(View point at Kootenay River Bridge, 40 miles north of Fort Steele)

In September 1845 Father Jean De Smet, the first missionary to reach the Kootenay Indians, placed a large ‘Cross of Peace’ in a pass north of here as he struggled on foot through the Rockies seeking the Blackfeet tribe.  Born in Belgium in 1801, this Jesuit priest laboured for 35 years among Indians from the Missouri River to the Pacific.