100 Years (1884-1984)
Chapter 1
The HistoryIn the early 1880's General Nelson A. Miles of Fort Keogh (near Miles City, Montana) found himself the guardian of many Northern Cheyenne Indians who did not have any land they could claim as their own. They had separated from the Southern Cheyennes as far back as the 1840's preferring to live and hunt in the area west of the Sioux Reservation in South Dakota to the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming and from the Yellowstone River on the north as far south as Colorado. These were their favorite hunting grounds but they had no reservation of their own. Edward P. Smith, the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, had announced in December of 1875 that all Indian tribes must return to their agencies by January 31, 1876 or they would be taken there by the U.S. Army. The "round-up" began in March. Thus the Battle of the Little Big Horn (June 25, 1876) was fought when the Army was attempting to herd the Indians onto their treaty reservations. Custer and his 240+ men found themselves greatly outnumbered by the Cheyenne and Sioux Warriors who were camping along that river. Even though the Indians won the battle, they became fugitives and eventually had to surrender. Many of the Cheyennes were camped outside of Fort Keogh in 1880 with no place to go. Gen. Miles asked an ex-soldier and a Catholic convert, George Yoakam, to help the Cheyennes get settled on land according to the Indian Homestead Act of 1875. Yoakam was successful and helped many Indians to claim land but he incurred the hostility of the White ranchers who also liked the grazing land along the various tributaries of the Yellowstone River: the Powder and Tongue Rivers and Rosebud Creek. The Crow tribe was already settled on a reservation to the west of Cheyenne lands. But there was hostility between the Crow and the Cheyennes at that time because of hunting grounds. The greatest desire of the Cheyennes was that all their bands, families and people would be reunited and that they could claim the area along the Tongue River and to the west as their own place. Some of the Northern Cheyennes were still living in Oklahoma, some were living with the Arapahoe's in Wyoming, others were among the Sioux in South Dakota. Two Moons' people and the followers of Little Wolf were at Fort Keogh while the followers of Chief White Bull lived in the Tongue River area. George Yoakam suggested that "Catholic Sisters could do as much for the good of the Cheyennes as a regiment," and Father E. W. J. Lindesmith, the Catholic army chaplain at Ft. Keogh, began the search for Sisters. But it was Bishop John Baptist Brondel who actually succeeded in finding a group of Ursuline Sisters from Toledo, Ohio, who were ready to come to the newly established diocese of Helena, Montana, to serve the Cheyennes. The six sisters were headed by Mother Amadeus Dunne who, at 38, had already been their elected superior for two terms. This was the beginning of Mother Amadeus' career as a foundress of Indian missions and schools in Montana and Alaska. The Sisters left Toledo with their chaplain, Father Joseph Eyler of Cleveland, on Tuesday, January 15, 1884 and they arrived in Miles City on Friday, January 18. Their letters back to Toledo tell in detail all about their arrival in the small cowboy town and how they fared during their first weeks in Montana. Mother Amadeus found a house suitable to be a convent and a school and on February 2, they opened Sacred Heart School in Miles City. Fr. Eyler left the city in mid-February to select a site for the Cheyenne mission and he purchased a 3-room cabin and a bit of land on the banks of the Tongue River about 75 miles to the southwest of Miles City.
Mother Amadeus with Sister Sacred Heart, Sister Ignatius, and Sister Angela set out on March 29, their wagons loaded with trunks, furniture and other goods. They were escorted by a small band of soldiers from Ft. Keogh and, after fording the twisting Tongue River a total of nine times, the party arrived at about noon on April 1 at what was to become the Saint Labre Indian Mission. After the soldiers and the Sisters spent the whole night cleaning and making the cabins ready for occupancy, Mass was offered on the site for the first time on the morning of April 2, 1884. A few days later, after she saw the Sisters settled and their school opened, Mother Amadeus returned to Miles City. Fourteen boys and girls were the first pupils of the Ursulines, all full-blooded Cheyennes. Father Eyler's health began to fail almost as soon as he came to Montana and he was forced to leave the Mission in June. Father Kramer and Father Allaeys stayed briefly during the summer months and then Father Peter Barcelo S.J. arrived in September. His health, too, was very fragile and he withdrew on December 16 hoping to return but he never did. Bishop Brondel was able to get another Jesuit in October, 1885, Father Aloysius van der Velden, who had recently arrived in the United States from Holland. Fr. van der Velden became an avid student of the Cheyenne language and labored tirelessly among the Cheyennes until 1897. He built the first church building in 1895 and with some minor renovations this served as the Saint Labre Church until 1971. He also put up a building in 1891 that would house the Cheyenne boys. Sister Ignatius McFarland had built what was known as "the White House' in 1885. This served as the convent, class rooms, girls' dormitory as well as furnishing a chapel for daily worship and a refectory for all until it burned in January of 1917. When the White House was built in 1885 Saint Labre became a boarding school and it still has some boarding students, though now it is primarily a day school.
The Jesuit superiors withdrew their priests and brothers in August, 1897 and from then until 1914, the mission and school were served by a series of diocesan priests, none of whom stayed very long. The last, Father Theodore 0. Rocque had the most impact because he visited the homes of the Cheyennes and got to know the native Catholics very well. In 1913, Bishop Lenihan, who had succeeded Bishop Brondel in 1904, asked Father Rocque to canvass all the White Catholics in the area and Fr. Lucas came to Saint Labre to serve the Cheyennes and be a chaplain for the Sisters. In November, 1884, a Reservation for the Cheyennes had been set up by presidential order but between 1890 and 1900 there was much conflict between the Cheyennes and the White cattle ranchers who had homesteaded in the same area. The reservation extended from the Crow reservation on the west to an imaginary line 12 miles east of Rosebud Creek and parallel to it. Any Cheyennes living close to the Saint Labre mission were not on the reservation and had to go long distances to receive their rations. The Cheyennes also became very restless because there were persistent rumors that the government intended to put them on the Crow reservation. Finally, urged by the agent at Lame Deer, Mr. Stouch, and by General Miles who had promised the Cheyennes they could stay permanently on the lands around the Tongue River, the United States government decided to enlarge the reservation and make definite, surveyed boundaries. A Major McLaughlin was sent to the area in 1898 to buy out all the White ranchers west of the Tongue River. More than half of the Rosebud Valley was in possession of Whites and choice sections of land were fenced off by White sheep herders. After the ranchers were moved from the reservation land, President McKinley, in an order released on March 19, 1900, established new boundaries to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation which now extended from the Crow Reservation on the west to the Tongue River on the east. The reservation covers 444,525 acres. Even though Saint Labre Mission lies on 160 acres west of the Tongue River, the presidential order exempted the Mission from the boundaries of the reservation since the land had been claimed in 1885 under the Homestead Act by Sister Ignatius using her legal name, Bridget McFarland. In 1914, Bishop Lenihan of Great Falls was able to obtain the services of the Fathers of the Society of Saint Edmund of Swanton, Vermont, for the Saint Labre Mission. Father M. J. Trigory SSE was the first to arrive on September 14 of that year. He was succeeded by Father Wm. Arendzen SSE, newly ordained in 1916, who worked zealously until 1921. He was joined by Father Charles Renaudin SSE in 1919. In a letter to Bishop Lenihan in 1920, another Edmundite Father wrote: "Father Arendzen was up this week and told us everything was going on well at the mission. The Indians were never so contented as they seem at present. Mother Gertrude (Ursuline) wrote me that the church was filled to the door at Mass on Easter Sunday. Nearly all the Indians received Holy Communion, some of them made their first Communion. I think the grace of God is at present working wonders among the good Cheyenne . . ."Father Arendzen was transferred in 1921 and was succeeded by Father Ledoux SSE and Father Herbert Leduc SSE. The last Edmundite superior, Father Charles Bernier SSE was at the Saint Labre Mission less than six months, from June 1924 until October when a crisis in the Edmundite order caused them to withdraw. Fr. Renaudin stayed until Father T. 0. Rocque returned to again take charge of the parish.
When the White House burned to the ground in 1917, Sister St. Thomas was in charge of the school. Her letter to Father Wm. Ketchum of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions is typical and shows the courage and faith of these valiant women. January 25, 1917A new concrete building to replace the White House was finished in 1920 but until then the girls and the Sisters slept and ate in the church, which then became the school and on Sunday was transformed again into the parish church. The Ursuline Sisters had founded the Saint Labre Mission and were always in charge of the mission and the school from 1884 on. However, in 1921, Bishop Lenihan asked that the administration of the mission and the school be transferred to the Edmundite Fathers. When Father Rocque returned in 1924, he realized the urgent need for money to run the mission, and so he sought help from the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions in Washington, D.C. The director of the Bureau sent a list of 5,000 names to the mission and suggested that the Indian children write personal letters asking for financial help. About 1500 letters were actually written and sent out. There was some response but financial backing would be a problem for many more years. On a trip to Rome in early 1925, Bishop Lenihan met a Capuchin Father and he spoke of the situation at the Cheyenne Mission in Montana. The friar advised him to approach the General Superior of the Capuchin Order in Rome. There the Bishop also met Father Antonine Wilmer OFM Cap. of Mt. Calvary Province in the United States and he made a direct appeal to have the Capuchins come to Montana. Both the General Superior and Father Antonine were open to the request. Fr. Benno Aichinger, provincial of the Mt. Calvary Capuchins proposed the project to the provincial board in June of 1925 but, because of a lack of priests and brothers, the Capuchins were not able to accept the invitation. However, circumstances were different a year later and on April 8, 1926 the Capuchin provincial board voted unanimously to accept charge of the Saint Labre Indian Mission. Father Francis Busalt, OFM Cap. arrived at Miles City on April 26 and Father Rocque brought him to Saint Labre to take up the ministry to the Cheyennes. They traveled the same route the Ursulines had taken in 1884 but by 1926 there was at least a dirt road.
Father Francis, though unable to learn the very difficult Cheyenne language, was able to communicate through interpreters in church and through his own loving concern for the Cheyennes in their tipis or cabins. He did much visiting in the homes of the people, traveling on horseback, by wagon or by "Tin Lizzie," but road conditions were less than ideal through most of the year. Snow and ice in the winter and thick gumbo in the spring made sticking and sliding the rule of the day. There were no bridges over the Tongue River or the smaller creeks on the reservation so cars and wagons did not always make it to the other side. Father Francis' personal interest in each individual attracted more Cheyennes to the Catholic Church than his sermons or his catechizing. With the coming of the Capuchin Fathers and Brothers to the mission, many changes were brought about. Brother Gaul Neumann arrived on October 14, 1926 and remained until 1942 when he went to serve the Miskito Indians in Nicaragua. He was very gifted in mechanics, building, gardening, electricity and all that was needed to keep the mission in repair. Soon after he came he built the L-shaped building which still stands to include a shop, a laundry, a bakery, storage rooms and a recreation room for the students. Five years later under his direction, a second floor was added to the building which gave the school much needed classrooms. He was also responsible for the electric lights which took over from the kerosene lamps on February 15, 1927 and he devised the irrigation system. In the summer of 1929, under Brother Gaul's supervision, an addition was built to the convent and girls' school (erected in 1920). The first floor of the addition contained class rooms, the second floor a large dorm for the girls. Fr. Regis, Br. Gaul and the hired help built a two-story frame building to serve as a dormitory for the boys in 1931. In 1935, St. Francis Hall was added to the campus serving as a residence for faculty and at times for students until it was dismantled in 1978.
Father Richard Brunner OFM Cap. joined Father Francis and Brother Gaul in January 1927. Other Capuchins who served at Saint Labre were Father Regis Neeser who compiled a dictionary of the Cheyenne language, Father Matthew Niedhammer who prepared the Golden jubilee celebration in 1935 and Father Patrick Berther who arrived in 1935 and served in southeastern Montana until 1996. Father Daniel Bormann, Father Seraphin Winterroth and Father Bernadine Schlimgen served at Saint Labre in the late '30s and '40s. Brother Gaul was replaced by Brother Berthold who was known as Brother "Candy" because he always carried some in his pockets for the Indian children. He was greatly loved by all. Father Marion Roessler OFM Cap. came to Saint Labre in 1947 and it was during his years that the school began to prosper. The Ursulines had been in charge of the school through all the years when there was only a grade school and the number of students had fluctuated from 40 to 75. From 1926 when they arrived, the Capuchin Fathers served as superintendents and they taught religion in the school. In 1931 a high school was begun and that same year the U.S. Government demanded that White students also be admitted to the high school. Two years later the Ursuline Sisters withdrew after 49 years of courageous and unstinting service. Six School Sisters of Saint Francis from Milwaukee came to teach in the school.
For financial reasons the high school was closed in 1938 and the school population dropped until there were only 41 pupils in 8 grades in 1943. Two Sisters taught four grades each in two classrooms. Sister Limana was principal in those years and she worked valiantly to encourage attendance at school. This included ringing the school bell for twenty minutes each morning. In 1947 the first school bus was purchased and this not only brought students each day but also increased the number of boarding students. Because of the buses they were able to spend weekends at home and this pleased their parents. The high school also reopened in 1947. There were 112 in the elementary grades and 21 in the high school that year. The school continued to grow until in 1969 the total enrollment was 529. The growth of the school brought a need for more food, clothing, buildings, as well as an increased staff. Expenses soon began to outrun the resources. Saint Labre mission and school had always been supported by the religious orders that staffed the mission. Various charitable organizations and individuals also sent money, used clothing, books and other materials throughout the years. From its beginnings Saint Labre was a contract school which meant that the school received government funds quarterly according to the number of students enrolled. At one time, Saint Labre was receiving $28,000.00 a year. In the 1940's however, Congress cut the appropriations to the Department of the Interior and contract funds were withdrawn from a number of private schools including Saint Labre.
In order to create a new source for financial support, Father Marion Roessler in 1952 sent out a letter to the alumni of his Capuchin college asking for financial help. One of those alumni was Leo Dohn of New York City who came to Father Marion's assistance with his experience in fund raising and established what has become one of the most successful fund drives in the country. Father Marion wished to do something to change the economic situation of the Cheyenne People. The slaughter of the buffalo in the 1880's had ruined their whole way of life. Later many of them had homesteads and ranches and were quite independent. But the U.S. Government had decided about 1900 to begin to forcibly assimilate the American Indians into the White cultural and economic scene regardless of the cultural and traditional differences between the two races. Native Americans were forced to send their children to schools where their native language was forbidden and none of their traditional values were taught. If they refused to comply, rations were withheld. For many years the Northern Cheyennes lived in terrible poverty. Father Marion decided that teaching them trades which they could use to earn a living on or off the reservation would do the most good. In 1954 his letter of appeal asked for help to get a new trade school equipped. The money eventually came and there began an amazing growth and expansion of the Saint Labre mission school. Forced by ill health to give up most of his duties, Fr. Marion stepped aside and the direction of the fund drive, the school and the parish fell on the shoulders of the young Father Emmett Hoffmann who arrived at Saint Labre in 1954. He, too, was inspired by Fr. Marion's dream to make the Cheyennes economically independent and able to earn a living by their own skills. As the school grew in its curriculum and course offerings, more Cheyennes finished high school and learned trades and skills through the vocational programs, but this also brought a need for larger buildings and more lay staff. The letters of appeal raised the awareness of thousands of generous people all over the country to the plight of the original Americans at Saint Labre but there was also disbelief and/or anger that such conditions actually existed in this land of the free. A new building program began in 1958 with the construction of a kitchen-bakery-cafeteria complex and attached to it, a large convent for the Sisters. Up to this time the Sisters had been living in the same building as the girl boarders where they were prefects and house mothers as well as teachers. In 1960 a stand-by powerhouse was built, two new wells were dug and a sewage disposal system installed. A water storage tank was erected on a hill near the mission as Saint Labre's population grew. 1962 saw new dormitories built for the steadily increasing numbers of boarding students of all grades. That year, a factory was built on tribal land across the road from the mission where Guild Arts and Crafts from New York set up its Ashland division. This was part of Father Emmett's attempt to give the Cheyennes regular employment. The mission fund drive became the Guild's best customer. Many of the plastic wares made there were sent out with the appeal letters and their costume jewelry was advertised and sold through The Race of Sorrows, a newsletter which was sent to donors several times a year beginning in the year 1956.
Unfortunately new regulations for operating fund drives brought an end to the life of the Guild Arts and Crafts factory of Ashland in 1977. Many Cheyennes lost their jobs and again the economy of the reservation became more unstable. In 1963 a new, well-equipped gymnasium was erected and the Quonset which had been the gym became a temporary students' chapel because the church built in 1895 by Father ven der Velden could not hold all of the students at one time. The school day during those years began with Mass and then breakfast for all in the cafeteria. An administration building was built in 1964 to house the mailing and receiving operations of the burgeoning fund drive. All donations were acknowledged but many donors received personal letters and the volume of mail sent out and received demanded many hands. Employment was high because of the factory and also because of the fund drive. A kindergarten program was begun in 1957 and in 1966 a head start program was added. Because alcoholism had slowly grown to serious proportions among the Native Americans, an AA program began at the mission in 1966. A new classroom building was completed in 1967 and named for Father Marion Roessler. With all the latest equipment, the school had 11 grade school classrooms to accommodate 330 students and high school classrooms to take care of 175 students. A medical and dental clinic was built in the school as well as a large band room and a library. In 1965 Bishop William Condon of Great Falls, asked the Capuchin Fathers at Saint Labre to assume the pastoral care of the Crow Indians on their reservation west of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. The Capuchins had the parishes in Ashland and Lame Deer with missions at Birney, Busby, Muddy and Kirby serving Cheyennes and also White Catholics who lived close to the reservation. Serving the people of the Crow nation added parishes at Crow Agency, St. Xavier, Pryor, Lodge Grass and Wyola. St. Xavier and Pryor each had a grade school and since 1965 these schools also have been supported by the Saint Labre Mission.
When a flu epidemic in 1967 made it necessary to send all the school children to their homes, it was discovered that several children had no home to go to. Jasper and Alice Tall White Man were happy to take care of them and this was the beginning of the Cheyenne Home. By 1970 there were 36 of these homeless young people living together with the Tall White Man couple as their house parents. In order to ensure more individual care of the children by the house parents, the decision was made to have the children live in small group homes. In 1978 the first small group home, Eagle's Nest, was opened to accommodate nine children. By 1984, the Cheyenne Home program had an Intake Unit, several group homes and employed a professional staff which included a full-time director, a psychologist, counselors, a registered nurse, program supervisors as well as houseparents. In addition, young men and women, members of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps served at Saint Labre each year from 1969 to 1985 primarily with the Cheyenne Home Program. In 1971 a new church building was completed. It is in the shape of a tipi with a circular floor and stone walls that rise to a peak. In place of the center lodge pole there is a metal cross. The symbols in the church are adapted from Cheyenne culture and art as far as possible. The Stations of the Cross, for instance, are in the pecked-rock engraving style of the Plains Indians and are similar to many of the petroglyphics found in Montana and Wyoming.
In 1972, the old Church and the building attached to it were remodeled to house a continuing education program in vocational skills. The program was transferred to Lame Deer in 1975 and was named Dull Knife Memorial College. Father Benno Aichinger who had been the Capuchin provincial, came to Saint Labre in August, 1927 but was soon called back in June, 1928 to serve the Capuchin community as a teacher in Indiana. In the short time he was at the mission Father Benno took a significant step. He invited the Indian men who were going to serve as an honor guard in the Corpus Christi procession to wear their native costume. His statement was greeted with total silence for a moment and then one of the Cheyenne men, Peter Little Bird, remarked, "You are the first priest who appreciates the dress God has made for us Indians. You acknowledge some of our customs as good." From that time on the Indians were encouraged to wear their native dress and perform their dances on feast days celebrated at the mission. Throughout the whole United States a gradual rebirth of interest in preserving the Native American culture, teachings and art was taking place. There is no doubt that this renaissance was helped in the 1960's by the civil rights movement in the political arena. The Second Vatican Council (1962-65) in the Roman Catholic Church also brought new attitudes toward Native cultures. The liturgical reforms of Vatican II encouraged variety in worship that would reflect the cultures of the people. This included the use of the vernacular languages rather than the uniformity of Latin. Beginning in 1968 the Cheyennes were invited to have their annual summer Pow-wow on the mission grounds. Classes in the Cheyenne language were added to the grade school curriculum in 1970 because many of the young Cheyennes had never learned their native language. The classes were so popular that an adult class was added in the evenings. An annual Indian Heritage Day in the fall was put on the school calendar beginning in 1974. It is a day when there are demonstrations in sign language, races in putting up tipis, and Indian music and dances are performed. Of course, a feast of favorite Cheyenne foods highlights the day. Missiology has changed much since the late 19th century and new methods of bringing Christianity to native people who have their own religion have had to be devised. In 1973 Father Gilbert Hemauer, a Capuchin, began work on a plan that would "respect the Indian in his rediscovery of Indian culture and faith." To help develop a cross-cultural catechesis and orient the ministers to the history, values and the riches of native American cultures, a research library was set up at Saint Labre. Books, films, slides, tapes, and music were gathered together and constitute an impressive collection of works on religion and on Indian history, culture and art. In 1978, the Saint Labre Indian School became a Bureau of Indian Affairs School with an all-Indian school board. By that time, Saint Labre served not only the Cheyennes and some White students but also many students of the Crow nation. Religion was taught in release-time classes and other religious teaching was cared for through the Saint Labre parish. In 1984, the community and parents asked that the Catholic church once again assume responsibility for the operation of St. Labre.
The sixties and the seventies were decades of tremendous change in the Roman Catholic Church when its very basic structure, its worship, its relationship to the life of the people were questioned and rethought. Scientific and technological research had changed our life styles so drastically that Pope John XXIII in a special moment of grace recognized the need for "aggiornamento" - renewal and reform. If the Catholic Church was to remain relevant into the 21st century, it had to come down into the valleys and marketplaces where people lived their daily lives and had to relate to them in a more pastoral way. As always when there is a great change in the Church, there was an exodus of priests and religious from their monasteries, convents and rectories following Vatican II. Besides that, new roles for the laity have been developed in the Church and this has been reflected in the operation of the Saint Labre Mission. There were fewer Sisters teaching in the school and the number of School Sisters of St. Francis of Milwaukee was greatly reduced. Franciscan Sisters from both Joliet, Illinois and Rochester, Minnesota joined the ministry at Saint Labre as teachers, counselors, and parish and social workers since 1974. The number of Capuchin Fathers and Brothers serving at Saint Labre was fewer than in the 60's. In 1968, Mr. Larry Kostelecky, a teacher at Saint Labre, became the first lay superintendent of the school, and in 1983, Father Dan Crosby, the Capuchin director of the Saint Labre Mission was replaced by a layman, Mr. Robert B. Phelan. The Capuchin Fathers are still serving on the Mission Board of Directors and they are on the parish team but the details of the day-to-day business of the mission are taken care of by lay persons. In a sense a new era has begun in the life of the Saint Labre mission. From a very small and simple mission school served by three Ursuline Sisters and a priest chaplain, it has grown into a huge and complex corporation made up of very diverse components, with more ministers serving many more people. |
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