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Transcribed from the Wisconsin
State Journal - November 23, 1923
Reserve,
Wisconsin - Up and down the Chippewa reservation, on the shores
of beautiful Little Lac Courte Oreilles, echo the bells of St. Mary's.
They call the red man to worship, in the red man's way, before the red
man's own altar. The vision of a flashing eyed Indian priest has been fulfilled.
The 'splendid' church he dreamed about morning after morning at the altar
of the humble chapel wherein he formerly ministered to his people has become,
at last, a reality.
Like
Medicine Lodge
But to the Reverend Philip
Gordon, himself a full-blooded Chippewa, splendid does not mean a many-towered
edifice like the Cathedral of Cologne, nor on with glided dome like St.
Peter's in Rome. To him it meant a building of fieldstone, without,
and within dark like a medicine lodge.
When there was sufficient
money to begin construction, Father Gordon took his problem to Alexander
C. Eschweiler, Milwaukee architect.
Over and over he repeated
the injunction, 'remember this is to be an Indian place of worship, not
a white man's church.'
Built
by Parishioners
Today the building nears
completion. Services are already being held in it.
The Indian parishioners
have done almost all the work in Barron quartzite; they split stones, which
have lain for ages nearby to form the walls. The deep roof now covered
with roofing paper, is to be broken by rough cedar shingles called 'shakes.'
Into the windows, George
M. Muelenburg of Milwaukee has worked symbolic signs that speak to the
red man's humanity in familiar terms. There are many arrows, crossed calumets;
the rising sun, the pipes of peace, the wartime arrows and the Christian
cross. The hand-hewn rafters will be stained in brilliant reds, blues and
orange after the fashion in which the red man adorns his long hickory bows.
Deerskins will hang upon the church's walls. And the Chippewa women
are weaving the altar cloths incorporating into them images of things accounted
powerful in the medicine lodge.
Seven
Bells
The tower still lacks many
feet of completion. It has been temporarily roofed over. Yet it meets the
requirements. It is large enough to contain the seven bells supplying the
last touch of Father Gordon's dream picture. And it is these bells
that call dark-eyed Chippewa braves, squaws and papooses to worship their
God, in the red man's church, in the red man's way.