| Summary: | 612 EARLY HISTORY OF NORTH DAKOTA resident priest in North Dakota. Father Harper then returned to Quebec. In 1833 Rsv. Charles Poire and Rev. John Baptiste Thibault were ordained at St. Boniface. Father Belcourt had studied the Algonquin language and to him was assigned the Indian missions. He soon acquired a perfect knowledge of the Chippewa tongue, later composing a grammar and dictionary of that language, published after his death by Father Albert Lacombe. For many years the language was taught to young missionaries. In 1838, Rev. Arsene Mayrand was added to the missionary band and in 1841, Rev. Jean Darveau was added. He was drowned in 1844. All of these priests attended to Catholics at Pembina at times and accompanied the hunters whenever they could from 1831 to 1848, when Father Belcourt became the resi-dent pastor at Pembina. For him the town of Belcourt in the Turtle Mountains now the site of an important Indian school, was named. In 1837, Rev. Modeste Demers, first bishop of Vancouver, labored in the Red River missions. In 1848, Rev. Francis Norbert Blanchet, first bishop of Oregon City, spent some weeks on the Red River, leaving with Bishop Demers., They were the first priests to celebrate mass on the Saskatchewan, but they do not appear to have officiated in North Dakota. In 1844, Bishop Provencher secured Rev. J. F. Lafieche and Father Joseph Bourassa. Accompanied by a small party of gray nuns, they arrived at St. Boniface June 21, 1844. Lafleche, in February, 1847, was consecrated coadjutor bishop of Three Rivers. He became bishop in 1870 and died July 14, 1898. June 24, 1845, Revs. Aubert, an Oblate father, and Alexandre Tache, later archbishop of St. Boniface, came. He became coadjutor bishop of St. Boniface Sept. 22, 1870, dying June 22, 1894. He was a distant relative of Verendrye, who explored the Red River in 1734. Father Tache labored in North Dakota and was for many years vicar-general of the American bishops, Grace, Seiden-busche, Marty and Shanley, who exercised jurisdiction from 1859. Another name not mentioned above is that of Fr. Boucher, from 1827 to 1833. Bishop Provencher crossed the plains with a caravan of Red River carts in 1843 from Pembina to St. Paul. These carts increased from six in 1843 to 162 in 1851 and 600 in 1858. In going or coming they were generally accompanied by a priest, who said mass nearly every morning. In 1842, Father Atigustine Revoux had began a mission among the Sioux at Lake Traverse. It was he who instructed, baptized and assisted thirty-three of thirty-eight Sioux executed at Mankato, Dec. 26, 1862, for complicity in the Sioux massacre. Bishop Lafleche often claimed he was the pastor at Wild Rice, near Fargo, as he had so often ofHciated there for the Canadian half-bloods and the few Indians in that vicinity. Before 1856, mass had been said in every camping place from Lake Traverse to Pembina. In 1847, Rev. Henry Faraud accompanied the hunters on the plains of North Dakota. The population, often to the number of three or four hundred, camped on the plains three or four months on their annual hunts, a priest usually accom-panying the party. In November, 1864, Father Faraud was appointed vicarate-apostolic of Athabasca-McKenzie. In 1848, a lay brother (Dube) went with the hunters twice to the prairies in the absence of a priest who could accompany them. In 1849, this work was con-fined to Fathers Maisoneuve and Tissot. Internet Archive
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