all listened with great attention, and unanimously expressed the wish to be supplied with Catholic missionaries.
Among the Arapahos, I baptized 305 little ones; among the Cheyennes, 253; and among the Brules and Osage Sioux, 280; in the camp of Painted Bear, fifty-six. The number of the half-bloods that I baptized in the plain of the Great Council and on the river Platte is sixty-one. In the different forts on the Missouri, I baptized, during the months of
June and July last, 392 children. Total number of bap
tisms, 1,586. A great number died shortly after, in consequence of diseases which reigned in the Indian camps.
I witnessed for the first time a singular rite, to which the Cheyennes attach as much importance as the Asiatic tribes do to circumcision; this is the " ear-cutting of the children." This custom appears to be common among all the tribes of the Upper Missouri, and probably in other places, though there may be perhaps some variety in the form of the ceremony. Among the Cheyennes, the mother chooses the operator and puts the knife into his hands. She extends the child on the skin of some animal, carefully prepared and painted, and which the Canadians call " pare tleche." While one of the relations or friends holds the infant in a quiet posture, the operator makes two to five incisions in the rim of each ear. These incisions are destined to receive and carry ornaments. The mother makes a present of a horse to the operator, and another present to each one of the assistants. In the same place, rudely arranged for the occasion, and composed of six lodges, each lodge consisting of twenty
hides of buffalo cow, we witnessed another ceremony. The Shoshones, or Snake Indians, had scarcely quitted the Rocky Mountains to repair to the Great Council, when they were pursued and attacked by a party of Cheyennes, who killed two of their men and carried away their scalps. The Cheyennes must pay, or " cover the body," which is a satisfaction required by the savages on such occasions, before they can accept the calumet of peace or smoke it together. On this day the principal braves of the Cheyenne nation and forty