that these animals frequent is becoming more and more circumscribed. Besides, they do not remain in the same place, but change pasturage according to the seasons.
Thence arise the incursions which the Sioux make into the territories of the Aricaras, the Mandans, the Minnetarees, the Crows and the Assiniboins; thence also the mutual invasions of the Crows and the Blackfeet in their respective hunts. These depredations are committed by all the wandering tribes of the desert, and give birth to dissensions, and to incessant and bloody wars, which annually revive and multiply, to their great detriment and misfortune. It is not, therefore, astonishing that the number of these savages is gradually decreasing. In the plains, war and famine lend their aid; on the frontier of civilization, liquors, vices and maladies carry them off by thousands.
I have visited the Blackfeet, the Crows, Mandans, Assiniboins, the Aricaras, the Minnetarees, etc., who possess the whole region of the upper Missouri and its tributaries. The condition of all these savages, far from the influence of all religious and moral principles, renders them much alike - ejusdenz farina. Among them all are met the same cruelty, the same barbarity, the same sloth and supineness, in fine, the same degrading and revolting superstitions, pushed to the most remote limits which the human mind abandoned to itself, and under the empire of vile passions, can reach.
It is quite a common observation, and I have myself heard it offered by several persons, that the " religious as well as the social condition of the Indians of these regions, is in nowise capable of amelioration." I am far from par ticipating in this opinion. Let the obstacles arising from the people who style themselves civilized, be removed; let all trade in ardent spirits, that deadly scourge of the Indian, be prevented; let missionaries be sent, whose zeal is prompted only by the love of our divine Master, and with no object but the happiness of the poor souls intrusted to their care, and I am confident that in a short time we should have the consoling spectacle of a sensible improvement among them.