Pierre-Jean De Smet
Belgian Catholic priest and member of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits)
1801 CE to 1873 CE
Pierre-Jean De Smet (January 30, 1801 – May 23, 1873), also known as Pieter-Jan De Smet, is a Belgian Catholic priest and member of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits).
He is known for his widespread missionary work in the mid-1nineteenh century among the Native American peoples, in the midwestern and northwestern United States and western Canada.
His extensive travels as a missionary are said to total one hundred and eighty thousand miles (two hundred and ninety thousand kilometers).
He is known as the "Friend of Sitting Bull", because he persuades the Sioux war chief to participate in negotiations with the United States government for the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie.
World
The Far West
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Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet is welcomed at a Crow camp in the Bighorn valley in the summer of 1840.
The River Crows charge a moving Blackfeet camp near Judith Gap in 1845.
The Blackfeet chief Small Robe had been mortally wounded and many killed.
Father De Smet, who mourns the destructive attack on the "petite Robe" band, works out the number of women and children taken captive to one hundred and sixty.
Eventually and with a fur trader as intermediary, the Crows agree to let fifty women return to their tribe.