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History of Pierre De Smet S.J.
Pierre De Smet
In the history of the Westward Expansion of the United States, one of the pivotal figures was Pierre De Smet, S.J. He was born in Termonde, Belgium, in January, 1801, and entered the Jesuit novitiate in Maryland in 1821. He arrived in St. Louis with twelve other Jesuits in 1823 to open a school for Indians near Florissant, Missouri. At the invitation of Bishop Rosati, he was among the Jesuits who took over the direction of the small college founded in 1818 by Bishop DuBourg. This school would be chartered by the State of Missouri in 1832 as Saint Louis University.
In 1838, Fr. De Smet made the first of many overland journeys to establish missions among the Indians. The first mission was at Council Bluffs, Iowa, among the Potawatomie tribe. In 1842, Fr. De Smet became the first Jesuit missionary to travel to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest.
Fr. De Smet was able to win the confidence of both the Indians and the white settlers. The Indians called him "Blackrobe" and held him in high regard. In 1868, Fr. De Smet visited the camp of Sitting Bull in the Big Horn Valley of Montana, although this chief had vowed to kill any white man to show himself there. Sitting Bull welcomed him and agreed to a conference which eventually ended hostilities. De Smet was called upon regularly to arbitrate treaty conditions during the latter years of the 19th century.
Fr. De Smet traveled more than a quarter of a million miles over the Western Plains and across the Atlantic to Europe in the service of the American Indian Tribes. He died on Ascension Thursday, 1873, at the age of 72.
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