ness. "Beati pauperes spiritu, quoniarn coelum possidebunt." Marie had spent several years in a French half-breed family and been instructed in a number of points of our holy religion.
Contagious diseases, especially among the small children, often ravage our poor Indian tribes, since they have no remedies and no treatment but that of their medicine-men. A large number have died since my visit, and already know the bliss of the elect, a precious prize of baptism, through the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Indian tribes that I last visited belong for the most part to the nations of the Blackfeet, the Crows, the Assiniboins, Minnetarees, Aricaras, Mandans and Sioux. This last nation is considered the most numerous on the plains, and reckons 30,000 to 40,000 souls (1862). Circumstances did not allow me to penetrate very far into the interior of the Sioux country, on account of the great uprising or warfare made upon the whites by several of their tribes in the northwest. They are said to be very cruel, and there have been frightful and terrible massacres. They have ravaged principally along the frontiers of Wisconsin and Minnesota. More than 300 Indians have been taken prisoners by the American troops. Thirty-eight of them have been hung. Before their execution, thirty-two requested baptism of the priest who was on the spot. There has been a great outcry in the United States against the execution of these prisoners of war, who seemed to be given over to the vengeance of the whites of the frontier. The unhappy Indians are often wronged, insulted and outraged beyond measure by the whites, and there is no recourse open to them for the obtaining of justice. Driven to desperation, they dig up the war hatchet and utter the cry of vengeance against the palefaces, whom they consider their enemies -woe to those, then, who fall into their hands. With the Lord's favor, I shall this spring (1863) make a fresh effort to reach the 50