Pierre-Jean De Smet
Pierre -Jean De Smet ( born January 30, 1801 in Dendermonde, † May 23 1873 in St. Louis), who called himself Pieter -Jan De Smet, was a Roman Catholic missionary from Flanders. He was a Jesuit and enlisted in the northwestern United States. He was considered a friend of Sitting Bull ( Tatanka Iyotanka ).
Life and work
De Smet was born in Dendermonde in East Flanders, which belonged to the diocese of Ghent. His father was a shopkeeper, but this had considerable wealth. Pierre -Jean went with the Petit Séminaire 19 in Mechelen.
He came first in August 1821 in the company of Charles Nerinckx to America to go as a novice to White Marsh, a Jesuit station in Baltimore. After that he went to Florissant, where he was ordained on 23 September 1827. In the years 1824-1830 he worked on as prefect of the boys' school with Indian customs and languages , went to the College of St. Louis (now the University of Missouri -St. Louis), where he was treasurer, but he had from September 1833 to November 1837 return because of a skin disease in Belgium.
Iowa
1838 and 1839 supported De Smet building the St. Joseph's Mission in the later Council Bluffs. To this end, he took over the abandoned Fort Council Bluffs, a larger cabin and a missionary especially among the Potawatomi under Sauganash (about 1780-1841 ). He had little success in the mission and therefore secretly baptized some children. In addition, he helped Joseph Nicollet in the cartography of the region. He himself learned it so much that he could create the first accurate map of the Missouri River system between the Platte River and the Big Sioux River. It is particularly important because it also lists Indian villages and facilities.
Flathead Mission
Then he turned to February of the proselytisation of the strains belonging to the Confederated Salish today and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation. Bishop Joseph Rosati sent him there after multiple Indian delegations had requested the posting of priests. From 30 April to 31 December 1840, he explored the territory of the Rocky Mountains for the first time the possibility of a mission trip. He had to start before after the model of the Jesuits in Paraguay, a reduction that whites should be blocked.
In 1841, he came with two Fathers and three brothers to Montana in the Bitterroot Valley and founded the station Sainte- Marie, today Stevensville, about 60 km south of Missoula. In the spring of 1842 he visited the missionaries at Fort Vancouver François- Norbert Blanchet and Modeste Demers. With them he was making plans for the mission in the Oregon Country. De Smet should procure the necessary funds in Europe. Again he crossed the Atlantic and returned only on July 31, 1844 back to the Columbia. With him five Jesuits and sisters came from Notre Dame de Namur. De Smet believed, without a peace with the Blackfeet was not possible a successful mission. Therefore, he decided to take a trip there.
Mission trip to Canada
On this trip, he came well before the territory of the Hudson 's Bay Company. In August 1845, he broke from Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho on the Kootenay River, reached the sources of the Columbia River, crossed the Sinclair Pass, returned to Kootenay. From there we went on the White Man's Pass to the Bow River at Canmore today northward to Rocky Mountain House, which he reached on 4 October. He met there the whole month with Cree, Chippewa and Blackfeet together, but of the latter only two small groups. The winter is spent, after he had wandered for several days, at Fort Edmonton.
In the spring he moved across the upper North Saskatchewan River to Jasper House, where he celebrated Easter on April 12, 1846, and continue on Fort Colville near the Kettle Falls (May 29 ) to Fort Vancouver, which he reached in June, and finally to his mission station at Sainte -Marie Bitterroot River ( around the 8th of August) and finally back to St. Louis. From Fort Vancouver he had sought out the Willamette Valley.
After the mission activity
In the next few years he kept in touch to Europe, which he crossed the Atlantic a total of 19 times. For the U.S. government, he traveled several times 1851-1870 on the upper Missouri.
In 1868, he persuaded Sitting Bull the Treaty of Fort Rice to accept. In 1870, he visited for the last time the Sioux.
De Smet died in St. Louis and was buried at St. Stanislaus Seminary in Florissant near other missionaries. His body was brought in 2003 together with other missionaries on the Bellefontaine and Calvary Cemeteries in St. Louis.