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that the Indians were more likely to make the cross a stepping-stone to idolatry than to understand its spiritual significance; not appearing to perceive that he was dealing with savages who were already imbued with the principles of the Roman Catholic religion.^[1]

After travelling several days to the Kooskooskie River, Parker, dreading the terrible Salmon River Mountains, where he narrowly escaped death the year before tried to persuade the Nez Percés to take the Grande Ronde and Snake River route usually travelled by the Hudson's Bay Company's parties. As the Indians however, preferred the Salmon River route, which avoided the hostile Blackfoot warriors, he changed his design, and after sending letters by

1. As this mistake of Parker's afterward assumed serious import, some explanation should be made of the religious ideas of the natives selected by him as most hopeful and teachable. It will be remembered that the Dalles people observed Sunday as a holiday, in the manner of the Catholic church. Parker himself explains in a note, p. 254, that the reason assigned to him for dancing being included in their ceremonials was the fear that if it were forbidden they could not be interested in pure worship; obviously this reason was not furnished him by the natives themselves. Again, in relating the circumstance of the burial cross, he remarks that they had probably been told by some Iroquois, a few of whom he had seen west of the Rocky Mountains, to place a cross at the head of a grave, again showing he was not wholly ignorant of Indian theology in this quarter. Shea, in his History of the Catholic Missions, 467, says that some Iroquois formerly of the Coughnawaga Catholic mission, joined the Flatheads previous to 1820, the tribe becoming christianized about that time, through their example; and that their desire for teachers led to the pilgrimage to St Louis before mentioned. They continued in the ceremonials and practices of the church, daily offering up prayers to God, and keeping the sabbath. This agrees with the observations of Bonneville in 1834, who says the Flatheads, Nez Percés, and Cayuses had a strong devotional feeling, but speaks of it as successfully cultivated by some of the Hudson's Bay Company's people. So far as Mr Pambrun of Walla Walla is concerned, this I believe to be the truth, but not of the company's servants generally, as Dunn in his History of the Oregon Territory, 181, informs us, they having occasion to blame themselves for their neglect. So well advanced in the Christian religion were the tribes mentioned, according to Bonneville, that they would not raise their camps on Sunday, nor fish, hunt, or trade on that day except in cases of severe necessity, but passed a portion of the day in religious ceremonies, the chiefs leading the devotions, and afterward giving a sort of sermon upon abstaining from lying, stealing, cheating, and quarrelling, and the duty of being hospitable to strangers. Prayers and exhortations were also made in the morning on week days, often by the chief on horseback, moving slowly about the camp, and giving his instructions in a loud voice, the people listening with attention, and at the end of every sentence responding equivalent to amen. While these ceremonials were going on every employment was suspended. If an Indian was riding by, he dismounted, and attended with reverence until the conclusion. When the chief had finished, he said, 'I have done,' upon which there was an exclamation in unison. 'With