CHAPTER III.
A ROMANCE OF AN INDIAN MISSION.
Nez Percé and Flathead Indians - The Iroquois among the Flatheads - Deputation of 1831 to St. Louis - Fact and fiction concerning same - The mythical oration - Its far-reaching influence - The Protestants send missionaries to Oregon - New deputation from the Flatheads - The Jesuits decide to respond.
The Indian tribes in what is now western Montana, northern Idaho, and eastern Washington were a peculiar people in the matter of their susceptibility to religious influences. Especially true was this of the Flatheads and Nez Percés (Pierced Noses), (1) the only Indians who, of their own volition and without ever having seen a priest, have sought the services of missionaries. They were naturally of a turn of mind that was easily moved by religious teachings, and were relatively high in the scale of morality as measured by the Indian standard.
As early as 1811 or 1812 the traders of the Northwest and Pacific Fur Companies were among them, and their territory remained a fruitful field in the fur trade until settlement took possession of the country. The rank and file of the trapping fraternity were made up of Canadian half-breeds who, in spite of their lawless and irreligious lives, were staunch Roman Catholics. With them, strange to say, were many Iroquois, children of the tribe who had shut their doors to the missionaries a hundred and fifty years before. They were apparrently descendants of the converts of a later period; but whatever the origin of their religious belief, it was now ardent and strong. It is a singular fact that the
(1) How those names came to be applied to these two tribes has always been a mystery. There was nothing in the practices of either that could suggest them.