I wish I could give Your Paternity an idea of the architecture of an Indian village; it is as outlandish as their dancing. Imagine a great number of cabins and tents, made of the bark of trees, buffalo skins, coarse cloth, rushes and sods, all of a mournful and funereal aspect, of all sizes and shapes, some supported by one pole, others having six, and with the covering stretched in all the different styles imaginable, and all scattered here and there in the greatest confusion, and you will have an Indian village.
We have a fine little chapel, twenty-four feet square, surmounted with a little belfry; four poor little cabins besides, made of rough logs; they are fourteen feet each way, wish roofs of rude rafters, which protect us from neither rain nor hail, and still less from the snow in winter.
Good Brother Mazelli and myself commend ourselves urgently to the holy sacrifices and prayers of Your Paternity.
Very dear and Reverend Father: (9)
I think I told you, the first time I wrote you, that I had already baptized twenty-two persons. To-day the number of those upon whom I have had the consolation of conferring holy baptism amounts to seventy-six, among whom I reckon thirty-four adults of ages from twelve to sixty years. I am sure that Your Reverence would be touched to see with what fervor these good Indians assist at the holy sacrifice and with what docility they listen to our instructions. For my part, I assure you that I see the work of God in it, and that I feel penetrated with gratitude toward those who, by their prayers, cease not to obtain for us from heaven these unexpected successes. One of our first conquests for Jesus Christ was the spouse of the head chief of the Potawatomi
(9)Extract from a letter to Father Verhaegen, Superior of the Mission of Missouri. Dated Potawatomi Nation, St. Joseph [Mission], August 20, 1838. Translated from the French and hitherto unpublished.