Catholic Indians in Kansas among the Osages and Potawatomies, etc., is approximately, I should think, not far below 4,000. I have written to the Superior of the missions to be correctly informed on the subject and shall for ward his answer to your Lordship when received. The Catholic Magazine, Baltimore, of 1849-5o, edited by the Very Reverend C. White, D. D., published a number of letters of Reverend Fathers Bax and Gailland, missionaries among the Osage and Potawotami Indians, giving detailed accounts of their labors and of their success. Since about fifteen years, the agents of the Government in their yearly published accounts, though Protestants, have always reported most favorably and commendably of the Catholic missions in Kansas. The piety, fidelity and zeal in the St. Mary's Potawatomi mission have always been conspicuous among a great number of the Christian Indians. Since Kansas has become a State and since civilization has crept in and with it vice and drunkenness and all mischief, there is great danger for the existence and continuation of those missions; and " the Protestant trick of damning by faint praise," as your Lordship says, may be again renewed on this occasion. " It is easy to show that Protestant unscrupulous cunning worked whatever failure there was." As far as my own experience has gone in regard to Protestant missions, east and west of the Rocky Mountains, they have proved a complete failure. Nothing remains of their missions in Oregon and Washington Territory but rich and extensive tracts of lands, enriching the ci-devant missionaries, their better halves and their little ones. o is their number of converts, and mighty little do they care.
I must make a rough guess at the number of Christian Indians west of the Rocky Mountains. Including all that has been done under the Right Reverend Bishops and by the secular clergy, by the Oblate Fathers and by the Jesuits, over 6,ooo must have been regenerated in the holy waters of baptism. The Coeur d'Alene mission numbers between
6oo and 700 souls. The Pend d'Oreille and Kalispel mis