Search Our Web Site



Advanced Search

Please Note:
If you are looking for a Montana business or service, click on the MT Web Directory button above (this will take you to a index page for the Directory) or click on the Search by Name button above (this will take you to a search page for the Directory).


Saint Xavier

Travel Montana

A view from 1939:

ST. XAVIER, (3.033 alt 62 pop.), largest settlement on the Crow Reservation. In 1887 Father Prando, a Jesuit missionary, and two companions founded a mission here. At first they used their single tent as church, reception room, storehouse, kitchen, and dormitory. In the following year a frame schoolhouse was completed.

One of the leaders of the Crow, who were very restless at the time and eager to fight troops stationed at Fort Custer, was a medicine man who brandished a rusty saber when proclaiming his ability to exterminate every paleface. One evening three Ursuline nuns accompanied by a priest arrived at the mission and shortly afterward the Indians fired several shots into the agency buildings. The next morning the four proceeded to the mission school but were not molested. A Crow scout ended the incipient rebellion a few days later by shooting the medicine man.

Source: Montana: A State Guide Book; Compiled and Written by the Federal Writers' Project of the Work Projects Administration for the State of Montana; September, 1939.