The sun. [volume] (Morris, Stevens County, Minn.) 1882-1895, 1891-01-15
A CANADIAN MISSIONARY.
Father Lacombe and His Unavaillng Plea
to the Blackfoot Indians.

The history of the conquest of the
wilderness contains no more pathetic
story than that of how the kind old
priest, Father Lacombe, warned the
Blackfoot Indians against the coming
of the pale-faces. He went to the
reservation and assembled the leaders
before him in council. He told them
that the white men were building a
great railroad, and in a month their
workmen would be in that virgin
country. He told the wondering red
men that among these laborers would
be found many bad men seeking to sell
whisky, offering money for the ruin
of the squaws. Reaching the greatest
eloquence possible for him, because he
loved the Indians and doubted their
strength, he assured them that contact
with these white men would result in
death, in the destruction of the In
dians, and by the most horrible pro-
cesses of disease and misery. He thun-
dered and he pleaded. The Indians
smoked and reflected. Then they
spoke through old Crowfoot:
I'VE have listened. We will keep
upon our reservation. We will not go
to see the railroad.
But Father Lacombe doubted still,
and yet more profoundly was he con-
WINGED of the ruin of the tribe should
the ''children," as he sagely calls all
Indians, disobey him. So once again
he went to the reserve, and gathered
the chief and the headmen, and warned
them of the soulless, diabolical, self
ish instincts of the white men. Again
the grave warriors promised to obey
him.
The railroad laborers came with
camps and money and liquors and
numbers. and the prairie Numbered
the echoes of their sledge-hammer
strokes. And one morning the old
priest looked out of the window of his
bare bedroom and saw curling wisps of
gray smoke ascending from score of
tepees on the hill beside Calgary.
Angry, amazed. he went to his door
way and opened it, and there upon the
ground sat some of the headmen and
the old men, with bowed heads
ashamed. Fancy the priests wrath
and his questions! Note how wisely
he chose the name of children for them,
when l tell you that their spokesman at
last answered with the excuse that the
buffaloes were gone, and food was hard
to get, and the white men brought
money which the squaws could get.
And what is the end? There are al
ways tepees on the hills now beside
every settlement near the Blackfoot
reservation. And one old missionary
lifted his trembling foretinger toward
the sky, when was there, and said:
mark me. In fifteen years there
will not be full-blooded Indian alive
on the Canadian prairie-not one."
Through all that revolutionary rail-
road building and the rush of new
settlers, Father Lacombe and Crow
foot kept the Indians from war, and
even from depredations and from MUIR
der. When the half-breeds arose under
Riel, and every Indian looked to his
rifle and his knife, and when the NUT
terings that preface the war-cry sound
ed in every lodge. Father Lacombe
made Crowfoot pledge his word that
the Indians should not rise. The
priest represented the government on
these occasions. The Canadian states
men recognize the value of his services.
He is the great authority on Indian
matters beyond our border; the am
bassador TO and spokesman for the
Indians. Ralph, in HarpeT's
Weekly. -