fort at about the same time as ourselves, having come to exchange their peltries for such things as they needed. The Mission of St. Peter is situated on the Missouri ten miles above the Great Falls, and seventy-five miles from Benton.
I had thus far fulfilled the wishes of my superiors; I had brought the two Italian Brothers to the first Rocky Mountain mission. My own principal object was a missionary visit to the wandering tribes of the plains; this I had accomplished only in part. When I left St. Louis, I had intended to see a very large number of Indians during the summer and fall, but local conditions and the dangers of the cruel Sioux war, had absolutely blocked my plan. The contagion of this war had spread to the upper tribes of the Sioux, who had hitherto been at peace with the whites. The reports that reached us every day, of robberies and massacres committed by the Indians of the plains, on one hand - and on the Salt Lake route by marauders and murderers of another species, the off-scourings of civilization, living by robbery and assassination on the unhappy travelers whom they meet - caused me to take the resolution of returning to St. Louis by the Pacific Ocean. That is not only the safest route, but the most prompt, with its regular line of steamships, by way of the Isthmus of Panama and aspinwall.