01Biography
Pierre-Jean De Smet was a Jesuit priest from Belgium who spent much of his life among the tribes of the West. In July 1840 he went to the fur trappers' rendezvous on the Green River and said Mass there. In 1841 he headed west again with a small missionary party guided by Thomas Fitzpatrick. The Bidwell-Bartleson company, the first emigrant wagon train bound for California, traveled with them as far as Soda Springs. Passing Independence Rock that summer, De Smet called it "the great register of the desert."
He founded St. Mary's Mission in the Bitterroot Valley in 1841 and worked for years among the tribes of the Northwest. In 1851 he brought tribal delegates from the upper Missouri to the great treaty council near Fort Laramie.
02Why they matter
He traveled with the first emigrant wagon company of 1841 and gave Independence Rock its nickname, the great register of the desert.
03How they died
De Smet kept traveling into old age, and in 1868 he persuaded Sitting Bull to send a delegation to meet United States peace commissioners. He died in St. Louis on May 23, 1873, aged 72. He was buried at the Jesuit seminary near Florissant, Missouri, and in 2003 his remains were moved to Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis.
04Legacy
The towns of De Smet, South Dakota, and De Smet, Idaho, are named for him. Monuments near Daniel, Wyoming, remember the Mass he said at the 1840 rendezvous.