History
The History of Fire and the Human Use of Fire in the Northern Rockies

History
The History of Fire and the Human Use of Fire in the Northern Rockies

History
The History of Fire in the Northern Rockies

Jesuit preists and their church murals were perhaps the first exposure the Salish and Pend d’Oreille had to the hellish image of fire common to Christian cosmology. The missionaries were giving expression to a prevailing sense in western culture that fire was inherently evil, and must be extirpated or in some way brought under control.


The Mural
"St. Michael the Archangel Driving the Devil into Hell" by Father Joseph Carignano, S.J. This mural is one of many painted in the St. Ignatius Mission Church in 1903-1905 by Fr. Carignano, who also painted similar images in St. Francis Xavier church in Missoula between 1900 and 1903. May of the murals, including this image, are copies originals by Raphael that hang in the Louvre in Paris.

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Between 1815 and 1820, a small party of Iroquois under Ignace LaMousse — Sk͏ʷíɫny̓á or Big Ignace, as he was known by the Salish people—reached western Montana. Fur traders hoped the Iroquois would bring more Salish people into the fur trade, but instead several of them married into the tribe, more or less dropped out of the fur trapping business, and joined in the Salish way of life. They also introduced the Salish to the religion of the Blackrobes — the Jesuit missionaries who had worked among some Iroquoian bands since the 1600’s. And the Blackrobes, in turn, would advocate conversion not only to their religion, but a way of life completely different from their own. And this included a very different view of fire.

In Big Ignace’s stories of the Blackrobes, the Salish recognized the prophecies of one of their elders,
Xall̓qs (Shining Shirt), who had long before received a vision that men wearing long black dresses would come and teach the people a new way of prayer.

With continuing raids from the Blackfeet, economic and ecological upheaval from the fur trade, and repeated losses from epidemics of European diseases, it was a time of increasing trouble for the Salish. Perhaps the power of the Blackrobes could help. During the 1830s, the tribe sent four delegations to St. Louis to seek out the priests. The Jesuits finally dispatched Pierre Jean De Smet, and he helped build a mission in 1841 at the principal Salish winter camp, Ɫq̓éɫml̓s (Wide Cottonwood Trees). The Jesuits called it St. Mary's, and other whites later named the town there Stevensville.

The missionaries were intent not just on bringing their teachings to the people, but on getting rid of the traditional Salish spiritual practices, which they regarded as the “work of the devil.” In a larger sense, the Jesuits sought to transform the entire culture of the Salish. They unsuccessfully tried to convince the tribe to switch to agriculture and abandon what they described as their “roving” way of life. At the mission, the priests taught religious practices, but also farming, milling, carpentry, and other skills.

When the Jesuits established another mission among the Blackfeet in 1847, many Salish felt betrayed, seeing this as lending power to the enemy. They turned away from the missionaries, who were then left exposed, ironically, to Blackfeet raids. The Jesuits abandoned St. Mary’s in 1849, and established the first St. Ignatius mission among the Kalispels. In 1854, the Blackrobes wanted to return to Montana, and Pend d’Oreille leaders agreed to allow the Jesuits to establish a mission in their territory — the second St. Ignatius mission — in exchange for providing education to the tribe. In 1868, the Blackrobes also reestablished a mission at St. Mary’s. Many Salish and Pend d’Oreille people embraced Catholicism, and since that time, the cultural and spiritual life of many tribal people has consisted of a blend of native and Christian ways.

The Mission started to grow. Flour and saw mills and schools for the Indian children were soon erected. By the 1880s, enormous boarding schools were constructed, and hundreds of tribal children would be schooled there over the following decades. The education consisted primarily of Catholic teachings and industrial and agricultural skills.
My Image

Father DeSmet

In 1890, the Jesuits and tribal people constructed the brick mission church that still stands in St. Ignatius. Inside the enormous nave, a Jesuit laborer painted elaborate frescoes and murals across the entire ceiling and on many of the walls. And in one alcove, he created a painting that had a particularly powerful effect on the tribal children who were shown the image, repeatedly, by the blackrobed priests. The mural showed the fires of hell. Tribal people were accustomed to seeing images, particularly of a spiritual nature, as literally true. So the elders remember this painting playing a major role in scaring people into obedience to the church. “When I was at the Jesuit school,” recalled Pend d’Oreille elder Mitch Smallsamon in 1977, “they taught about religion. I seen the pictures in the church. Everything was taught us about the pictures. The Jesuits knew everything...The sqélix͏ʷ [the people] gathered together at the Mission church and prayed. The priests knew all about the pictures that are in the church and what they mean. All the sqélix͏ʷ got scared when they saw that one picture. The priests explained to them, ‘That is what will happen to you if you do anything wrong. If you die in sin, you will go in the fire. It will happen to you like in the picture.’ That is why the snunx͏ʷenʔtn [beliefs] of the sqélix͏ʷ a long time ago were very strong, because they saw the picture of the burning fire and the sqélix͏ʷ became scared.”i

This was perhaps the first exposure of Salish and Pend d’Oreille people to the hellish image of fire common to Christian cosmology. And tribal people did quickly internalize the Christian concept of hellfire; during the Hellgate Treaty negotiations in July 1855, the Pend d’Oreille leader Big Canoe (according to government translators) remarked that those tribal people who were too prone to go to war “are dark Indians, the bad fire (hell) comes to them, fighting one another.”ii But as Salish elder Louie Adams has said, although the Salish “were taught by the priests that if you're bad and die you go to hell, to a fire” they didn’t let that somehow change their understanding of the “good use of fire...We didn't say, well, we better not mess with this fire because it's bad.” The missionaries were giving expression to a prevailing sense in western culture that fire—and so many other seemingly uncontrolled forces of nature, such as snakes or wolves—were inherently evil, things that must be extirpated or in some way brought under control. From the Jesuits who brought in Catholicism to the progressive movement that implemented aggressive fire suppression after 1910, there was a common cultural worldview. As fire historian Stephen Pyne has written, “fire control was...of a piece with...straightening stream channels; killing wolves and coyotes; fertilizing soils; draining swamps; damming rivers.”iii

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iMitch Smallsalmon, Salish-Pend d'Oreille Culture Committee Oral History Archives, Tape 103, side 1, July 1977.
iiRobert Bigart and Clarence Woodcock, eds., In the Name of the Salish & Kootenai Nation: The Hell
Gate Treaty and the Origin of the Flathead Indian Reservation (Pablo, Montana: Salish Kootenai
College Press, 1996), 34.
iiiStephen Pyne, Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910 (New York: Viking, 2001), 80.

Jesuit preists and their church murals were perhaps the first exposure the Salish and Pend d’Oreille had to the hellish image of fire common to Christian cosmology. The missionaries were giving expression to a prevailing sense in western culture that fire was inherently evil, and must be extirpated or in some way brought under control.

The Mural
"St. Michael the Archangel Driving the Devil into Hell" by Father Joseph Carignano, S.J. This mural is one of many painted in the St. Ignatius Mission Church in 1903-1905 by Fr. Carignano, who also painted similar images in St. Francis Xavier church in Missoula between 1900 and 1903. May of the murals, including this image, are copies originals by Raphael that hang in the Louvre in Paris.

  • My Image
  • My Image
  • My Image
  • My Image
  • My Image
  • My Image
  • My Image

Go to an Interview with Tony Incashola


Between 1815 and 1820, a small party of Iroquois under Ignace LaMousse — Sk͏ʷíɫny̓á or Big Ignace, as he was known by the Salish people—reached western Montana. Fur traders hoped the Iroquois would bring more Salish people into the fur trade, but instead several of them married into the tribe, more or less dropped out of the fur trapping business, and joined in the Salish way of life. They also introduced the Salish to the religion of the Blackrobes — the Jesuit missionaries who had worked among some Iroquoian bands since the 1600’s. And the Blackrobes, in turn, would advocate conversion not only to their religion, but a way of life completely different from their own. And this included a very different view of fire.

In Big Ignace’s stories of the Blackrobes, the Salish recognized the prophecies of one of their elders,
Xall̓qs (Shining Shirt), who had long before received a vision that men wearing long black dresses would come and teach the people a new way of prayer.

With continuing raids from the Blackfeet, economic and ecological upheaval from the fur trade, and repeated losses from epidemics of European diseases, it was a time of increasing trouble for the Salish. Perhaps the power of the Blackrobes could help. During the 1830s, the tribe sent four delegations to St. Louis to seek out the priests. The Jesuits finally dispatched Pierre Jean De Smet, and he helped build a mission in 1841 at the principal Salish winter camp, Ɫq̓éɫml̓s (Wide Cottonwood Trees). The Jesuits called it St. Mary's, and other whites later named the town there Stevensville.

The missionaries were intent not just on bringing their teachings to the people, but on getting rid of the traditional Salish spiritual practices, which they regarded as the “work of the devil.” In a larger sense, the Jesuits sought to transform the entire culture of the Salish. They unsuccessfully tried to convince the tribe to switch to agriculture and abandon what they described as their “roving” way of life. At the mission, the priests taught religious practices, but also farming, milling, carpentry, and other skills.

When the Jesuits established another mission among the Blackfeet in 1847, many Salish felt betrayed, seeing this as lending power to the enemy. They turned away from the missionaries, who were then left exposed, ironically, to Blackfeet raids. The Jesuits abandoned St. Mary’s in 1849, and established the first St. Ignatius mission among the Kalispels. In 1854, the Blackrobes wanted to return to Montana, and Pend d’Oreille leaders agreed to allow the Jesuits to establish a mission in their territory — the second St. Ignatius mission — in exchange for providing education to the tribe. In 1868, the Blackrobes also reestablished a mission at St. Mary’s. Many Salish and Pend d’Oreille people embraced Catholicism, and since that time, the cultural and spiritual life of many tribal people has consisted of a blend of native and Christian ways.

The Mission started to grow. Flour and saw mills and schools for the Indian children were soon erected. By the 1880s, enormous boarding schools were constructed, and hundreds of tribal children would be schooled there over the following decades. The education consisted primarily of Catholic teachings and industrial and agricultural skills.

My Image

Father DeSmet

In 1890, the Jesuits and tribal people constructed the brick mission church that still stands in St. Ignatius. Inside the enormous nave, a Jesuit laborer painted elaborate frescoes and murals across the entire ceiling and on many of the walls. And in one alcove, he created a painting that had a particularly powerful effect on the tribal children who were shown the image, repeatedly, by the blackrobed priests. The mural showed the fires of hell. Tribal people were accustomed to seeing images, particularly of a spiritual nature, as literally true. So the elders remember this painting playing a major role in scaring people into obedience to the church. “When I was at the Jesuit school,” recalled Pend d’Oreille elder Mitch Smallsamon in 1977, “they taught about religion. I seen the pictures in the church. Everything was taught us about the pictures. The Jesuits knew everything...The sqélix͏ʷ [the people] gathered together at the Mission church and prayed. The priests knew all about the pictures that are in the church and what they mean. All the sqélix͏ʷ got scared when they saw that one picture. The priests explained to them, ‘That is what will happen to you if you do anything wrong. If you die in sin, you will go in the fire. It will happen to you like in the picture.’ That is why the snunx͏ʷenʔtn [beliefs] of the sqélix͏ʷ a long time ago were very strong, because they saw the picture of the burning fire and the sqélix͏ʷ became scared.”i

This was perhaps the first exposure of Salish and Pend d’Oreille people to the hellish image of fire common to Christian cosmology. And tribal people did quickly internalize the Christian concept of hellfire; during the Hellgate Treaty negotiations in July 1855, the Pend d’Oreille leader Big Canoe (according to government translators) remarked that those tribal people who were too prone to go to war “are dark Indians, the bad fire (hell) comes to them, fighting one another.”ii But as Salish elder Louie Adams has said, although the Salish “were taught by the priests that if you're bad and die you go to hell, to a fire” they didn’t let that somehow change their understanding of the “good use of fire...We didn't say, well, we better not mess with this fire because it's bad.” The missionaries were giving expression to a prevailing sense in western culture that fire—and so many other seemingly uncontrolled forces of nature, such as snakes or wolves—were inherently evil, things that must be extirpated or in some way brought under control. From the Jesuits who brought in Catholicism to the progressive movement that implemented aggressive fire suppression after 1910, there was a common cultural worldview. As fire historian Stephen Pyne has written, “fire control was...of a piece with...straightening stream channels; killing wolves and coyotes; fertilizing soils; draining swamps; damming rivers.”iii


iMitch Smallsalmon, Salish-Pend d'Oreille Culture Committee Oral History Archives, Tape 103, side 1, July 1977.
iiRobert Bigart and Clarence Woodcock, eds., In the Name of the Salish & Kootenai Nation: The Hell
Gate Treaty and the Origin of the Flathead Indian Reservation (Pablo, Montana: Salish Kootenai
College Press, 1996), 34.
iiiStephen Pyne, Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910 (New York: Viking, 2001), 80.