Santees to confer with us concerning the proposals which the Government sent them through me. During all my stay at the fort the colonel did everything possible for me, and I have thought it my duty, in a spirit of gratitude, to make him a return (American fashion) ; and knowing that a good meerschaum pipe would be very acceptable to him, may I venture to ask your Reverence, while you are in Europe, to give some connoisseur-amateur-smoker the commission of procuring me a meerschaum to present to the worthy colonel?
I should have written you in my last letters especially about the good dispositions of the Yanktons, of whom Pananniapapi is the chief. All the children of his tribe are now baptized. They desire most ardently to have a mission of our fathers; the money granted them for schools by their treaty with the Government has been pilfered from
them by their previous agents. The principal chiefs of the tribe authorize me to assure you that they are willing to devote two to three thousand dollars a year to the establishment and maintenance of the mission.
St. Louis University, August 30, 1867.
Very Reverend Father (Roder) :w
I have often proposed writing to you, but as the affair is so personal to me and seems to have so little claim on your attention, I have always put it off. But as the motives which seem to urge me to it are on the increase, after having recourse to prayer and consultation, I have concluded to send you these few lines, confiding wholly in your indulgence and charity. I will try to lay my case clearly before your Reverence.
I have been more or less engaged in the Indian missions for something like thirty years. The Reverend Father
From the French.