22 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 1 10 



lives and property of the missionaries and their faithful assistants. 

 By the fall of 1850 Catholic officials reluctantly recognized that the 

 possibility of effective work among the Flathead had become so 

 remote that further maintenance of St. Mary's Mission was not 

 justified. On November 5, 1850, the Mission property was sold to 

 John Owen, an American trader, who founded there a trading post, 

 Fort Owen. 



Contemporary accounts of the missionaries indicate that the Flat- 

 head change of heart became evident almost immediately after they 

 left Father De Smet in the Blackfoot country in the fall of 1846. 

 The Flathead are said to have given themselves up to obscenity and 

 excesses of the flesh while still on the plains. V/hen they returned 

 to the Bitterroot Valley, the Indians greeted the missionaries coldly, 

 pitched their lodges at some distance from the Mission, and were 

 reluctant even to sell the missionaries dry meat of poor quality. (Ra- 

 valli in Garraghan, 1938, vol. 2, pp. S7^~2)77-) Throughout much 

 of the remaining period of the existence of the Mission, the Flathead 

 avoided the Mission and were indifferent or hostile to the efforts 

 of the missionaries on their behalf. They indulged their passion for 

 gambling and "indecent" dancing, and refused to sell provisions 

 to the Mission. (Ravalli in Garraghan, vol. 2, p. 380 ; Accolti in same, 

 vol. 2, p. 383.) They no longer took their sick to the missionaries, 

 but entrusted them to the treatment of native medicine men. Because 

 the punishment of the whip had been abolished, some of their once 

 influential chiefs, who deplored the actions of their people, were 

 unable to exercise their traditional authority over their tribesmen. 

 (Accolti in Garraghan, 1938, vol. 2, p. 382.) 



In sum, these actions of the Flathead majority constituted a blood- 

 less revolt against the planned socio-economic program inaugurated 

 by Father De Smet. After 5 years of trial, they were unable to 

 assimilate the alien, and to them meaningless, traits of European 

 culture introduced by the missionaries as substitutes for their time- 

 honored primitive customs. The contemporary accounts of the mis- 

 sionaries suggest that during the early period of their revolt against 

 the austere moral code imposed by the Mission, the Flathead may 

 have indulged in excesses that would not have been tolerated by their 

 own leaders in premissionary days. However, for the most part, the 

 Flathead reverted to their traditional pattern of existence. 



Gambling was again popular. Polygamy was no longer forbidden. 

 Their agricultural efforts were virtually abandoned. Four years after 

 the sale of Mission property, George Gibbs observed that the Flathead 



