In 1845, Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, a Jesuit priest, came east from Windermere Lake via the Kootenay River and one of its tributaries to the summit of White Man's Pass where all was wild sublimity. He erected a large cross on the pass. Father De Smet and British Army Lieutenants Henry James Warre and Mervin Vavasour are said to have met near the summit. Few Europeans were travelling in the Canadian Rockies at this time and it was a remarkable coincidence that the two parties met (Esther Fraser, The Canadian Rockies wrote that Warre and Vavasour probably used this pass).