icularly to the Christianizing of the
Indians. I will begin with the first structure ever erected in the
state, designed for religious purposes. It was a very small beginning
for the prodigious results that have followed it. I speak of the little
log "Chapel of Saint Paul," built by the Rev. Lucian Galtier, in
October, 1841, in what is now the city of St. Paul.

Father Galtier was a French priest of the Church of Rome. He was sent by
the ecclesiastic authorities of Dubuque to the Upper Mississippi
country, and arrived at Fort Snelling in April, 1840, and settled at St.
Peters (now Mendota), where he soon tired of inaction, and sought a
larger field among the settlers who had found homes further down the
river, in the neighborhood of the present St. Paul. He decided that he
could facilitate his labors by erecting a church at some point
accessible to his parishioners. Here he found Joseph Rondo, Edward
Phalen, Vetal Guerin, Pierre Bottineau, the Gervais Brothers, and a few
others. The settlers encouraged the idea of building a church, and a
question of much importance arose as to where it should be placed. I
will let the good father tell his own story as to the selection of a
site. In an account of this matter, which he prepared for Bishop Grace
in 1864, he says:

"Three different points were offered, one called La Pointe
Basse, or Pointe La Claire (now Pig's Eye); but I objected
because that locality was the very extreme end of the new
settlement, and in high water, was exposed to inundation. The
idea of building a church which might at any day be swept down
the river to St. Louis did not please me. Two miles and a half
further up, on his elevated claim (now the southern point of
Dayton's Bluff), Mr. Charles Mouseau offered me an acre of his
ground, but the place did not suit my purpose. I was truly
looking ahead, thinking of the future as well as the present.
Steamboats could not stop there; the bank was too steep, the
place on the summit of the hill too restricted, and
communication difficult with the other parts of the settlement
up and down the river.

"After mature reflection, I resolved to put up the church at the
nearest possible point to the cave, because it would be more
convenient for me to cross the river there when coming from St.
Peters, and because it would be also the nearest point to the
head of navigation, outside of the rese