The story of St. Mary's Mission begins in 1823, when twelve Iroquois, employed as trappers by the Hudson's Bay Company, remained with the Salish through the winter of 1823-24. Exposed to Christianity 200 years previous, they told the Salish stories of Christianity and of the "Black Robes", the missionaries who taught them. The Salish proved to be an interested audience and, between 1831 and 1839 they sent four delegations to St. Louis in an attempt to obtain a Black Robe of their own.
On September 24, 1841, Father Pierre Jean DeSmet, together with his fellow Jesuit missionaries, Fathers Gregory Mengarini and Nicolas Point, and three Lay Brothers arrived in the Bitterroot valley with their belongings and supplies in three carts and a wagon, the first vehicles to enter the area. They established the first white settlement in what was to become Montana, on the east bank of the Bitterroot river, immediately west of the present town of Stevensville.
The fathers built two chapels, residences and outbuildings, and began farming, planting wheat, oats, potatoes and garden crops. From Fort Vancouver they brought into Montana the first cattle, swine and poultry. A third chapel was under construction by 1846 but soon trouble with the Blackfeet forced the closure of the mission, the entirety being sold in November 1850 to John Owen, a former army sutler, for $250.00.
It was sixteen years later (1866) when Father Joseph Giorda, Superior for the Rocky Mountain area, called back Father Ravalli and Brother William Claessens and re-established St. Mary's Mission about a mile south of Fort Owen. Brother Claessens built a little chapel, the fourth he had built for St. Mary's, to which he attached a study, dining room, kitchen and a story and a half barn. Father Giorda made the "new" St. Mary's the Jesuit mission headquarters for the Rocky Mountain province. In 1879 an addition to the front of the building doubled the size of the chapel. (The entire Mission complex has been restored to that date - the peak of its beauty.)
The mission served the Salish people until their forced removal in 1891, during that time teaching them methods of farming and gardening to aid in their survival following the demise of the buffalo.
One of the log buildings on the site is the Dove Cote, a reconstruction of the original Dove Cote, built around 1867-68. It is a two storey building built of hand hewn squared logs. Chickens were kept in the lower portion, while the upper floor housed pigeons.
Italicized sections above are from
St. Mary's Mission, Inc.
Dove Cote
The chinked log barn, built circa 1982, mimics the style of Victor's House with half dovetail notching. The small rectangular building is a reconstruction of a similar building, on the same site, that housed the missions' chickens on the ground floor and doves, or pigeons, on the upper portion. The building faces east. Its roof is divided into two halves. The east half is one story with a gable roof. The west portion is two stories,
tower fashion, and has a pyramidal hipped roof. Wood shingles cover both roof portions. There are no openings on the north or south sides, but there is a single, centered plank door with wood surrounds on the east and a double plank door with wood surrounds opening on the west. A rooster weathervane crowns the top of the pyramid.
From the NRHP Nomination Form