Category Archives: Religious History

MAGIC OF CHRISTIANITY – THE METHODIST MISSION TO OREGON

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Scene from Henry Eld Jr.'s Encampment on the banks of the Willamette with the Methodist Mission on the opposite side of the River - 1841 Oregon Territory - Yale Collection.
Scene from Henry Eld Jr.’s Encampment on the banks of the Willamette with the Methodist Mission on the opposite side of the River – 1841 Oregon Territory – Yale Collection.

Most stories – articles or books – discussing the Methodist Mission of Jason Lee to Oregon which lasted from 1834 until 1843, start with the same story.  The story of four Native Americans who came to St. Louis to ask Missouri governor William Clark – yes, the same “Clark” of the Lewis & Clark fame – for teachers to provide them with the power of white man’s religion. Of the Native Americans, three were of the Nez Percé tribe and one was a Flathead elder.  The two tribes were both neighbors and friends.  They reached St. Louis early in October 1831, soon after meeting with Governor Clark, also the superintendent of Indian Affairs.

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FRENCH PRAIRIE – CATHOLICISM COUNTER TO THE METHODISTS

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Graves of Etienne and Maurgerite Gregoire in the St. Louis Cemetery.
Graves of Etienne and Maurgerite Gregoire in the St. Louis Cemetery.

Canadian trappers were among the first non-Native Americans to spend extended periods of time in the nascent Oregon Country during the early years of the 19th century. Most were French speakers from rural Lower Quebec. Many took on Native American women as their wives. Common law marriages and the resultant children failed to receive recognition from either British law. Catholic priests ventured out slowly behind the trappers to bring a modicum of religious stability to those living beyond the pale of society. Most of the retired trappers settled on what is today the French Prairie.

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MORMON COLONIES IN THE LAND OF THE TACO BELL DOG

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High on the hill above Colonia Juarez, the LDS temple sits.
High on the hill above Colonia Juárez – one of the original Mormon colonies, the LDS temple sits.

Mormon colonizers were sent out throughout the desert West in the later parts of the 19th century seeking to expand the world of Deseret. First, they developed arable lands in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Arizona, but also a group ventured further south into northern Chihuahua State. Here, some of the valleys and places where enough water existed, they founded a total of ten Mormon colonies over time. Two survive today, though one of those is becoming engulfed by the growth of nearby Nuevas Casas Grandes.

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AÍ CHIHUAHUA! – VISION RESTORATION IN THE LAND OF THE TACO BELL DOG

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LIS team and local Lions Club members celebrate the end of the vision clinic in Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico.
LIS team and local Lions Club members celebrate the end of the vision clinic in Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico.

Mexico is a large and very diverse country. Many travelers from the United States know the country for its beaches – Cancun, Playa del Carmen, Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, Zihuantanejo, maybe Huatulco. Some visitors may have only penetrated as far as border towns like Tijuana, Mexicali, Agua Prieto, Ciudad Juárez, Neuvo Laredo, Matamoros and others. There is a lot more magic awaiting beyond, however, as well as welcoming peoples of a mélange of cultures and even languages.

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SITE OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM – INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI?

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“Dream of the Temple that Might Be” Earnest Webbe based on a dream of Joseph Smith III.

The last posts spun off of study and visits I made following German American religious communes in the American 19th century in anticipation of the New Millennium. My own family history encompasses the solidly American religious phenomenon of Joseph Smith’s Mormon movement. The German American efforts petered out for various reasons – communism and celibacy being major factors. Both groups were convinced that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ was at hand. Both groups were convinced that, as the Elect, they would help usher in the New Age. The main difference is that the followers of Joseph Smith knew Jesus would return to the World in Independence, Missouri. They had it straight from the source.

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GEORGE RAPP, ECONOMY AND THE NEW MILLENNIUM

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St John’s Lutheran Church occupies the old Economy Harmonist chapel in Ambridge, Pennsylvania today. Notice only the hour hand is shown.

In the last post, we saw Johan Georg Rapp and 600 like-minded Pietists coming from Germany to establish a new communal settlement just north of the Ohio River called Harmonie. After a decade, they set out downriver to build a New Harmony along the banks of the Wabash River in southern Indiana. Another decade brought Rapp and his followers back upriver to found their last town, Oikonomie, better known as Economy. Here, Rapp would continue to change the focus of simple agricultural communalism to more of a spirit of amassing wealth – still within a communal picture. This would allow Rapp and the Harmony Society to greet Jesus’ return at the beginning of the Second Coming with enough material sustenance to last the thousand years of the new Millennium.

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GEORGE RAPP AND HARMONY ON THE CONNOQUENESSING

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Revolving gate at Harmonist Cemetery – one life to the next.

Johann Georg Rapp – anglicized to George Rapp – led those who would follow from southwestern Germany to found the first of three communal villages – Harmony – in the New World in 1805. Five other villages would spin off from these in the course of time. Who was George Rapp and who were his followers?

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WILHELM KEIL FOUND HIS BETHEL IN MISSOURI

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Bethel, Missouri – and engraving after Keil’s departure for Oregon – Illustration from The Communistic Societies of the United States 1875 Charles Nordhoff.

In Genesis, Bethel is the place where Abram stayed building an altar on his way to Egypt and on his return. Later, in the same record, fleeing from the wrath of his brother Esau, Jacob falls asleep on a stone dreaming of a ladder filled with angels stretching between Heaven and Earth. At the top of the ladder, God, who promises Jacob the land of Canaan. When Jacob wakes, he anoints the stone (baetylus) with oil and names the place where he his dream occurred, Bethel. So, as with Abram and Jacob, Wilhelm Keil led his communal German-American followers to a new Bethel. This one in the middle of Missouri.

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AURORA, NEW DAWN FOR WILHELM KEIL IN OREGON

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Keil Family Cemetery just outside of today’s town,

From a European birth, Wilhelm Keil made his way in fits and starts, all the way from one coast to the other, finishing his days in the communal town he founded, Aurora, Oregon. The story of his life was unusual to say the least.

Keil started out in what would soon be the Prussian province of Saxony. Born 6 March 1811 in the town of Bleicherode, just a year before the Royal Saxon army was marching off as part of Napoleon’s Grand Armee on its date in Russia.

NOTE: This is the first post of four moving backwards in time from the German-American communal town in Oregon of Aurora to other like settlements from which the Aurorans sprung out from.

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WIND MOUNTAIN, A GREAT ALTERNATIVE TO THE DOG

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Looking across the Columbia River at Wind Mountain from Indian Point on the Oregon side of the Gorge.

Driving to the large trailhead at the bottom of Dog Mountain, Washington Highway 14 drives right around the base of another smaller peak with its own form of drama, Wind Mountain. A beautiful cone-shaped peak, Wind has a brother, Shellrock Mountain, on the opposite side of the Columbia River in Oregon. Both mountains are thought to be from the same volcanic intrusion which needed to be cleaved in half by the Columbia River. Unlike Shellrock, Wind Mountain has a trail to the top.

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