CROATIAN AND SLOVENE MISSIONARIES AS INVENTORS AND EXPLORERS OF THE AMERICAN WEST AND MIDWEST
CROATIAN AND SLOVENE MISSIONARIES AS INVENTORS AND EXPLORERS OF THE AMERICAN WEST AND MIDWEST

Summary/Abstract: In this paper we examine the works and lives of some Croatian and Slovene Catholic priests who worked as missionaries among American Indians. The American missionaries not only brought Christianity to the American Indians, they also became known as inventors and explorers, traveling especially in the American West and Midwest. The Croatians, Rev. Ivan Ratkaj and Rev. Ferdinand Konš}ak, were explorers of the American and Mexican West from the 1680s until the late 1760s. Father Konšak's detailed observations and measurements definitively confirmed that Baja California is not an island but a peninsula, which enabled further expeditions and discovery of the territory of what is today the State of California. The Slovenes, Bishop Frederick Baraga and Rev. Franz Pirc, worked among American Indians in the Midwest from the 1830s until the 1870s.

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