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 campaigned in the northwestern United States. He was considered a friend of Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotanka).
life and work
Pieter-Jan de Smet was born in Dendermonde in East Flanders , part of the diocese of Ghent . His father was a shopkeeper, but he had considerable fortune. At the age of 19 De Smet entered the Petit Séminaire in Mechelen .
He came to America for the first time in August 1821, accompanied by Charles Nerinckx, to go as a novice to White Marsh, a Jesuit station near Baltimore . In 1823 the novitiate was moved to Florissant . He was ordained there on September 23, 1827. In the years 1824 to 1830 he dealt as prefect of the boys' school with Indian customs and languages, went to the college of St. Louis (today University of Missouri - St. Louis ), where he was treasurer, but he had to from September 1833 to November 1837 returned to Belgium because of a skin disease.
Iowa
In 1838 and 1839 De Smet supported the establishment of St. Joseph's Mission in what would later become Council Bluffs . To this end, he took over the abandoned Fort Council Bluffs, a larger log cabin, and proselytized mainly among the Potawatomi under Sauganash (around 1780 to 1841). He had little success in the mission and therefore secretly baptized some children. He also helped Joseph Nicollet with the cartography of the region. He learned so much himself that he was the first to create an accurate map of the Missouri river system between the Platte River and the Big Sioux River. It is particularly important because it also lists Native American villages and institutions.
Flathead Mission
He then turned from February to proselytizing the tribes that are now the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation . Bishop Joseph Rosati sent him there after Indian delegations had asked several times to send priests. From April 30 to December 31, 1840, he explored the possibilities of a missionary trip in the Rocky Mountains for the first time. He planned to found a reduction based on the model of the Jesuits in Paraguay, which would be closed to whites.
In 1841 he came to Montana with two fathers and three brothers in the Bitterroot Valley, where he founded the Sainte-Marie station, now Stevensville , around 60 km south of Missoula . In the spring of 1842 he visited the missionaries in Fort Vancouver François-Norbert Blanchet and Modeste Demers . With them he made plans for the Oregon Country mission . De Smet should raise the necessary funds in Europe for this. He crossed the Atlantic again and did not return to Columbia until July 31, 1844. With him came five Jesuits and sisters from Notre-Dame de Namur. De Smet believed that a successful mission would not be possible without making peace with the Blackfeet. So he decided to go there.
Mission trip to Canada
On this trip he went far into the Hudson's Bay Company territory . In August 1845 he broke from Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho to the Kootenay River , reached the sources of the Columbia River , crossed the Sinclair Pass , and returned to the Kootenay. From there it went over the White Man's Pass to the Bow River at what is now Canmore north to Rocky Mountain House , which he reached on October 4th. He met Cree , Chippewa, and Blackfeet there for the whole month , but only two small groups of the latter. After wandering around for several days, he spent the winter in 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 on via Fort Colville near the Kettle Falls (May 29) to Fort Vancouver , which he reached in June to finally return to his mission station at Sainte-Marie on the Bitterroot River (around August 8th) and finally to St. Louis. From Fort Vancouver he had visited the Willamette Valley.
After missionary work
In the next few years he kept in touch with Europe, for which he crossed the Atlantic a total of 19 times. For the US government, he traveled several times to the upper Missouri between 1851 and 1870.
In 1868 he convinced Sitting Bull to accept the Fort Rice Treaty . In 1870 he visited the Sioux for the last time .
De Smet died in St. Louis and was buried at St. Stanislaus Seminary near other missionaries in Florissant . His body was taken to the Bellefontaine and Calvary Cemeteries near St. Louis in 2003, along with other missionaries.
literature
- John J. Killoren: Come, Blackrobe: De Smet and the Indian Tragedy. The Institute of Jesuit Sources 2003, reprinted from the University of Oklahoma Press 1994 edition .
- De Smet, Pierre-Jean . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).
Web links
- Pieter Jan De Smet en de indiaanse tragedie (Dutch)
- Biographies and other publications of Father De Smet
Remarks
- ↑ Online Database voor Intermediaire Structuren (ODIS): Levensbeschrijving - Biografische schets , accessed on October 19, 2016 (Dutch).
- ^ William E. Whittaker: Pierre-Jean De Smet's Remarkable Map of the Missouri River Valley, 1839: What Did He See in Iowa? In: Journal of the Iowa Archeological Society. Vol. 55 (2008), pp. 1-13.
- ^ Frank Mullen: Father De Smet and the Pottawattamie Indian Mission : In: Iowa Journal of History and Politics. Vol. 23 (1925), pp. 192-216.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | De Smet, Pierre-Jean |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | De Smet, Pieter-Jan |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Jesuit missionary in the Northwest USA and Canada |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 30, 1801 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dendermonde |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 23, 1873 |
| Place of death | St Louis |