philippine duchesne and the religious of the sacred heart

Mission to the Potawatomi, 1841-1879

Betty Shearman rscj

The missionary voyages and exploits of 19th Century missionary religious offer obvious examples of crossing barriers: class, racial, ethnic, geographic, cultural and social barriers. In the case of the religious of the Sacred Heart, of whom St. Philippine Duchesne is the best known, these barriers were virtual chasms. The story of the mission among the Potawatomi in Kansas is a story of determination in the face of odds, of ingenuity in the face of deprivation, of willingness to adapt to living and working conditions, none of which these cultured, convent-bred European women could have imagined. This paper is based upon first hand accounts of the period of time the religious of the Sacred Heart spent in Kansas in the education of Potawatomi women and girls. As our conference is taking place in the territory in which they lived and worked, a place of pilgrimage today, the mission may be of particular interest.

Philippine Duchesne came to the continent of North America with four companions in 1818. Their overriding purpose lay in bringing the Gospel to the “savages,” of whom they had heard vivid tales from visiting missionary priests in their native France. Labors among the French and American settlers in the Mississippi Valley delayed the realization of their dreams until, finally, in 1841, in the company of the Jesuit missionaries, Philippine and her companions journeyed to a Potawatomi settlement at Sugar Creek, Kansas. At her advanced age, Philippine could contribute to the enterprise only by prayer and kindness. She remained just a year, but her memory lives among this people as “the Woman-Who-Always-Prays.” Her companions, however, remained and moved to St Marys, Kansas, with the Jesuits. They stayed until the Potawatomi moved so far west that there were no longer Native American pupils in the school they had established.

The journal of the convent tells of the adaptation in religious customs, educational methods, food and living conditions required by the frontier mission. Letters and biographical notes of the missionaries supplement the journal accounts. A wealth of anecdotes still in the institutional memory of the religious of the Sacred Heart sheds light on the ways in which these women religious viewed their calling to evangelize in the context of their religious vocation in the Society of the Sacred Heart. Though limited to a 19th century European worldview, by our standards, these women, nevertheless, showed an amazing ability to accept and adapt to the other and a capacity to cross, even more, to transcend boundaries.

While Philippine Duchesne was not the leader of the little band that left St. Louis to journey to the Potawatomi settlement at Sugar Creek, Kansas, in 1841, she was surely its inspirer. A glance at her life is a necessary preamble to the story of the mission. Furthermore, her life is an object lesson in “Crossing Boundaries,” the theme of our conference.

Rose Philippine Duchesne was born in Grenoble in the foothills of the Alps on the same day as Napoleon, August 29th, 1769. Her family was haute bourgeoisie. Her father, Pierre Duchesne, was an attorney; her mother was a Perier, a member of the family that gave France one of its most distinguished presidents, Casimir Perier, called Father of his country. The Duchesne and Perier families, who lived in a double house in the center of the city, were numerous, so Philippine grew up with several brothers and sisters and cousins. They were educated at home by tutors, the girls sharing the boys' lessons. When it was time to prepare for first Communion, Philippine was sent to a local Visitation monastery. It was there that she discovered religious life and her own vocation. From the start, it was a missionary vocation, inspired by reading stories of the Blackrobes in the Annals of the Propagation of the Faith and hearing firsthand accounts of the mission among the Indians in North America from priest visitors to the convent.

The Revolution was brewing, however, and Dauphiny was the site of some of its fomenters. Pierre Duchesne himself was a leader in the opposition to the fiscal policy of the regime, and he knew what was ahead for religious orders. He strongly opposed his daughter's entering the Visitation. When she defied him and entered in spite of his opposition, he forbade her making her profession, so she remained a novice for four years until 1792, when the monastery was suppressed, confiscated by the city and the inhabitants turned out. Philippine spent the years of the Revolution living as austerely as she could in her family home and devoting herself to the poor and to aiding clandestine priests. In 1801 she bought her former monastery from the municipal authorities and set about to revive Visitation life there, a task that proved impossible.

In 1804 in December through mutual priest friends she met Madeleine Sophie Barat, handed over the monastery to the newly formed Society of the Sacred Heart and joined it. From the time they met Philippine found in Madeleine Sophie, her new superior, ten years her junior, a spiritual friend and guide. She was not slow in confiding to Madeleine Sophie her yearning to bring the Gospel to the sauvages of North America. Madeleine Sophie shared her desire but realized that her own mission lay in France in the consolidation of the Society, of which she was superior general for life. The motherhouse had only recently been established in Paris when in 1817 Bishop William Valentine Dubourg of Louisiana visited to ask for nuns for his diocese. His request was met with a prudent refusal; the new Society was not yet 20 years old; Philippine had a responsible position, that of secretary general; Mother Barat needed her in France. But Philippine's persistence won the day and Mother Barat consented to send three choir religious and two coadjutrix sisters to Louisiana. They set out from Bordeaux on Holy Saturday in 1818 and reached New Orleans on the feast of the Sacred Heart, May 29th. They expected to go immediately to the goal of their dreams, the savages. But Bishop Dubourg had other needs and other plans. A series of boarding schools for American and French settlers in Missouri and Louisiana would occupy Philippine and her companions for the next twenty-three years. American vocations and reinforcements from France increased their numbers. They gained some experience in working with the native people in a small boarding school for Indian girls at Florissant.

The real opportunity came in 1841 as the result of a request by Father De Smet to the visiting assistant general charged with America, Elizabeth Galitzin. She refused on financial grounds. De Smet promptly went to New Orleans and raised $500, which he presented to Mother Galitzin with a renewed request to send a band of nuns to the Potawatomi. His request coincided with a message from Bishop Rosati of St. Louis, then in Europe, that the Holy Father wanted the RSCJ to undertake a mission among the Indians. It was the sign from God. Philippine was by then 72 years old and in poor health, but she longed to go. Mother Galitzin was not willing to allow her to be part of the expedition, but again a Jesuit intervened: Father Verhaegen, the vice-provincial who was to lead the band, insisted, “She must come too. Even if she can use only one leg, she will come. Why, if we have to carry her all the way on our shoulders, she is coming with us. She may not be able to do much work, but she will assure the success of the mission by her prayers.”

We owe the account of the mission to the notes and letters of the superior, Lucile Mathevon, and to a narrative of a certain Catherine Tardiu, who served in Kansas from 1871 to 1873. Lucile Mathevon, from Lyon, had been a novice in the Society of the Sacred Heart under Philippine at Ste Marie; she subsequently followed her old novice mistress to America. When bidding her good-bye as she set out for America, Madeleine Sophie Barat had said to her: “I have always had an ardent desire to go as a missionary among the savages, to teach them the knowledge of God and so extend the Kingdom of Christ. My dear Lucile, I send you in my place.” At the time Lucile did not think Mother Barat's words particularly significant because she thought all of America was inhabited by savages.

Mother Mathevon's companions, besides Philippine, were Mother Mary Ann O'Connor, one of the earliest American RSCJ, who had directed the small school for Indians at Florissant and Sister Louise Amiot, a Canadian. They left St. Louis on June 29, 1841; the account of their journey would make a great film, four days on a Missouri River steamboat, four more days in slow overland travel to a stopover eighteen miles from the settlement, where two braves on horseback came seeking news of their arrival, then the arrival itself: every two miles two more braves stationed to point out the best route. Upon reaching the village the party was treated to an equestrian demonstration, welcoming speeches and handshakes from each of the 700 women of the village. The greetings over, the four nuns looked around to see where they were to set up housekeeping, but no house was ready because the village pastor had not been informed of their arrival. A kind Indian vacated his one-room cabin, and the nuns moved in. Subsequently the Indians built a log house for them, but it took three months. Their efforts to establish some sort of regular conventual life seem laughable to us: they designated the four corners of their one room house, refectory, dormitory, community room, etc. Into the middle of the room they received their pupils; they opened the school less than a month after their arrival, on July 19, feast of St. Vincent de Paul. As soon as the second story of the house, really a kind of loft, was built, they accepted boarders. They went to the village church for prayer and liturgical services. The teaching given was, of course, of the most basic sort: catechism, hymns, reading in English and in Potawatomi, sewing, knitting, cooking. It is interesting that Sister Louise taught the needlework lessons, while Mother Mathevon did the cooking at the beginning while she was learning the language. Mother O'Connor could teach English from the beginning, but Lucile's French was of no use. She had plenty of ingenuity, however, and she was very musical. Thanks to the Jesuits, there were copies of hymns and prayers in Potawatomi; Lucile had these read aloud to her; she wrote down what she heard in French phonetics so that she could repeat the hymns, which she then could teach the children without necessarily understanding the meaning herself. This method served until they all mastered the language they persisted in calling “sauvage.” The Jesuits wanted the children to be taught in their own language so that they would not lose their innocence by exposure to too much European and American literature, but at the same time they seem to have recognized the necessity of the use of English in contacts with the U.S. government and in commerce.