Cataldo Mission

The Schitsu'umsh tell of Circling Raven, a leader who foresaw men in black robes coming with word of a greater spirit. When the Jesuits arrived in 1842 they were welcomed, and after spring floods drove the first mission off the St. Joe River they moved it in 1846 to a knoll above the Coeur d'Alene River. Antonio Ravalli, an Italian Jesuit, designed the church. Schitsu'umsh workers raised it between 1850 and 1853, and the building they made still stands on the hill, its columned front looking down the valley.

For a generation it was a center of the tribe's world. In 1858 the peace that ended the Coeur d'Alenes' war with Colonel George Wright's troops was negotiated here. Four years later the Mullan Road came through within a few hundred feet of the door, and the miners followed it.

Then the reservation was drawn. The executive order of 1873 took in Coeur d'Alene Lake but left the mission outside the line, and in 1877 the Jesuits and the people moved south to a new mission at DeSmet, inside the reservation and away from the mining roads. The church at Cataldo went on as a stop for miners and a Jesuit farm, and in time became a state park.

The people kept coming back. Since at least the 1930s, Coeur d'Alene tribal members have made a pilgrimage here every August 15, the Feast of the Assumption: a Mass at an outdoor altar, drumming and singing, and a procession honoring the ancestors whose work stands on the hill. Their dead lie in the mission cemetery beside it.

The church and the 1887 parish house make up Old Mission State Park, with a visitor center beside them.