tribute of gratitude to the ladies of St. Louis and Philadelphia, who have contributed so charitably to the needs of my mission. Besides their pious donations of money and of chaplets, medals and images, they procured for me about 1,ooo little shirts and dresses, the work of their own hands, for the infants to be newly baptized. The very sincere and genuine joy of the poor Indian mothers was shown in their happiness at being able to dress their children, in order to present them decently on this solemn occasion. Their distinguished charity will without doubt obtain the blessing of heaven, for it is written " Qtrod uni ex minimis meis f ecistis, tnihi fecistis, licit Dominus."
The unhappy war which is now raging so fiercely over all the extent of the Great Desert, east of the Rocky Mountains, has, like so many other Indian wars, been provoked by numerous injustices and misdeeds on the- part of the whites, and even of agents of the Government. For years and years they have deceived the Indians with impunity in the sale of their holdings of land, and afterward by the embezzlement, or rather the open theft, of immense sums paid them by the Government in exchange therefor. The Indians, driven to extremity, after being swindled and robbed through a long series of years, and without being able to obtain any justice against their oppressors, utter at last their terrible war-cry against the whole race of the enemy; in their own words, they " thirst for blood," " dig up the tomahawk," " raise the warclub," " prepare eagle feathers to decorate their hair " (every feather standing for a scalp taken).
For two years the Sioux have been ranging the frontiers of 'Minnesota, the Missouri and the interior of the great plains in search of victims to sate their terrible and brutal vengeance; without regard either to age or to sex, thev massacre indiscriminately all the whites that come to their hand. Over goo victims are reckoned already as having fallen beneath their barbarous blows since the beginning of hostilities.