Father Peter John de Smet: Jesuit in the West

Description

In this biography| Robert Carriker describes De Smet’s love for the great American West and the native tribes who lived there| the Potawatomis| Flatheads| Coeur d’Alenes| Kalispels| Blackfeet| Yankton Sioux| and others to whom the Jesuit father carried Christianity. Soon the man called Black Robe became known throughout the mountains and plains as a man of peace and a friend of all Indians. Yet this book looks at De Smet as more than a mere courier of Christianity to the western tribes and an establisher of missions among the Indians. De Smet was also a fund raiser extraordinary for his order on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean as well as a writer of travel books read avidly by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. With the nearly quarter of a million nineteenth-century dollars he raised in his lifetime| and with the addition of his own family’s funds| De Smet kept the Jesuits’ underfunded western Indian missions alive. Deeply sensitive to criticism by his fellow Jesuits| De Smet did not always enjoy community living. He felt most at home on the frontier| where he maintained his reputation as an affable companion on the trail| whether seated in a canoe or astride a mule| until his death in 1873.