The story of two cultures meeting in the Rockies

“I want to learn about De Smet!” said outgoing President Ed Byrne at the Nov. 17 meeting of the Northwest Montana Westerners as he introduced ethnohistorian Sally Thompson.

So we did, and more.

Thompson’s books and presentations bring new information to light. I appreciate the stories she collects, her dogged research and her questions.  

For instance: “If it’s not written down, how do we stay true to the truth?;” “We were all indigenous at one point — how did we become so different?;” and, when it comes to evaluating written records, “What’s the end product?” and “Who’s the audience?” 

The queries provide points to ponder from the former archaeologist who left “stones and bones” to read history with a different eye and listen hard to stories passed down through generations. “They almost always check out,” Thompson said, corroborated by other accounts.  

For her latest, “Black Robes Enter Coyote’s World: Chief Charlo & Father De Smet in the Rocky Mountains,” Thompson found sources galore — for De Smet especially. Her research led her to the Jesuit Archives in Vatican City as well as De Smet’s native Belgium and all over the United States. 

At St. Louis University she asked library staff if anything new had come in about De Smet. She said, “These two guys looked at each other and said, ‘There’s that box that just came in.’”  

In it she found De Smet’s field journal, including maps and drawings, which illustrated his time among “my Indians” in the Rockies.  

“He was a remarkable human, no doubt about that — but not a saint,” Thompson said, pointing out his restlessness (four schools in three years) and struggles with his Jesuit order. De Smet ultimately lost his missionary job and was sent back to the Midwest in 1846.   

Thompson originally planned to focus only on De Smet, but something felt off. She decided to include others of influence: Chief Charlo (Bitterroot Salish), along with two Iroquois men who, as emissaries of the Salish, traveled to St. Louis to ask for missionaries to come. Surely the white man’s medicine would help stave off raids from the Blackfeet. 

“The Salish men are diplomats,” Thompson says of the stage that was set in the early 1800s. “They do what they can to get along with the white man.” 

Even so, the conflict of values often seemed insurmountable. For example, as De Smet pushed for the Salish men to take up farming instead of hunting for buffalo, which were fewer and farther away, they refused to dig into Mother Earth because men traditionally didn’t have that right.

The Salish constantly asked to see the settlers’ Great Father in Washington, D.C., to resolve differences and hang on to the land they were promised — 22 million acres at one point. 

Congressman James A. Garfield (not yet president) forged Charlo’s signature on the 1872 contract for removal of the Salish from the Bitterroot. Garfield explained the deed to his wife, that it was “to save these noble Indians ... Moreover I greatly dislike to fail in anything I undertake.” 

History buffs constantly seek to satisfy and stoke their curiosity, learning information that fills the gaps, illuminates the shadows and paints a more complete picture of the past. 

Margaret E. Davis, executive director of the Northwest Montana History Museum, can be reached at mdavis@dailyinterlake.com.