sons were baptized December 2d with the Christian names Charles and Francis; and Ignace went to Bishop Rosati with his request for missionaries. In the following spring he returned home with his sons, where one of them, Francis, is still living.
In 1837 a third deputation started for St. Louis. It consisted of old Ignace, three Flatheads, and one Nez Percé. At Fort Laramie they fell in with a party of white mer. traveling in their direction, among them one of the Protest ant ministers, W. H. Gray, returning from Oregon. At Ash Hollow on the North Platte, where the road started to cross over to the ford of the South Platte, the Indians were attacked by a band of Sioux. The whites were ordered to stand apart, as it was not intended to molest them. Ignace, being dressed as a white man, was mistaken for one and ordered apart with the rest, but heroically refused to abandon his companions. The five Indians were slain and this deputation never reached St. Louis.
A fourth, and this time successful, attempt was made in 1839. A deputation of two Indians, Pierre Gaucher and Young Ignace, set out with a party of trappers who were going to St. Louis. Their route was apparently by the Yellowstone and the Missouri rivers which they descended by canoe. In passing St. Joseph Mission, at Council Bluffs, they stopped to see the priests there, and it is an interesting coincidence that they should have found the very man who was to grant theta their request in person and open a new era in the history of their nation. This is Father De Smet's account of their visit :
"On the 18th of last September two Catholic Iroquois came to visit us. They had been for twenty-three years among the nation called the Flatheads and Pierced Noses, about a thousand Flemish leagues from where we are. I have never seen any savages so fervent in religion. By their instructions and examples they have given all that nation a great desire to have themselves baptized. All that tribe strictly observe Sunday and assemble several times a