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.
When they arrived in the Bitter Root Valley, they brought with them the first Red River Carts to enter what was to become Montana Territory, still later the 41st state of the union. The first known Red River Carts appeared in about 1801 in the Red River area. They have either French or Scottish ancestry (or both), being developed by French Canadian and Scottish fur traders of the Northwest Company. They were first used by the Métis to bring meat from the buffalo hunt and later in farm work. Given that "hardware store" fasteners, such as nails, were unavailable at that time in that area, Red River Carts were built without fasteners other than what could be fashioned on the spot using leather and wood. Depending on the builder's skill and the time available, the carts would be built with either wooden spoked wheels or solid wood wheels.
"It's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease" is not a cliche which could be applied to the Red River Cart. With wooden wheels running on wooden axles, one would think that greasing the axles would be a fine idea. The truth was that the unprotected juncture, if greased, would simply collect dirt and dust as it progressed, creating more friction, not less. As a result, the Red River Cart is legendary for its loud, squeaky, and slow progress along the trail.
The original carts brought with the Fathers have long since turned to dust and have returned to whence they came. This is a reproduction, intended to be as faithful as possible to the originals.
JESUIT MISSIONARIES,
LEAD BY FR. PIERRE DESMET,
BROUGHT THE FIRST TWO-WHEELED CARTS INTO
WHAT WOULD BE KNOWN, TWENTY-THREE YEARS
LATER, AS MONTANA TERRITORY. THE CARTS
CARRIED THEIR BELONGINGS AS THEY WERE
ESCORTED BY THE INDIANS TO THE BITTERROOT
VALLEY IN 1841. THE MISSIONARIES SETTLED
ON THE EAST BANK OF THE RIVER AND
MONTANA'S FIRST PIONEER SETTLEMENT GREW
FROM THESE BEGINNINGS.
THE RED RIVER OX CART AND BARN WERE
HANDCRAFTED BY
CHRIS WEATHERLY OF STEVENSVILLE.
From the plaque by the cart