This timeline of Christian missions chronicles the global expansion of Christianity through a listing of the most significant missionary outreach events.
Jason Lee was a Canadian Methodist Episcopalian missionary and pioneer in the Pacific Northwest. He was born on a farm near Stanstead, Quebec.
Kettle Falls was an ancient and important salmon fishing site on the upper reaches of the Columbia River, in what is today the U.S. state of Washington, near the Canada–US border. The falls consisted of a series of rapids and cascades where the river passed through quartzite rocks deposited by prehistoric floods on a substrate of Columbia River basalt. The river dropped nearly 50 feet (15 m), and the sound of the falls could be heard for miles away. Kettle Falls was inundated in 1940, as the waters of the reservoir Lake Roosevelt rose behind Grand Coulee Dam, permanently flooding the site.
The Cayuse War was an armed conflict that took place in the Northwestern United States from 1847 to 1855 between the Cayuse people of the region and the United States Government and local American settlers. Caused in part by the influx of disease and settlers to the region, the immediate start of the conflict occurred in 1847 when the Whitman massacre took place at the Whitman Mission near present-day Walla Walla, Washington when thirteen people were killed in and around the mission. Over the next few years the Provisional Government of Oregon and later the United States Army battled the Native Americans east of the Cascades. This was the first of several wars between the Native Americans and American settlers in that region that would lead to the negotiations between the United States and Native Americans of the Columbia Plateau, creating a number of Indian reservations.
The trade center Fort Colvile was built by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) at Kettle Falls on the Columbia River in 1825 and operated in the Columbia fur district of the company. Named for Andrew Colvile, a London governor of the HBC, the fort was a few miles west of the present site of Colville, Washington. It was an important stop on the York Factory Express trade route to London via the Hudson Bay. The HBC for some time considered Fort Colvile second in importance only to Fort Vancouver, near the mouth of the Columbia, until the foundation of Fort Victoria.
Andrew Colvile was a Scottish businessman, notable as the governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, a huge organisation set up for the North American fur trade but also instrumental in the early history of Canada. He was also chairman of the West India Docks.
Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area is a U.S. national recreation area that encompasses the 130-mile (210 km) long Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake between Grand Coulee Dam and Northport, Washington, in eastern Washington state. The Grand Coulee Dam was built on the Columbia River in 1941 as part of the Columbia River Basin project. Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area is a unit of the National Park Service and provides opportunities for fishing, swimming, canoeing, boating, hunting, camping, and visiting historic Fort Spokane and St. Paul's Mission. Crescent Bay Lake in Grant County just southwest of Lake Roosevelt also falls under the jurisdiction of the National Recreation Area.
François Norbert Blanchet was a French Canadian-born missionary priest and prelate of the Catholic Church who was instrumental in establishing the Catholic Church presence in the Pacific Northwest. He was one of the first Catholic priests to arrive in what was then known as the Oregon Country and subsequently became the first bishop and archbishop of the Archdiocese of Oregon City.
Francis Xavier Pierz was a Roman Catholic priest and missionary to the Ottawa and Ojibwe Indians in present-day Michigan, Wisconsin, Ontario, and Minnesota. Because his letters convinced numerous Catholic German Americans to settle in Central Minnesota after the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, Fr. Pierz is referred to as the "Father of the Diocese of Saint Cloud."
The Methodist Mission was the Methodist Episcopal Church's 19th-century conversion efforts in the Pacific Northwest. Local Indigenous cultures were introduced to western culture and Christianity. Superintendent Jason Lee was the principal leader for almost a decade. It was a political and religious effort. Two years after the mission began, the church's Board of Foreign Missions described its intent to reclaim "these wandering savages, who are in a very degraded state, to the blessings of Christianity and civilized life." Alongside the missions founded in the region were several secular operations opened. These were maintained to allow for material independence from the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), then the preeminent economic entity in the region among European descendants.
Benjamin Marie Petit was a Catholic missionary to the Potawatomi at Twin Lakes, Indiana, where he served from November 1837 to September 1838. A native of Rennes in Brittany, France, Petit was trained as a lawyer at the University of Rennes, but left the profession after three years to enter the Saint-Sulpice Seminary in Paris to study for the priesthood. In 1836 he decided to move to the United States to become a missionary among the Native Americans. He traveled to New York with a group led by Bishop Simon Bruté, the first bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Vincennes. Petit was sent to Vincennes, Indiana, where Bishop Bruté ordained him as a Roman Catholic priest on October 14, 1837. Within a month the bishop sent the newly ordained priest to work among the Potawatomi in northern Indiana.
St. Paul Roman Catholic Church in St. Paul, Oregon, United States, was the first church in Oregon to be built with bricks when it was constructed in 1846. It is the oldest brick building in the Pacific Northwest. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
The Colville people, are a Native American people of the Pacific Northwest. The name Colville comes from association with Fort Colville, named after Andrew Colvile of the Hudson's Bay Company. Okanagan: sx̌ʷyʔiɬpx) Earlier, outsiders often called them Scheulpi, Chualpay, or Swhy-ayl-puh; the French traders called them Les Chaudières in reference to Kettle Falls. The neighboring Coeur d'Alene called them Sqhwiyi̱'ɫpmsh and the Spokane knew them as Sxʷyelpetkʷ.
Antonio or Anthony Ravalli was an Italian Jesuit missionary, artist, and doctor active in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. He is known primarily for his contributions to the architecture and art of Jesuit missions in the region. He also inoculated the tribes he served against smallpox, and his efforts shielded the Bitterroot Salish against epidemics that devastated other tribes. In 1893 Ravalli County, Montana was named after him.
Theodore J. van den Broek was a Dutch Dominican missionary to the United States. He was known for his capacity for foreign languages, his community building efforts, and extensive work among several American Indian ethnic groups. He died in 1851 having spent only 19 years in the United States.
Gregorio or Gregory Mengarini was an Italian Jesuit priest and missionary and linguist. He worked as a pioneer missionary in the northwest of the United States to the Flathead Nation, and became the philologist of their languages.
The Kettle River Range, often called the Kettle Range, is the southernmost range of the Monashee Mountains, located in far southeastern British Columbia, Canada and Ferry County, Washington, in the United States. Most of the northern half of the range is protected by the Colville National Forest and the southern half of the range is located on the Colville Indian Reservation. The highest peak is Copper Butte, which reaches 2,177 metres (7,142 ft). The range is crossed by Washington State Route 20 at Sherman Pass.
Jean-Charles-Jean-Baptiste-Félix Pandosy, commonly known as Father Pandosy, was a French Catholic priest who was the first settler in the Kelowna area in British Columbia. He set up a church and a school and attracted many settlers to the area. He founded the Okanagan Mission which was the first permanent white settlement in the British Columbia Interior aside from the forts for the Hudson's Bay Company and the gold rush boomtowns of the Fraser Canyon.
The Fort Walla Walla–Fort Colville Military Road was built in June 1859 to connect the Walla Walla area with its fairly easy access to the Columbia River to the mountainous area of the Huckleberry and Selkirk Mountains of current Northeast Washington and the Inland Northwest. Brigadier General William S. Harney, commander of the Department of Oregon, opened up the district north of the Snake River to settlers in 1858 and ordered Brevet Major Pinkney Lugenbeel, 9th Infantry Regiment to establish a U.S. Army post to restrain the Indians perceived as hostile to the U.S. Army's Northwest Division and to protect miners who traveled to the area after first reports of gold in the area appeared in Western Washington newspapers in July 1855.
