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Show CHAPTER THE CaTHOLIC CHURCH IN NEw VIII MeExico — CAREER OF Most REV. JOHN B. Lamy anp His Successors, 1851 ro 1911 — THE Prorestant CHURCHES— THEIR WorK SINCE THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION T the time of the Mexican war the Archbishop of Baltimore The provinwas the only metropolitan in the United States. cial councils of the Church were attended by the bishops of sees which had been created within the limits of the old diocese of New Orleans. The diocese of St. Louis had no fixed limits in the west and was regarded by the American church authorities as ex- tending to the Pacific coast. Missionaries were sent to the Rocky Mountain region and into the northwest.2°2 About two months after the conquest of New Mexico by General Kearny, St. Louis was made a metropolitan see.25* New Mexico had not yet become a territory of the United States. Subsequent, however, to the execution and signing of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Rt. Rev. Joseph Anthony Laureano de Zubiria, a man of great piety, energy, and zeal, bishop of Durango, who had twice before, as we have seen, visited New Mexico, made a third visitation in the month of October, 1850. The fact that New Mexico was in the control of the Americans, although not yet erected into a territory, did not cause any lack of religious ardor on the part of Bishop Zubiria. Believing that the time had come when their faith was exposed to many dangers, the good bishop urged the Catholies to restore their dilapidated churches, : *88 Father De Smet traveled in company rom the Missouri and Yellowstone & great council was held in th In 1840 Father D baad Takin. e Smetet in rivers with a large number to Fort . Laramie, ; in of Indians 1851, | tribes. where that year to form treaties with the severa establi issi established missions among the Nez Perces an d Flat- . 36. nt John Gilmary, History of the Catholic Church in the United States, Rev. Donato M. Gasparri, S. J. |