Indians o f the Rocky Mountains.
To Editor of the Precis Historiques, Brussels.'
St. Francis Xavier, Feb. 4, 1856.
Reverend Father:
I have just received a letter from Father Adrian Hoeken, dated October 18th, at the united camp of the Flatheads and Pend d'Oreilles, in the region of the great plains, east of the Rocky Mountains. The Indians had gone there to attend a peace council, held by order of the United States Government. Father Hoeken attended, at the express request of Governor Stevens of Washington Territory, who shows every regard to the Fathers, and whose reports to the President evince the lively interest which he feels in the improvement of the material condition of the Indians under our care.
The Blackfeet, Crows, Flatheads, Pend d'Oreilles, Kootenais, and a great number of chiefs of other tribes attended the council. It is to be hoped that the stipulations of the new treaty will be ratified by Government. On the one hand, the Indians promise to remain at peace with each other; on the other, the whites and the Government to aid them by subsidies in educating their children, and by farming implements to encourage them to leave their nomad life and settle in a convenient spot on their own lands. It is to be hoped that the council will succeed in realizing this laudable plan.
Father Hoeken tells me that the Indians of our missions west of the Rocky Mountains (the Flatheads, Pend d'Oreilles, Cceur d'Alenes, Kootenais, Kettle Falls Indians), continue, by their regular and religious conduct, to give the missionaries great consolation. He speaks also of the good dispositions of the Crows, Blackfeet and others east of the mountains. These Indians earnestly solicit missionaries. Colonel Cummings, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, who
3 From Western Missions and Missionaries, p. 292.