2d. Sacred Heart Mission in the Cceur d'Alene country. 3d. Mission of St. Paul near Colville on the upper Columbia.
4th. St. Ignatius Mission among the Kalispels, or Pend d'Oreilles, near Flathead lake.
5th. St. Pe'ter's Mission for the Blackfeet near the Missouri Falls.
6th. The Mission of St. Joseph among the Yakimas in Oregon Territory.
7th. The Mission of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary at Helena City.
Besides, the Spokans, the Kootenais and a great number of other tribes have each their stations where they are regularly visited by the Fathers of the various missionary establishments. The missionaries are thirty-three in number, of whom sixteen are priests and seventeen are lay brothers, mostly of the Society of Jesus from Turin (Italy), to whom the missions of the Rocky Mountains were transferred and where they have continued their apostolic labors with great fervor and zeal until this day.
The extracts I now send you will go to show some of the hardships the missionaries encounter in their visits and excursions among the Indians; but at the same time the spiritual consolations and fruits they reap repay them a hundredfold. It is truly an encouraging scene to behold the happy and good dispositions of the Indians and the zeal and fervor they manifest on hearing the holy word of God and the consoling truths of salvation; which, with the grace of God, they edifyingly embrace, when understood.
With regard to the Indians in general allow me to add a few words from my own experience. The farther I find them from any intercourse with the whites, the better were they disposed to listen to the word of God. As the Indians approach the frontiers of our so-called civilization and meet with the first intruders on their land, they soon become contaminated and fall victims to all its vices and sins. The