The Belgian Jesuit priest Pierre Jean De Smet (1801-1873) was a pioneer Roman Catholic missionary among the Native Americans west of the Mississippi River.

Pierre Jean De Smet was born at Termonde on Jan. 30, 1801. At the age of 14 he entered the seminary at Malines. On Sept. 21, 1821, he arrived in the United States to enter the novitiate of the Jesuit order at White Marsh in Maryland. Two years later he was a member of a group that traveled overland to St. Louis whose purpose was to establish a new novitiate in the West. At his ordination as priest in 1827 he expected assignment as missionary among the Native Americans, but other pastoral assignments and serious illness delayed his dream for another decade.

Father De Smet's long missionary work among the Native Americans began in 1838, when he was sent among the Potawatomi Indians to found a mission. On this journey he...