“Our horses, exhausted, died a little while later.”[i] Father Léon Doucet, OMI, wrote these words in his journal on July 13, 1873 while describing the end of a trip in the North West. He and Brother Auguste Némoz, another member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, had just traveled by canoe, cart, foot, and horseback from the Mission of St. Jean Baptiste, Île-à-la-Crosse, a mission the Oblates had built for Plains Cree converts, to Fort Carlton, a post Hudson’s Bay Company men had built for fur trading. Doucet and Némoz survived the trip from the mission to the trading post, but their horses did not. Notably, this pattern often repeated as Doucet traveled between nineteenth-century Indigenous and European communities in the lands today known as Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada. In another journal entry, Doucet described how he and a companion switched from horseback to travel via a boat that “a good Catholic Métis” had built. The missionaries continued, but “the poor animals were so exhausted that they soon died (except for one) from the fatigues of our journey.”[ii] These and other horses under the care of Oblate missionaries in the nineteenth-century North West died of starvation and exhaustion.
Doucet also regularly lost his horses, which local boys and men would then return to him. In an August 1883 journal entry, that missionary recounted: “Our horses were lost for part of the summer….A Peigan, Nitaoyi,..helped me out of my predicament and loaned me a good saddle horse.” Then in September: “Our horses are found at last and are brought back by a Blood Indian.”[iii] While working with communities who highly valued horses, Doucet and other Oblate missionaries abused and misplaced them.
In the 1890s, Doucet’s relationship with horses transitioned from a cycle of neglect and death to appreciation and retirement. In 1890, for example, he wrote about one of his horses: “Before giving him the rest which he needed, he had rendered me a noteworthy service.”[iv] After living and working with horses in the North West for over twenty years, Doucet finally achieved a more sustainable relationship with them. This paper uses Doucet’s journals to analyze the relationship between Oblate missionaries, horses, and Indigenous communities in the nineteenth-century North West.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Oblates grew from a French to an international order. In 1816, Charles Joseph Eugéne de Mazenod established the Oblates in Aix-en-Provence, France as a group focused on preaching to the rural poor. They quickly grew in size and significance, spreading across France and, beginning in 1831, extending their work to international missions. By that time in the nineteenth century, Catholics missionaries, traders, settlers, and soldiers had been in the Americas for centuries. Looking at state of missions in the 1830s North West, though, Father Joseph-Norbert Provencher, Auxiliary Bishop for the West, decided the region should be controlled by one order, and he asked the Oblates to take control. They accepted, and in 1841, the Oblates established their first foreign mission in Canada at Red River. From there, they began preaching and building missions across the Prairies, the Mackenzie Basin, and the Arctic Lands.
In 1868, Doucet became one of the Oblates who traveled from France to work in these North West missions for Indigenous and European peoples, and in 1870, he was the first Catholic priest ordained in the lands today known as Alberta. Then, he worked with itinerant Indigenous communities and at mission sites across the North West. His 1868 to 1890 journal began with his arrival to the North West as a twenty-one-year-old brother and concluded with his life on the Prairies as a forty-three-year-old priest who had worked among Métis, Plains Cree, Blackfoot, Stoney Nakoda, and European communities. The journal recollects interactions with, to name a few, Blackfoot chiefs, Plains Cree leaders, and Métis farmers; Oblate priests, Oblate lay brothers, and Grey Nuns; Hudson’s Bay Company officers, North-West Mounted Police officers, and Indian agents. Horses, bison, and other animals also feature prominently. Doucet’s 1868 to 1890 journal exists in its present form because in the early twentieth century, his provincial asked him for an account of his work with the Siksikaitsitapi (Blackfoot Confederacy), and he compiled his field notes into the journal that I am analyzing for this paper. The journal has much to offer to historians of Indigenous nations, Catholic missions, animals, the environment, medicine, disability, gender, and politics, to name a few.
When he first arrived, Doucet struggled to live in an environment he described as beautiful but treacherous—notable for its dangerous prairie fires, unexpected flooding, misery-causing insects, and harsh winters. Such imagery corresponds with contemporary missionary accounts that elevate hardship. By the late nineteenth century, though, Doucet and other Oblates had accumulated social, economic, and political power, and they reported navigating their environment with ease.
With this paper, I utilize Doucet’s journal and Oblate records at the Provincial Archives of Alberta to explore the changing relationship between Indigenous communities, Oblates, and horses in the mid-to-late-nineteenth-century North West. Many Indigenous communities in the nineteenth-century North West relied on, respected, and valued horses. And, as evidenced with Doucet, many Oblates did not understand or value horses. Slowly, along with learning Indigenous languages, the Oblates learned local horse cultures as part of their attempts to acculturate themselves and to attract Catholic converts.
[i] Léon Doucet, OMI, Mon Journal: The Journal and Memoir of Father Léon Doucet O.M.I., 1868 to 1890, transc. And trans. Bronwyn Evans, eds. Mario Giguère and Bronwyn Evans (Calgary: Historical Society of Alberta, 2018), 65, 233.
[ii] Doucet, Mon Journal, 54, 222.
[iii] Doucet, Mon Journal, 141, 304.
[iv] Doucet, Mon Journal, 193, 354.
“Our horses, exhausted, died a little while later.” Father Léon Doucet, OMI, wrote these words in his journal on July 13, 1873 while describing the end of a trip in the lands today known as Alberta, Canada. Through Doucet’s 1868 to 1890 journal and other Oblate records, this paper explores the relationship between Indigenous communities, horses, and Oblate missionaries in the mid-to-late-nineteenth-century North West. Many Indigenous communities on the Prairies respected and valued their horses. This included the Blackfoot, Métis, Plains Cree, and Stoney Nakoda communities among whom Doucet worked. In contrast, many Oblates, as evidenced by Doucet, did not understand or adequately care for their horses. Slowly, along with learning Indigenous languages, the Oblates learned local horse cultures as part of their attempts to acculturate themselves and to attract Catholic converts.