CHAPTER XXIII.

RAPACITY OF INDIAN AGENTS. AGRICULTURE AND MATERIAL PROSPERITY OF THE INDIANS OF THE JOCKO RESERVATION.

The Rt. Rev. Bishop O'Connor speaks of the "heartless and inventive rapacity of Indian Agents," and we might confirm the truthfulness of his words by many an example drawn from our Indian missionary life. We shall mention only one or two wherein both "the heartless and the inventive" elements show forth rather conspicuously.

When boats commenced to run on the Upper Missouri, the annual supplies for the Missions in Montana were shipped from St. Louis to Fort Benton, free transportation being generously offered by the steamboat men, personal friends of Father De Smet. The goods were then transported over the mountain roads to their respective destinations by Mission teams. One year at St. Ignatius we had no wagons that could be sent on such a long rough trip without much repairing, and the Brother who might have repaired them being laid up by sickness, we applied to the Indian Agent for the loan of two government wagons, which he could easily spare, as they were not in use.

Our request was promptly granted, and in due time good Brother Magri, with some Indians and the Mission teams, started for the Agency, which lay on his course. He there found the wagons ready; but to this surprise he found them also heavily laden. Having asked the meaning of this, he was told by the official that, "since the teams had no load on their way out and were to pass through Deer Lodge, he had concluded to have them haul to that place some freight for him, on the presumption, of course, that the Fathers could have no objection to his doing so."

This proceeding nettled and perplexed the Brother considerably; the more so that he had no way of consulting his Superior on the matter. Hence, there being no other alternative,

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he took the Agent's freight to Deer Lodge ,the man himself managing to reach there about the same time, to dispose of it.

We must note here that from their brand the ox-teams were recognized as the Mission's all along the road, while the wagons, as everybody could see from the letters painted in then, were Government property.

A year or so later, while on the way to Helena to purchase supplies for the Mission, the writer fell in with a friend, a well-known Montana gentleman, by whom he was taunted as follows: "Why, Father, heretofore no one would have dreamed that you Fathers at the Mission were in with the rest to rob the poor Indians." Being as yet somewhat "green" about the ways of Indian Agents, we did not understand the gentleman's allusion. A few words of explanation, however, soon threw light on the subject, and we could not but marvel at the "inventive and heartless rapacity" that had so cleverly turned the cross. The Mission brand, to its own advantage.

The freight which the Indian Agent had thus shipped to Deer Lodge was a quantity of flour and shorts ground at the Agency mill, from wheat which the Government had appropriated for the relief of the Indians, who, owing to the failure of their crops, were in danger of starving. The worthy had of the stuff hauled to the mines by the Brother, simply as a blind to cover up the dishonesty of the shipment, feeling quite sure that nobody would ever suspect a transaction wherein a Jesuit Brother and the Mission teams had taken such a conspicuous part.

On another occasion, it being an intensely cold winter, we applied to the Indian Agent for material for clothing for our school children. We received two bolts of prints and two of unbleached muslin, and felt thankful for the bounty. Some three years later, our attention was called to an item in the Agent's Official Report which ran as follows: "By domestics furnished the Sisters' school at St. Ignatius, $1,600.66; sixteen hundred dollars and sixty six cents; this being the actual amount which that honest official charged the Government for those few years of unbleached muslin and calico!. After such an experience, we felt loath to ask any further assistance from those gentlemen, lest in doing so we should furnish occasion.

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of practicing their "heartless and inventive rapacity." But to return to our Indians.

Besides the three national designated in the hell's gate treaty of 1855, as the confederated Tribes of Flat Heads, Pend d'Oreilles and Kootenays, the Indian community of St. Ignatius includes some Spokane, a few Nez Peres, and the Blackfeet, have no more affinity or resemblance with one another than Greek or Hebrew with English.

How the Indian tribes in the Rocky Mountains, despite their comparative proximity and notwithstanding their being so much alike in other respects, can still be so different in tongue is a problem that ethnologists, so far as we know, have not yet been able to solve satisfactorily. Nor need we emphasize he fact that this language difficulty has even been a most serious impediment to the way of efficient missionary work among the various tribes, and is one of the many obstacles that render the Indian Mission in this part of the Northwest very hazardous.

The natives on this Reservation are grouped into several small centers or villages, the principal one being the Mission proper, which we have already described. At the southern end of the reserve, near and around the Agency, are located the Flat Heads, both those who went thither at the time of the Garfield Treaty, and the rest of their brethren, under the leadership of Charlot, who until quite recently had refused to leave their homes in the bitter Root Valley.

For the special benefit of these and some few other Indians living in that vicinity, a chapel was built in the locality by the Fathers a few years ago. It is a frame structure, 28 X 75 feet, and was dedicated by the Ordinary, August 4, 1889, under the title of St. John Berchmans. The corner-stone had been blessed by His Grace Archbishop Seghers, on his second visitation of western Montana in 1882; but as a matter of fact, the chapel was not erected until some years later.

Quite recently, a branch school was opened in this settlement for the accommodation of a number of Indian children unable

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or unwilling to attend the central school at St. Ignatius. Three Ursulines do the teaching, and Father Canestrelli is in charge of the dependency. The simple-minded Flat Heads and others more intelligent, are far from even dreaming that their spiritual guide who works so zealously to instruct them in the rudiments of Christian doctrine, had been singled out as worthy to replace a renowned master of Divinity in Rome, Cardinal Franzelin.

Another Indian village, having also a chapel, but no resident priest, lies at the northern extremity of the Reservation, and occupies the little valley of Dayton Creek, on the west side of Flat Head Lake. This Indian village is composed chiefly of Kootenays, called the Scalze, a band of thriftless redskins, considerably addicted to drinking and gambling, and of an unsavory record otherwise. Some of these poor creatures spend their time lounging round white settlements where whiskey can be found in plenty; thus bringing all the others of the tribe into disrepute. Ignace, the chief, is a good, upright, steady man, esteemed by all who know him, but his authority is disregarded by many of his wards.

Father Philip Canestrelli and other missionaries before him namely, Fathers Menetrey, Grassi, Tosi, Bandini, have labored hard to lift this wretched band of Indians from barbarism. But, all in all, the result has been rather discouraging.

These Dayton Creek Kootenays are a branch of a large tribe of Kootenays or Scalze who live on what are called Tobacco Plains and from whom they separated, or by whom, rather, they were driven off as castaways, for misbehavior. The Tobacco Plains Kootenays or Scalze are a much better class if Indians, and they too were attended from St. Ignatius prior to the drawing of the boundary line between the United States and British Columbia. They are now looked after by the Oblates M. I. under whole jurisdiction lies the section across the line, while the Kootenays on the Dayton Creek continue to be visited by the Jesuit Fathers from St. Ignatius Mission. In the baptismal records kept at the Mission we find one hundred and sixty-one Scalze or Kootenay adults baptized by Father U. Grassi in 1863, within three days, that is, between October 25, and 28.

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Clusters of Indian cabins can also be seen at Crow Creek, at the foot of the lake, at the south of the Jocko, and in other parts of the Reservation. All told and including the following of Charlot, the Indian number about 1,900 souls, a few more perhaps than less.

The Mission records of baptisms and burials for the last eight years, that is, from 1884 to 1891, give 520 births as against 467 deaths. Whence it would appear that there had been a slight increase in their numbers.

The following additional items which we have taken from the official records sent in to the Indian Department, will give the reader some further information as to the actual condition of these Indians and their advance in civilization.

In 1886 sixteen Indian families purchased from the Geneva Nursery, New York, at their own expense, a number of young fruit trees, such as plum, apple and cherry, and laid out small orchards. In the spring of the following year, 1887, an Agent of the House of L. L. Man and Co., nursery men of St. Paul, Minn., delivered to thirty more families on this reservation invoices of young fruit trees to the aggregate amount of $932, the orders having been filled for cash on delivery.

According to the official report if 1890,m there are in the reservation some two hundred farms, from eight to one hundred and sixty acres each, enclosed and cultivated, making an aggregate of over 9,00 acres of land under cultivation.

The Indians own severally some 10,000 head of cattle; 5,000 head of horses; 1,200 head of swine, and from 5,000 to 6,00 fowl. The crop raised by them the same year was estimated at 45,000 bushels of oats, and 40,000 bushels of wheat. They also raised a good vegetable crop, potatoes, turnips, cabbage, onions, etc. A number of these Indians live in comfortable houses, and some have good barns and outbuildings for the care of agricultural implements.

The live-stock owned by Indians includes a herd of comparatively tame buffalo, which can be seen grazing in the mission or Sinie'lemen Valley. The herd numbers some fifty

Page head, all sprung from two calves captured on the buffalo plains, and brought to St. Ignatius in our first days on the place by Indian Samuel.

The official items and figures here presented speak for themselves and show unmistakably the progress made by the Indians in civilization. Prior to the Fathers coming among them, fifty years ago, not one sod had been turned in what is now the state Of Montana, and sowing crops was utterly unknown to the natives. Today these children of the forest compare favorably with our thrifty farming communities.