Nez Perce & Flathead Indians, Missionary Dr. Marcus Whitman, & the Oregon Trail

After the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803, Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore the Northwest from May 1804 to September 1806, meeting natives tribes along the way.

Several years later, in 1831, three Nez Perce Indians and one Flathead Indian, traveled 2,000 miles, all the way from the Oregon Territory to St. Louis, Missouri, looking for the "Book to Heaven."

The Bishop of St. Louis was Rev. Joseph Rosati (1789-1843), who later sent Pierre De Smet as one of the "Black robe" missionaries to the Indians.

Bishop Rosati wrote in the Annals of the Association of the Propagation of the Faith, December 31, 1831:

"Some three months ago four Indians who live across the Rocky Mountains near the Columbia River (Clark's Fork of the Columbia) arrived at St. Louis ...

... After visiting General Clark who, in his celebrated travels, has visited their country ... they came to see our church and appeared to be exceedingly well pleased with it ...

Two of our priests visited them ... They made the sign of the Cross and other signs which appeared to have some relation to baptism. The sacrament was administered to them."

A monument of two eagle feathers, standing over eight feet tall, in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri, commemorates the visit of the Indians.

Wyandot Indian chief, William Walker (1800-1874), who had become a Methodist, met the same Indians at the home of Territorial Governor William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1805-1806).

Though modern-day revisionists attempt to discredit the spiritual aspect of the Indians' quest, William Walker, who was the first provisional governor of the Nebraska-Kansas Territory, gave an eye-witness account.

An amazing and thrilling story.

If you'd like an equally astonishing story of Native American tribal nations seeking the Christian deity as the One True God, check out the events recorded by Blessed Maria of Agreda

Agreda was a Franciscan Abbess (Religious superior) in Spain who never left her cloistered convent --- yet she preached Christianity in the American Southwest -- most notably in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

This was the best-documented case of bilocation in history.

"Between 1620 and 1623, Mary of Jesus reported that she was often "transported by the aid of the angels" to settlements of a people called Jumanos. The Jumano Indians of New Spain (what is today Texas and New Mexico) had long been requesting missionaries, possibly hoping for protection from the Apaches. Eventually a mission led by the Franciscan Friar Juan de Salas visited them in 1629.
The abbess reported further but less frequent visits afterwards, all while she physically remained in the monastery at Ágreda.
They thus are considered bilocations, an event where a person is, or seems to be, in two places at the same time. Before sending the friars, Father Alonzo de Benavides, Custodian of New Mexico, asked the natives why they were so eager to be baptized. They said they had been visited by a Lady in Blue who had told them to ask the fathers for help, pointing to a painting of a nun in a blue habit and saying she was dressed like that but was a beautiful young girl.
The Jumanos visiting Isleta indicated that the Lady in Blue had visited them in the area now known as the Salinas National Monument, south of modern-day Mountainair, New Mexico, about 65 miles south of Albuquerque. At the same time, Fray Esteban de Perea brought Benavides an inquiry from Sor María's confessor in Spain asking whether there was any evidence that she had visited the Jumanos.
As reports of Mary's mystical excursions to the New World proliferated, the Inquisition took notice, although she was not proceeded against with severity, perhaps because of her long written relationship with the Spanish king.
Accounts of Mary's mystical apparitions in the American Southwest, as well as inspiring passages in Mystical City of God, so stirred 17th and 18th century missionaries that they credited her in their own life's work, making her an integral part of the colonial history of the United States.

Note that, interestingly, not only did the Catholic authorities initially not believe this, they were actually ready to investigate the cloistered nun for heresy.

One thing that caused them to back off, is that the nun's notes about the people and lands she visited, with detailed descriptions of mesas and plaines, mountains, rivers, plant and animal life, as well as the Jumano people themselves.

She had had no visitors, no correspondance, nor any other communication about the geography or indigenous people of the Southwest, yet she had accurately documented everything about her mystical visits.

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