of Christianity ;12 but the interpreter was not sufficiently skilled in the language to render my words into the Sioux. The next day, though we were still five days' journey from the fort, the chief had his son and two other young men go with me, praying me to instruct them. He desired absolutely, lie said, to know the words I had to impart to them in behalf of the Great Spirit; and at the same time these young men would be a safeguard for me against evildisposed savages.
Two days afterward we met an Indian loaded with cow's meat. Seeing that we were without provisions, he threw his load on the ground, begging that we would accept it; " For," he said, "you are going toward the fort, where game is very scarce." We reached Fort Pierre" on the 17th of October.
These are the names of the principal chiefs whom we met on our route: Iron Crow, Good Bear, Dog Hand, Black Eyes, Won't Eat Cow and Goes Barefoot. The last named is the chief of the Blackfeet. The principal
12 It was Father De Smet's lifelong ambition to establish a mission among the Sioux. This ambition he never realized, although his influence over those tribes, the foundation of which was laid on the present journey, never lapsed, but on the contrary came to be the greatest ever wielded by any white man.
18 Fort Pierre, next to Fort Union, the most important of the American Fur Company posts on the Missouri river, was built for the trade of the great tribe of the Sioux. It was located at an important bend in the stream where it turns east from its long southerly course after leaving Fort Clark. It was conveniently located for the trade of the whole Dakota country as far west as the Black Hills. Many posts have been built in its vicinity, where the Teton river empties into the Missouri. Fort Tecumseh, the predecessor of Pierre, was built in 1822 by the Columbia Fur Company, and passed to the American Fur Company when the latter bought out the Columbia Fur Company in 1827. Owing to the encroachments of the river which threatened the destruction of the fort, it was rebuilt in 1831, and christened Fort Pierre about June 1, 1832, in honor of Pierre Chouteau, the head of the company.