St. Ignatius Mission

Brother Joseph Carignano was a cook. He was also, apparently, a painter — untrained, working in a mission kitchen on the Flathead Indian Reservation, and responsible for 58 murals covering the interior of this brick Gothic Revival church. Built between 1891 and 1893, the church rises from a mission founded by Jesuit priests in 1854. The murals blend Christian imagery with Salish belief, including depictions of the Lord and his mother rendered in Native American form. That specificity of place — that refusal to erase one tradition to make room for another — is reason enough to go.