and social commerce, is the condition, sine qua non, of the conversion of the greater part of those poor Indians, unless God is pleased to work a miracle, which rarely has happened, except among the Flatheads.
" I have been on a six weeks' hunt with the fifty lodges of the Piegans, which are under the command of the chief, Amakzikinne, or `Big Lake.' This camp is one of the seven or eight fractions of the Piegan tribe, amounting in all to about 300 lodges. This tribe forms a part of the four, known under the generic title of Blackfeet. I have spoken of them already. The Piegans are the most civilized, on account of the relations of a portion of their people with the Flatheads. If the Grosventres were less importunate, I would willingly entitle them the Flatheads of the Missouri. They have something of their simplicity and their bravery. They are improperly ranked among the Blackfeet : besides that they did not originate in the country, they do not speak their language, and are different in many respects.
" However this may be, these four tribes may contain about I,ooo lodges or Io,ooo souls. This is not half what they were, before the contagion of smallpox introduced among them by the whites. I believe that women constitute more than two-thirds of them, if not even three-quarters. This inequality, so baneful to morals, is the result of war. In the visit that I paid to the Grosventres, divided into two camps, I counted 230 lodges. I visited, or received visits from, several fractions or detachments of Blackfeet, and further, an entire camp of Gens du Sang; and all were in such dispositions, that only a word on my part would have been necessary to enable me to baptize, with their consent, all the children from the largest down to those of only a day old, which the mothers brought me of their own free will. I could have baptized a great number of adults; they even seemed to desire it ardently; but these desires were not yet sufficiently imbued with the true principles of religion. I could not content myself with the persuasion generally ex