Indian. The savings that our religious economy enables us to make, we retain solely to relieve their miseries. Whatever we gain by manual labor and by the sweat of the brow, is theirs! Through love of Jesus Christ, we are ready to sacrifice all, even life itself. Last year we opened our school; but circumstances forced us to close it. Next spring we shall have a brother capable of teaching, and we intend opening it a second time; but in the interval we shall not
earn a cent. During last October, the snow forced Fathers Joset and Ravalli and Brother Saveo to return to the Coeur d'Alenes.
We have done, and shall continue to do, all that lies in our power for the Government officers. Still our poor mission has never received a farthing from the Government. Do not think, Reverend Father, that I complain - oh no! you are too well assured no earthly good could ever induce us to work and suffer as we do here. As wealth itself could never recompense our toils, so privations are incapable of leading us to renounce our noble enterprise. Heaven, heaven alone is our aim; and that reward will far exceed our deserts. On the other hand, we are consoled by the reflection that he who provides for the birds of the air will never abandon his tenderly loved children. Yet it is not less true, that, if we had resources (humanly speaking), our missions would be more flourishing; and that many things that we now accomplish only with great patience and sore privations, and which again frequently depend upon contingencies, could be effected more rapidly and with less uncertainty of success.
In our mission there are persons of such a variety of nations, that we form, so to speak, a heaven in miniature. First, our community is composed of six members, all of whom are natives of different lands. Then we have creoles ; Genetzi,whose wife is Susanna,daughter of the old Ignatius Chaves ; Abraham and Peter Tinsley, sons of old Jacques Boiteux ; Alexander Thibault, a Canadian, and Derpens. There are some Iroquois: old Ignatius is settled here, as well