CHAPTER I
EXPEDITION TO THE SIOUX - 1848.
The Sioux mission still under consideration -Nebraska vacant between the Platte and Niobrara - Hardships of land travel - Heat, insects, lack of water - Bad Lands - First meeting with the Poncas - The designs of Providence for America - Meets the Sioux at Fort Pierre - The Red Fish affair - Indians and idiots - Medals and medicine-Little encouragement for missionary work among the SiouxDownstream in the fall by skiff, wagon and steamboat.
TRANSIENT visit to some tribes of Sioux, on the upper Missouri, on my way back from the Rocky Mountains, 11846] left in me an ardent desire to see those poor Indians again. I was anxious to judge more maturely of their disposition, and ascertain with greater certainty what hopes might be entertained from the establishment of
a mission among them. During the course of last summer, my superiors granted me this truly consoling privilege.
In order to reach their villages, I was obliged to ascend the Missouri as far as Bellevue (a village situated in the territory of the Otoes, 61o [665] miles from St. Louis), and then pursue my journey on horseback, over immense prairies, for about twenty-five days. An excursion through
1 This chapter comprises Letters II, 111, IV and V of the Western Missions mad Missionaries, which are Letters I, 11, III and IV of the Ciriquawe Nouvelles Lettres. The English text is mainly followed. The narrative of this expedition appears among Father De Smet's papers as a letter to an unnamed lady, written prior to January 1, 1849. It was published early in 1849 as a series of six letters to the Archbishop of Baltimore, in the Baltimore Catholic Magazine, and in July, 185o, in the Annales de la Propagation de la Poi, as a series of four letters to the Central Council of Lyons and Paris and the Directors of the Work, dated St. Louis University, June, 1849. It was thus printed in the Cinquawe Nouvelles Lettres and thence translated for the Western Missions and Missionaries.