Exhibit On Cda Indians Looks For Permanent Home Backers Of Sacred Encounters Hope To Build Museum At Cataldo Mission

A traveling museum exhibit that explored the soul of Coeur d’Alene Indians never was displayed in the Inland Northwest.

No museum in the region had the space for it.

Now, the Coeur d’Alene Tribe and other fans of the Sacred Encounters historical exhibit are hoping to build it a permanent home at the foot of the historic Cataldo Mission.

The tribe has spent more than $80,000 to buy the furnishings that house the exhibit and related materials, confident that it can be recreated at Old Mission State Park.

“It’s just so big, and the magnitude of the message it can bring is so big, we feel it had better be put in a place that is conducive to that magnitude,” said tribal elder Henry SiJohn, whose grandfather was buried in the mission’s cemetery.

“Sacred Encounters: Father DeSmet and the Indians of the Rocky Mountain West” brought together artifacts, drawings and documents that trace the merging of two spiritual cultures when Jesuit missionaries lived among the Salish and Coeur d’Alene Indian tribes.

More than 200 objects were displayed, nearly all on loan from a collection of 40 sources in the U.S., Canada and Belgium, Father Pierre Jean DeSmet’s native home. The $1.7 million exhibit was made possible by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant.

“It started with objects and artifacts and ended with a very human, and in some ways tragic, story,” said the exhibit’s creator, Jacqueline Peterson of Washington State University.

“We were taken from the sweat house and put into a building,” SiJohn said. “We were regimented into worshipping on a given day, not every day …” Missionaries and the Coeur d’Alene Indians built the Cataldo Mission, originally called the Sacred Heart Mission, in 1853. It’s the oldest standing building in Idaho.

At a meeting of the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation in Wallace Thursday, Peterson called the mission “the most important site in Idaho.”

Peterson, who began working on the exhibit in 1987, has been hired for the summer by Old Mission Associates, Inc., to do some of the major footwork necessary before the project can get off the ground, including:

Finding funding sources.

Searching for replacement artifacts for those that were on loan from other museums.

Deciding what the facility will need to attract donors of money and artifacts.

Meeting with all the parties in the project to reach a consensus on unresolved issues.

Old Mission Associates, whose chairman is Wallace businessman Harry Magnuson, was formed in 1963 to work on the preservation of the Cataldo Mission.

Magnuson, several tribal members, Peterson, a member of the Idaho Catholic Diocese, a Gonzaga history professor and the manager of the Old Mission State Park have been holding monthly meetings for a year in the pursuit of the goal.

Although the state Parks Department manages the Old Mission State Park now, it will be turned over to the Coeur d’Alene Tribe in 2015, according to an agreement between the Catholic Diocese of Idaho and the tribe. The church building will remain the property of the diocese.

SiJohn asked the board to consider meeting now with the Diocese and the Tribe to ensure a smooth transition.

Peterson said that attracting large donations for the project will depend in part on a clear plan for the long-term administration of the exhibit.

After the meeting, Peterson said she was thrilled when she learned the Coeur d’Alene Tribe wanted the exhibit.

“Personally, it blows me away,” she said. “I think it affirms the spirit with which everyone who worked on the project brought to it. It became a very living thing.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo