I spent three days there instructing the people, and baptized fourteen persons. They treated me with great kindness, and expressed their extreme delight at the prospect of the establishment of a Sioux mission. They promised to pay for their children's board. They are not only full of good will, but capable of acting.
As for the mixed race of the Santees (a Sioux tribe), they receive from Government about $I,ooo a head, according to the treaty made last year at St. Peter's River in the Upper Missouri. You see, then, Reverend Father, that if we defer founding a mission among them, they will send their children elsewhere. Do not imagine that the number of these poor children, all baptized by Father De Smet and others, is insignificant. The half-breeds exist in great numbers everywhere, with thousands of Indians. Must all these children, of whom several thousand have already received holy baptism, perish for want of instruction? Are they doomed to remain sitting in the shadow of death? May I not announce to them all, the precious tidings of vocation to grace? I trust, in God's mercy, the day of their deliverance is at hand; that they will soon perceive the aid of the Saviour and Redeemer. My daily prayer is (above all at the holy altar) that their expectations and frequent appeals may at length find a term.
I forgot to say, that on arriving at Linden, a village situated eight miles below the river Nishnabotna, I found Major Matlock very dangerously ill with dysentery. He recognized me at once, and cried out: " Father Hoeken, I am extremely glad to see you. I wished to see you much a long time; but I am so indisposed at this moment that I cannot converse with you. Could you not come a little later?" " Most willingly," I replied; " I will see you by and by." An hour after I returned to his room in the hotel; I found him half asleep. He heard my voice, and after having dismissed those who were with him, he spoke to me of his religious convictions. He informed me that he had been brought up in the Methodist sect, but that he