The Fleming, the Native Americans and the Wild West
Curators toured the Rocky Mountains to put together an exhibition in Ghent’s Caermersklooster that tells the story of a Flemish missionary among Native Americans, a young romantic turned crucial peacemaker
Man on a mission
There is a statue commemorating De Smet in his birthplace, Dendermonde in East Flanders, but he isn’t so well known by people elsewhere in the region. The University of Leuven’s Documentation and Research Centre for Religion, Culture and Society (Kadoc) and Antwerp’s MAS museum want to bring him out of the shadows of the past with their collaborative exhibition. The project is supported by the province of East Flanders and the Flemish government.
During the preparation of the exhibition in the Caermersklooster, curators Luc Vints of Kadoc and Mireille Holsbeke of MAS retraced De Smet’s steps on a tour in the west of the US, during which they kept a blog. They convinced authorities in Saint Louis, Missouri, and others to provide important archival pieces. De Smet’s own belongings are included, and various European institutions lent materials.
“What we found on our trip was that De Smet is still well known and respected by the tribes in the Rocky Mountains region,” says Holsbeke. One sign of this is the permanent exhibition on his life and work set up by the Coeur d’Alene tribe in Cataldo, Idaho.
Young romantic
De Smet’s mission in the US started in 1821, in a way that was entirely in keeping with his enterprising character. At the age of 20, he sneaked away from Flanders without the consent of his well-off family to become a missionary for the Jesuit congregation of the Catholic Church. He was a young romantic who was curious about the “exotic” people on the other side of the Atlantic.
After a difficult start, De Smet set up a successful mission among the Salish people. “He gained the trust of the Native Americans thanks to his openness towards them and his sincere admiration for their culture and traditions,” says Holsbeke. This attitude meant that many tribespeople considered him “one of them” and gave him the honorary title Blackrobe of the Indians. Blackrobe was a general nickname for Catholic missionaries.
De Smet gained the Native Americans’ trust thanks to his openness and his sincere admiration for their culture
What the native peoples also respected in De Smet was that he led a nomadic life – just like them. He was always on the road, trying to create new Catholic missions in the region and expanding the Kingdom of God in the US. By establishing isolated missions based on an agricultural way of life, he tried to convert Native Americans while protecting their traditions against the white settlers from the east of the country.
De Smet proved himself to be a decent amateur scientist and geographer. In his letters and reports, he describes the landscape, plants and animals he encountered and mapped areas that had rarely been seen before by white people. Although they now turn out to contain some mistakes, the maps are very detailed and provide an insight into the relationship between the indigenous population and the landscape.
In the first place, however, De Smet wrote about the culture of Native Americans, describing their appearance, clothing, housing, villages and customs. He also witnessed how the busy boat traffic, fur trade and colonisation introduced diseases to which the Indians had no resistance and how the illegal sale of liquor took its toll.
Travel reports
The threatened culture of the Native Americans in the 19th century is extensively shown in the exhibition through clothing, weapons and tools, including decorated robes made of bison hide, a feathered headdress, snow shoes, knives and tomahawks.
Also on view are several tools with which the Catholic missionaries tried to convert the Native Americans. The Jesuits rewarded interested natives with illustrated prayer cards and summarised the Catholic view on human history through a print with a timeline – in the form of a ladder – with images and symbols.
You can also listen to and read De Smet’s story via audio fragments and through travel reports on e-readers. Drawings by De Smet’s fellow Jesuit Nicolas Point, a Frenchman, provide an insight into the daily customs of Native Americans. You can also explore a digital map that features information and images of the numerous places De Smet visited.
While this nomadic lifestyle was appreciated by the Indians, it led to increasing criticism from De Smet’s fellow missionaries, who felt he was leaving them to deal with the many practical issues in the missions. Around 1840, De Smet lost his supervisory position and had to stay in Saint Louis to work, as an accountant among other roles.
After this setback, he dedicated much of his time and efforts to fundraising campaigns for the missions in the Rockies. He sought funding among wealthy American citizens and especially in Europe, which gained him an international reputation.
A talent for PR
He also travelled back to Flanders and became a celebrity in his home country. “He definitely had a talent for PR,” says Holsbeek. The exhibition includes an Indian robe that De Smet gave as a present to Belgium’s Queen Maria Henriëtta – the wife of King Leopold II – and a portrait of De Smet with his decoration of the Order of Leopold, the country’s highest order of knighthood.
After 1848, when gold was found in California, De Smet had to take on the role of peace mediator between the American government and the Native Americans. During the gold rush, masses of adventurers threatened their land and chased away the bison on which they largely depended for food, tools, clothing and shelter. The native people fought back with guerrilla attacks.
De Smet didn’t foresee that the migration of settlers would be so massive and the greed so immense
No longer a naive romantic, by then De Smet believed the natives could only survive if they accepted living in separate areas, which later became land designated as Indian reservations. Thanks to his ability to gain the trust of the natives, he played an essential role in important peace treaties, like the two treaties of Fort Laramie in 1851 and 1868.
De Smet succeeded in involving the most combative tribe, the Sioux, and one of the most illustrious chiefs – Sitting Bull. The exhibition features several copies of the ceremonial pipe, an important tool used during meetings with native chiefs.
Although the government promised to protect the Native Americans in their designated territories, the tribes quickly fell victim to the greed of the colonists for land and the cruelty of army generals. “You could say in hindsight that De Smet was abused by the government,” says Holsbeke. “He didn’t foresee that the migration of settlers would be so massive and the greed so immense.”
Story in context
In the years before his death in 1873 in Saint Louis, De Smet was pessimistic about the future of the Native Americans – and with good reason. The exhibition tells how children were forced to assimilate in boarding schools and how the population fell prey to discrimination and poverty.
Since the 1970s, there has been increasing attention to and activism around the cause of America’s Native Americans. As videos in the exhibition show, several Flemish TV directors and journalists have taken up this cause.
Last year, De Smet was in the news in the US. In the aftermath of the racial tension caused by police violence against African Americans, the Jesuit Saint Louis University removed a statue of De Smet praying over two Native Americans, following complaints that it “represented white supremacy”. The statue has been moved to the university’s art museum, where additional information puts the story in its proper context.
The Call of the Rockies is mainly in Dutch, but an information brochure in English is available. Until 1 May, Caermersklooster, Vrouwebroersstraat 6, Ghent
Photos: (top) courtesy Caermersklooster, (above) (c) ARSI Rome
