men whom ignorance, rather than a perverse and disordered. will, renders vicious. Moreover, that same Spirit which obliged the most rebellious to cry with St. Paul,. " Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" can also soften the most obdurate hearts, warm the coldest, and produce peace, justice and joy where before reigned iniquity, trouble and disorder. The great respect and the marked attention which the poor Indians testify on all occasions to the missionary who appears among them to announce the gospel, are a source of much consolation and encouragement to him. He discovers the finger of God in the spontaneous manifestations of good will offered by these poor creatures.
The language of the Poncas differs little from that of the Otoes, the Kansas and the Osages. Of intrepid and tried courage, they have, notwithstanding the paucity of their numbers, made themselves feared by their more nu merous neighbors. They may with justice be styled the.
Flatheads of the Plains, on account of their bravery. Although attached by taste to the wandering life, they have begun to cultivate some fields of corn, of pumpkins and potatoes.3
Here, then, is a portion of the vineyard as yet untilled, but which only waits for a generous, charitable hand to cause it to yield fruits worthy of the dews of heaven. Can the Lord refuse his grace and his assistance to the apostolic man, who abandons all the advantages of civilized life in order to teach, in the midst of every species of privation, the salutary and consoling words of the gospel? When I _reflect upon the hopes that may be justly entertained of the Indian tribes of the North and West of the United States, I cannot refrain from blessing the bounty and mercy of God, and trembling at the consideration of the terrible judgments of his justice. While Europe, shaken to the centre by the incessant efforts of learned impiety, appears to have strength or vigor only to shake off the divine yoke which the blood
3 The later story of the Poncas the curious reader may find told in Mrs. Jackson's A Century of Dishonor.