Faith on the Frontier: Episode 1 - Where the Story Begins

The story of Catholic education in Montana begins long before classrooms, systems, or school buildings. It begins with people, and with a relationship.

In this opening episode, we travel to the Bitterroot Valley in the early 1840s, where the first Catholic missionaries arrived at the invitation of the Salish people. Together, they founded St. Mary’s Mission in 1841, the first Catholic mission and first permanent settlement in what would become Montana.

But this is not just a story about missionaries. It is a story of encounter. Of curiosity. Of faith shared across cultures.

You’ll hear how Indigenous communities actively sought out the “Black Robes,” how early mission life took shape, and how this moment laid the foundation for everything that would follow.

And yet, this is only the beginning.

Because as the story moves east, the context changes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Across the wide plains and open skies of eastern Montana, distance has always mattered. Communities formed where the land allowed. Faith took root where people gathered. And education emerged not from abundance, but from commitment. Long before there were school buildings, there were teachers. Long before systems, there was mission. This is the story of Catholic education in eastern Montana and of how Billings Catholic schools came to be. Shaped by land, carried by people, tested by time, and sustained by faith. This is Faith on the Frontier. It is the second largest diocese in the contiguous United States, surpassed only by the Diocese of Cheyenne, which encompasses all of Wyoming. To put that into perspective, if you combine the Archdiocese of New York, St. Louis, Cincinnati, St. Paul, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Newark, New Orleans, and Philadelphia, all of them together, you would still cover only about half the land area of this single diocese in eastern Montana.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Eastern Montana's people have lived colorful lives on the land commonly known as a last best place. Native Americans who have a deep respect for the land are credited with playing significant roles in bringing Catholicism to Montana. This is where our story begins, with the land and the first people on it. Kim Larson, from Age to Age: A History of the Catholic Church in Eastern Montana.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Before we talk about schools, before parishes, before buildings, boards, or budgets, we have to begin with the land. Eastern Montana is not simply large, it is vast. Distances here shape everything. How people travel, how communities form, how faith is practiced, and how education survives. Long before this land was divided by counties or rail lines, long before it belonged to a diocese, it was home. Home to indigenous nations whose relationship to the land was spiritual, communal, and deeply rooted in responsibility rather than ownership. Catholic education in eastern Montana begins here, not with European missionaries, but with native peoples. It surprises many people to learn that some of the first Catholics in this region were indigenous themselves.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Some three months ago, four Indians who lived at the other side of the Rocky Mountains, near the Columbia River, arrived in St. Louis. They made signs of the cross and of other signs which appeared to have some relation to baptism. This sacrament was administered to them. They gave expression of their satisfaction. Bishop Rosati Letter dated december thirty first, eighteen thirty eight, as quoted in Curly.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Catholic Iroquois fur traders carried their faith westward along trade routes in the early nineteenth century. They brought prayer, ritual, and story with them, not as conquerors, but as travelers. Faith moved across the land the same way knowledge did, by word of mouth, by example, by shared life. Perhaps most important of all, indigenous nations were not passive recipients of Catholicism.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

More importantly, the natives chose to accept certain foreign forms and then to make them their own. Michael J. McGinley.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

They sought it out. In the 1830s, the Flathead Nation sent delegations, not once, not twice, but four separate times to St. Louis. They were asking for missionaries, for teachers, for spiritual guides. They were saying, we want this faith among our people.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Native Americans who have a deep respect for the land are credited with playing significant roles in bringing Catholicism to Montana. Kim Larson.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

That matters because it tells us something essential about how Catholic education begins here. When missionaries eventually arrived, especially Jesuits, they entered a world already shaped by relationships, tradition, and the land itself. What's clear is that Catholic education here didn't arrive on empty ground. It entered a place where learning already had meaning, relationships already had structure, and the land itself was already a teacher. There were no class schedules posted on walls, no report cards, no gymnasiums or cafeterias. Learning happened outdoors, around the campfire, in fields, in shared labor. Reading and writing were taught alongside farming, hunting, prayer, and care for the community. Faith was not a subject. It was a way of life. One of the most significant centers of early Catholic life in this region was St. Mary's, founded in response to invitations from the Salish people in 1841. Located in the Bitter Rip Valley, near present-day Stevensville, this was the first non-indigenous settlement in the region. It became a place where worship, education, culture, and survival were woven together. These missions were not simply churches with classrooms attached. They were communities where belief was lived before it was taught. This is why Catholic education in eastern Montana cannot be measured solely by buildings, enrollment, or grade levels. It was formed in a place where distances were long, resources were scarce, and relationships were everything. Education here began as an act of trust. Long before the Diocese of Great Falls was established in 1904, long before formal schools emerged, learning was already happening. And it was happening because people believed faith was worth passing on, even when the future was uncertain. Before there were schools, there was land, there were people, and there was mission. When we hear the word school today, we imagine something very specific: a building, a schedule, desks in rows, bells that mark time. That picture simply did not exist in eastern Montana in the 19th century. What existed instead were missions. And those missions became the earliest schools, not by design, but by necessity. When Catholic missionaries arrived, especially the Jesuits, they entered a world shaped almost entirely by the land. Seasons determined movement. Weather dictated survival, and community, rather than institution, was the organizing principle of life. In that world, education could not be separated from daily living. You learned by watching, by participating, by being part of something larger than yourself. Catholic missionaries understood this quickly. They taught reading and writing, but also farming, craftsmanship, and stewardship of the land. They taught prayer, but not only from books. Prayer happened through work, through ritual, through shared responsibility. Faith was not taught in addition to life. Faith was life.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Early Catholic education in eastern Montana was practical, relational, and grounded in necessity. It emerged from lived experience rather than formal design. Kim Larson.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

At first, the story of Catholic missions in Montana begins in the West, in the 1840s, when the Flathead people actively invited the black robes to come among them. But as the story moves east, toward the land we now call Billings, the context changes. By the time missionaries arrived among the Crow people in this region, it was no longer the 1840s, it was the 1880s. And Montana itself and the lives of native people had been profoundly reshaped. Permanent mission work near Billings did not begin until 1887 when Jesuit missionaries established St. Xavier Mission on the Crow Reservation.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

In 1886, Jesuit priests Urban Grassi and Peter Paul Prondo visited the Crow tribe to select a site for a permanent mission. They returned the following year, cleared a 9x12 foot patch of snow, and pitched a tent where they lived for eight months. In 1887, the Simple Frame School was completed. Ursulin sisters arrived, and by Christmas, 50 students were attending the school. The Simple Wood Frame Mission Church dates to 1888 and is still in use. Montana State Library.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

St. Xavier was not simply a place of worship. In western Montana, earlier missions often came at the request of native communities, people seeking relationship, learning, and spiritual guidance. But in eastern Montana, missions were established during a time when native nations had been forced onto reservations, their movement restricted, their traditional ways of life disrupted, and their futures uncertain. Missions like St. Xavier became centers of education, worship, and community life. They also became part of a broader system that aimed to reshape native life, especially through schools that encourage new languages, beliefs, and ways of living. For many Native families, this brought both opportunity and hardship, education and spiritual life, but also separation, pressure, and deep cultural change.

SPEAKER_04 10:37

My name is Anda Stewart Pretty on top, and I'm originally from Wyola, Mighty Few District, but I was captured, so I landed in Lodge Grass, and I'm with the Lodge Grass district now. And I'm a retired educator and I'm a grandma. I have five grandkids that I cherish.

SPEAKER_03 11:04

My name is Fanny Cliff and I am a psaloga. I'm from the prior district and grew up there and now I'm a principal there. Graduated from St. Charles and uh I'm a alumni from there, so I'm the first one to graduate and come back as a principal.

SPEAKER_02 11:32

Yeah, my name is Ivan Small, director of schools at St. Libray. Interim. I'm in Rogue Crow and I'm affiliated with Northern Cheyenne. My dad is Cheyenne and my mom is Crow. And I asked my mom, I says, okay, so Tilly's family, John Whiteman's family, John Whiteman Runs' family, they're all Baptists. How come we're Catholics? And she said, Well, grandma Birdnacloud, that was her grandma. She said, uh, they were out camping and they were hunting and picking roots and picking berries and all that stuff. And they said, Here comes the black robes. The priest was coming. They all left, took off running. And Bird Nicloud was blind. And so she couldn't, she couldn't leave. So my grandpa Blake, he was just a young man, young boy then, uh little guy, he stayed with her. Priest come up, baptized him. She says, that's why we're Catholics.

SPEAKER_04 12:41

Our land is our identity. We survive from the land. We use our land powerfully, culturally. It has not changed. We still have that. It has never changed. We still carry on the we have the school, the mission school. They came, tried to wipe us out, but could not. So we still carry on our traditions to this day.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

You know, yeah, and along that, you know, the concept that, you know, a lot of folks say, okay, here's I guess I look at the crow and I I was told this at one time. So the Baptists basically settled along the rivers. That's where you get all the Baptist schools. The Catholics then kind of had to go out. So you had prior and you had, you know, most folks were along the little bighorn and down the bighorn. That's what I was told. So and I guess I I look at were they did they try to wipe out the Indianess? Of course. Did they succeed? No. But then that all turned around. I mean a lot of that. You get your father, father Randolph, your father Gary, your father Charlies. They they immersed themselves in c in our culture.

SPEAKER_04 14:13

We were forced, like my great grandparents were forced to go to school because of the federal government. And so some abided by that, some did not. The ones did not abide by going to school, like I can talk for Lodge Grass. In 1904, the Baptist Church and the Catholic Church opened. And the Baptist Church, it was on Indian land. White man Runsim, I believe, owned that land, and he donated that land to the Baptist ministry there. And that's where they did the old their first school. And some crows went to school, some did not. The ones did not go to school, they had police come pick them up. They were on horseback and they had them picked up. And then along the way, boarding schools opened, and they were forced to go to boarding schools like Carlisle, and they ran away. They would run away. There was one boarding school in Genoa, I think it's in Nebraska or Wisconsin. I know a lot of cruel young boys went there and they ran away and came back home.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

And as I was told, they they liked the establishment of mission schools on our reservations because then that meant they didn't haul them to Carlisle, Chamawa, Genoa, those schools uh way off. So they were educated here. And you look at St. LeBray, St. LeBray, I think, was established even before the reservation was. And so that relationship was already beginning then. And so their their their children, yeah, they may have been in that boarding school in St. Xavier or or St. Charles or at St. LeBray, but they could they they got to come home.

SPEAKER_04 16:22

Like my grandmother was an orphan, so she was taken to Saint Ex Pretty Eagle, and that was the boarding school, and she was raised there. And she my the nuns were not mean to her. They taught her very well. And so when she came home, of course, long time ago they were arranged marriages, and so they arranged her to marry my grandfather, and then they I don't know who was from Wyola, but that's where they resided. And my grandmother was a very, very strong Catholic because they raised her. So we were all brought up in the Catholic way, which we still do, and then she gave that land to the Catholic Church to have a church so we can go to church.

SPEAKER_03 17:20

And they built that place there too, with no boarding school, and they b built the houses around there so the their children can go to and from home and to school where they didn't have to pull them away to boarding schools. And my mom said they would have to they our homestead is like and where I reside is about like four or five miles out of Pryor. And she said that they would have to ride on a buggy to to school and and even in winter time, I guess her grandpa would make a makeshift um sled and take 'em to school. They used they they had the houses around that that school. They called that uh where they have a place of dwelling there. Is that that's what they called it. And y there was loc log cabins that were made in that area so that the kids could go to school. And and those are the things that I could remember of what she told me and how Haywood, the late Haywood Matak would tell me about St. Charles. Back in the 1800s, my adoptive parents, Haywood and Mary Lou, the late Haywood and Mary Lou, big day, they're part of their family, the Lyncholes family was a big part of having to give the property to the priest there. Haywood went back and said, This this priest here was the one that was given this land because of the how I guess the Lion Schules family saw that and they said, Well, since you have a heart for our kids and how you gently, you know, pick them up and would, you know, talk to them and would tell them about the Bible stories and stuff, and but they didn't understand it because they spoke crow and but he said, Well, they well this his grandfather saw his great grandfather saw this and he gave him the land there is what he he recalled. And and I w look at the crows of how I said, How come you guys never went to boarding schools? But you know, there's you know, that one and say next, like I said, but my mom said it to her knowledge, she said it was just to keep their children closer. And they prayed in that they wouldn't take them away like the other ones. And now, due to that, that's why our language is so strong, you know, in our culture. And because without our culture, we we if we don't have our language, our our language is our culture, you know, and that's why we practice all these other things and and it's still intact. And I remember some of our neighboring tribal reservations around here in Montana, they say we look to you crows because you guys still have your traditions, you still have your culture, and we look at your language, you s you still have it.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

So the story of missions in Montana is not one single story. It is a story that changes depending on where and when you stand, from invitation to adaptation to survival in a changing world. Children learn prayers in languages spoken at home and entirely new languages. Adults learn new skills to survive in a rapidly changing world. Culture, faith, and knowledge intersected every day.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

The natives judged the priest's claim of religious power by the integrity of the missionaries' social behavior and their political relevance in meeting the religious needs of everyday life. Michael J. McGinley.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Education here was not abstract. It was immediate, it answered real needs. And yet, this kind of education required something profound. It required trust. Families entrusted their children, indigenous communities entrusted their traditions, even as they sought new tools for the future. Missionaries entrusted themselves to unfamiliar land and people. These encounters were not simple. They were shaped by misunderstanding, tension, and loss, as well as faith and hope. But they were rooted In relationship. There was no separation between church and school, because there was no structure yet to hold those distinctions. Education happened wherever life happened. Over time, as Catholic communities became more established, the need for structure became clearer. Parents wanted consistency. Children needed stability. Clergy and religious needed organization across enormous distances. Missions alone could not carry everything forward. What had begun as relationship and response would eventually require form. By the end of the 19th century, Catholic life in eastern Montana stood on a threshold. Faith was present. Education was happening. Communities were forming. What came next would change the shape of Catholic education entirely. In 1904, the Church would place structure around what already existed. And with that structure, a new chapter would begin. By the end of the 19th century, Catholic life in eastern Montana had taken root. Faith was present. Communities had formed. Education, though informal, was happening wherever people gathered. But something was becoming increasingly clear. What had grown through mission and relationship now needed structure. The distances were vast. Communication was slow, and Catholic communities were scattered across open land, reservations, and small towns.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

Where Peter is, there is a church. Where the people go, Peter follows. Edward P. Curly.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Without organization, the risk was not simply inefficiency, the risk was disappearance. In 1904, the Catholic Church responded. That year the Church formally established the Diocese of Great Falls, bringing eastern Montana under a single episcopal structure. For the first time, Catholic life across this enormous region was intentionally linked, parish to parish, mission to mission, community to community. This moment is easy to misunderstand. It was not about replacing mission with bureaucracy, it was about protecting what already existed. Structure made it possible to assign clergy more effectively, to coordinate ministries across long distances, and slowly to imagine something more consistent for education. Not yet schools as we recognize them today, but the conditions that would allow schools to emerge. The diocese did not create Catholic education in eastern Montana. It recognized it. By acknowledging the realities of the land and its people, diocesan leadership could begin to support learning in more deliberate ways. Parishes would eventually become centers not only of worship, but of instruction. Religious communities, especially women religious, would soon take on expanded roles as educators, and families would begin to imagine Catholic education not as occasional or informal, but as something their children could depend on. None of this happened quickly. Resources were scarce, travel was difficult, many communities were separated by hundreds of miles. Building schools in a place like eastern Montana would always require perseverance. But after 1904, Catholic education no longer depended solely on the endurance of individuals. It now belonged, however imperfectly, to a shared vision. What began with indigenous initiative, grew through mission and relationship, had now entered a new phase. A phase that would shape everything to come. The creation of the diocese did not mark the start of Catholic education in eastern Montana. It marked the moment the Church committed itself to carrying that education forward, across generations, across distances, and across an unforgiving landscape. Faith had found this land. Mission had taken root. Now, education would begin to endure.