in the closing years of his life, when called to Washington for consultation about the apportionment of the missions among different religious bodies, that the Indians were not consulted at all, but the missions were parceled out on a wholly different basis. It was then that he saw his great work, cut down as it already was by the influx of settlers, practically swept away. (3)
Father De Smet made a profound study of the Indian character as it related to his missionary work among there. He never sought to minimize or conceal the natural difficulties in the way. In a long letter written late in life he reviews the whole question in an exhaustive manner. From this most valuable essay one readily discovers that he did not then view the subject with the same enthusiasm as thirty years before. In his early work, fortune threw him among a tribe which above all others was susceptible to religious teaching. They received him with a sincere desire to learn his religion, and everything then looked as if the field had only to be occupied to become permanently fruitful. His
this time I have noticed with the greatest interest that the efforts made by good Christians to establish missions and schools, to instruct the Indians in spiritual and temporal matters, have contributed the most to civilizing and pacifying them. Furthermore, I take pleasure in testifying that the Catholic Church, to which you belong, has everywhere obtained the most pre-eminent success. The Catholic missionaries have always succeeded in gaining the Indian's hearts, in controlling their brutal outbreaks and ameliorating their condition in every respect." Letter from Alfred Vaughan, Indian agent, to Father De Smet.
(3) "I have been called to Washington by the Secretary of the Interior, where a great council has been held on Indian affairs in general. I then learned that forty-three Indian stations were to be divided among different denominations in the various sections of the country inhabited by the Indians, of which only four are assigned to the Catholics, viz: One in Dakota (the mission we intend to establish in the spring among the Sioux), one in New Mexico, another in Montana (Flathead) and a fourth in Idaho. In the whole of this affair the Indians have not been consulted as to the religion they desired to belong to." Father De Smet, 1870.
(4) See page 1062 of the Letters.