There are some 3,000 Of them; they live in permanent earthen houses. All their children are baptized; they are at peace with the whites; they cultivate a large field (1,200 acres), raising corn, potatoes, melons, and beans, with no tools but sharpened sticks, with a few spades and mattocks. They complained bitterly of the Government agents and the soldiers: They first deceive them and rob them in the distribution of their annuities, and the others demoralize them by their scandalous conduct. All last winter they were the playthings and slaves of a hard and tyrannical captain, who seemed to make it his business to torment the poor
wretches. When the old women with their starving babies came up to the fort to pick up the filthy refuse thrown out of the soldier's kitchen, they were pitilessly driven off with scalding water, thrown upon their emaciated bodies, covered only with rags in the severest of the cold weather. The head chief of the Aricaras, named White Parfleche, in his speech to Generals Sully and Parker, drew a vivid pic ture of the miseries of his tribe. Their crop having failed, they were reduced to famine and all assistance was refused them by the captain of the fort. " Reduced to the last extremity," he said, " I implored the Great Spirit in the name of the children baptized by the Black-robe. My prayer was granted. The excessively cold weather moderated, and before the sun set we killed several buffalo alongside our camp-fires. Yes, the Great Spirit loves his little children." At Fort Buford, at the mouth of the Yellowstone (2,240 miles), a good number of chiefs and braves belonging to the various bands of the Assiniboins made their peaceableness and fidelity to the President evident to the Commissioners. At all the military posts on the Missouri river a good share of the soldiers are Catholics, and my ministra
tions were called for everywhere. A general of the army and several officers set the good example of approaching the holy table.
In all the public speeches of the chiefs and in all the private talks I had with them, they all showed a friendly