MORE than a hundred and twentyfive years since a fort was built by the Spaniards, who were then the possessors of the country, about sixty miles above the spot where the river Arkansas pours into the Mississippi. They erected this fort for the double purpose of protecting the trading posts which were connected with it, and of strengthening their own right of possession of the lands which the advances of the French from above the Mississippi and the Illinois territory rendered necessary.

Few traces of this fort are now to be found, though the village, which has increased to be the chief town of the Arkansas country, still bears the name of Arkansas Post, in remembrance of the building which for merly stood there.

The fort lay on the north side of the river, on the southwest side of the "great prairie" which divides the State into two parts. On the south side of the river, and nearly opposite to the fort, there was a large village of Quapaw Indians, who boasted proudly that they had never shed a single drop of white man's blood. They lived on the most friendly terms with the Spaniards, willingly received their instructions, and soon surpassed other nations in their skill in the use of firearms. The warriors supplied the fort with game and the merchants with furs, while the squaws brought for purchase maize, beans, melons, and all kinds of vegetables of their own growing.

But these quiet and peaceable people had their enemies in the wild Osage Indians, who were always skirmishing around, and who sometimes acted as aids to the French in their operations against the Spaniards, sometimes committed robberies on their own account; for better defence against these, their

common enemies, the Spaniards and the Quapaws made a compact for mutual aid and protection. A cannon-shot from the fort was to be the signal of approaching danger, and upon hearing this the Quapaws, who numbered at that time a thousand fighting-men, would hasten to the assistance of their allies.

At that time there dwelt on the Mississippi a band of robber adventurers under the command of a certain Clary, whose bold undertakings and cruel deeds were like those of a hero of romance. This band determined to attack the "Post" in order to get possession of the rich treasures which they knew were stowed away there, and they chose the autumn as the time for carrying their intentions into effect, a time when both whites and Indians were engaged in hunting the buffalo in the distant prairies. They rowed down the Arkansas in four large pirogues, landed two miles from the fort, and broke upon the unarmed village, forty men strong, at break of day, without their approach having been observed.

The governor of the country, and commandant of the post, Don Carlos de Villemont, had been called to New Orleans upon business some weeks before, and his family, consisting of his wife and a daughter of ten years old, were anxiously expecting his return. Although the Spaniards were lords of the country, yet the inhabitants of the fort were chiefly French or their descendants, and the wife of the governor, Donna Clara, was herself a French creole.

The robbers, of course, met with no resistance from the terrified and unresisting women, who were unable to oppose them. There was one negro who had sufficient presence of mind and intelligence to make the agreed signal, although there was small hope that their distant friends

and protectors would hear the roar of the gun.

The assailants first fell upon the fort, which they stripped of all its treasures and portable goods, then they plundered the village around it, frightfully ill-treated the inhabitants, and burned and destroyed everything that they could not carry off. Having completed their plunder and nearly destroyed the village, they returned with their booty to their boats.

But their chief did not seem satisfied with the rich plunder; probably he hoped to obtain a large ransom from the rich Governor, for before he disposed his booty in the boats, with his band he hastened back to the abode of the Governor, tore her little daughter from the arms of the despairing mother, and heeding neither the cries of the child nor the sorrowful entreaties of Donna Clara, hurried her away to the boats.

But the negro's cannon-shot had not been fired in vain; it had reached the ear of a true friend, and a brave heart answered the cry for help. When the Indians went forth to their chase, their chief or king, Sarasa, was too ill to accompany them, and he was therefore the only man who at the time of the alarm was left in the Indian village.

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He might well suppose that the "Wild Cat," the chief of the Osages, with his whole horde, were rounding the fort; he might well consider that his death would be inevitable if he appeared before them; but nothing could prevent his keep ing his word pledged to his white brethren to help them in time of need. With quick decision he seized his gun and tomahawk, sprang into a canoe, and rowed to the fort, where he arrived about an hour after the robbers had left. The women at once rushed out to meet him, wringing their hands, and when he learned the frightful truth from the trembling lips, and heard the hated

name of the pirate Clary, and when the beautiful Donna Clara threw herself weeping at his feet, and in heartrending accents implored him to save her child, the mighty Indian trembled with anger; with powerful springs he flew from the circle of weeping women towards the river, uttering his piercing war-cry.

In the meantime the pirates had got their rich plunder on board the boats and were revelling in the wine and other good things which they found among the Governor's treasures, while little Inez, the Governor's daughter, sat sobbing in a distant part of the boat, having been terrified into silence by the threats of the bandit-chief. The carouse was at its height, and the pirates were roaring out in chorus one of their wild songs, when suddenly the sound. died on their lips, and every eye was attracted as by some irresistible power to one particular spot.

A tall, majestic figure, with gun in one hand and tomahawk in the other, stepped forth from the neighboring thicket, his eyes, bold, proud, and sparkling with anger, turned upon the robber-band. It was the King of the Quapaws, who must have been well known to the pirates as well as greatly feared by them, for they remained as if fixed to the ground, without moving their eyes from him. The Indian chief looked anxiously among the troop of astonished men for the boat in which was the child,.gave the long warcry of his tribe, and struck his tomahawk with a tremendous swing against the side of the pirogue. Then he climbed into the boat, raised the sobbing child in his arms, and strode away with her in the same solemn manner in which he had come, and, passing through the still paralyzed troop of robbers vanished in the thicket.

When the enchantment in which the bandits were held was dissolved by the disappearance of the warrior, Clary sprang up with the cry,

"Sarasa! Sarasa ! and all looked terrified around, as if they expected to hear the crack of a hundred rifles and the unearthly war-cry of the approaching Quapaws. Quick as lightning they hurried after their boats, got into them, and rowed down the stream with all their might, to get out of reach of the muchdreaded Indian rifles. Thus did the heroic courage of one man fill the hearts of half a hundred with aların.

The parents of the man who told me this true story had been settled about forty years in that country, after France had ceded Louisiana to the United States. The Indians then exercised a right over the Arkansas territory, and the ancestors of this man must have received permission from King Sarasa to settle on his lands.

"At that time," my informant was told by his mother, "King Sarasa had reached a great age, but his carriage was still proud and upright, and his countenance had a decided and noble expression. He died some years before the removal of his tribe to another territory, by order of the United States, and was buried in the place where I now live, at

that time one of the Indian villages. I well remember the time when the warriors of his race, before their departure to the far West, assembled around his grave at night, and cried. with sorrowful voice: 'O King! come, O King, come!' It seemed as if they were imploring the spirit of the great king to accompany them on their constrained pilgrimage towards the setting sun."

The memory of my informant could go back to the times when the Quapaw and Choctaw Indians were no longer possessors of the land, but roved about in little bands, and for months and years would remain quiet and peaceful upon the fields which had once been their own. He declares that he never lived among more upright, honest, and truthful men than these Indians were. They never took an ear of corn, a melon, or a peach without first asking permission, though they often suffered want. In their gradual and undeserved extinction, they maintain their proud, stoical character, and it seems to be one of their greatest pleasures, when they can tell of the heroic deeds of their great King Sarasa to the ear of a willing listener.

WHEN the Indian policy of President Grant was inaugurated, the Catholic Church, as the reports state, "had stations and travelling Indian missionaries all over Arizona, among the scattered and impoverished descendants of the children of our once populous and flourishing missions. It had nineteen churches, commodious, substantial, brick buildings, with regularly attended stations among the Pueblos of New Mexico, and travelling missionaries over nearly the whole Territory; and in California the missionaries visited regularly, and administered to the wants of the few Indians that were left of the tribes that a hundred years ago gathered about the eighteen Franciscan missions, from which the true peace policy was first taught practi. cally on the Pacific coast. In the vast region north of California there were twelve regular stations, from which our missionaries regularly visited every tribe from the mountains to the seashore. There were three stations in Idaho and three in Montana, from which Father De Smet and his followers journeyed and baptized, and taught the lessons of the Evangelists among the 18,000 Blackfeet and Crows, the 40,000 Sioux, and the numberless tribes of the Northwest, and the regions of Wyoming and Colorado. There were two stations in Kansas, two in Wisconsin; one in Michigan, and one in Maine, and from these stations the priests went out in all seasons to lift up and console the remnants of all tribes from ocean to

ocean.

"When this policy was announced not a single Protestant Indian mission was known to exist on the whole Pacific slope. No Protestant church had undertaken the conversion of any Indian tribe in New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah or Idaho, until 1870; and after a fruitless attempt of some eleven or twelve years in Oregon and Washington Territory, the Methodists and Presbyterians had retired from the missionary field in 1848, and left it untended for twenty-two years.

"All who had any knowledge of our Indian tribes in 1870 knew that the Church was the only Indian missionary; it followed that we would have control of at least the forty agencies at which we had permanent mission stations if the peace policy was honestly administered; but it has not been honestly administered, and consequently we have not a single agency in California, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming or Idaho. We had only one in Arizona for a few years, and it has recently been abolished-the only

one of six agencies-and by all official reports the most successful in its work of christianizing and civilizing its Indians. We have only two in Oregon, two in Washington Territory, one in Montana, and two in Dakota. All the other agencies, seventytwo in number, have been assigned to Protestant churches, and wherever these have obtained control, they claim it to be an exclusive spiritual as well as temporal control, thus assuming the right to exclude us from some thirty agencies where we have Catholic Indians, and from all others where we have not as yet been at work."

THE injustice inflicted on the Catholic Indians called loudly for remedial measures. Charles Ewing, Esq., is Catholic Commissioner for Indian Missions in Washington. From official reports it appears that much good has resulted from the establishment of this office. For example:

It has presented to the Interior Department carefully prepared and printed arguments, in which is given a full and clear interpretation of the Indian policy.

It has prepared and filed numerous and lengthy reports establishing the undeniable right of the Church, under this Indian policy, to thirty of the agencies that were assigned to Protestant control.

It has secured the assignment of three agencies to the care of the Church, and Catholic agents have been appointed.

It has secured the establishment of six Catholic boarding and manual labor schools at our Catholic agencies; and there is a fair prospect that within six or eight months two additional schools of the same kind will be in successful operation.

It has issued a large number of carefully prepared letters of instruction for the guidance of our agents; and it has promptly attended to and advanced the interests of all Indians who have applied to it.

A portion of the agencies have recently been visited, and important changes have resulted therefrom.

Many petitions from and on behalf of the Indians have been presented and urged as their merits demanded.

Various delegations from the several tribes were accompanied, and their grievances properly represented to the Indian Bureau.

An investigation of frauds alleged to have been practiced on a Catholic tribe by their Protestant agent has been secured.