said against me, to which I must plead guilty. Something of the kind has occurred again, and from headquarters, which has brought me low, indeed - the more so, as I have the full conviction in my heart that the charges against me are untrue, false and unjust, and bring along great evil in their consequences - the neglect, in a great measure, of Indians, for whom I would have gladly sacrificed the
remainder of my days. I stand accused of the following First. That my letters have done a great deal of harm in America. Second. That my letters are only imagination
and poetry, false and untrue. Third. That I have lost. the missions by over-liberality to the Indians, and by promises to them which the Fathers have been unable to fulfill.
I pardon, from my heart, the men who have made these false accusations. The letters written from Oregon for several years in succession by the Fathers on the good dispositions of the Indians, after I had left the missions, are alone sufficient to cover the calumniators with shame and confusion. Many of these letters I have sent to Rome in the very handwriting of those Fathers, and culled [others] from the newspapers as they had been published; but to all of which no answer has been returned. All my letters have been written by special requests of my superiors, chiefly
Very Reverend Father-General. I declare to have written them all with uprightness and sincerity, and that I have never exaggerated, at least not willfully, in speaking of the dispositions of the Indians, and of the good which was done in their midst; and of this in particular, most of the Fathers have said, spoken and written more highly than I ever did (Fathers Point, Joset, Mengarini, Ravalli, Hoeken, Accolti,
De Vos, Nobili, etc.). I have many of their letters still in my possession. They have written the truth and so have 1. Even as late as the 1st of November, 1851, Reverend Father Joset writes to me as follows; and his letter was
published in the Shepherd o,f the Valley: " You will learn with pleasure that the Pend d'Oreilles, the Cceur d'Aenes, the Kettle Falls Indians and the tribes of the lakes of the