Background
Antonio Ravalli was born on May 16, 1811 of an aristocratic family in Ferrara, Italy.
Antonio Ravalli was born on May 16, 1811 of an aristocratic family in Ferrara, Italy.
He entered the Society of Jesus on November 12, 1827. His noviceship was followed by several years in the study of belles-lettres, philosophy, and the sciences in various Jesuit colleges and in Rome.
Thereafter, he taught in the Society's schools in Turin and Piedmont, completed his theological studies, and was ordained priest in 1843. Joining a party of missionaries which included John Nobili, Michael Accoloti, and a number of nuns of Notre Dame de Namur who were answering an appeal of Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, Ravalli arrived in Vancouver on August 5, 1844, after a tedious voyage of eight months. He remained a few months at St. Paul's Mission on the Willamette before becoming an assistant to Father Adrian Hoecken at St. Ignatius among the Kalispel Indians of the region that is now Montana. Here he learned to get along with only the bare necessities of life, as he braved the northern climate and learned the Selish dialects.
After a brief service among the Colvilles, he was ordered to St. Mary's Mission where Gregory Mengarini was in charge. Here life was still harder; for in the isolation of the mission, there was little intercourse with white men and letters were years apart. Nevertheless, he grieved when Indian disturbances forced the temporary abandonment of this center in 1850. Assigned to work among the Coeur d'Alènes of northern Idaho, he built a small flour mill with mill-stones brought from Italy, improvised a saw-mill, and built a church for which he himself carved the altar and statues.
He was not only handy with tools but an artist skilled in the use of chisel and brush. In medicine, too, he had some training and attained a greater reputation among the natives by restoring a half-strangled squaw who had attempted suicide. He was accepted as a leader, and, heeding his counsel, the northern tribes remained quiet in the days of the Yakima outbreak of 1856-57.
In 1857 he commenced a three-year term with the Colvilles, who welcomed him as an old friend. In 1860, Ravalli was called to Santa Clara College as a master of novices; but since he preferred the open county, he was allowed to return to Montana in 1863.
Life was changing, the wilderness had been invaded by the miner and even the farmer and stockman. Accordingly, Ravalli now served as priest and physician to tribesmen and to the isolated whites who were placer mining in Alder Gulch (Virginia City), Last Chance (Helena), Silver City, French Bar, Crook Creek, Montana Bar, Bear, and other gulches in the hills, or who were raising cattle in the Deer Lodge, Bitter Root, or Flint Creek valleys. From St. Peter's Mission, Hell Gate, and St. Mary's, which was reëstablished in 1866, he made many journeys to aid the sick or ease the departure of a soul.
Quotes from others about the person
"Fifty years a Jesuit and forty years a missionary, one of the noblest men that ever laboured in the ranks of the Church in Montana, his fame stands very high in Montana, where a later generation knows more of him than even of Father de Smet. "
