Constantine Scollen
(4 April 1841 – 8 November 1902) was an Irish Catholic, Missionary priest who lived among and evangelized the Blackfoot, Cree and Métis peoples on the Canadian Prairies and in northern Montana in the United States.
Constantine Michael Scollen was born on Galloon Island, Upper Lough Erne, near the village of Newtonbutler, County Fermanagh, Ireland on 4 April 1841.
His mother died in 1847 during the Great Famine and his father moved to England and worked as a warehouseman in Manningham, Bradford silk mill, West Yorkshire.
He then married his cousin, Catherine McEvoy, in 1851, and later moved his family to Crook, County Durham, England where he found work as a coal-miner.
On 14 August 1858, he entered their novitiate," Lys Marie", in nearby North Yorkshire in the village of Sicklinghall, close to Wetherby near Leeds.
He professed his provisional vows on 15 August 1859 and went to the Oblate retreat house, "Glenmary" in Inchicore village, south of Dublin and " took the habit" and taught there until March 1862.
In April 1862 he and another Irish scholastic, Brother John Duffy, traveled, on an Allan Line Royal Mail Steamers ship, the SS Norwegian, with Mgr.
Tache, on his return to Canada following his visit to a General Chapter in Rome, along with newly ordained Father Emile Petitot.
He opened an English language school for children of the employees of the Hudson's Bay Company, at nearby Fort Edmonton.
After some delays and interruptions caused by long periods out on the prairies living with the native peoples, he was able to continue his philosophy and theology studies under Father Vital Fourmond and was ordained on Easter Saturday 12 April 1873 by Bishop Grandin.
The group also included two others, Alexis Cardinal, a Metis and Jean-Baptiste L'heureux, a French Canadian, who acted as hunters, guides, catechists and interpreters (Scollen had begun studying Blackfoot in 1868 and was already fluent in both Cree and Chippewa) For the next eight years he remained mainly with the Blackfoot (Siksika Nation) and Kainai Blood people on the plains of Southern Alberta and Northern Montana, living their hard nomadic life without break apart from brief spring and autumn visits to St Albert, for supplies and to Fort Macleod.
Scollen took great care to avoid politics but following the failure of the Dominion government to fulfill its treaty obligations, he became very outspoken, on behalf of the native peoples and remained so for the rest of his life.
In 1870, he had spent the winter at Rocky Mountain House, co-writing a Cree language grammar and dictionary with his mentor, fellow Oblate and friend, Father Albert Lacombe.
In March 1881 he traveled down to Milk River, Montana via Fort Benton to visit with Crowfoot and successfully persuaded him to return, with his people, to Canada.
He was an outspoken advocate on their behalf and this combined with being an Irish Catholic caused him great difficulties with the Ontario Orange Order influenced Canadian authorities both civil and military and also with the Wesleyan Church|Wesleyan Methodists.
During the "1885 North West Rebellion", at the request of the Lt-Governor Edgar Dewdney, he dissuaded the Cree Chief, Bobtail, from joining the hostilities.
Some of the younger men had looted the nearby Hudson's Bay Company trading post at Battle River but he was able to calm the situation, get them to close their war camp, to return most of the stolen items and persuaded the Canadian Militia not to take punitive action against the people.
Scollen had remained at his post even though he was aware that two of his fellow Oblate priests, Fathers Felix Marchand and Leon Farfard, had been murdered (in the nearby Frog Lake Massacre, by the young Plains Cree warriors of Mistahi-maskwa Big Bear), and all of the white people apart from a Mr Taylor, including the Indian Department officials and his longtime antagonists, the local Methodist missionaries, had fled from his area.
In February 1887, having had his application to rejoin the Oblates rejected and having largely recovered from his breakdown but not the chronic rheumatism and tuberculosis, he crossed into the US to work among the native peoples of the Great Plains for the next 10 years, on already established missions.
During 1887 and 1888 he was among the Turtle Mountain Chippewa people at St. Michael Mission, St. John, North Dakota and applied to become a citizen of the United States, during this period.
He died in St Elizabeth Hospital, Dayton, Ohio in 1902 having been a TB patient there, for some months, in the care of the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor.
Shortly before he died, Mgr Adelard Langevin, successor to Tache as Archbishop of St Boniface, Manitoba, recognised that Scollen had always remained an Oblate, at heart, and made him an honorary member of the order.
In addition to his bi-lingual childhood tongues of Erse (Irish) and English he was fluent in Greek, Latin, French, Italian, German and the First Nations languages of Cree, Chippewa (Ojibwe), Blackfoot, Sarcee, Assiniboine and Arapaho.
During his years among the Blackfoot peoples he was loyally supported by Fr Leon Doucet who was based at Our Lady of Peace Mission near Calgary.
Living amongst the Blackfoot Confederacy, in the now South Alberta and Montana (the land of the Whisky Traders known as the Whoop Up Trail) Scollen was a witness to all of this and spoke out for justice for the native peoples, to his great cost.
A genealogical enquiry traced Mary's great-grandson, John Domann, living in California in early 2012 but the family had no knowledge of what had happened to the papers.
These included those of the Bulletin, a weekly newspaper published in Buffalo, Wyoming to which, during 1893 and 1894, Scollen wrote a series of forty two letters based on his journals and his manuscript.
Similarly, also not on public sale, the book Father Con, the Whoop Up Trail Priest a biography of Scollen, by the same author has also been placed with the Glenbow reference library.
The cemetery authorities have wisely retained the historic original marker but kindly added a notice giving the correct details, and quoting part of this Wikipedia entry.
