Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/125

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C(EUR D'ALENE


93


COFFIN


ern portion of Mercia, which Jilthelred recovered from Northumbria. It is inferred that the people of this region rebelled against ^thelred and chose Coenred for their king, and later induced Jithelred to resign the whole of Mercia in favour of Coenred in 704. A reaction against the Southumbrians took place in 709, when Coenred abdicated in favour of Coelred, the son of ^■Ethelred. Coenred then accompanied Otfa, King of the East Saxons, to Rome, where he received the monastic habit from Pope Constantine. He was )iresent at a council of the Mercian clergy in 705, and his name appears on several charters granting lands to Waldhere, Bishop of London, to Cuthswith, Abbess of Worcester, and also to the Abbey of Evesham. It does not appear that he was ever married. A great lover of peace, and of a pious disposition, he was more suited for the cloister than the throne. St. Beile tells us that he befriended St. Wilfrid when in exile, and relates in detail his efforts to convert to a better life one of his chief nobles, who finally died in despair.

LlNGARD, Hi^l. of England, I. iii; Anglo-S<ixon Chronicle ad aim. 702, "OU, 7oa; Bede, Ecd. Hist., bk. V. xiii, xix, x.>dv; WiLUAM OF Malmesbury, Gest. Reg. (Eng. Hist. Soc), i, iii; Idem. Gesl. Pont., 239, 317, 351-2, 386; H.\ddaj< and Stubbs. Councils, III, 2(3.

G. E. Hind.

CoBur d'Alene Indians, a small tribe of Salishan stock formerly ranging along the lake and river of the same name in Northern Idaho, U. S. A., and now residing upon a reservation established in 1873 within the same boundaries. The name by which they are commonly known, signifying awl heart", is said, although doubtfully, to have been originally a nick- name given by the French traders to a chief of the tribe noted for his stinginess. They call themselves Skits wish. When first noticed by the American ex- plorers, Lewis and Clark, in 1805, the Coeur d'.41ene were a wandering, poverty-stricken people, dwelling in mat-covered communal houses on the border of the lake, and subsisting chiefly upon fish and wild roots. In disposition they were peaceful, brave and honest, and at a later period, having acquired through the P'rench and Iroquois employees of the Hudson Bay Company an idea of the Catholic religion, many of them, as well as the Flatheads, Nez Perces, and others, vohmtarily adopted a system of Christian prayers and church forms. In 1841 the Jesuit, Nicholas Point, a companion of De Smet, established the Sacred Heart (now De Smet) mission among them, with such won- derful success that within ten years the entire tribe had become Christian, civilized, and comfortably self- supporting.

In his official report to the Indian Office in 1854, Governor Stevens of Washington says: "It is indeed extraordinary what the good fathers have done at the CiBur d'.^lene mission. They have a splendid church nearly finished by the labours of the fathers, laymen, and Indians; .a large barn; a horse mill for flour; a small range of buildings for the accommodation of the priests and laymen; a store room; a milk or dairy room; a cook room, and good arrangements for their pigs and cattle. They are putting up a new range of quarters, and the Indians have some twelve comforta- ble log cabins. The church was designed by the .supe- rior of the mission, Pere Avile, a man of skill as an architect, and undouljtedly, judging from his well- thumbed books, of various accomplishments. Pere Gazzoli showed me several designs for the altar, all of them characterized by good taste and harmony of proportion. The church, a-s a specimen of architect- ure, would do credit to anyone, and has been faith- fully .sketched by our artist, Mr. Stanley. The mas- sive timbers supporting the altar were from larch trees five feet in diameter, and were raised to their place by the Indians, simply with the uiil of a piiliey and rope. They have a large cultivated field of some 200 acres, and a prairie of from 2000 to 3000 acres.


They own a hundred pigs, eight yoke of oxen, twenty cows, and a liberal proportion of horses, mules, and young animals. The Indians have learned to plough, sow, till the soil generally, milk cows, and do all the duties incident to a farm. They are some of them expert wood cutters, and I saw some thirty or forty Indians at work getting in the harvest." .\11 this in thirteen years in the heart of the wilderness, two thousand miles from the frontier town of St. Louis!

The mission still continues to mould the tribal life, and official reports show that the same high standard is maintained, each year showing an advance in pros- perity and general intelligence. The tribe is increas- ing, and numbered 492 souls in 1906.

'Minimal Report nf the Commission "/ /., ,. \ ,-.,,.« :ish- ington. 1S31-1906); Lewis and < i i , " ' rnds

(New York, 1905); Moo.ney, art. W , i '/ ■/. ■•/

Am.erican Indians (Washington, 190,; Sim \, '\-'ii.,;i, l/j.s- sioTis (New York, 1S55); De Smet, Orrgon .Mt.s.^ions I. New Y'ork, 1847): Stevens, in Report of Commission of Indian Affairs (Washington, 1854).

James Mooney.

Coffin (alias Hatton), Edward, English Jesuit and missionary, b. at Exeter, 1570; d. 17 April, 1626, at Saint -Omer's College. After studies at Reims and Ingolstadt, he was ordained at the English (College, Rome, and sent to England. In 1598 he entered the Society. On his way to the novitiate in Flanders, he was seized by the Dutch, near Antwerp, and taken to England, where he was imprisoned for five years. Banished from England in 1603, he acted for twenty years as confessor at the English College, Rome. He vohmteered for England again, but died on the journey. He wrote the preface to Father Persons's "Discussion of Mr. Barlowe's .\nswer" (Saint-Omer, 1612); Refutation of Hall, Dean of Worcester's " Dis- course for the Marriage of Ecclesiastical Persons" (1619); "Art of Dying AVell", from the Latin of Bellarmine (1621); "True Relation of Sickness and Death of Cardinal Bellarmine", by C. E. of the So- ciety of Jesus (1622), tr. into Latin, "De Morte", etc. (Saint-Omer, 1623, 8vo.); "Marci Antonii de Dom- inis Palinodia" (Saint-Omer, 1623), tr. by Dr. Fletcher in 1827 as "My Motives for Renouncing the Protestant Religion"; " De Martyrio PP. Roberts, Wilson et Napper" (Stonyhurst MSS., Anglia, III, n. 103).

Oliver. Collectanea S. J., 55; Foley, Records, I, 69; VI, 178, and 677; VII (i), 145; Morris. Troubles, I, 166; Douay Diaries. pp. 18, 207, 213; SoMMERVOGEL, Bibliolh'ique, II, col. 1270; GiLLOw, Bibl. Did. Eng, Cath., I, 522; Cooper in Diet. Nat. Biog. . s. V.

Patrick Ryan.

Coffin, Robert Aston, ecclesiastical writer and bishop, b. at Brighton, England, 19 July, 1819; d. at Teignmouth, Devonshire, 6 April, 1885. He re- ceived his secondary education at Harrow and in 1837 went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he took his B..\. degree with honours in 1840. He then prepared himself for the ministry and, having received Anglican orders from the Bishop of Oxford, ho was appointed in 1843 vicar of St. Mary Magdalen, Oxford. While at Oxford he had become a follower of Dr. Newman, and like so many others w-ho had joined the Oxford or Tractarian Movement he left the .\nglican Chiirch and was received into the Catholic Cluirch at Prior Park on the feast of St. Francis Xavier, 3 Dec, 1845, two months after the reception of Dr. Newman. Having spent a year a.s tutor in the family of Mr. Ambrose de Lisle, he followed Newman to Rome to prejiare hinv self for the i)riesthood, and was ordainetl 31 Oct., 1847, by the cardinal vicar. In the meantime Dr. Newman had been authorized by Pius I X to found the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in England. When, in June, i848, the Oratory was established. Father Cof- fin with other convert priests joined it, and he was a|ipointed superior of St. Wilfrid's, Cotton Hall. The next year he followed a strong attraction he had felt