one, entered upon the Oregon mission,--Oregon
then extending east as far as the Rocky Mountains. They had often to
travel through dark forests, into which the daylight never entered, and,
axe in hand, make their own paths through the wilderness, sometimes
crawling on all-fours through labyrinths of fallen trees, fording rivers
where the water reached to their shoulders, travelling afterwards in
their wet clothes, with swollen limbs, and moccasins soaked in blood
from laceration of their feet by the thorns of the prickly pear, and
lying down at night on their beds of brushwood, wrapped in their
buffalo-robes. The Indians were full of curiosity to know what they were
in search of, and listened with great interest when they attempted to
talk with them. The first group that Father Joseph gathered about him
sat all night to hear him, although they had come from hard labor of
hunting and fishing, and digging roots. He said, that, however degraded
they were, they were all eager to find some power superior to man.

The tribe among whom he first established himself--the Coeurs
d'Alene--were renowned among all the tribes for their belief in sorcery;
and he experienced great difficulty in making an impression upon them,
from the opposition of the medicine-men (jugglers). Among this tribe he
found two relics held in great esteem, of which the Indians gave him
this account:--

They said that the first white man they ever saw wore a spotted-calico
shirt--which to them appeared like the small-pox--and a great white
comforter. They thought the spotted shirt was the Great Manitou himself,
the master of the alarming disease that swept them off in such vast
numbers, and that the white comforter was the Manitou of the snow; that,
if they could only secure and worship them, the small-pox would be
banished, and abundant snows would drive the buffalo down from the
mountains. The white man agreed to give them up, receiving in exchange
several of their best horses; and for many years these two Manitous were
carried in solemn procession to a hill consecrated to superstitious
rites, laid reverently on the grass, and the great medicine-pipe (which
is offered to the earth, the sun, and the water) was presented to them;
the whole band singing, dancing, and howling around them.

Father Joseph treated the Indians altogether as children, and devised a
system of object-teaching, making little images representing what they
were to shun, and what to see