Jean-Charles-Jean-Baptiste-Félix Pandosy (22 November 1824 – February 1891), commonly known as Father Pandosy, was a French Catholic priest who was the first settler in the Kelowna area in British Columbia. He set up a church and a school and attracted many settlers to the area. He founded the Okanagan Mission which was the first permanent white settlement in the British Columbia Interior aside from the forts for the Hudson's Bay Company and the gold rush boomtowns of the Fraser Canyon.
Background
Father Pandosy was born on 22 November 1824 in Marseille, France, to Esprit-Étienne-Charles-Henri Pandosy, a sea captain, and Marguerite-Josephine-Marie Dallest. He was educated at Collège de Bourbon in Arles. He then decided to enter the Oblate Juniorate of Notre-Dame de Lumières. On 14 August 1844, he entered the novitiate of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (O.M.I.) at Notre-Dame-de-l'Osier and took his vows one year and one day later, on 15 August 1845. After that, he studied philosophy and theology at the seminary in Marseille.
Towards the end of 1846, Eugène de Mazenod, the founder of the O.M.I., granted the request of two Pacific Northwest bishops (Augustin-Magloire Blanchet of Walla Walla, Washington and Modeste Demers of Vancouver Island) to send Oblate missionaries from France to serve in their dioceses. Pandosy and 4 other men (one ordained priest, three scholastics, of which Pandosy was one, and one lay brother) left Le Havre on 4 February 1847 when Pandosy was 23 years old. They arrived in New York on 2 April 1847, met Bishop Blanchet in St. Louis and reached Kansas City on 1 May 1847. They then joined a caravan going to Fort Hall in what is now southeastern Idaho. When the party arrived at Fort Hall the Bishop and a few companions went ahead to prepare lodgings and provisions for the winter. Father Pandosy remained with the wagons in Fort Hall and finally arrived in Walla Walla on 5 October 1847, eight months after he had set out from France.
Work in Oregon Territory
Father Pandosy and the other Oblates began by proselytizing the Yakama people in the lower valley of the Yakima River. While they were there, the Whitman Massacre occurred near Walla Walla. The Bishop decided to immediately ordain two of the Oblates, Pandosy and Father Eugene Chirouse. Pandosy was ordained into the priesthood on 2 January 1848. Father Pandosy then returned to the Yakama Indians, and convinced them to stay neutral in the Cayuse War which broke out after the massacre.
Pandosy and Chirouse befriended Chief Kamiakin of the Yakama people and he protected them for many years. In early 1849 the two priests built the Mission of St. Joseph at Saralpes. In 1851 he was joined by Father Louis-Joseph d'Herbomez and they moved the mission to the Ahtanum Creek. This was near Kamiakin’s camp.
The Yakima War broke out in 1855. Volunteer soldiers went into the field to fight against the Indians. Some of these volunteers took the St. Joseph Mission and uncovered a keg of powder, leading them to believe that the priests were helping the Yakama. The mission was burned and Father Pandosy was forced to flee with the Yakama. He escaped from them and managed to find his way to the Jesuits’ St. Paul's Mission at Kettle Falls. He stayed there until the middle of 1856, then spent the rest of 1856 and 1857 ministering to the Indians and US troops in that area. In 1858, he was transferred to Esquimalt, which was then the headquarters of the Oblates in British Columbia.