with similar success, and baptized a number of persons. At Fort Walla Walla a few natives were baptized, but having been recently taught by Whitman, they were less demonstrative, though, at the same time, more observant and critical. On witnessing mass, with all those accessories which appeal most powerfully to the imagination of the savage, they were, according to the vicar-general, "struck with amazement." Had Blanchet been more fully informed concerning the religious antecedents of the Cayuses, he would have been able to account for the interest exhibited by them in this mysterious ceremony, which brought to their recollection all they had ever heard from their Iroquois teachers, or learned from their intercourse with the French trappers and voyageurs, and which they were now wonderingly contrasting with the less decorative and more coldly ideal worship of the Presbyterian missionaries.
The appearance of the priests in their dark robes, their frequent mystical signs of reverence, their chastity, their apparent indifference to secular affairs, all impressed the natives with the sublimity and gravity of the faith. The Umatilla branch of the Cayuses especially showed a strong leaning toward this religion, so that already the 'blackgowns,' as the priests were called, began to divide the natives against themselves in things spiritual. On arriving at Fort Vancouver the Catholic missionaries were waited upon by a delegation from the Canadian settlement, consisting of Joseph Gervais, Étienne Lucier, and Pierre Belleque; but no promise of an establishment on the Willamette was given them at this time. Mass was first celebrated at the fort on the 25th of November; and it is related that many of the Canadians were affected to tears, not having enjoyed this religious privilege for many years. After remaining some time at Vancouver, Blanchet visited the Canadian settlement on the Cowlitz. On returning he spent a month in the Willamette Valley.
