A GREAT CHIEF

 The previous Blog dealt with the granddaughter of Salish CHIEF PAUL (BIG FACE) TJOLZHIYSAY,   who between 1831 and 1839 sent four delegations to St. Louis requesting the Blackrobes  (Jesuits) as their teachers. How did he hear about these missionaries and their religion? 

 When Christian Iroquois accompanied the European fur traders into the interior of North America in the early 19th century, they met the Salish and other peaceful tribes and settled among them and of course  mentioned who taught them about the religion they would adopt.  Chief Tjolzhitsay and his people were moved by what they heard and decided to send for these missionaries that they too might learn of this God.

September 24, 1841, Belgian born Father Pierre Jean DeSmet together with his fellow Jesuit missionaries, Fathers Gregory Mengarini and Nicolas Point, and three Lay Brothers arrived in the Bitterroot valley in the southwestern part of Montana.

From Father DeSmet’s journal:

Eight days afterwards we arrived safely in the camp of the Flat-heads, and Ponderas, or Pends d'oreilles.' Immediately the whole village was in commotion ; men, women and children, all came to meet me, and shake hands, and I was conducted in triumph to the lodge of the great chief Tjolizhitzay, (the Big face.) He has the appearance of an old patriarch. Surrounded by the principal chiefs of the two tribes, and the most renowned warriors, he thus addressed me: 

"This day Kaikolinzosten (the Great Spirit) has accomplished our wishes, and our hearts are swelled with joy. Our desire to be instructed was so great, that three times had we deputed our people to the Great Black-gown in St. Louis, to obtain a father. Now, Father, speak, and we will comply with all you will tell us. Show us the road we have to follow, to come to the place where the Great Spirit resides."

Then he resigned his authority to me; but I replied that he mistook the object of my coming among them; that I had no other object in view, but their spiritual welfare; that with respect to temporal affairs, they should remain as they were, till circumstances should allow them to settle in a permanent spot.—Afterwards we deliberated on the hours proper for their  spiritual exercises and instructions. One of the chiefs brought me a bell, with which I might give the signal.

Chief Big Face, nearly 90 years old, greeted the Blackrobes with great joy and was one of the first to be baptized, along with 350 others at the three forks of the Missouri River.  He received then name of Paul. Only months later in 1841, after receiving his first Communion, he died.

When I first came to Our Lady of the Rock, nearly 40 years ago, we were reading at table A History of the Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest 1743-1983 by Wilfred P. Schoenberg, S.J. of Gonzaga University.  That tome, which is almost 900 pages, won the Washington Governor's Book Award. It was a fascinating reading, at times stranger and more adventuresome than fiction. While it took us 2 years to get through, it was nevr boring.

.