St. Mary's Mission
Established in 1841 by Pierre DeSmet, S. J., in response to requests for Black Robes by four separate delegations sent by Flathead and Nez Perce tribes to St. Louis.
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 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.
Fr. Ravalli, Montana's beloved priest-physician-artist-sculptor-architect, for whom this county Is named, was assigned to St. Mary's during 1845-1850 and 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 remove to a reservation. The chapel served as a church for settlers until 1954, when a new church was built and the mission became a historic site.
From the Marker at the Visitor Center
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.
Today the original (contributing) components of the mission consist of the restored chapel/residence (Logs from the first mission were utilized to build the present church.), Father Ravalli's log house/pharmacy, Chief Victor's cabin, the cemetery, including Father Ravalli's grave, the Indian Burial Plot, the Smokehouse, now known as the root cellar, and two trees, Father Ravalli's Crabapple Tree and Wolf River Apple Tree, as well as a stone survey marker. Father Ravalli's Crab apple Tree, doubtless the oldest in Montana, was planted about 1869.
In order to preserve the original chapel a new church was built on the site in 1954. Beside it is the church's bell, hung in a stand alone bell tower. Both contribute to the historic district.
A Visitor's Center with gift shop, research library, art gallery and museum was built on the site in 1996.
Italicized sections above are from
St. Mary's Mission, Inc.