of Jesus Christ has rendered " sweet and easy," the forlorn inhabitant of the far-distant wilderness lifts his suppliant hands to heaven, and in all the sincerity of his heart asks to know the true Faith, and to be directed in the path of true happiness. While in the heart of Catholicity the priests of the Most High sink under oppression,' Providence, impenetrable in its views, is secretly preparing for them the
vast solitudes of another hemisphere. There, perhaps, the Divine Master will fix his sanctuary, and choose to himself new worshippers whose simple hearts will offer him only an oblation of gratitude and love.
It is time to pass to the Sioux, whose territory I reached a few days after my visit to the Poncas. Mr. [Colin] Campbell, one of the best interpreters in the country, generously offered to accompany me to the different tribes of this na tion. His acquaintance with the country and the manners of the Indians, as well as the respect and friendship which the latter entertain for him, greatly facilitated my relations with them. I must also add, as a tribute of well-merited gratitude, that the officers of Fort Bouis and of Fort Pierre received me with the most delicate hospitality, and that the concurrence of their influence aided powerfully to render my intercourse with the savages easier and more profitable.
I have several times observed, in former letters, that the Indians inhabiting the valley of the Upper Missouri are generally more cruel than those sojourning west of the Rocky Mountains. Probably this arises from their almost incessant wars, which inflame them with a love of plunder and a thirst for vengeance. At the epoch of my visit to the Sioux, a troop of these barbarians were returning from a war against the Omahas, with thirty-two human scalps torn from defenseless old men, and from women and children whose husbands and fathers were off hunting. When they
4 The allusion is to the revolutionary occurrences of 1848 in Rome, which compelled Pope Pius IX to take refuge in Gaeta.
See, in connection with the hint contained in this sentence, the anecdote of the Flathead chief, related on page 1341.