NO. 7 SOHON S PORTRAITS OF INDIANS EWERS 21 



that is your neighbors." All their traditional gambling games, in 

 which the Flathead had spent much of their leisure time, were abol- 

 ished. (Ibid., vol. I, p. 227.) 



In premissionary times the Flathead punished individual law- 

 breakers by flogging. The traditional symbol of authority of a Flathead 

 chief was a stout whip possessing fire-hardened rawhide lashes, which 

 he applied vigorously to the bare back of each offender. It was cus- 

 tomary for the guilty party to take his punishment manfully, without 

 resentment against the chief. This was a cruel but effective method 

 of enforcing tribal law. Father De Smct, impressed by the brutality 

 of the chiefly flogging, discouraged this practice. (Ibid., vol. 4, pp. 

 1225-1226.) 



Fatlicrs De Smct and Point accompanied the Flathead to the plains 

 in the late summer of 1846. In September of that year De Smet 

 succeeded in arranging a peaceful meeting between the Flathead and 

 the Blackfoot. At the Piegan camp he was able to establish, by 

 common consent among the leaders of these tribes, what he believed 

 would be a lasting peace between these traditional enemies. lie left 

 Father Point to spend the winter with the Piegan and to begin 

 missionary work among them, while he himself traveled down the 

 Missouri to St. Louis. When he left the Flathead in the fall of 1846, 

 Father De Smet was confident that the Mission, which he had founded 

 among them, was flourishing. Yet 4 years later the Indians and 

 missionaries had become so estranged that it was necessary to 

 discontinue the Mission. 



Many reasons have been given for the temporary abandonment of 

 St. Mary's Mission in the writings of the missionaries. Father 

 De Smet was accused of having made promises to the Indians which 

 the missionaries who remained at St. Mary's could not fulfill. This 

 De Smet vigorously denied. (Qiittenden and Richardson, 1905, vol. 4, 

 p. 1480; Garraghan, 1938, vol. 2, pp. 377-378.) Fathers Ravalli 

 and Mengarini, who remained at the Mission through the 4 years 

 after De Smet's departure, also stressed the point that the best 

 Indians of the tribe had died since the Mission was founded, leaving 

 a predominance of undisciplined individuals whose minds were pois- 

 oned against the missionaries by both white men and Indians who 

 were either immoral characters or prejudiced against the missionaries 

 and their work. (Garraghan, 1938, vol. 2, pp. 379-382; Palladino. 

 1894, p. 50.) Finally, the continued absence of the Flathead from 

 the Bitterroot \'alley for long periods on their buffalo hunts, left the 

 Mission unprotected against Blackfoot attacks which endangered the 



