While vacationing in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho we stopped at the “Old Mission” which is the oldest standing building in Idaho. What was going to be a quick walk through ended up being a 3-hour adventure as we stopped to marvel at their handiwork done with barely any tools. Below is the story of the mission. After that are two slideshows.

• The first mission was built by Father Pierre DeSmet on the St. Joe river in 1842 but didn’t work out because of flooding and they built a new mission at the present site (35 miles south) overlooking the beautiful Coeur d’Alene River between 1848 and 1853.

• The Coeur d’Alene Indians actually asked for Blackrobes (Jesuit priests) to come to their area because they had heard stories of their great miracles.

• This mission was a combined effort of 300 Indian Catholics and missionaries. Father Ravalli, an Italian-born Jesuit priest, designed the building to resemble the church cathedrals of his native Italy using only local materials that were on hand. They used wattle and daub construction (weaving reeds around the wall poles and applying mud,) mortise and tenons beams all put together without any nails. Only pegs were used to hold everything together. They used faux-painting techniques to resemble grand marble and they constructed chandeliers from tin cans. One father even carved all the picture frames, the statues and painted the paintings using a cat-hair brush he made. The Indians used huckleberries to tint the ceiling to resemble sky. The restoration preserved a few of the ceiling planks that still have the original blue color. If you go behind the alter you will see the crude backside that looks like the behind-the-scenes of a theatre.

• They used only an auger for drilling the holes, an axe with two functions. One side was to cut the boards off of the downed timber and the other side was used as a plane to smooth it. They used a knife to cut the tin cans into the decorations of the chandeliers and other decor. They used newspaper that was brought there by travelers and painted it. They applied it to the wall to look like a frieze around the walls and used it like wallpaper.

It really has a grand feeling, though somewhat crude to our present-day standards. But I find that so wonderful. Not perfect but grand just the same. The sad part is that the Coeur D’Alene Indians, a few decades later, were forced to leave this beautiful place and live on a reservation.

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