Following south along Highway 93 our next port of call was at Stevensville, MT. We wanted to see
the first permanent non-Indian settlement of Montana.Imagine the vast wilderness that was the northern Rockies in the fall of 1841. You and your little band of fellow Jesuit "blackrobes" have trekked westward across half a continent and now you stand on the bank of a wide, shallow, sparkling river coiling through a broad, meadow-lush valley nestled in these wild highlands.
At the request of the Salish and Nez Perce Tribes, Catholic Jesuits, led by Father Pierre DeSmet, S.J. established St. Mary's Mission in the Bitterrroot Valley in 1841.
Fr. DeSmet and his party erected Montana's first church immediately west on the bank of the Bitter Root River. They planted the first gardens, and harvested the first wheat and oats, practiced the first irrigation, bred first livestock, taught first classes and organized the first musical band. St. Mary's was the site of the first flour and lumber mills.
The mission thrived. In November 1845, Fr. Anthony Ravalli, S.J., arrived at St. Mary's after being recruited from Italy by Fr. DeSmet. Fr. Ravalli was a true renaissance man in addition to being a Jesuit priest. He was Montana's first physician, surgeon and pharmacist. Fr. Ravalli was an architect, artist, sculptor and built the first gist mill and saw mill. He was assigned to St. Mary's during 1845-1850 and again from 1866 until his death in 1884. He rests in the cemetery west of the chapel.
St. Mary's ceased to be an Indian mission in 1891, when the Flathead-Salish were forced to move to a reservation.
Today, the Mission Chapel is surrounded by historic buildings, telling the story of the beginning. "Dear Old St. Mary's", as father Ravalli called it, stands as a monument to those heroic sons of the mountains, through whose efforts the first trail into Montana was blazed with the Cross, and to those dedicated Jesuits who were the pioneers of Montana's pioneers.
That is all for now, more on our last stop below.
Candy and Johnny
