The following excerpt is from “A Century of Christianity on the Dakota Prairies” written by Fr. Albert Binder in 1970.

But there were Catholic antecedents long before 1870. The Dakota prairie was the land of the buffalo, and hunting parties roamed the plains. Very often these hunting parties were accompanied by priests. In the Pembina area, the early missionaries considered going with the hunt an essential aspect of their apostolate. Whole families would go on the hunt for weeks and even months at a time. The missionary went along to administer the sacraments and to instruct the children during the course of these long journeys.

One early missionary who ministered to the buffalo hunters and fur traders, many of whom were French Catholics, was Louis Francois LaFleche. He made trips through the Red River country between 1844 and 1856. He offered Mass for his itinerant flock in the area of Wild Rice. North Dakota History, Vol. I, p. 219 states, “Fr. LaFleche in 1856 celebrated Mass at Wild Rice with the hunting parties who made that place a rendezvous”. Bishop Shanley, in his account of the history of the Diocese of Fargo, states that La Fleche would jokingly remark that he was the first pastor of Wild Rice.

This same Louis Francois LaFleche later became Bishop of Trois Rivieres, in the province of Quebec. When some of the farmers there determined to emigrate to the United States in search of better farm land, Bishop LaFleche—even though personally opposed to the idea of such emigration—advised them that fertile land could be found near the junction of the Red River of the North and the Wild Rice River (La Riviere la Folle—“The Foolish River”—as it was then called).

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