He was later accused of crookedness in regard to the purely literary features of his work. The nature of these charges is thus stated by Father De Smet : " For some years past I have been subjected to criticisms, often personal and malevolent, on the part of several German priests, who are saying in America, on the testimony of one or several fathers of your Province, that my name is only an assumed name in the letters which are printed and the books that are published afterwards bearing my name."
To Father De Smet's sensitive and guileless nature these false accusations brought genuine sorrow, as he could not understand why any human being should bear him ili-will on so slender a provocation. Nothing in the present editorial studies of his writings has been discovered that can give the slightest color to the charge, unless it be a single instance in which Father De Smet consulted a friend in preparing his reply to certain inquiries from Europe in regard to the Indian Question, and transmitted as his own his adviser's answers. (2)
In the last two or three years of his life, Father De Smet spent considerable time in collecting material for a history of the religious Province of Missouri. Here is a personal reference to this work: " Whilst confined to my room by sickness, I take great pleasure in my leisure moments in collecting whatever I can concerning the history of the Province. I have commenced at the beginning of our leaving Belgium in 1821, of our coming to Missouri in 1823, with all its traveling incidents and digging the first spadeful of earth on 31st of July, 1823, the feast day of St. Ignatius, of the Novitiate in Florissant. I have already written eighty pages from notes in the archives of the Province, from personal recollections, and from such other information as I am able to obtain."
Father De Smet did not live to complete this work, and even the partial narrative to which he refers is apparently lost.
(2) See page 1208 of the Letters.