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In this monthly series, we’ll explore the history of the Catholic
Church in the Pacific Northwest from pioneer beginnings to the present
day. The series will highlight important places of faith in the
Northwest, the “holy ground” where the seeds of faith have been planted
in our midst. --
Corinna Laughlin
Part 3, November 3, 2019
MISSIONS AT VANCOUVER AND COWLITZ
This Miraculous Medal is among several Catholic artefacts
unearthed in archaeological research at Fort Vancouver,
reflecting the presence of Catholics and the work of the early
missionaries. Source
here.
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The priests barely rested after their long journey. Arriving on a
Saturday, they began a mission on Tuesday, gathering the Catholics of
Fort Vancouver and their children for teaching, prayer, and
hymn-singing. Couples married outside the Church were promptly separated
until their marriages could be blessed by the priests. The mission
continued daily (with a few brief interruptions) for four months and
twenty days.
Fort Vancouver in 1838 was an extraordinary place to be. The Chief
Factor was the redoubtable John McLoughlin—Scots-Irish on his father’s
side, French Canadian on his mother’s. Baptized Catholic, he was raised
Episcopalian, and while he welcomed missionaries of many denominations,
he was a special advocate for the Catholics. McLoughlin studied medicine
and soon went to work for the North West Company, where he became a
partner by the age of 30. After the merger of the North West Company
with their chief rival, Hudson’s Bay, McLoughlin directed the Company’s
efforts in the west. Under his leadership, Fort Vancouver became a
center for trade, primarily beaver pelts and lumber, with an
extraordinarily wide reach. McLoughlin established a lively commerce
with Russian outposts to the north, Mexican California to the south, and
Hawaii to the west. He was renowned for his hospitality and for his high
style: “The chief factor’s table, set with English porcelain, and
provided with the best of French wines, would have given pleasure to a
prince,” writes Wilfrid Schoenberg, SJ. Eating arrangements at Fort
Vancouver were quite formal, with the officers of the Company dining
apart from the other employees in the large hall. “It has been
remarked,” observed a visitor to Fort Vancouver in 1843, “that the
absence of their wives and the females of the establishment from the
table does not contribute to the refinement of manners.”
In addition to the Fort itself—surrounded by intimidating wooden walls
25 feet high—there were farms, sawmills, and a bustling village on the
river with about 700 inhabitants, including native peoples of various
tribes and people from the British Isles, the United States, France, and
other European nations, as well as a sizable number of Hawaiians.
The missionaries gave their first instructions in French and began to
teach the diverse group to sing favorite French hymns. The music
attracted the interest of non-Catholics in the Fort, and it drew the
native peoples in the vicinity like a magnet—as many as 140, by the
missionaries’ count, sometimes crowded around the door to listen to the
singing. Soon the mission expanded to include sessions for native
peoples outside of Fort Vancouver. The priests offered at least four
sessions of catechism, singing, and prayer each day for various groups.
Teaching the faith to the native peoples, who spoke a number of
different languages, was an extraordinary challenge. Even before contact
with Europeans, the native peoples around the Columbia River had
developed a shared trade language, Chinuk Wawa, or Chinook Jargon. With
the coming of Europeans, this pidgin language became the primary means
of communication in the Northwest.
An 1840 version of Blanchet’s Catholic Ladder (detail),
tracing the whole of salvation history, from the creation at the
bottom, to the arrival of Fathers Blanchet and Demers
(represented by the two vertical lines) at the top. Image
courtesy of Oregon Historical Society.
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Father Modeste Demers had a gift for languages, and mastered Chinuk Wawa
within a few weeks. Even with a vocabulary limited to a few hundred
words, Father Demers was able to translate basic prayers, the catechism,
and even hymns, and was soon able to communicate with people all over
Puget Sound, both natives and newcomers, without the help of an
interpreter. Meanwhile, the French Catholic influence added new words to
the Chinuk Wawa: saklema (sacrament); lames (from the French for Mass,
La Messe); Pak (from Pâques, Easter); and Paston plie
(Protestantism—literally, “Boston [American] prayer”!).
While this
first mission was underway at Vancouver, Father Blanchet took a few days
to head north. Those who had been released from active service at the
Fort were known as “freemen,” and some of these men, with their
families, had established a small settlement in the Cowlitz Prairie,
north of Vancouver. The Hudson’s Bay Company leadership had proposed
this place for a permanent residence for the priests, being far enough
away from the Methodist missionaries in the Willamette Valley. Blanchet
later described his journey and arrival in Cowlitz in his book Sketches
of the Catholic Church in Oregon (in which he speaks of himself in the
third person): “the Vicar General left Vancouver on Wednesday afternoon,
December 12th, 1838, in a canoe paddled by four Indians, and reached the
Cowlitz settlement on Sunday, the 16th, at 10 a.m. The first mass ever
celebrated at that place was said on that day, and another one on Monday
in the house of Mr. Simon Plamondon, before the settlers and their
families, who were much pleased to learn that the priests were to reside
among them.” Blanchet selected a site for the mission (“a piece of land
of clear prairie of 640 acres”) and returned to Vancouver—not without
first designating François Fagnant, one of the farmers, as catechist to
teach the others until he should return. (Lay ministry has been a
reality of the Church in western Washington from the very beginning!)
Blanchet returned to Cowlitz the following spring. He arrived on March
16, 1839, and the following day the mission commenced in earnest,
continuing until May 1. Blanchet lodged with Plamondon (who would later
marry a Blanchet niece!), who also provided a large room for the
priest’s use in teaching and celebrating Mass. News of the mission
spread quickly, and soon native peoples began coming in great numbers,
and sometimes from great distances. Chief Tsla-lakum of Whidbey Island,
almost 150 miles away, travelled five days to hear the message of the
priest.
The native people, unlike the handful of Catholic families living at
Cowlitz, could remain only a few days, not weeks and months. Father
Blanchet rose to the challenge. “In looking for a plan the Vicar General
imagined that by representing on a square stick, the forty centuries
before Christ by 40 marks; the thirty three years of our Lord by 33
points, followed by a cross; and the eighteen centuries and thirty-nine
years since, by 18 marks and 39 points, would pretty well answer his
design.” Using the simplest of materials, Blanchet created a tool which
allowed him to explain the Christian world-view, from the beginning to
the present (1839!). What was more, the stick could be handed on to
native elders, who could use it to share with their people what they had
learned.
The “Catholic ladder,” as it came to be called, was, in the words of
historian Wilfred Schoenberg, “a howling success.” It was soon used all
over the Northwest, by both Catholics and Protestants, though this
shared approach was anything but ecumenical: in later versions of the
ladder, Blanchet added a dead branch to illustrate the Protestant
Reformation, and Protestant missionaries retaliated by depicting
Catholic bishops descending into hell on their own versions of the
Ladder. Sectarian controversy would mar, and shape, the early years of
the Catholic Church in the Northwest.
Corinna Laughlin, Pastoral Assistant for Liturgy
Works consulted:
· Wilfred P. Schoenberg, SJ, A History of the
Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest
· Archbishop F. N. Blanchet,
Historical Sketches of the Church in Oregon during the Past Forty Years
(1878)
· Douglas Deur, “Fort Vancouver as a Base for Missionary
Efforts,” https://www.nps.gov/articles/fovamissionaries.htm
· Fort
Vancouver:
http://www.hbcheritage.ca/places/forts-posts/fort-vancouver
MAKE A VISIT
St. Francis Xavier Church (also known as the “Cowlitz Mission”) is a
living link with Blanchet’s 1839 mission on the Cowlitz Prairie. The
present church was built in 1901.
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER MISSION
139 Spencer Rd Toledo, WA 98591
https://www.wlpcatholic.org/
Fort Vancouver is well worth a visit, with a reconstruction of the
Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Vancouver and much more. Costumed guides
give a feel for the era in the working blacksmith’s shop, carpenter’s
shop, kitchen, and garden.
FORT VANCOUVER
612 E Reserve St
Vancouver, WA 98661
https://www.nps.gov/fova/index.htm
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