Where the Indians dance and the Belgians bring peace

Father De Smet among his Native American friends.

Before they bent the knee Arab style, Belgians had priests seeking out the lost among the Native Americans. 19 June 1868: Father Pierre-Jean De Smet is sent to pursue peace between the United States and the Sioux Indians in present-day Montana.

Born in Belgium in 1801, Father De Smet became a Jesuit priest in 1821 and then moved to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1823 with the ambition to become a missionary to the Native Americans. He studied their languages, customs and traditions, in order to be fully equipped to spread the Gospel in the manner best understandable to them. He started with the Potawatomi villages in Iowa, with the full preparation for missionary work taking him about seven years. He established St. Joseph’s Mission in Iowa and made use of all his skills to reach his targeted people both with the Good News of God’s salvation and with a helping hand in their daily struggles.

Father Pierre-Jean De Smet.

Those who seek God will find Him, and those who want to bring God to the lost will be provided the opportunity. A tribe of Flathead Indians, the Salish, had heard of this Christ of the Christians from the Iroquois and had become so convinced of the truth of “the white man’s religion” that they thrice sent delegations to St. Louis – 2,400 km away from Wyoming where they lived – to seek the Catholic Church’s “black-robes”. They wanted the priests to come and baptize their children, the sick and the dying. The Roman centurion who showed greater faith than most Hebrews of the time in pleading with Jesus to come and heal his servant has his counterparts in these “noble savages”.

Father De Smet travelled with them back to their tribe, established a mission among them and first offered Holy Mass on 5 July 1840. He also played a major role in the peace secured between the Flatheads and their previously irreconcilable enemy – the Blackfeet. Inner peace will have an outlet in the world.

Flathead Indians (Salish) in front of their teepees.

The Salish, however, were a seasonal nomadic tribe, which Father De Smet found a considerable deterrent to “any solid and permanent good among these poor people”. Thus he proposed a plan for them to assemble and settle in villages, be taught agriculture and be supplied with implements, seed and cattle to make a new lifestyle possible. As for himself, Father De Smet acquired the nomadic lifestyle of the Christian missionary seeking the lost among the Native Americans in multiple areas of America.

Having proved himself a genuine friend, Father De Smet earned the reputation of a white man who could be trusted with fair negotiation and mediation in disputes between the Natives and the US government. One such case when his help was called for was in the 1860s, as Plains Indians like the Sioux and Cheyenne skirmished with settlers taking their lands in ever increasing numbers. The US government wanted the tribes to relocate to reservations, a move met with resistance by them and escalating hostilities between both parties.

Father De Smet – now 67 years old – was called by the government to meet with the legendary Sioux Chief, Sitting Bull, and try negotiating a peace treaty. The meeting took place on 19 June at Chief Sitting Bull’s camp by the Powder River in Montana. The Indian Chief received the priest with all the deserved honours, with “arms stretched out, ready to embrace him”, as he had promised.

Chief Sitting Bull.

The two great men first met at Chief Sitting Bull’s lodge, so as to avoid the chance that some hot-headed young Native charged against the guest as if he was the next white man coming for their extinction. The next day, Father De Smet met with a council of other Chiefs as well.

He failed to convince Chief Sitting Bull and the others to sign the peace treaty – a decision that would cost the Sioux a beautiful but tragic resistance against the inevitable US expansion.  They won the battle at Little Bighorn, but lost the war at the end. Outnumbered, exiled to Canada for four years and nearly starved, the resistance was over and the great Chief ended his days in one final doomed stand on his homeland.

Father De Smet was unable to stop the unstoppable, but through his books and speaking tours he never ceased to bring a sympathetic, closer-to-reality view of the Native American, away from the status of “savages” easily bestowed on them during those eventful times. He died in 1873 the death of a godly man who had devoted his life to the heathen’s reconciliation with the true, living “Great Spirit” who had loved them before time began.

Statue of Father De Smet in Dendermonde, Belgium.