Schools and Education in Montana (Part 3)

Almost from the time we became a country, there has been no more significant force in American private education than the Catholic Church, and it has served millions and millions of students, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, from pre-school to the highest levels of university graduate study. By the close of the Civil War, the Catholic Church was well-established on the Montana frontier to assist in schooling both white and Native American children.

Picturesquely located near Birdtail Rock, a scenic drive from Cascade, St. Peter's Mission Church is still a functioning Catholic Church for special events and holidays. Lovingly and generously donating time, money, and expertise to complete the project, its small but loyal flock of parishioners restored the log church to its original grandeur. We visited the church in its state of repair, and the painting shows it prior to the application of the whitewash.

The diocesan-owned church, out-buildings, and cemetery – along with the girls' dorm, known as the Opera House, on private land across the road – are all that remain of the once-prospering teaching and mission complex. This community, operated by Jesuit priests and Ursuline nuns, once numbered 149 people and provided for them with 300 head of cattle, grain fields, pastures, and gardens.

This was the fourth site chosen by the Jesuits in their efforts to settle among the Blackfoot Nation. In 1865 Father Imoda, some Jesuit Brothers, several workmen, and Indians erected the church, other buildings for living quarters, and a priest carved the altar and tabernacle. In 1866, when the tribe drove other Jesuits from their first three Montana missions, all fled to St. Peter's. However, the Indians followed their trails, so they left the complex in the care of a nearby rancher, Thomas Moran, and fled again.

Eight years later the Jesuits, determined to teach the Blackfoot children, returned, but within a few weeks Congress ordered the tribe moved sixty miles away and put into the hands of Protestant missionaries. Likely the Blackfoot wondered just what religion it was the white man wished them to follow. St. Peter's mission then became a school for both ranch and Indian boys, and wooden classrooms were built near the chapel.

A Jesuit seminary was added, and, in 1892, a fine stone school was constructed for boys, as Ursuline nuns arrived to start the first girls' school. In 1895, when the mission was flourishing, the government once again thwarted progress, decided to open their own schools, and ended all subsidies there for Native Americans. This forced the Jesuits to disperse to their four remaining Montana missions and left the nuns to operate both schools until fire utterly destroyed the boys' facilities in 1908.

What remains of the Jesuit compound is the small, beautiful church, a few wooden buildings decaying in the wind, scattered chunks of the stone walls from the magnificent boys' edifice, and the small, hilltop cemetery overlooking the mission property.

Turning back to 1882, when only boys were housed and educated there, Father Joseph Damiani of Rome, Italy became St. Peter's Mission Superior. Girls in the area received no schooling, so Fr. Damiani moved to remedy that shortcoming and arranged for the Ursulines to open a girls' school with dormitory.

Mother Amadeus of the Heart of Jesus and four nuns were given this assignment. They already had established the first Montana Ursuline convent in Miles City, but when they were transferred to St. Peter's, accommodations were primitive. The log houses had pole and clay roofs, dirt floors, and bunks constructed of boards covered with straw for mattresses and buffalo hides as covers. Mother Amadeus contracted pneumonia shortly after her arrival, and her childhood nurse, Mary Fields, traveled from Ohio to care for her.

Not in the ordinary cut of a nursemaid, Mary, a tough, six-foot, 250-pound black, began life as a slave in Tennessee and was one of few taught to read and write. Once Mother Amadeus recovered, the nuns hired Mary as school handyman and to haul freight and supplies, but her versatility extended to laundress, vegetable gardener, tender of the chickens, and building repairwoman. She was a hard-drinking, cigar-smoking woman, quite capable of using not only bad language and her fists, but also her pistols and shotgun. Legends have her killing several men, though only one can be documented. When she got into a shoot-out with a fellow employee over the matter of salaries, the bishop decided to retire her, so Mother Amadeus helped her open a restaurant, which, due to her generosity, failed after ten months; regardless of a customer's ability to pay, she fed everyone.

When she was about 60, Mary was hired by a contractor to deliver mail over a route he had won in the Cascade area. She is said to have been the first female African-American mail carrier in the U.S. She never missed a delivery day, and in deep snow she donned snowshoes and carried the sacks on her shoulders. Her rounds included the Mission, though no additional shooting incidents were reported. For nearly 10 years, regardless of weather, road conditions, wolves or thieves, Mary, sometimes having to walk miles to do it, delivered the mail on time. Such remarkable feats earned her the nickname, "Stagecoach Mary," although she did not enjoy the luxury of that conveyance and had only a horse and wagon.

Native Americans in the vicinity called her "White Crow," because, despite her black skin, she acted every bit like a white woman.

When she was 70 and too worn for the rigors of frontier postal work, the nuns helped her open a laundry service in Cascade, where she grew to be so respected and loved that, one year, schools were closed to celebrate her birthday. When Montana passed a law prohibiting women's entering saloons, Cascade's mayor granted her an exemption.

Mary Fields, pictured here, passed away in 1914 and was buried in a cemetery at the foot of the trail that led to St. Peter's.

Mother Amadeus became Superior General of the Montana Ursulines, traveled extensively to establish new convents, and was permanently injured in a train collision in Billings in 1902. Nevertheless, in 1910 she was named head of a commission to organize schools for Eskimo chilchildren in Alaska and maintained that post until her death in 1919. Like her friend, Mary Fields, she was buried in Montana.

Regarding the Mission, the nuns lived and taught in the priests' log buildings until 1891, when a magnificent, 3-story, stone convent, school, and chapel, named Mt. Angela, was completed across the road from St. Peter's. The Ursulines then constructed a lovely, wood building dubbed "The Opera House," since it had both the dormitory and the auditorium. Mt. Angela was designated the Motherhouse of the Ursulines of the West.

Both white and Indian girls were accepted into the school until the government intervened once again and decided it would educate the Native American children. When the Jesuits departed, the Ursulines taught both schools until the 1908 fire ended their ability to accommodate boys. In 1912 the school for girls, along with some of the nuns, were moved to Great Falls, and only the Indian students remained at St. Peter's. In 1918 Mt. Angela and the girls' school were totally destroyed by fire, and the Ursuline land was purchased by a rancher that sold most of the remaining building stones.

Where once the grand complex of buildings stood, now only the Opera House, pictured here, remains to give testimony to Mt. Angela's wonderful history and the heroic effort to bring education to everyone in a rugged niche of Montana. Slowly decaying, it has been relegated to a barn.