My personal observations serve as a foundation for these hopes. I have had frequent interviews with the Blackfeet, the Crows, the Assiniboins, the Aricaras and the Sioux. They have always lent the most marked attention to all my words; they have ever listened to the holy truths which I preached to them with extreme pleasure and a lively interest. They entreated me with the most captivating ingenuousness to take compassion on their miseries, to establish myself among them, promising to join a faithful practice to the knowledge of the truths I should impart to them. Among the Indians of the great American desert, I never found even one who presumed to rail against our holy religion.
To put an end to the cruel wars which decimate these nations ; to rescue so many souls from the baneful consequences of the idolatry in which they are buried; to prevent the total destruction of these tribes already so wretched, and yet redeemed like ourselves by the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, is it not an enterprise worthy of inflaming the zeal of a minister of the gospel? a work worthy of claiming the efficient co-operation and assistance of a government as powerful as is that of the United States?
As to agriculture, considered as a means of civilization, its introduction will always be difficult among the Indians, as long as there remains to them a hope of procuring buffaloes or other wild animals. It would prove, in my opinion, a chimera to pretend to introduce this branch among them on an extensive scale in the beginning. We know, however, by experience, that, although little habituated to the fatigue of the assiduous labor that farming requires, some tribes have already attempted to cultivate their little fields. This step taken, each year, according to the abundance of the increase, the limits of these little fields might be extended. Like their brethren who reside west of the Rocky Mountains, they would become more and more attached to the soil whose productions would be the result of their toil. Their roving habits, the wars which often spring from them, would insensibly give place to a more peaceable and domestic life.