Rural Mission
Celebrates
100 Year
Anniversary
Sacred Heart Mission in Hot Springs,
Montana tolls a one-hundred year
old bell in celebration
On June 15th, 1911 the first Catholic services were held at the
DeMers schoolhouse in what at the time was the platted town site
of Camas with Father Griva of Ronan officiating.
In September of that year Father Griva informed the Sanders
County Signal newspaper that a permit had been secured for two lots in Pineville to build a Catholic Church. The church was
planned as a 30 foot by 70 foot building and construction was to commence as soon as enough money had been secured. It was the
first church to be built in this part of the Flathead Indian reservation.
August 31, 1913 the newspaper reported that the first church service was held in the new church located on Arlee Street with
three hundred people arriving prior to mass for a blessing of the 600 pound bell.
On September 8, 2013 that bell rang loud and clears into a stormy afternoon sky and soon after dedicated parishioner's filed
out to be given blessings by Reverend Jefffrey P. Benusa of the Sanders County Catholic Community and Bishop George Leo
Thomas of Helena. Everyone then gathered in front of the church for a photograph of the event.
Bishop Thomas travels approximately thirty thousand miles a year in the Diocese and has attending a couple of these 100 year
church anniversaries every year. He stated that quite a few of the missions, a total of fifty five, were begun in the early 20th century. Bishop Thomas stated he found the Hot Springs Mission to be one of the most beautiful and well cared for in the state and he
was impressed with the obvious dedication of the parishioner's.
This celebration was a culmination of a long history of the desire by the Indigenous population of this reservation and the 1910
homesteaders for religious teaching beginning in the 1820's. Old Ignace La Mouse, a Christianized Iroquois came to the Flathead
as a fur trader for the Hudson Bay Company, preaching the Catholic faith to the Salish of the Bitterroot Valley. In 1831 two Salish
and two Nez Perce plus two other Nez Perce from neighboring tribes traveled to St. Louis to speak with the Bishop. Their tribes
wanted a Blackrobe priest. The volunteers, lacking the necessary language skills, failed and when none of them returned another
party set out in 1835. This party consisting of a Nez Perce Chief and three Flatheads were killed on the North Platte River. In 1937
after Old Ignace's death his son traveled to Council Bluff, Iowa and met with Father DeSmet who went with him to the Bishop in
St. Louis. DeSmet was chosen to come to Montana, and had a major impact on the growth of the church in the state.
Bishop Thomas has a great deal of respect for missions such as the one in Hot Springs based on his masters thesis on that era
of the church in the west in his book, "Catholics & the Missions of the Pacific Northwest."
St. Mary's Mission is the oldest church congregation in the state and was established by Father Pierre-Jean DeSmet in 1841. At
the time Stevensville, Montana was the home of the Salish people. Within two months Father DeSmet bap