in one of which Father Van Quickenborne and a companion lived, the other being used for a chapel. Two small log cabins completed the list of buildings from which the now splendid St. Louis University took its rise. These buildings were enlarged as rapidly as possible, the manual labor being done by the novices themselves.
After a time schools were opened for Indian children, this being an important part of the missionary work of the Society. These schools, however, as has so often been the case, did not thrive as they had been expected to do. The wild nature of the Indian was ill adapted to that kind of life, and it is proof of the high sagacity of Father Van Quickenborne that he early recognized the wisdom of not building all his plans on so precarious a foundation. Although the good father and his companions had dedicated their lives to the spiritual and temporal welfare oŁ the Indians, they soon became convinced "that no great or permanent results could ever be accomplished among the indolent, wandering and indocile aborigines of the woods and prairie which would at all compensate for sacrificing all their energies and resources in exclusive attention to the savages. They came to the conclusion, therefore, that more solid and lasting good might be done among the white population than with the well-nigh indomitable redmen." (2) Without abandoning any of their missionary purposes among the Indians, they resolved to found an institution of learning to meet the growing wants of a great center of population in which the proportion of Catholics was certain to be large. The conception rapidly developed into a concrete result. A suitable building was erected in the city of St. Louis and the reception of students began in the fall of 1829. Father P. J. Verhaegen, one of the seven novices from Whitemarsh but now an ordained priest, was made first president, and Father De Smet was a member of the faculty.
The Jesuits in St. Louis were now fairly well equipped
(2) History of the St. Louis University, p. 36.