Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history." In the decades since Oscar Handlin wrote those lines in The Uprooted, immigration and ethnicity have remained subjects of intense interest in the United States. Among the millions of refugees who emigrated to these shores in the nineteenth century were approximately 350 Italian Jesuits. Banished from one kingdom after another during the upheaval that accompanied Italian national unification, these expatriates began arriving in 1848. Most of them migrated to the American West. There they profoundly shaped Catholic culture in eleven states during the next half century.

Ursulines and Native American Students, Montana If a boarding school is to enjoy "any good repute among Indians," wrote Giuseppe Giorda, SJ, in 1874, it must be run by sisters. Women religious ran orphanages, kindergartens, and girls' schools at many missions administered by the Jesuits. Native American students in Montana and their Ursuline teachers pictured here demonstrate domestic skills mastered in boarding school -- sewing, leather work, drawing, needle-point, knitting, and music.

Jesuits of Las Vegas College The Jesuit staff of Las Vegas College, New Mexico, opened its doors in 1877. Founded by Neapolitan Jesuits, the school offered instruction in English and Spanish. Later transferred to Denver, it exists today as Regis University. The Italian Jesuits' western schools served in the years after the Mexican War as cultural bridges facilitating the transition of young nuevomexicanos and californios to post-conquest culture.

The displaced Jesuits of the Turin Province of northern Italy in 1854 adopted the Pacific Coast as their mission field. In the Northwest, they joined other European Jesuits in ministering to Native Americans in a vast area known as the Rocky Mountain Mission. The Italians' linguistic skills and their ambiguous national allegiance appealed to tribes alienated by repressive U.S. policy.

Their network of schools and churches extended from the Yakimas, Umatillas, and Nez Perces eastward to the Cheyennes, Assinoboines, and Crows. By 1896 the Indian schools of the Rocky Mountain Mission enrolled over a thousand students. One of the most famous establishments, St. Ignatius Mission, Montana, ran industrial boarding schools for both boys and girls, a kindergarten, a printing press, workshops, and extensive farms. In 1887, the Jesuits extended their educational mission to white settlers by founding Gonzaga College in Spokane.

Other Italians emigrated to the arid Southwest. In 1867, members of the Naples Province founded the New Mission -- Colorado, which served largely Hispanic Catholics. In the eyes of the Neapolitans, the two jewels in their crown of accomplishment were a college in Las Vegas, New Mexico, and a Spanish-language newspaper, the Revista Catolica, which appeared in 1875. Inspired in part by the Jesuits' famous journal La Civilta Cattolica in Italy, the Revista molded regional Catholic public opinion for 87 years.

A large contingent of Piedmontese refugees ran the California Mission, founding popular urban parishes and colleges. "Like the Greeks after the fall of Constantinople," recorded an Irish co-worker, "they brought with them libraries, scientific instruments and the education and habits which fit men for the life of teaching. The Fathers, however, labored under one defect -- both in the pulpit and in the classroom. They spoke and taught in a language not altogether English, and their manners and ideas were too Italian to meet the tastes of the young Republicans of the West." Eager to recruit native speakers for their institutions, the Piedmontese pleaded with East Coast Jesuits to "send us helpers who speak English."

Students in San Francisco Scholars pose by a statue of St. Joseph in a courtyard at St. Ignatius College, later the University of San Francisco. Italian Jesuits fostered Italian forms of ritual and piety. "Devotional celebrations characterized by dramatic and colorful public display enlivened the yearly calendar of every parish, college, and Indian mission," according to the author. "Pilgrimages to the shrine St. Joseph in March, pageants during Holy Week, Marian devotions in May, Corpus Christ processions in June, the construction of elaborate creches at Christmastime -- all were standard fare."

Santa Clara Baseball Trio Santa Clara baseball players around 1865. Although they welcomed play as a necessary and healthy complement of study, the Italians were surprised at the American love of athletic competition. There are no conversations "in which sports are not spoken of," complained a newly arrived Italian, who observed that American teachers influence their students through games, "which I do not know and never will understand because they are too complicated." But the refugee teachers adjusted. "Baseball," recalled one of their students, "went on forever at Santa Clara."

These atypical westerners molded California's intellectual and religious life by founding two institutions of higher learning. A boarding college planted amid the orchards of the Santa Clara Valley opened its doors in 1851. Today's Santa Clara University is California's oldest institution of higher learning. Four years later, a day school, St. Ignatius College, arose on San Francisco's Market Street, the central thoroughfare of the Gold Rush metropolis. It has become the University of San Francisco. All of the western Jesuit colleges began as elementary and preparatory schools, although several of them offered college-level courses within a few years of their founding. Their student bodies were typically cosmopolitan, reflecting the ethnically diverse populations of the western mining frontiers. The cultural ambivalence of the Italians was an asset because it enabled them to work effectively among Hispanic, European, and Anglo cultures and to build bridges between the groups.

Wherever they went, the emigres were torn between two conflicting desires: to adhere to European conventions and to adapt to the exigencies of American culture. When erecting schools and churches, the exiles quickly learned that handsome buildings were essential in their adopted homeland. "Appearances count for a lot here," a Neapolitan Jesuit wrote. "The American, more than any other nationality is impressed by appearances, and believes in what he sees." They believe "a beautiful building must signify an excellent school," and hence "we must adapt to this weakness of theirs."

And adapt they did. So impressive were their colleges that a San Francisco newspaper declared in 1864, "Today the Jesuits have built the most prosperous and populous education institutions in California."

Panorama of San Francisco Bay, 1851 During the Gold Rush, San Francisco's harbor was filled with ships, some abandoned, others converted into makeshift shops and hotels. The newly born city made a deep impression on Jesuits Michael Accolti and John Nobili when they stepped ashore in December 1849. "Whether it should be called a villa, a brothel, or Babylon, I am at a loss to determine," Accolti wrote. "The disorder, the brawling, the open immorality, and the reign of crime ... triumphed on a soil not yet brought under the sway of human laws."

The schools offered curricula and policies that combined both Italian and American educational traditions. As in Italy, the academic year concluded with a series of saggi or public examinations, which a Santa Clara Jesuit once observed, "would have honored the Roman College to say nothing of any other college of our Italian provinces." Following Old World practice, the Italians maintained tight rein over students. Fr. Michael Accolti once proudly contrasted the "exact compliance with the rules of discipline" at Santa Clara with the "unlimited liberty" tolerated in other California schools. Discipline at his institution was strict, he once boasted, but "of course not so stringent as that enforced at West Point." Accommodation was the watchword for professors and pupils alike. "American students love freedom," a Piedmontese priest explained to Roman superiors. "There is an art which, when properly utilized, makes them work, but not everybody is possessed of it."

Attempts to impose a classical education, the hallmark of Jesuit schooling in Europe, met with mixed results. "Oh what a waste of time are Latin and Greek," a San Francisco Jesuit lamented in 1866, "for so many students that I now see working ... as grocer, butcher, and who knows what else!"

Aged Italians of Santa Clara Toward century's end, the Italian Jesuits of California were gradually replaced by American vocations to the order. This photograph depicts four old-timers at Santa Clara around 1893. The Turin Jesuit Province's jurisdiction over the West Coast ended in 1909 when the California Province was formed by uniting the California and Rocky Mountain missions.

Scientific training was more popular. The western colleges, reflecting both student interest and the Italians' own training, offered more instruction in the sciences than did many Jesuit institutions in the East. To make their curriculum relevant to the needs of Gold Rush California, Santa Clara and St. Ignatius taught assaying and chemical analysis and imported at great cost the "latest inventions" from Europe in order to "keep pace with the progress of science."

Wherever the immigrants settled in frontier America, they fostered distinctively Italian forms of piety. A cycle of devotional celebrations enlivened the yearly calendar of every parish, college, and Indian mission. Pilgrimages to the shrine of St. Joseph in March, Marian devotions in May, Corpus Christ processions in June, the construction of elaborate creches at Christmastime -- all were standard fare. These rituals of Mediterranean Catholicism nurtured a sense of solidarity and reminded practitioners that their church was universal.

As American vocations to the Society increased, Italian influence waned. Turinese Jesuit jurisdiction on the West Coast ended in 1909 when the California and Rocky Mountain missions were united in the new California Province. Ten years later, the Neapolitan mission in the Southwest was absorbed by the Missouri and New Orleans provinces. In the intervening years, Italians helped mold the cultural, intellectual, and religious life of the West in ways still felt today; they in turn were changed and americanized by it.

Gregory Mengarini, SJ, (right) worked as a missionary among the Flathead Indians of Montana before moving to Santa Clara College were he served as treasurer and teacher of modern languages for nearly 30 years. He is best known for his contributions to Native American linguistics and ethnology.

Charles Messea, SJ, (left) who arrived in California in 1854, founded Santa Clara's science department and purchased its impressive treasury of scientific instruments and minerals.

Fr. Gerald McKevitt, SJ, professor of history at Santa Clara University, has authored and coauthored two books on Santa Clara University and is writing a book on Italian Jesuit immigrants and their influence on American Catholicism.