly
and had collaborated with Gailland in the latter's dictionary of that
difficult Indian tongue. With government agents and public officials,
with whom he was brought into contact in the management of the mission and especially the schools, his relations were uniformly pleasant,
his affable manners and unfailing tact gaining for him an entry into
all hearts. In the latter years of his administration the duties he attempted to carry single-handed were too many and varied to be discharged with satisfaction by a single individual. It was an idiosyncrasy
of his, so it was alleged, to attempt to manage everything directly and
in person and not through the medium of his subordinates. But all in
all he made a capital head of the mission. In 1866 Coosemans, the
provincial, was assured by Gailland that, account being taken of the
difficulties of his position and the multiplicity of business details on his
hands, Diels was the most efficient superior St Mary's ever had. "Some
of his predecessors were better in certain respects, but for the needs of
the Mission generally, the mission-staff, school, farm, outside folk,
Father Diels surpassed them all." 9 1 Father Coosemans wrote of him in
1869 that he was "loved by Ours and respected by outsiders." 92 The
most significant chapter in the history of St Mary's Mission is written
around his name. 93
91
Coosemans a Becks, January 10, 1867 (AA)
Coosemans a Beckx, January 6, 1869 (AA)
93
An anonymous unpublished sketch of Father Diels written probably by a
coadjutor-brother who knew of his work at first hand, credits him with having
been the real maker of St Mary's "True, when Father Duennck became Superior
of the Mission in 1849, a s t a r t towards improvement seems to have taken place,
but he being a man little acquainted with the business world [ ? ] and [being]
besides of a simple and confiding disposition, was often taken advantage of by the
crafty to the great pecuniary loss of the Mission, which at that time stood m
need of almost the necessaries of life From the time of his lamented and untimely
death in 1857 until 1861 things at best stood still During this year Father Diels
was placed at the head of the Mission Then burst forth the dawn of its prosperity,
a new life animating and enlivening every department A man of bioad and comprehensive views he saw at a glance the needs of the place and it once set to
work to supply them. Surrounding himself with competent men he gave full scope
and encouragement to the development of the natural resources of the soil. . .
No industry that was thought to be useful towards the enlightenment of the
Indians or the advantage of the then undeveloped country but received his attention Cereals and othei products that before his time were thought impossible of
62
�52 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D S T A T E S
With the issuing of a college charter to St. Mary's in 1869 the
Indian stage in the history of the mission schools may be said to have
come to an end though a number of Potawatomi boys continued to attend them. Steps toward the erection of a college building were immediately taken. On January 3, 1870, in view of the circumstance that the
registration of students at St. Mary's was already good and would be
better if a suitable building were available, it was agreed at St Louis
that such building should be erected, especially as approval of the step
had already been obtained from the General, Father Beckx.94 Father
Keller, when assistant-provincial, had sketched a rough plan which provided for a central structure, sixty-eight feet square, with extensions on
either side. As means were lacking for putting up the entire edifice at
once, it was decided to begin with the central unit, which represented
almost one-fifth of the entire design. T h e services of a professional
architect, De Bonnes, were then secured. On February 7, 1870, Father
Coosemans and De Bonnes arrived at St. Mary's, the provincial to acquaint himself with the financial standing of the house and the architect
to inspect the site of the proposed building and give directions for the
necessary excavations. On February 18, James McGonigle, who had
done the construction work on the Leavenworth cathedral, was engaged
as contractor. On April 22 Father Coosemans was again at St. Mary's
to determine on the actual site of the new college, a question still in
abeyance at this date H e first favored the hill, on which in later years
was to rise St Mary's college dormitory, Loyola Hall But lack of an
growth in Kansas soil were by him generously experimented with successfully to
the greatly appreciated benefit of the country as reference to the press of Kansas
m those days will amply prove For it was no uncommon thing for the editors
to call the attention of their readers to the advancement in agriculture and other
industries on the mission farm, which did no little service m drawing the attention
of the homeseekers and banishing from the minds of the people far and near
mistaken notions that Kansas was unproductive T h e n with that statesmanlike foresight which he possessed he saw the change at hand of 'the wild west into the
great new west' and began preparations to meet the future needs of the country
His great aim was to establish an educational institution on the site of the
mission as soon as the Indians would disappear T h i s thought of erecting a college
at St Mary's was ever uppermost m his mind, not only, as he often said, would
it become a center of Catholic education in the West, but it would also perpetuate
the work of the first apostles of the faith in Kansas on the spot hallowed by their
labors and sweat T h u s we see that with Father Diels first originated the idea of a
college at St Mary's and (he) was the first to admit white children as regular
students
T h e bleak surroundings with nothing but the log huts to rest the
eye upon, he set out with trees and shrubs in the shade of which the students of
today delight to revel ignorant of his name who anticipated their needs H a r d l y a
fruit or shade tree on the place that is not due to his direction and many of them
were planted with his own hand " ( F )
94
Liber ConsultaUonum.
(F).
�ST. M A R Y ' S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , II
53
adequate water supply made the choice inadvisable. On his return to
St. Louis he telegraphed April 26 that the college should be erected
at the foot of the hill a little to the east of the old buildings. 95
On May 31 the foundations of the structure were begun and on
June 8 the corner-stone was blessed. The building measured eighty by
sixty feet, had a stone basement with superstructure of brick four stories
high and when completed was to show a frontage of four hundred feet
On January 26, 1872, the ninety-four boarders moved into their new
quarters, which were solemnly blessed some two weeks later, February
8, with accompanying solemn high Mass and a procession from the old
log church to the college. Seven years later, February 3, 1879, t n e n e w
structure, which marked the entry of the one-time Indian mission of
St. Mary's into the field of college education, was completely destroyed
by fire.
In the interim the infant institution had been beset with difficulties,
chief among which was the lack of an adequate faculty. Though it bore
the name, St. Mary's College, to which it was entitled by its charter,
all during the seventies it scarcely rose above the status of an academy
or high school. A few weeks before the students moved irom the old
log buildings into the new structure, the provincial and his advisers
were engaged in St Louis with the problem of the most fitting designation for the new school. "As it is inexpedient that colleges be multiplied
in our Province, a situation which would prove indeed no s light obstacle
to the training of our scholastics, let the school, though it be a sort of
inchoate college [collegium mchoatum], be called St. Mary's Academy
Let Latin and Greek be taught but only up to Poetry exclusive, and
let it be clearly understood out there that only one Father and two
scholastics are to be set aside for the Academy. T h e rest of the teachers
will have to be coadjutor-brothers and lay teachers hired at a salary."
This proposed designation of the aspiring institution by the less pretentious name of academy promptly elicited protest from the faculty. The
protest was well received at St. Louis and the provincial board, February 27, 1872, reversed its former stand on the question and agreed
to the designation "college," reiterating, however, its previous caution
that for some years to come the school should not attempt a more
ambitious curriculum than what is comprised in the so-called grammar
classes of the Jesuit Ratw Studtorum. This restriction on the educational program of the newly founded institution likewise elicited protest
on the part of its president, Father Ward, who the following month
was enjoined from issuing the prospectus of the new school until the
85
St Mary's College, House Diary (F) "This site [the foot of the hill]
commends itself for many reasons, while other reasons more obvious, but m my
opinion less solid, militate against it." Coosemans a Beckx, May 15, 1870 (AA).
�54 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D S T A T E S
question of its plan of studies could be further discussed at St. Louis.
Eventually the restriction was upheld by the Father General, who in
July, 1872, decided that temporarily at least St. Mary's was to be
merely what is called in Jesuit parlance "a simple school" (schola simflex). As a matter of fact, the institution continued as late as 1873 to
be entered in the official register of the Jesuit province of Missouri as
St. Mary's Pottawatomie Mission. Thereafter for four years it was
technically known as a residence and not until 1877 was it entered as a
college in Jesuit officials registers. During all these years it led a precarious existence and the question of definitely discontinuing it was once
at least under advisement at St. Louis This was in the spring of 1872
when word had come from the Jesuit General that one boarding-college
was as much as the Missouri Province could conveniently maintain.
What was to be done with St. Mary's? T h e town of St Marys was too
undeveloped, it was felt, to support a day-college. Should the boardingschool be suspended and the property sold? Two at least of the consuitors recommended this course. Another was in favor of maintaining
a grammar school, but nothing more, while a fourth voiced the opinion
that the college could not be closed without seriously compromising
the interests of religion. For lack of agreement on the important issue
it was concluded to have recourse to the General, the college to be left
m statu quo. W h e n the General's decision arrived in July, 1872, it was
for continuing the school, but in no sense as an institution of college
grade. Later years were to see the school gradually equip itself for a
broad program of education, collegiate as well as secondary.
No account of the mission-schools at St. Mary's is adequate which
does not leave the reader with an impression of the important share
of the Religious of the Sacred Heart in making them a success. In
their hands ever since the days of Mother Duchesne at Sugar Creek
was the education of the Potawatomi girls, that they acquitted themselves with distinction of this phase of the missionary program of St.
Mary's is a fact written large in the story of the mission. Even more
so than the boys' department, the girls' department of the Pottawatomie
Manual Labor School elicited repeated and almost fulsome commendation from Indian agents and other federal officials. T h e self-effacement
of the nuns was complete. T h e names of scarcely any of their number
found their way into contemporary records. It was enough for them
that they gave themselves unreservedly to the task in hand, that they
spared neither time nor energy nor available means of whatsoever kind
to compass a perfect work in the metamorphosis of an Indian child
into a self-respecting and well-trained Christian woman. One regrets
the absence of published data from their own community historical
sources concerning this happy experiment in Indian education which
�ST. MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , I I
SS
they worked out through some three decades of years on the Kansas
prairies. Results, at any rate, were achieved, and these have happily
been put on record in numerous testimonies from disinterested sources.96
Of the Religious of the Sacred Heart thus identified with Indian
education at St. Mary's the names of two at least occur in the mission
annals. Mother Lucille Mathevon was called by death in the same year,
1857, that s a w t n e mission suffer another heavy loss in the premature
passing of Father Duermck. She had been one of the pioneer nuns that
came up the Mississippi with Mother Duchesne in 1818 to open at
St. Charles in Missouri the first house of the Religious of the Sacred
Heart in the New World, and she had gone out with the same venerable
mother to Sugar Creek in 1842 to make the venture of a school for the
little women of the Potawatomi. Both at Sugar Creek and at St. Mary's
she discharged the duties of superior, that the nuns' school met with
such a measure of success was largely due to her intelligent sympathy
and administrative skill. Associated with Mother Lucille in her educational work was Mother Mary Anne O'Connor, whose death at St.
Mary's occurred December 9, 1863. She, too, had seen service at Sugar
Creek and altogether spent twenty years and more as instructor of the
Indian girls. Father Gailland wrote of her that she was conspicuous for
a whole series of virtues, as gravity, wisdom, humility, assiduity in labor
however menial and a burning zeal for the salvation of souls. Womenfolk often came to the convent to seek her advice and never left without gain to their souls while through her inspiring zeal entire families
were converted to the Catholic faith.
Up to the end of the sixties the two departments, male and female,
of the Indian school were administered as a financial unit by the Jesuit
superior of the mission. The mission could be said to have owned the
buildings and other improvements but not the property on which they
stood, which was Indian land and incapable as such of alienation. As
to the expenses of the two schools, including board and lodging for the
teachers, they were met out of a c ommon fund provided in part by the
annual per capita subsidy granted by the government, in part by the
sale of the surplus stock and produce of the farm. This fund was administered by the head of the mission. The changed condil ions brought
about by the treaties and especially the acquisition by the mission of
large tracts of land with absolute title thereto in fee-simple made it
desirable to arrange some equitable division of the mission property
between the missionaries and the nuns. With this purpose in view a
meeting was held on May 25, 1869, at the residence of Bishop Miege
at Leavenworth, there being present besides the prelate himself,
96
Cf
note 59.
agents' reports cited m Chap XXVIII Cf
also sufra, Chap. XXIII,
�S6 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D S T A T E S
Mothers Galwey and Hardy on behalf of the nuns and Father Joseph
Keller, assistant-provincial of Missouri, on behalf of the Jesuits. T h e
terms of the division of goods were submitted by Father Keller to the
two mothers, were approved by them, and then forwarded by the latter
to their Superior General in Pans, Mother Goetz, who gave them her
indorsement. According to the arrangement thus mutually agreed upon,
St. Mary's Mission was to cede to the Religious of the Sacred Heart
a tract of land some fifty to sixty acres in extent, so located as to include
within its limits the house occupied by the nuns, and, besides, provide
a site for the erection of new buildings with playgrounds, garden,
orchard and pasture. T h e nuns, moreover, were to receive ten thousand
dollars in cash, ten milk-cows or more if the needs of their community
so required, some horses and other stock, and provisions for a year and
a half if the convent was in need of them or desired to receive them
Finally, in case the mission was to make brick on its own account, the
nuns were to be furnished with the needed brick for a building of three
stories, sixty by forty feet in size With the carrying out of these articles
of agreement the Religious of the Sacred Heart thereafter administered
their financial and economical affairs independently of the Jesuits 97
On February 2, 1870, two superiors of the Religious of the Sacred
Heart, one of them being Mother Galwey of Chicago, arrived at St.
Mary's to confer with the local superior on the selection of a site for
the academy building which the nuns were planning to erect. On April
16 following work was begun on the foundations of the new structure,
which was to be of brick and four stories in height Soon housed in
their new and commodious home, the nuns there carried on, with the
same devotion that had marked their labors for the Indian children,
the work of the higher Christian education of women. They were thus
engaged when there occurred, February 3, 1879, t n e complete destruction of the new St. Mary's College building by fire. T h e catastrophe
took place in the early hours of the afternoon, the first cry of fire having
been raised just at the end of the midday meal, about half after twelve
o'clock. That very afternoon the nuns vacated a considerable part of
their building, placing it at the disposal of the Jesuit faculty and their
students. Three days later the nuns transferred their academy to a
house in the adjoining town of St. Marys, leaving their entire convent
to be occupied by the college faculty and students. Within a few months
the Jesuits had acquired the convent by purchase from the nuns, who
in July, 1879, withdrew definitely from St. Mary's leaving the sons
of Loyola, with whom they had been associated in Indian instruction
for several decades, to pursue alone the work of Christian education on
Gailland, Htst. St Mary's Mission
(F)
�ST. MARY'S OF T H E POTAWATOMI, II
57
the banks of the Kaw. With the departure from Kansas of the Religious
of the Sacred Heart was closed a chapter as interesting and impressive
as any that may be read in the pioneer educational history of the West.
§ 7 T H E PASSING OF T H E POTAWATOMI
The question has been raised whether the two Potawatomi treaties
of 1861 and 1867, providing as they did for the allotment of the
tribal lands in severalty, the per capita distribution of tribal funds and
the admission of the Indians, according as circumstances permitted, to
the full status of naturalized American citizens, really made for the
best interests of the tribe. It may be argued, as has been done, that
the wiser policy would have been to secure the Indians adequate protection in the unmolested possession of their common reserve and not
urge them, as was done by government officials and missionaries alike,
to acquiesce in the sectionizing of the reserve.98 In the light thrown
upon the problem by subsequent events this view, it may be admitted,
has something to commend it. But hindsight is easier than foresight.
The advocates of the sectionizing policy included numerous undoubted
friends of the Indians, who were not without suspicion of some at least
of the evils that might attend its operation Father Gailland's stand on
the question found expression in his prophetic words, "wo to you [Indians] when your lands shall be sectionized'" " And yet to him and
other well-wishers of the Indians it seemed that the blessings which
would probably accrue from individual ownership and the rights of
citizenship would more than counterbalance any evils that might be
expected to follow from the sectionizing process. Moreover, the invasion
of the reserve by settlers appeared to be taken for granted, possibly on
insufficient grounds, as inevitable, so that nothing was left for the
Indians but to adjust themselves to the new situation and meet the
white man on equal ground as citizens of the United States. Gailland
wrote of the treaty of 1861. "The steps they [Potawatomi] are taking
forebode their final ruin as a tribej but it is unavoidable, being brought
on by the force of events." 10°
By arrangement with the government the Potawatomi minority,
most of them belonging to the Prairie Band and numbering in all some
six hundred, who opposed the apportionment of the old reserve among
the individual members of the tribe, were given a new reserve, some
eleven miles square in extent, in the present Jackson County, Kansas.
It was described in 1869 as having "valuable timber, pure water, and
98
99
See sufra, Chap XXIX, § 4
De Vnendt, Genllani. (F).
100
WL, 6.70.
�58 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D S T A T E S
rich prairie soil containing over seventy-five thousand acres within an
hour's ride of the dome of our State capitol [Topeka]." 101 This last
home of the Potawatomi tribe in Kansas is still theirs. T o this day they
maintain within its borders the customs of their fathers, possess (or up
to recent date possessed) the land in common, and in the eyes of some
are a living proof of the wisdom of the choice made by the Prairie Indians of the sixties when they refused to follow their Christian fellowtribesmen after the will-o'-the-wisp allurements of individual homes and
American citizenship. Not only was a reserve in Kansas thus secured to
the non-sectionizing members of the tribe, but by the terms of the
treaty of 1867 t n e Potawatomi were to be provided with another reserve
in the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, not to exceed thirty miles
square in extent. To this reserve, which was to be purchased for them
by the government out of the proceeds of the sale of their surplus lands
in Kansas to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, they were
to be at liberty to migrate. Numbers of the Christian Indians of St.
Mary's subsequently settled in this new home. 102
As to the fate that befell the Potawatomi who set up as individual
land-owners under the treaties of 1861 and 1867, it is a melancholy
story of Indian incapacity and the white man's greed. It is one of the
commonplaces of American history that the Indian in any issue of justice between him and the civilized or supposedly civilized folk of the
frontier generally played a losing game. Whiskey, in D r . Palmer's
words "the great hindrance to the material, moral and social advancement of the Indian," was plentiful on the Potawatomi reserve, though
its sale to the Indians was strictly forbidden by government statute. 103
Teamsters passing over the reserve in every direction on the public highways had liquor in their wagons to sell to the red men. In 1866 Dr.
Palmer petitioned that a marshal and a United States commissioner be
stationed near the agency, which was at St. Marys, with a view to
greater success in repressing the sordid traffic.104 Sometimes the culprits
were caught and convicted, more often they were not. Another abuse to
101
RCIA,
1869
According to Father Gailland, writing in 1877, about one hundred Potawatomi from Kansas had settled near Chetopa (Indian T e r r i t o r y ) and were being
attended by a Father Bonocmi About two or three hundred were settled on the
Canadian River and were under the care of the Benedictines WL, 6 84 For the
status of the citizen Potawatomi in Oklahoma, cf G E E Lindquist, The Red
Man tn the Umted States ( N e w York, 1 9 2 3 ) , 177 et seq According to Lindquist,
of cit, p 200, fifty-four Catholic families belonging to the Jackson County
Potawatomi attended services in a chapel fourteen and a half miles west of Mayette
103
RCIA,
1866, p 263
104
Idem, loc at.
102
�ST. MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , I I
59
which the Indians were subjected was the stealing of their timber by
the settlers. "These offenders sometimes succeeded by the use of a little
shrewdness," reported Dr. Palmer in 1866, "in getting summoned upon
the grand jury. They seem to steal timber from an Indian with as little
compunction as they manifest in receiving pay for investigating cases of
theft and refusing to indict." 105 Three years later Palmer wrote again:
"They [the timber thieves] know that the United States district
court for the district of Kansas never did and probably never will convict a white man for depredating upon Indian lands. I know of no way
of remedying the evil except by prevailing upon white men to be honest
and just toward the Indians, or seeing that the laws are rigidly enforced
against them One other means may be tried, with perhaps a more certain prospect of success, to move the Indian to some country where he
would be free from such annoyances." 106
In more recent allotments of Indian lands in severalty to the individual members of a tribe, the government has in general proceeded
with the wisdom born of experience, taking precautions to secure the
several land-owners in the possession of their property and prevent them
from alienating it unwisely. But such vigilance was not exercised in the
breaking up of the Potawatomi reserve. No particular obstacles were
placed by the law in the way of the Indian who wished to barter his
rich acres for a mess of pottage Dr. Palmer reported in 1866
I have advised and encouraged but few to apply for their patents and
to take upon themselves the duties and responsibilities of citizens Improvidence is the peculiar characteristic of the real Indian No sooner does he
become possessed of money or property that he can dispose of, than he proceeds at once to make it available, as far as possible, for present enjoyment,
seeming not to reflect that his means may become exhausted until his last
dollar is gone. T h u s many of our Indians would gladly apply for and
receive patents to their land (without realizing at all the changed relation
they assume in the community by becoming citizens of the United States)
solely with a view of a sale and spending the proceeds thereof, as also their
interest in the credits of the tribe held in trust by the Government for them.
I have conceived it to be my duty to restrain such persons, as iar as possible,
from taking any of ihe steps necessary for becoming citizens Many of them
will doubtless find it to their advanlage at no distant day to throw up their
present allotments and follow their friends, who may have gone before
them, to a new home. T h e n it would be better that they should not have
squandered their share of the national wealth and been left paupers upon
the Government or their Indian friends for support 1 0 7
Idem, 1866, p 264
Idem, 1869, p. 375
Idem, 1866, p 264.
�60 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E
MIDDLE UNITED
STATES
N a i v e l y a n d in a w k w a r d E n g l i s h yet with vivid a n d dramatic
touches of his own, B r o t h e r D e V r i e n d t in his sketch of F a t h e r G a i l l a n d
pictures t h e distressing scenes t h a t w e r e daily witnessed as t h e helpless
I n d i a n s p l a y e d into t h e h a n d s of unscrupulous whites. G a i l l a n d is represented as discoursing sadly, almost d e s p o n d e n t l y , before his fellowJesuits in t h e faculty recreation-room at t h e mission on t h e d a r k days
t h a t have overtaken his once h a p p y P o t a w a t o m i charges
I feel very sad, because I see now that my prophecy is going to be true.
I have said to the Indians "wo to you when your lands shall be sectionized'
You will be lost body and soul " It is now only too true for I see the
land-sharks cheating my Indians out of their land and property T h e y took
some of them, all unsuspecting, to the saloon and there they treated them
to a little whiskey and then to a little brandy till they saw the Indians
commencing to talk. T h e n the rascally land-sharks would try to make a
bargain with the Indians, telling them they would give them 300 dollars
and a buggy and a pair of horses for 80 acres of land, and saying it would
be very nice for them to have a buggy and a pair of horses for 80 acres
of land, and saying it would be very nice for them to have a buggy to
drive their families to church T h e simple Indians concluded the bargain
and gave the deed of their land to the rascals Another Indian gave 80 acres
and a house for 500 dollars and a cow. Another sold his claim and his
wife's and that of his four children for 1200 dollars and then set to drinking
and wasting the money, and by and by had to buy a tent to live in and
[had] to beg for his needs. Others sold their claims and went to Kansas
[City] and then to Topeka, and spent their money on drink and trifles
and then returning to St Mary's fell victims under the locomotive. Still
others, very good Indians, sold their claims for one-fourth of what they were
worth and, having the money, commenced to drink and fight and some
of them were killed And who is to blame for all this, but those rascals
who cheated the poor Indians out of their property. O h ' if it were pleasing
to Almighty God that they should all get sick and I could give them all
the holy rites of the Church and they would die before getting spoiled,
what a joy it would be to me to see them all going to heaven before I die'
But this will not be possible W e must be resigned to the will of God and
I must bear my cross in seeing their misfortunes
Rap, r a p ' "Come i n ' " "Father Gailland, some white man wants to
buy my claim " " I forbid you to sell it, for you will begin to drink as
soon as you get the money and you will become a bad man and die unhappy
and go to hell " " W e l l , Father, I promise you I shall not sell if that is so "
"Yes, my child, believe me it will be so if you sell your claim You will
be without a home and then what will your wife and children become but
beggars and drunkards and thieves to be put in prison and from there to
hell Go home and work and do what I have told you and you will be
happy And if those white people come again, tell them that you do not want
to sell an inch of your land and say nothing else and they will let you
�ST. M A R Y ' S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M 1 , II
61
alone." "Father, I do promise you I shall not sell it, but shall do as you
told me Goodby Father, pray for m e . "
R a p ' "Come i n ' " "Father Gailland, that Indian boy went to Topeka
with his parents and they have been drinking and feasting and buying
there, and in coming back the boy, about 20 years old, fell between the
cars in stepping into the train and the cars were already moving and he
was killed" " O h m y ' T h e r e it is' I told them they should stay at home
and now see what they got by going there to drink and to feast. O h ' must
I hear more of such accidents. See, it is the money from the claim that
brought them there. ] told them not to sell and they had to do their own
will and now they find out what they got for it. I hope they will open
their eyes and stop selling the rest of their land I must go and see them
as soon as they come home and correct them on their disobedience because
I had forbidden them to sell T h e y were good people and never disobeyed
me, but those land rascals deceived them "
R a p ' "Come i n ' " "Father, Nakse and Queskin sold their land Scarcely
had they received the money when they went to the saloon, and drinking,
because they had plenty of money, they very soon got drunk T h e y commenced to gamble and after some misunderstanding they began to quarrel
and fight and then one wounded the other, and the wounded one killed
Nakse." " O h ' devil's drink' T w o of our best Indians before they had
sectiomzed. T h e y were continually working, examples in the church, going
to confession and holy communion every week and Queskin was one of
our best school-boys, who went to school in 1849 a t St Mary's A real
Indian boy, not knowing A B C, no English whatever, and he made his
confession in English after 14 months schooling He was a very good boy
and for us a very good interpreter, having spent four years in school He
was a good reader, writer, arithmetician After leaving school he went to
live with his step-father. T h e y worked well together, were examples in
church, never drank and now at last money for their claim spent in drinking
has worked their destruction. O h ' my Indians, if you had never possessed
land, how happy you would be' But alas' it was too late Your destruction
is the use of money O h ' my brethren, how my heart feels I cannot tell
you' Almighty God is good. I hope He will not let my Indians perish I hope
He will make them poor again, without land, and make them live in a
common reserve I hope so T h e n shall I feel happy " 1 0 8
This was the tragic fate that overtook the historic Potawatomi tribe.
It went down in defeat in an unequal contest with inexorable conditions
and events. The progressive disappearance of the Indians from the
Kaw reserve is recorded in the pages of the St. Mary's house diary. In
1870 the red men were ravaged by sickness and death. In 1872 the diary
reports them as "departing" and in 1873 as "scattering." In 1876 Father
108
De Vriendt, Gailland, p. 173, et seq. ( F ) . Numerous emendations have
been made in the text of the brother's ms.
�62 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E
MIDDLE UNITED
STATES
G a i l l a n d estimated t h e sectionizing I n d i a n s still to be found within t h e
old reserve at about six h u n d r e d , a n d in t h e same year, which was t h e
one preceding his d e a t h , h e p e n n e d w h a t m a y be called t h e obituary
of t h e race.
W e have arrived at the gloomiest page of the Pottowatomy mission, a
sudden cold wind from the northern regions has blasted the beautiful flowers,
that but yesterday displayed so much freshness in its magnificent garden
Until this time the Pottowattomies had acquired to a great degree the
habit of industry, were regular in attending to their religious duties, and
by the purity of their morals and vivacity of their faith had been the edification of their white neighbors. But now, in accordance with the treaty
stipulations, the Government begins in different instalments to pay out to
them large sums of money T h e whiskey comes along with the money and
flows in torrents, nearly every house in St Mary's is turned into a saloon
Sharks of all kinds follow the Indians wherever they go, and never lose
sight of them night and day, they use all manner of frauds and artifices to
get hold of the Indian's money and property Seeing himself undone by
those he looked upon as friends and protectors, the poor Indian in despair
of ever redeeming his condition plunges still deeper into drinking and all
sorts of excess. In consequence thereof many of our neophytes have become
quite negligent in the practice of their religious duties Many have sold
their lands and become homeless. Many by imprudent exposure to the inclemency of the weather have met with a premature death. Some were
drowned, some crushed by the cars, some fell by the hands of assassins
W h a t a sad spectacle it is for a missionary to see the work of so many
years thus destroyed, and his flock devoured by merciless wolves Like the
prophet standing amidst the ruins, what else remains for him but to weep
over the work of destruction, to bewail his sins, to implore divine mercy,
and to sigh after a better home? O n e thing, however, in my bitter grief
consoles me, that a certain number, small indeed, have remained firm, and
that to my knowledge none of those that have forsaken the path of virtue
have lost the faith; this revives in them sooner or later especially in times
of sickness and adversity. 109
F r o m t h e September d a y in 1848 w h e n h e arrived with t h e pioneer
p a r t y to lay t h e foundations of t h e new St. M a r y ' s u p to t h e d a r k days
of t h e debacle F a t h e r G a i l l a n d ' s devotion t o t h e forlorn I n d i a n s k n e w
not a m o m e n t ' s respite. E a r l y in 1871 h e s u b m i t t e d to t h e mission
board in St. L o u i s a m e m o r i a l u r g i n g t h a t t h e Jesuits accompany t h e
Christian I n d i a n s , w h o w e r e m o v i n g south, a n d set u p a mission on
109 p p ^ 5 g2> William Nicholson, "A Tour of Indian Agencies in Kansas and
the Indian Territory in 1870" in Kansas Historical Quarterly, 3 310 "These
Indians [Potawatomi] show the bad effects of annuity payments They sit and
wait for their money and then use it badly "
�ST. MARY'S O F T H E P O T A W A T O M I , I I
63
behalf of them in their newly acquired habitat; but the board vetoed
the proposal. Nobody could be spared for the suggested mission; the
board could do nothing more than express the hope that "the Lord
of the harvest might soon send workmen for a harvest such as this " An
offer had been made at this juncture to the missionaries which was
inviting enough, if indeed the terms of the offer had been correctly
understood, which seems unlikely. Each of the fifteen hundred Potawatomi migrating to the Indian Territory was to receive four hundred
and eighteen acres of land and of this allotment each would set aside
eighteen for the mission, making the latter the possessor of some
twenty-seven thousand acres 110 No subsequent efforts were made by the
Potawatomi to secure the services of Jesuit missionaries, at least none
appear to be on record. T h e separation between the tribe and the missionary body that had ministered to it almost without interruption from
the days of Marquette and Allouez was to be complete.
Meantime, Gailland, as long as his physical condition permitted,
was ever on the alert in attending to the spiritual wants of the Indians
still clinging to the reserve H e went in this direction and that in all
sorts of weather wherever the signal-flag of spiritual distress was raised
De Vriendt wrote of him that he seemed to have his ears always cocked
to catch the words "sick," "danger," "confession." When somebody was
reported to be unwell, he could not rest until he had ascertained whether
or not the person was in danger, and even when such was not the case,
he would often go anyway for fear a soul might pass out of this world
without the ministrations of the Church. T h e patient attended to, he
would return in high spirits to the mission. " H e is ripe for heaven,"
was his only comment. "Let him go. I feel satisfied. I have done my
duty and am ready for some one else." His duties in the mission-church
he discharged with regularity and zeal. H e sat for long hours in the
confessional waiting for the penitents as they presented themselves in
irregular succession, even when all were heard he' would still return
at intervals to see whether some late-coming Indian had not taken his
stand before the confessional. Sometimes an Indian loitering about in
the shadow of the church was ace osted by Gailland " D o you not wish
to go to confession'' I have a little time now. Come, come' how do you
know that you will live till tomorrow?" The whites, ever growing more
numerous, were welcome in the mission church, but Gailland's first concern was for the Indians. As far as depended on him, the latter were
not to suffer harm from contact with folk that sometimes bore with poor
grace the name of civilized. One Sunday a party of whites for some or
110
St Mary's House Diary (F)
�64 T H E J E S U I T S O F T H E M I D D L E U N I T E D S T A T E S
other reason rose from their seats in church and started to walk out
before the services were ended 5 whereupon Gailland roundly berated
them from the altar as being a scandal to the Indians. If they came
to church, let them conduct themselves therein with decency and
decorum after the manner of his Potawatomi children. 111
A call in the winter season from a sick Indian residing twenty-three
miles from St. Mary's was promptly answered by Father Gailland, but
on crossing a river only a short distance from the mission he fell
through the ice and had to continue on his way with clothes frozen to
his body. H e had perforce under the same circumstances to spend the
night in the Indian's hut and return home the following day. Twentyfour hours of this physical hardship and exposure had their result, the
missionary thereby contracting a paralysis from which he never fully
recovered. For some time subsequently he was still able with the aid of
horse and buggy, for to ride horseback was now beyond him, to go
some distance on his ministerial rounds. For several years he lacked the
needed services of a driver for the vehicle. " T h e Potawatomies have
diminished greatly the last few years," he wrote to De Smet in June,
1872. "Drink has done considerable harm among them I am the only
one who understands their language. I can scarcely see them for lack of
a driver j this makes the matter all the worse. If I could have a driver at
least twice a month I might be able to do some good. There are 20
boys who would willingly render me this service. It seems to me that
if each of them were to lose one or two days of class a year, their
studies would not suffer much on this account j on the contrary. But our
professors will not hear of it." 112
Father Gailland's last summons to the sick, occurring about June,
1877, is recorded by Brother D e Vnendt with characteristic vividness.
T h e brother's fondness for lending realistic touches to his narrative is
still indulged. " R a p ' rap' rap' 'Father Gailland, an Indian is sick
near Topeka.' It was a little before dinner. 'Very well,' said Father
Gailland, '1 will start after dinner with the cars.' So he went; but next
morning a telegraph despatch came saying that Father Gailland was
very sick so that the Brother Infirmanan had to get him again and come
home with him." For several weeks following the valiant priest was
confined to bed} then some eight days before the end of July he began
to improve in quite remarkable fashion and was able to celebrate Mass
on St. Ignatius day, July 31. Brother D e Vnendt visiting him on this
day found him in excellent spirits and received from him the Jesuit
greeting of "a happy feast." But the veteran missionary was to say Mass
111
112
De Vriendt, Gailland (F)
Gailland to De Smet, June 11, 1872 (A).
�ST. MARY'S OF T H E POTAWATOMI, II
65
no more. With the dawn of August he relapsed into his previous weakness and declined rapidly until he passed away on the twelfth day of
that month, 1877, in the full possession of his senses to the end. With
him the Jesuit attempt, lasting through four decades, to christianize and
civilize the Potawatomi of Kansas passed into history.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jesuits of the Middle United States
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="%20http%3A//id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069941.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004994.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
Publisher
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Contributor
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Rights
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Reproduced with permission of Loyola University Press.
Format
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PDF
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Identifier
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JA-Garraghan
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
BX3708 .G3
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Loyola University Press.
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
Authentic story of the Society of Jesus in Illinois; Kansas; Louisiana; Maryland; Missouri; Ohio; and Oregon from 1673. Extensive discussion on the Indian missions of the Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Osage, and Blackfeet, and of Father De Smet and the Oregon missions.
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
2016-08-30
Extent
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Three volumes
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1938
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
hardcover book
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Chapter 29: St. Mary's of the Potawatomi, II
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
Publisher
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Contributor
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Type
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Text
Format
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PDF
Identifier
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JA-Garraghan-031
Source
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BX3708 .G3
Language
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eng
Relation
A related resource
JA-Garraghan
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
Description
An account of the resource
Chapter 29 of Jesuits of the Middle United States by Gilbert Garraghan. Volume III. Pages 1-65.
Rights
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Reproduced with permission of Loyola University Press.
Rights Holder
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Loyola University Press.
Date Available
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2016-10-7
Date Copyrighted
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1938
Extent
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73 pages
19th century
American History
American religious history
education
explorers
higher education
History
Jesuit missions
Jesuits
Kansas
Middle West
Missions
Missions to Native Americans
Native Americans
Potawatomi
religious education
Society of Jesus
St. Mary's
St. Mary's Mission
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40e5e1445b9c07919ccc09903633f229
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jesuits of the Middle United States
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="%20http%3A//id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069941.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004994.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Reproduced with permission of Loyola University Press.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
PDF
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
JA-Garraghan
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
BX3708 .G3
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Loyola University Press.
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
Authentic story of the Society of Jesus in Illinois; Kansas; Louisiana; Maryland; Missouri; Ohio; and Oregon from 1673. Extensive discussion on the Indian missions of the Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Osage, and Blackfeet, and of Father De Smet and the Oregon missions.
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
2016-08-30
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
Three volumes
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1938
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
hardcover book
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Title Page and Table of Contents, Volume III
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
Contributor
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
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PDF
Identifier
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JA-Garraghan-47
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
BX3708 .G3
Language
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eng
Relation
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JA-Garraghan
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
Description
An account of the resource
Title page and table of contents for volume III of Jesuits of the Middle United States by Gilbert Garraghan.
Publisher
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Reproduced with permission of Loyola University Press.
Rights Holder
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Loyola University Press.
Date Available
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2016-10-7
Date Copyrighted
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1938
Extent
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8 pages
19th century
American History
American religious history
education
explorers
higher education
History
Jesuit missions
Jesuits
Middle West
Missions
Native Americans
religious education
Society of Jesus
-
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b517ecf1e0bb6ee249439a87025feda3
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jesuits of the Middle United States
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069931.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="%20http%3A//id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069941.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004994.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
Publisher
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Contributor
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Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Rights
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Reproduced with permission of Loyola University Press.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
PDF
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
JA-Garraghan
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
BX3708 .G3
Rights Holder
A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource.
Loyola University Press.
Abstract
A summary of the resource.
Authentic story of the Society of Jesus in Illinois; Kansas; Louisiana; Maryland; Missouri; Ohio; and Oregon from 1673. Extensive discussion on the Indian missions of the Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Osage, and Blackfeet, and of Father De Smet and the Oregon missions.
Date Available
Date (often a range) that the resource became or will become available.
2016-08-30
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
Three volumes
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1938
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
hardcover book
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Chapter 28: St. Mary's of the Potawatomi, I
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
<a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/n85818611" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Garraghan, Gilbert J. (Gilbert Joseph), 1871-1942</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jesuit Archives & Research Center
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
PDF
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
JA-Garraghan-030
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
BX3708 .G3
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Relation
A related resource
JA-Garraghan
Subject
The topic of the resource
<a href="Jesuits" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069941.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Missions</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--18th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh87004993.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--History--19th century</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069938.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jesuits--Education</a>
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85085029.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Middle West</a>
Description
An account of the resource
Chapter 28 of Jesuits of the Middle United States by Gilbert Garraghan. Volume II. Pages 594-699.
Rights
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Reproduced with permission of Loyola University Press.
Rights Holder
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Loyola University Press.
Date Available
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2016-10-7
Date Copyrighted
Date of copyright.
1938
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
112 pages
19th century
American History
American religious history
education
explorers
higher education
History
Jesuit missions
Jesuits
Kansas
Middle West
Missions
Native Americans
religious education
Society of Jesus
St. Mary's
St. Mary's Mission