By Bill McClellan
01/10/2003
On an unseasonably warm January day some 130 years after the death of Jesuit missionary Peter DeSmet, a two-man crew from Catholic Cemeteries of St. Louis worked their way toward his remains. The Rev. Frank Reale, who heads the Missouri Province of the Jesuits, was there as an observer.
DeSmet was buried at St. Stanislaus Seminary in Hazelwood. The seminary had grown out of an Indian school the Jesuits established when they first arrived in Missouri in 1823. The seminary, which was founded 17 years later, became the home base of the missionaries, the place from which they rode off into Indian country. Long after the missionaries' work was completed, St. Stanislaus remained a self-contained city, a 999-acre community unto itself. It had its own vineyard and orchards, its own winery and butcher shop. And until 1971, the seminary was the burial place for Jesuits from the Missouri Province.
That year, the Jesuits sold the campus to the United Pentecostal Church International. The remains of 351 Jesuits were disinterred and moved to Calvary Cemetery. But the oldest grave site, located on top of what was once an Indian burial mound, was left untouched. That grave site contained 121 bodies. The most recent burial in that grave site was in 1898.
So that cemetery outlived the seminary. So did an on-site museum. The museum was housed in the historic Rock building, which had been built in 1840 with limestone hauled over from the nearby Missouri River. The museum contained an interesting assortment of artifacts, some valuable, some just quirky. Among the former were two glass globes made in Holland in 1690, and the leather shirt DeSmet wore when he lived with the Indians.
When the Jesuits decided to move the artifacts to a new museum on the St. Louis University campus, the lay board of the museum at St. Stanislaus objected. A legal fight ensued. The Jesuits won. In addition to closing the museum, the Jesuits decided to move the remains of the pioneer Jesuits to Calvary.
And remains is what we're talking about. Not bodies.
These men were buried in simple, wood coffins. Some may have been buried in shrouds. For many of the men, a bit of bone, or a button, is all that is left. Also, there is a certain graying of the dirt. For the most part, the remains of these men have become part of the earth.
The crew arrived at the cemetery on Monday, and plotted things out. The disinterment began Tuesday. By midmorning Thursday, the crew had disinterred the remains of 12 Jesuit pioneers. Two more, and then they would reach DeSmet.
Father Reale explained the process. A backhoe clears the top ground. Then the men use shovels, and finally, sift through the dirt.
"We're doing this very carefully, very respectfully," Father Reale said. "You know we had to get a court order, and it's like I told the judge: 'These men are not my blood family, but they are my religious family.' We're doing this with the care I would take for my own parents."
He was courteous, but seemed a little subdued. This was a day, I thought, tailored for introspection. Father Reale said he did not want to discuss exactly what they were finding, but he said they were collecting everything - bits of bone, bits of coffin - and keeping all these things separated for reburial.
If the weather holds, the entire process should be completed in about three weeks.
About 1:45 p.m., the crew reached the site of Peter DeSmet.
Father Reale did not tell me what the workers discovered, but I was later told that the workers recovered a bit of leg bone and a piece of skull bone, perhaps from the skull cap.
That was the end of the day's work.
It all seemed surreal, especially to realize that the Jesuits built their cemetery on top of an Indian burial mound. Well below the remains of the Jesuits lie what remains of the Indians. They are part of the earth now, and still undisturbed.
(Reprinted from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
