The missing chapter on how the Jesuit missionaries came to Northwest Montana, and their relationship with the Flathead Indians, will be revealed in a presentation Monday, Nov. 17, in Kalispell. 

Using sources uncovered in Europe, historian and author Sally Thompson will tell how Pierre-Jean DeSmet came to America in 1821, determined to be a missionary.

And perhaps the first time, she has assembled details of the four trips by the Flathead Indians to St. Louis in search of Catholic priests. Iroquois migrants, brought to western Montana by the fur trade, had convinced the Flathead Indians that their only chance of survival in the ongoing fight with the Blackfeet was to enlist the help of the Jesuits.  

The tribal quest succeeded, and DeSmet established St. Mary's Mission near present-day Stevensville in 1841.  

Through tribal accounts and her experience as an ethnohistorian, Thompson will describe the cultural clash between the missionaries' efforts to create a static farming community, and the Flathead's seasonal nomadic cycle to bull trout spawning runs, buffalo country and meadows with bitterroot tubers.  

She also will look at the clash of replacing tribal tales with biblical accounts, and cultural conflicts, especially the Indians' love of gambling. And how the conflicts with the Blackfeet were soon exchanged for waves of settlers moving onto the tribe's traditional
lands. 

DeSmet didn't stay long in Montana but traveled throughout the West, visiting tribe after tribe. His journeys covered an estimated 180,000 miles, including six trips to Europe. 

Thompson is the author of “Black Robes Enter Coyote's World,” “Disturbing the Sleeping Buffalo,” and “People Before the Park.” 

The presentation is at the monthly meeting of the Northwest Montana Westerners, a local history group. It starts at 7 p.m. on the second floor of the museum, at 124 2nd Ave. East in Kalispell. Cost is $5 for the general public, with members and youths under 16 admitted free.