Isidore Clut (1832 – 1903)
Isidore Clut was a young French Oblate who came to the Red River to be ordained to the priesthood in 1857. He apprenticed in St. Boniface for a year and then travelled to Lake Athabasca and the mission of La Nativite at Fort Chipewyan in 1858. He became director of the mission in 1861 and remained there until 1869. He regularly visited the Fond du Lac mission at the eastern end of the lake and built the first mission at Fort Vermillion on the Peace River in 1868. He travelled through forts Norman and Simpson in 1872 and spent the early summer at Fort Rae. There he received a letter from the Oblate provincial superior in Montreal suggesting that he make a missionary visit to the Yukon and Alaska.1)
Francois Mercier, working for the Alaska Fur Trading Company, was taking over all of the fur trading posts in Alaska in April 1872 and promised every assistance to Catholic missionaries. Bishop Clut left Providence in August 1872 and, picking up Father Auguste Lecorre as a companion from Fort Norman, stopped at Good Hope where he resisted Father’s Petitot and Seguin’s requests to accompany him. Clut set off for Fort McPherson and Lapierre House on 14 September 1872. He recorded his reception, good and bad, at the Hudson’s Bay Company posts. They were generally well-received. But they discovered, as had Sequin and Petitot, that the Gwich’in were already devoted to the Church of England through regular visits from the reverends Kirkby and McDonald. Clut and Lecorre wintered at Fort Yukon and travelled down the river to St. Michael. Clut arrived back in Providence in October 1873 to learn that Alaska was part of the diocese of Vancouver and outside his area of jurisdiction. His first serious clash with his superior came when Father Faraud learned of his trip through the Yukon and Alaska territories. Faraud never forgave Clut for this and other independent actions.2)