Faith on the Frontier: Episode 2 - A Changing Landscape

As Catholic mission work spread east across Montana, the story took on a different shape.

In this episode, we move into eastern Montana and the Billings region, where permanent missions did not take root until the 1880s, decades after St. Mary’s. By this time, Native nations had been forced onto reservations, and life had been profoundly disrupted.

At places like St. Xavier Mission (founded in 1887 among the Crow), missions became centers of faith, education, and daily life. They offered stability, learning, and community.

But they also existed within a larger system, one that reshaped culture, language, and identity for Native peoples across the region.

This episode attempts to explore that tension honestly and respectfully, including:

• The growth of early Catholic schools
• The role of mission communities in a time of change
• And the beginnings of an educational system that would continue to expand across Montana

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:06

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. Shaped by land, carried by people, tested by time, and sustained by faith. This is faith on the frontier. Not all at once, not evenly, but change had arrived, and it was moving along steel rails. Railroads stretched across the plains, connecting remote places to markets, cities, and opportunity. Where rail lines met rivers and trade met labor, towns emerged. Some remained small, some faded, and one grew.

SPEAKER_03 1:35

Billings. Well, my name is Christian Coppage. I'm currently employed at the Yellowstone County Museum as the curator of collections. I also serve as the president of the Friends of Pompeii's Pillar and Vice Chairman of the Trust for the Netsburst Trail. So Billings was preceded by a different settlement. So really the kind of the inciting event for settlement of the Yellowstone Valley was the steamboat Josephine that came up the Yellowstone River in the summer of 1875. So as a military expedition to kind of see the viability of the river for transporting supplies as well as kind of scouting locations for military forts. This was sort of during the buildup of the Great Sioux War, you know, which we mostly associate with like the little bighorn, but that's this is like the broader conflict that that kind of falls into. But the highest point they got along the river was kind of just south of Billings, and that was like the highest point of seamboat navigation, and that was kind of what established that as sort of a hub there. Just a two years later, Perry McIdow out of Bozeman, he originally came west with the Gold Rush, but he won a contract to bring supplies to the new Crow Agency that's kind of located south of Absorkey. And what he did was he established kind of a post there that he could then bring supplies in through the river and then trek overland to the Crow Agency. So he started this little town called Colson, named after the Colson Packet Company in St. Louis, kind of trying to curry their favor a little bit there. So just about it was about a mile north of current downtown Billings, is where that settlement kind of started. And they had high hopes that when the Northern Pacific Railway entered Montana in 1881 that they would kind of go through their town and kind of make it a huge hub. But as we know, it kind of bypassed it by about a mile south, and they kind of missed out on that. And that's when Billings kind of was started. So when surveyors came through with the railroad, they kind of came through in like a checkerboard pattern. So along the right-of-way where the train was going to come through, they would kind of get a land grant for a section on each side, kind of alternating. But they made a mistake during the survey. And while the surveyors came through, two of the sections ended up on the same side, which made this gigantic plot of land. And that's where they decided, well, we might as well just put a township there, because we're going to need like a roundhouse and a refueling depot and all these things anyway, so we might as well just put it right there where we already have all the land anyhow.

SPEAKER_04 4:00

Billings was not founded as a religious center. It didn't begin as a cathedral city or a seat of ecclesial power. Billings grew because geography made it inevitable. Railroads converged here. Trade flowed through here. Livestock, agriculture, and industry passed through this place. People followed.

SPEAKER_03 4:23

Kind of the emerging industry at that time and throughout all of eastern Montana, but especially in Billings, was like cattle and sheep ranching. So we have the railroad coming through, so we have like, you know, pretty reliable transportation. And then, you know, you can ship beef and leather and wool all over the state. So that kind of became the primary force during the kind of the late 1800s was primarily as a shipping center for both beef and and beef and uh sheep. If you go pretty much anywhere else in eastern Montana, I think like the second largest city is technically Haver, you know. But most of eastern Montana is very rural, very much agriculturally focused, and Billings is to a large degree as well. But it also has some pretty significant mineral wealth kind of in and around that area. So you're aware of the rim rocks, right? The eagle sandstone that makes up the rim rocks. Well, the stuff we see are the stuff that we're most familiar with, but underground it extends for several hundred feet, and this is throughout all of eastern Montana. And it kind of forms like these little wells for oil and natural gas and coal. And they discovered this kind of in the early 1900s. And since Billings already had all this wonderful transportation infrastructure, it became a hub for that kind of industry as well. So they would ship their coal and oil and whatnot to Billings, and then it could be shipped out via rail for refinement or for you know use elsewhere. Well, agriculture didn't really take off until a little bit later, like actual like farming. So when people first started settling in that late 1870s, early 1880s, they realized that the soil was really rich and could support agriculture, but it was still very much semi-arid like it is now. So they needed a lot of kind of irrigation infrastructure before they could start farming. And that those projects really started in kind of the early 1900s. And then farming became fairly more widespread throughout the Yellowstone Valley, and that attracted all sorts of people. There were lots of itinerant workers from Mexico who kind of worked in like the sugar beet fields for a long time there in the early 19, like I think 1906 was when the sugar beet factory was actually built. And then that's been a driving industry for a long time now. So and that's always been attracted kind of those itinerant farmers. Transportation is really the main thing, I think, because it it serves basically all of eastern Montana, but also a good portion of northern Wyoming as well. So it's just it happens to be perfectly situated to serve both those locales.

SPEAKER_04 6:49

Families arrived looking for work. Immigrants settled with hopes for stability. Indigenous people were increasingly drawn or forced into proximity with a growing city. And where people settled, the church followed. By the early 1900s, Catholic faith already existed across eastern Montana through mission life and scattered communities. But it is important to understand how that presence began here. In western Montana, missions had emerged decades earlier, often at the request of native communities seeking relationship, learning, and faith. Here in eastern Montana, the story was different. By the time permanent missions formed near what is now Billings in the 1880s, they were established during the Reservation Era. Native nations had been restricted in movement, traditional ways of life were being disrupted, and the future felt uncertain for many families. Missions like St. Xavier became places of faith, education, and community, but they also existed within this larger reality, one that brought both opportunity and real hardship for native peoples. But Billings offered something new density. For the first time, Catholic families could gather in larger numbers, parishes could become stable, ministries could take root. This mattered deeply for education. In isolated mission settings, learning happened relationally and informally, shaped by the land and the community. In a growing city like Billings, families began to imagine something more consistent. Children walking to school, regular schedules, a sense that faith formation could happen week after week, after year, after year. Catholic education was no longer only about adaptation. It was becoming about formation. As Billings grew, so did its parishes. They were not abstract centers of worship.

SPEAKER_03 9:00

They were community anchors. Anytime there's a settlement where you know numerous different people from different walks of life from all over the United States and elsewhere kind of come to one place, there needs to be some kind of through line to get people to connect. And a lot of times churches served as sort of that community hub. So, you know, across all churches, whether they're Catholic or Protestant or what have you, uh they kind of provided some familiarity with for people who moved to this new and kind of scary place. Frankly, if you move back east to here, you're kind of probably doubting some of your decisions at first. But if you can find community in some of these smaller churches, then that helped people transition.

SPEAKER_04 9:39

Here's Christian Coppage again, speaking about what greeted people when they got off the train new to Billings.

SPEAKER_03 9:45

Well, they walked into a town that was fairly utilitarian in a lot of ways. It was it was really made to support industry, to serve as both a commercial and industrial hub. So there was not a lot in the way of amenities. So if you stepped off the train and saw that, like, okay, like everything's a brick building and you know there's just there's there's very little for families, that that might be a little worrisome. But if you can kind of find your way over to these these community centers and find actual community there, then that would be a huge sigh of relief, I think, for people at that time.

SPEAKER_04 10:20

Parishes became places where families shared not only sacraments but lives. Where children learned prayers at home and heard them again on Sunday, where faith was reinforced through repetition and presence. And soon, parents wanted more for their children. They wanted schooling that reflected the same values lived at home and at church. Schooling that shaped not just minds, but character. Billings did not create Catholic education, but it created the conditions for Catholic education to take institutional shape. For families living across the vast distances of eastern Montana, this was not a small shift. It was a hopeful one. In Billings, Catholic education would move from mission life to parish classrooms, from informal teaching to intentional schooling. And at the heart of that movement stood the parish school. The story of Catholic education in Billings begins not with a single building, but with a city coming into its own. As Billings grew, Catholic life in the city began to organize itself around parishes. These were not simply places where families gathered on Sundays. Parishes became the center of daily life, places where faith was practiced, reinforced, and passed on. And for Catholic families, one question rose quickly to the surface. How would their children be formed? Public education was expanding, and for many families, it was the only available option. But Catholic parents wanted more than proficiency. They wanted their children's education to reflect the values lived at home and taught at church. This is where parish schools entered the story. In Billings, parish schools emerged at St. Patrick, Holy Rosary, Little Flower, and St. Pius X. These schools were modest by today's standards. Small classrooms, simple materials, a few extras. But what they offered was something deeply compelling. They offered consistency. Children could hear prayer at home and hear the same prayer again at school. They could learn their faith not as an abstract idea, but as a lived rhythm woven into ordinary days. These schools taught reading and arithmetic, grammar and penmanship, geography and history. But they also taught something harder to measure. Belonging. At the heart of these parish schools stood the women religious who staffed them. The sisters arrived not with promises of comfort or security, but with the conviction that teaching was a calling. Many taught multiple grades in a single classroom. Some lived in simple convents attached to parishes. All were paid little and worked endlessly. Yet families trusted them deeply. That trust did not come from credentials alone, it came from presence. The sisters knew families by name. They knew siblings. They knew who was struggling and who needed encouragement. Discipline and care existed side by side. For many students, the sisters were the first adults outside their families to insist that their lives mattered, that their minds, their faith, and their futures were worth investing in.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

It was Father DeSmet that also helped the Sisters of Charity to move from Nashville to Leavenworth, Kansas. And uh with the promise that sometime the sisters would come west to Montana as well as Colorado and Wyoming, which we did in uh eventually. But our community was founded in Leavenworth in 1858. And in 1869, we came to Montana. The problem that happened was they came by railroad and then by stagecoach, and they got there before word that they were coming got there. And so when they arrived, it was kind of like, oh my, oh my, oh my. And so the Jesuits, I mean they the parishioners or some some of the families in Helena took the sisters in immediately. Then the Jesuits moved out of the house they were living in and gave it to the sisters. That house had originally been the house of the newspaper, so it wasn't very big, and there were six of them that had come. Their response was to whatever the needs were in the area. It was a mining camp, not a town, per se. There were many children, some women who had already been widowed. There were, I mean, there were so many needs. And so immediately they began a school. At the very beginning, the second or third day they were there, they gathered children, the girls, and then eventually the boys, and developed a school. So Dr. Chapel, and the who was a pioneer physician, surgeon, and mayor of Billings, took took care of the sick himself. He was, and so he he knew he had to go all over the area. He wasn't just here in Billings. Billings was a small railroad town. It wasn't very big. But his persistent talks about a hospital with Father Van Clarenbeck, who was the pastor of St. Joachim Church, which was really just down the street about a block. It was not where St. Patrick's is now, but it was either here on 2nd or 3rd, but I think it was here on 2nd, if the if history tells me right. But the two of them traveled to Leavenworth and said they heard such good things about these sisters in eastern Montana and the hospitals they started. Could they come to Billings? The population at that point was about 3,000. But they came, there were two sisters that came, and the chapel drugstore was here at the site of this school, Central Catholic High School. And so this was the first site of the first hospital. In 1911, so I'm going backwards now. But Father Paulin, the first priest ordained in Montana and pastor of St. Patrick's Parish in Billings, asked sisters to staff a school there. So that was in the fall of 1911. So two sisters came out and began teaching grades one to four in the old St. Joachim's Church. In 1918, the school had outgrown its quarters, and the Catholics of Billings were fortunate in having Mrs. David Fratt donate and endow the Kate Fratt Memorial School, which opened on March 1, 1919. 1919. We have to know the spirit of Vincent de Paul, St. Vincent de Paul, that we live, and that most almost all Sisters of Charity, especially, who were founded by St. Vincent, if you really kind of go down through the the centuries. But our mission is always to care for those who are poor and vulnerable, whatever the work may be. And so we really begin with the work of Jesus, and he went out among the people. So we go out among the people, and what were the needs? So when they came, there was a dedication. In fact, when the community leader asked for volunteers to come to Montana, every hand went up. You know, all the sisters were willing to do that. But it's the commitment to care and to love those who are in need, whatever the need may be. We had a large number of sisters at the hospital, but we also had a large number here in the schools. So when you think of a full faculty of five, seven, eight, ten sisters at Pius, the same about six or eight at Holy Rosary. At St. Patrick's, it was probably 10 or 12. And here at Pi at Clunterell, it was probably anywhere from 12 to 20, I would say, at different times. And so when you think about the number of sisters, then at the hospital there were probably 25, 35, and we had a school of nursing there as well. And so there were additional sisters there. It was only in the 1960s, late 60s, after Second Vatican Council, that some of us began working in parishes doing religious education programs rather than in the formal programal school. I would hope that they brought love, nurturing, knowledge, a wholeness in who they were, you know, the whole person of caring for themselves. I mean, when you think about the topics that we teach, I mean, including physical physical education, I mean, all the sports that kind of take over our lives now. And sometimes they're detrimental to our health, but but I think the sisters really brought a wholeness and holiness of touching their lives. Now, some will say, well, they were pretty strict, well, they were mean, well, they were whatever. But it when you have sixty or eighty kids in a classroom, which we did. I mean, even in my teaching early on, I had I had over sixty kids in a classroom. Today, if you have fifteen or twenty, it's too much. You know, it's kind of like, wait a minute. So that's kind of where we have to also look and say, but their focus was always on the mission and ministry of Jesus, of really caring and loving and nurturing children, adults, whomever they were, whose lives they were touching. Parents really saw the value if they were really because they saw the value in their own faith and how they had grown in faith and they wanted their children to do that. That they belong to a faith community where they can nurture one another. The faith community is their parish church, but it's also their school community church, which is extremely important. So however that works for them, to be nurtured by one another is extremely important. And that's what's going to make their children grow. You can't make your children be Catholic. You can't make them do anything because they're just like us. They will grow and become who they are.

SPEAKER_04 21:01

But even with the sisters' support, Billings was on the verge of something that would soon impact the entire country. Here's Christian Coppage again speaking about the growth of Billings and the arrival of the Great Depression.

SPEAKER_03 21:14

So I think by 1917 it was around 20,000 people, which is, you know, not nothing, but certainly not as big as it is now. But Billings was one of the fastest growing cities in America. Like it almost grew by orders of two to three hundred percent every decade from then on out. Depress moving into like the Great Depression, it had the same problems that it everywhere had. I think what people kind of forget about Montana is that the Great Depression kind of came early here. It didn't come in the 1930s, it kind of came in the 1920s. So, like after the First World War, you know, during the First World War, there was a huge demand for uh wheat, for uh wool, for beef, all manners of things like that. Things that obviously were produced in. Billings in the surrounding area. Well, after the war, there was less demand for that, but you know, farmers were still producing at like wartime levels. So like the the price of beef kind of like fell through, the price of wheat and and all all manners of agricultural products kind of kind of hit the bottom there. So they kind of so people of Billings and of Eastern Montana experienced the Great Depression far earlier than most other places in the United States.

SPEAKER_04 22:27

Parish schools were not easy to sustain. Buildings needed maintenance, supplies cost money, and while the sisters accepted little pay, the broader costs of operating schools remained real. Parishes carried these schools because they believed the effort mattered. In a city still finding its footing, parish schools became anchors. They signaled permanence. They told families, we are staying. For Catholic children in Billings, these schools formed more than students. They formed a shared identity. Children from the same parish learned together, prayed together, grew up together. Faith was no longer just something inherited. It was something practiced daily. Still, as billings continued to grow, parish schools began to encounter their own limitations. Elementary education could be offered locally, but families began to ask what came next. How would Catholic formation continue as children became teenagers? How could Catholic education grow alongside a growing city? Parish schools laid the foundation, but the future would demand something new. By the early 1940s, Catholic education in Billings had established deep roots. Parish schools were forming children well in their earliest years. But as those children grew older, families began to face a new question. What happens next? Parish schools could support elementary children, but adolescence brought new challenges, academic, social, and spiritual. Catholic families wanted their children's formation to continue as life became more complex. They wanted a place where faith and learning could remain connected, not just through childhood, but through the critical years when identity takes shape. In 1944, Billings took a decisive step forward. Billings Central Catholic High School opened its doors.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

Members of the then four parishes in Billings united to draw up plans for a central high school. Classes were initially held in a frame building next to St. Patrick Church with two sisters of charity of Leavenworth instructing 25 students. Enrollment grew to 100 students within one year. Kim Larson.

SPEAKER_04 25:09

Instead, it drew students from across the city, from St. Patrick, Holy Rosary, Little Flower, St. Pius X, and beyond. For the first time, Catholic teenagers in Billings were being formed together, not only academically, but spiritually and socially. Students arrived with different parish traditions, different family backgrounds, different experiences of Catholic life. Central Catholic brought them into the same hallways, the same classrooms, the same liturgies. Something new was happening. Catholic education in Billings was no longer only local. It was becoming communal. This mattered not just for education, but for identity. Students learned that being Catholic in Billings meant more than belonging to a single parish. It meant belonging to something larger. Central Catholic became a place where friendships crossed parish lines, where a shared sense of mission began to emerge, where Catholic identity was reinforced through community, expectation, and visibility.

SPEAKER_01 26:31

A lot of the families that were Catholic-oriented people, during that time we were coming out of the depression. Most of the kids I knew, their families suffered really hard during the depression. And the depression created a situation where these families needed the support of their of their Catholic religion. And Central gave that to them by allowing their kids to go to school here. And it also gave them a feeling of support that they were really doing a good thing for their children that they thought they might not be able to do. So I thought those were some of the real positives of how it affected the youth and the community because we were all coming together now as a family and the and the the Catholic churches, I think, benefited because more kids were participating. The school promoted, you know, participation in church events. And I think that helped the parishes. So yeah, I just I have nothing to say but good things. For me, it was a really a good experience. And I think most of the my friends and classmates from that time period felt the same way. I thought the best thing about it, well, there were a lot of good things, but one of the very good things was the demographics brought together: South Side, West Side, North Side, East Side. And a lot of families were poor, and Central made it possible for those families from lesser income levels to actually attend Central. I know we were we were very poor and we didn't have the money, but I was able to go. And the demographics was to me a lot of these young people could have got lost at the bigger schools. And the size of the classes and the the attitude of the whole administration of a of a family orientation type, they they really benefited from that. And I saw some in my freshman year some students who think they'll never make it, and they blossomed by their senior year. And I'm not so sure some of those would have made it.

SPEAKER_04 29:10

Catholic education was beginning to move from parish-by-parish efforts toward shared systems. This brought strength. Resources could be pooled. Academic offerings expanded. Catholic education gained visibility and coherence. But it also introduced new dependencies. A centralized high school required sustained enrollment. It would require financial stability. And it relied on families continuing to choose Catholic education in years when public options became increasingly attractive. In the decades that followed, Central Catholic would grow into a defining institution in Billings.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

Because Central had some pretty good sports teams that created a lot of attention for the school by other people in the community. Hey, what's going on over there? And in fact, I think in 1949, Billings Central had a terrific football team. Billings Sr. refused to play them because they didn't want to get beat by this small school. So things like that brought attention to the school. Academics, there were some pretty good scholarships being announced, and people really took notice that here's a strong component of the city of Billings. They respected what they were seeing coming from the school. They respected the kids' participation in different youth activities, and they brought a different attitude because these we were learning at Billings Central to be a part of a community. I'm not so sure that was a focal point in the public school. And when that was promoted to the students at Central, then they they gave back, they were taught to give back. Part of that is just the whole concept of the way the Catholic Church was teaching. And it was important during that time, like I said, the 30s and 40s were some pretty tough periods of time. And agricultural people who weren't doing well were moving into billings, trying to find employment. Employment was tough, so income levels were not good, and these families still had an opportunity to get their kids a good education. And I think the community recognized that that was going on.

SPEAKER_04 31:32

It would shape leaders, parents, parishioners, and citizens. But at its beginning, it was something simpler and more fragile. It was an act of trust. Trust that families would commit. Trust that parishes would cooperate. Trust that Catholic education could adapt without losing its heart. For a time, that trust was rewarded. Enrollment grew. Community strengthened. Catholic education in billings seemed secure. But beneath the surface, forces were changing, both locally and nationwide. Forces that would challenge every Catholic school in the country. Catholic education in billings had reached a new height. And from that height, the fall, if it came, would be steep.