the present city limits of Council Bluffs, Iowa. Father De Smet, who put a cross on the roof of the church, wittily relates that when he "climbed the ladder to put it in place * * * Father Felix [Verreydt] beheld the devil clap his tail between his legs and take flight over the big hills."
In the year 1839 Father De Smet made an excursion to the Sioux post at the mouth of Vermillion river, a short distance above where Sioux City now stands. He left the mission April 29 by the American Fur Company steamboat St. Peters, (7) and returned about the middle of May by canoe. The purpose of Father De Smet's mission to the Sioux at this time was to bring about peace between them and the Potawatomies. It was the first of many similar excursions in which he went, comparatively alone and unprotected, among Indians whose friendship was doubtful.
The Potawatomi mission at Council Bluffs is of particular interest in this narrative, not so much for the results that it accomplished, as because it reveals at this early date the full character of Father De Smet as an Indian missionary. It was here that he began that famous series of letters which have made his name well known throughout the world. A few of those written at St. Joseph Mission have already been published; but the most interesting and important are now given out for the first time. They were probably not intended for publication, for they lack something of the clerical dignity in which the writer then doubtless thought that he ought to appear in public; but they are all the better for the omission and are equal, in force of expression, to anything he afterward produced. No more racy narrative is to be found in the pioneer literature of the period than the account of the voyage on the Wilmington from Fort Leavenworth to St. Joseph Mission in 1838; while the journal of 1839, copied in a letter written in December of that year,
(7) On the St. Peters was a Government exploring party under the celebrated geographer Jean N. Nicollet, whom Father De Smet knew well.