The Little Mission in the Little Mountains

When you stop to consider Montana's great destinations, it is unlikely you would ever list off Hays, Mont. Nestled in the heart of the Little Rocky Mountains on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, the little north-central Montana town is not a major tourism draw for many travelers to the Big Sky State. But for those locals with more time to spend, Hays offers both cultural and natural wonders of Montana.

In late Dec. 2018, I volunteered to venture to Hays to deliver shoeboxes full of gifts and supplies for the children at St Paul's Mission School. Our church, St Raphael's Catholic Church in Glasgow, Mont., sends these boxes every year and each year a group of volunteers deliver them to the school. The mission runs completely off the donations and volunteers. For the better part of 50 years the Dominican Sisters of Our Lady of the Rosary from Sparkhill, N.Y., have managed, run and taught at the school, which serves kindergarten through fifth grade.

Currently, the school serves just over 60 students with enrollment, like many reservation schools, fluctuating yearly. The students who attend come from the surrounding communities and pay absolutely no tuition to attend. Sister Christine runs the school as the principal. In total, three Dominican Sisters teach at the school which on a good year would be supplemented by Jesuit volunteers whether from Jesuit Universities or Jesuit Seminaries around the country.

In 2018, however, there were no Jesuit volunteers, but the Diocese of Great Falls and Billings had invited five sisters from Nigeria to come and teach at the school. Those five sisters belong to the order of Missionary Sisters of Divine Providence. According to Dominican Sisters Helen and Christine, it was a huge blessing in the face of no volunteers, but it had its challenges with language barriers and communication. Both of the two sisters along with one we didn't meet, Sister Nora, had been at the school since 1980, traveling back and forth each summer from the school to the convent in New York to their families' homes along the east coast.

Both women speak with a New York style accent and both can be blunt and strict, if not completely peaceful at the same time. It was remarkable to watch these elderly nuns, one of whom, Sister Helen, had come out of retirement to continue serving the school by teaching and engaging these young children. The school for its part was almost brand new having been built just a few years prior when the original school burnt down.

The walls were decorated with Native American artwork, both professional and produced by the students. A nativity scene waited for the arrival of Jesus on Christmas. It featured a Native woman (Mary) and a Native man regaled in traditional Native winter clothes sitting outside a Teepee alongside Native animals, such as horses, dogs and bison. It was beautiful and striking and the reminders of Native American culture and Catholic Theology were everywhere. "God made me Native" was scrawled on one hand-painted sign flanked all around by student artwork bearing the theme.

After delivering the Christmas gifts and supplies to the school, my wife and I visited St Paul's Mission Church. The original stone structure sits prominently in the center of the valley, the stream that cuts Mission Canyon just uphill from the Church runs swiftly by in the winter. A statue to St. Francis adorns the grounds of the Jesuit Mission established in the late 1800s by a Jesuit Priest.

According to the Sisters telling, the Church was originally built on the Hi-Line near modern day U.S. Highway 2. But after the arrival of the railroad, the Tribe's Chief at the time invited the Jesuit Missionary to move the Church to its current site in modern Hays. The school followed with the Jesuit mission and after transitioning from Jesuit to Franciscan Sisters, it came into the hands of the Dominican Sisters of today.

The prominent stone structure of the Church was remarkable enough in the treeless valley with the mountain backdrop painted with lodgepole trees and snow, but the interior was absolutely gorgeous and tranquil. No other person was present in the entire building, and much like the Missions of California or Arizona that had survived nearly 400 years of existence, the holiness and peace of this spiritual site could be felt in its existence.

Prominent statues of the times were on full display and icons dedicated to Mary, Joseph and a few Native American Saints, such as Saint Kateri, and a representation of the Blessed Mother holding her Baby, were not as a European or Jewish women but as a Native women. The simplistic but richly detailed chapel glowed with the sunlight pouring through its stained glass windows. The quietness of the deserted sanctuary sang a peaceful hymn as my wife and I prayed in the front pews before I took to photographing the monument.

We lingered, my wife waiting patiently while I scanned the details of the Jesuit Catholic Mission era sitting nearly untouched in front of my face. I remarked about our past, reminiscing about our honeymoon where we visited Missions in Carmel, Napa and San Luis Obispo, Calif. Or when we lived across from the San Luis Rey Mission in Oceanside.

We left feeling a sense of peace and made our way up the road to see the Mission Canyon and Natural Bridge geological features. To say we were once again struck by the beauty of a place we had never heard about before was a bit of an understatement. Mission Canyon is only a few hundred feet high, but it is so narrow that the road going up and down is seemingly only wide enough for one car. Fortunately, we didn't have to test that theory, because given the winter conditions of the road we seemed to be the only people up there on this early Friday afternoon.

We stopped at the Natural Bridge, a peculiar feature that appears often in the southern regions of the country like the deserts of Utah and Arizona, but that I had never experienced in Montana before this occasion. To describe it, basically at some point in the last few eons water began traveling down the canyon wall and instead of pouring over the edge, it began boring a hole straight through the rock. This in time made a massive hole in the canyon wall that would grow over time until it appeared as though some mythical creature or divine hand placed a bridge of stone across this cut in the canyon wall.

As we walked back in under the bridge, we were greeted by a pavilion of stone rising nearly straight up and cut in a nearly tower-like fashion. The sounds reverberated off the stone walls and rose straight out into the blue sky above, represented by a small portion of the view above us. I snapped photos trying desperately to find a way to capture the majesty and unique quality of the place and I'm still not sure I ever did.

We continued on our way up the canyon until it became evident we were running the risk of getting stuck and we turned around, making our way back to Glasgow via Lodgepole and Malta. In certainty, I felt connected to Hays as if somehow this gem of Big Sky Country had remained hidden in the earth and I had come along to mine it out and display for the world. Secretly, I wanted to rebury it and keep it as my own, but my wife insisted I share it.