"Alaskana Catholica" being researched by notable Jesuit

Editor's note -- This is part two of a look at Louis Renner's life and the process of researching his book Alaskana Catholica.

By NAOMI KLOUDA-For the Frontiersman

The map of Louis Renner's life has traced Jesuit territory, missions the society had established from 1840 across the Rocky Mountains and throughout the northwest. It was perhaps no wonder that by the time he entered Alaska in 1958, Renner already was grounded in an understanding of what motivated his predecessors to yearn for wilderness and continuing service to Native peoples. Early on he noticed the importance of collecting previous priests' stories and manuscripts before fire, flood or human amnesia yanked them from posterity.

Many of the Alaska mission's faded manuscripts and Catholic house diaries were eventually collected in archives at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., by Wilfred Schoenberg S.J., a now legendary archivist who hitchhiked, caught rides with bush pilots and on river boats to cart away documents as missions closed down in the '40s and '50s. And Renner himself took routes all over the state and collected Alaskan and Catholic histories from which to draw for biographies and histories, writings filled with not only records of daily life but also highly academic observations useful to Alaska Natives and historians today.

Renner, now 76, pursued writing part time while teaching German at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and later as priest to Tanana and Ruby, as well as editing the Alaskan Shepherd, a newsletter sent out nationally from the Fairbanks Diocese.

"I must admit I found research and writing a very satisfying occupation, a pleasure," Renner said, though he was "often dealing with archival materials critical to my research that had gone through floods and fires, were written in a faded scribble all but indecipherable, lacked reference points as to time and place, lacked completeness, etc."

Nevertheless, in the past 25 years, Renner built a reputation as a "purist" historian, quoting almost exclusively from original materials to set down interesting, accurate accounts of people and events both Alaskan and Catholic. He does not wince at hard topics, such how more enlightened modern people view turn-of-the century conflicts about Catholic thoughts on Native traditions.

Jesuit superior, the Rev. Robert Grimm, noticed the importance of Renner's work -- more than 100 articles, biographies and reviews, and three book-length biographies: Father Tom of the Arctic; Pioneer Missionary to the Bering Strait Eskimos: Bellarmine Lafortune S.J.,; and The KNOM: Father Jim Poole Story.

Last spring, at an age when people might be considered for retirement, Grimm appointed Renner to this new assignment at Gonzaga University, whose Foley Library contains most all the archival material Renner's heart could desire. There his mission is to collect a century of information into an "Alaskana Catholica."

"Alaskana Catholica," as Renner envisions it, will be a compendium of information sorted out in an encyclopedic dictionary containing diverse topical and biographical entries arranged alphabetically. He is aiming for a complete list of entries at the beginning, along with a timeline for convenient reference.

"I deliberately chose the encyclopedia-dictionary format," Renner wrote in a tentative preface, "because this enabled me to treat each topic, each biography, as a mini-history, a mini-biography, having its own chronological beginning, middle and end."

Renner has not set his sights on a completion date. Despite his long experience compiling historical information, only now does he find himself in a position to do justice to such an undertaking.

In the preface he writes: "By the time I was assigned full-time to the writing of "Alaskana Catholica," I had called Alaska home for over four decades. I knew all its bishops, but one, personally. I knew well many of the earlier, veteran missionaries. I knew many of its Native people. I had traveled extensively throughout much of Alaska, had spent time on its Bering Strait islands, hiked its high country, boated and floated its rivers, was familiar with its natural wonders. And I had read widely and researched in-depth and written about many people, places and things Alaskan. In mind and heart, I was thoroughly Alaskanized. I felt myself qualified and ready to write Catholic-Alaskan, Alaskan-Catholic history: history that reflects my esteem and respect for matters Catholic and Alaskan."

Certainly, much of Renner's 25 years worth of well-received writings wait to find a place in his Alaskana Catholica, which should save him labor. Entries in a typical encyclopedic dictionary are produced by many different authors, he notes. "This is not the case here. All the articles in this volume are written by me. They are, of course, derived, in varying degrees, from a great variety of sources, published and unpublished. Some of the articles are reprints of articles that appeared in The Alaskan Shepherd. Many are actually autobiographical sketches, written in the third person, but, to a greater or lesser extent, edited by me."

Today, the Oregon Province Archives at Gonzaga contains 735 reels of microfilm, 2,400 (nonNative language subject) book titles, plus an additional 450 volumes on Indian and Eskimo dialects which supplement 50 linear feet of manuscripts as well as uncounted thousands of personal letters, photographs and documents. It is considered one of the foremost ecclesiastical archives in the U.S. today, said Gonzaga Jesuit archivist, David Kingma.

Jesuit priests from the Oregon Province, which covers the Northwest, often donate historically relevant papers to the collection. About 715 of these are currently processed and inventoried, Kingma said.

If Renner's own autobiography and papers make their way to the collection, future readers will study a man every bit as intriguing as his predecessors. A priest who recorded valuable information about interactions with his beloved parishioners along the Interior rivers, a man who walked everywhere and never bothered to learn about cars, and the Jesuits who influenced his own scholarly bent for a "cartographer's precision."

Naomi Klouda is a former Frontiersman reporter.