bewildering and vexing and I have prayed to drive them from my mind and heart." I consoled him with a few words of advice and encouraged him to persevere manfully in the service of the Great Spirit, who would have pity on him and help him in his tribulations, and he was not flogged.
As to agriculture and other manual-labor work, it was easily introduced amongst them and they set joyfully to work as far as the few plows and other instruments we had would allow them. Each family had its field of weed [wheat?] and its garden of vegetables. Each mission was provided with a mill and carpenter and blacksmith shops.
I might here adduce many more characteristic traits of the mountain Indians. I shall rejoice if I have not exceeded the limit of my letter and if, in any way, I have come up to your intention and expectation in these somewhat hurriedly written pages. Please accept my good will in what I have the honor to address to you, with my best wishes and prayers in the deliberations you are about to assume for the welfare of the Indian tribes.
Permit me to add the following testimonies, confirming what I have said of the religious dispositions of the mountain Indians. In the Explorations and Surveys (of Governor Stevens) for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, Vol. I, page 3o8, Captain John Mullan, of said expedition, writes, September 14, 1853: " When the guide and myself had reached their camp (Flathead) three or four men met us at the entrance and invited us to enter the lodge of their chief. They very kindly took care of our horses, unsaddling and watering them. As soon as the camp had heard of the arrival of a white man among them, the principal men of the tribe congregated in the lodge of the chief. When they had all assembled, by a signal from their chief they offered up a prayer. This astonished me, it was something for which I had not been prepared. Every one was upon his knees, and in the most solemn and reverential manner offered up a prayer to God. For a