Selected Letters of A. M. A. Blanchet, Bishop of Walla Walla and Nesqualy (1846-1879) eds. by Roberta Stringham Brown and Patricia O’Connell Killen (review)

Roberta Stringham Brown and Patricia O’Connell Killen, collaborators and co-editors, have produced an important and valuable publication in the letters of A. M. A. Blanchet, the nineteenth-century Canadian bishop charged with building a Catholic presence throughout a vast area of the American Northwest.

First, Selected Letters of A. M. A. Blanchet: Bishop of Walla Walla & Nesqualy, 1846-1879 is important because of the breadth and depth of this Catholic project. The editors, coming upon a forgotten cache of letters, totaling nearly a thousand in number, undertook the tedious task of sorting, translating, and assessing the collection, which had gone unused for 150 years. The intellectual challenge of winnowing such a mass of poorly arranged letters, written in French, English, and Latin, to forty-five historically significant epistles is alone worthy of admiration. The smoothly combined efforts of Brown the translator and Killen the academician reveal the myriad religious, political, and cultural forces that pulsated through the American Northwest as one Catholic clergyman labored for over thirty years to plant and protect his religion in a remote and often chaotic frontier region. Through careful selection and judicious interpretation, the editors have teased out the complicated life and personality of Blanchet as he confronted a tangled mission world. The letters remind readers that the most effective foreign Catholic leaders to resettle in the West understood the necessity of multi-faceted relationships, buttressed by political and cultural acuity, even as they upheld their personal religious fealty. This assertion is underscored by the exceptionally detailed annotation that follows each letter. Although the notes slow the reader’s pace, they provide a context that places Blanchet’s life within the larger historical scheme of events.

Second, this publication is a valuable addition to the growing scholarship that focuses on the Catholic Church in the American West. This is not merely an account of hardy European pioneers, who happen to be addressed as “Father” or “Sister.” Rather, this is the sort of project that defines western newcomers, indigenous peoples, international rivals, and religious competitors as equals, with vested interests in a changing and tumultuous geographic region. These letters (with their rich annotations and excellent maps) are one more indicator that the rise of American Catholicism is not a story exclusive to the Atlantic seaboard. Rather, the transformation from struggling missions to solid bricks and mortar is better explained by an inclusivity that sweeps across and through the continent, delves into the evidence found among Native cultures, people of color, religious women, lay families, and astute clergy, such as A. M. A. Blanchet, to understand the enriched spirit and spirituality that became the American Catholic Church. In this growing effort to refocus the Catholic narrative, Brown and Killen are to be applauded for bringing attention to this bishop of the Northwest and doing so with the highest standards of scholarship.