mistaken about them, and in that case we will all go to hell in company." The next day I set out; one of the head chiefs made me a present of a handsome bell and hung it on my horse's neck. He invited me to make the tour of the camp with him; I followed him, my animal sounding his bell, and afterwards he accompanied me, out of civility, to the distance of six miles from his village.'
After having spent several more days in surmounting the difficulties of the passage, across sterile and broken hills, we came at last to the Fur Company's first fort.' It is called the Fort of the Crows. The Americans who reside there received us with a great deal of benevolence and friendliness, and I quickly recovered from my fatigue. Not until then did the intermittent fever entirely leave me. At this place the Flatheads edified all hands by their piety. In the fort as well as in the camp, and when we were on the road, we never failed to assemble morning and evening to say the prayers in common, and to sing some canticles to the praise of God. I had set my departure from the fort for the I3th of September. Here I decided to part from my faithful Flatheads. I told them
Father De Smet found himself again among the Crows upon his return journey to St. Louis in the fall of 1842. He was equally well received by them, but as on the present occasion, no conversions nor baptisms resulted. Father Palladino records that Father Point baptized twelve children, believed to have been Crows, among the Grosventres in the winter of 1846-47 (see page 955), and Father De Smet baptized a number in 1863, as related hereafter. No other missionary work seems to have been done among them by Catholic priests until the year i88o.
5 There were four "Crow posts" built by the American Fur Company in this vicinity.-Fort Cass, at the mouth of the Big Horn, built in 1832; Fort Van Buren, on the right bank of the Yellowstone near the mouth of Tongue river, in 1835; Fort Alexander on the left bank of the Yellowstone opposite the mouth of the Rosebud, about 1839; and Fort Sarpy on the right bank of the Yellowstone about twentyfive miles below the mouth of the Big Horn, in 185o. These posts were built for the trade of the Crow Indians.