week to pray and sing canticles. The sole object of these good Iroquois was to obtain a priest to come and finish what they had so happily commenced. We gave them letters of recommendation for our Reverend Father Superior at St. Louis. They thought nothing of adding three hundred leagues to the thousand they had already accomplished, in the hope that their request would be granted."
The two deputies arrived safely in St. Louis and presented themselves to Bishop Rosati, who gave them definite hope of a priest in the following spring. Thereupon one of them, Pierre Gaucher, set out for home, while Ignace remained to accompany the missionary who should be sent. The letter of Bishop Rosati to the Father General of the Society in Rome, detailing the circumstances and result of the visit, is dated October 20, 1839, and states that the Indian was to start the next day. If Pierre Gaucher made his journey home alone at that season of the year (it is said to have taken him all winter) it was a remarkable achievement. He arrived in the Bitter Root Valley, the home of the Flatheads, early in the spring of 1840 and announced to the tribe that a black-gown was surely coming.