In 1841 Jesuit Pierre Jean De Smet arrived among the Coeur d'Alene Salish Indians in what is today northern Idaho and western Montana. With 200 color and 20 b&w illustrations, this catalog of the international Sacred Encounters exhibition displays the similarities and differences between European Christianity and Native American beliefs.

Jacqueline Peterson is director and curator of Sacred Encounters, a multimedia traveling exhibition that opened at the Museum of the Rockies, Bozeman, Montana, in April 1993. She is an Associate Professor of History and Native American Studies at Washington State University, Pullman and Vancouver, and the author, with Jennifer S. H. Brown, of The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Metis in North America, and of articles about the Metis, the fur trade, and Indian women and religion. Knighted by the king of Belgium for her work on Father De Smet, she currently resides in Portland, Oregon.