Page:Quarterlyoforego10oreg 1.djvu/273

Rh the Oregon Indians of the interior. Their knowledge of these prayers is thus explained by DeSmet: "They had deputed an intelligent young man, who was gifted with a good memory, to meet me. Having learned the prayers and canticles and such points as were most essential for salvation, he repeated to the village all that he had heard and seen. It was, as you can easily imagine, a great consolation for me to see the sign of the cross and hear prayers addressed to the great God and His praises sung in a desert of about three hundred miles extent, where a Catholic priest had never been before."

The Kalispels had been visited during the summer by ministers who had attempted to disaffect the minds of the savages towards the Catholic missionaries. The Indians' natural and instinctive reverence for the Black-robe, however, soon overcame the prejudice instilled by the hostile ministers. Interesting light is thrown on the missionary situation at this time by a private letter of the wife of the leader of the American Board mission. Mrs. Whitman, writing in 1842, and faithfully reflecting the sentiments of her husband, considered that the interests of the Oregon country hung in the balance with the "prosperity of the cause of Christ on the one hand and the extension of the powers and dominion of Romanism on the other." She continues: "Romanism stalks abroad on our right hand and on our left, and with daring effrontery, boasts that she is to prevail and possess the land. I ask, must it be so? The zeal and energy of her priests are without a parallel, and many, both white men and Indians, wander after the beasts. Two are in the country below us and two far above in the mountains." The priests below at Vancouver were Fathers Blanchet and Demers; those above were DeSmet and Point. Narcissa Whitman bears striking testimony to their zeal and energy. With this letter before us we shall not be surprised to learn that when Dr. Whitman and his wife were massacred by the Indians in 1847, his co-workers were in a