"I am not usually much alarmed, though often considerably excited. Some Sabbaths since, a party of Indians brought a keg of whiskey, and proposed drinking it in our new building, which is intended for a chapel and school-room. But the Lord did not permit this desecration. One of their number objected to the plan, and they drank it outside the door." When our school-house was erected and partly finished, our efforts at teaching took on more of regularity. It was a more convenient room to hold our Sabbath service in. In religious teaching, as well as in the school, Mr. Hopkins was an indefatigable worker. He learned the language slowly but well. Often he made visits to the Indian camps miles away. When the Dakotas of that neighborhood abstained for a while from drinking, we became encouraged to think that some good impressions were being made upon them. But there would come a new flooding of _spirit water_, and a revival of drinking. Thus our hopes were blasted. "TRAVERSE DES SIOUX, March 15, 1845. "At the present time our Indian neighbors are absent, some at their sugar camps, and others hunting musk-rats. Thus far the season has not been favorable for making sugar, and we have purchased but a few pounds, giving in return flour or corn, of which we have but little to spare. Last spring, we procured our year's supply from the Indians, and for the most of it we gave calico in exchange. Not for our sakes, but for the sake of our ragged and hungry neighbors, I should rejoice in their having an abundant supply. They eat sugar, during the season, as freely as we eat bread, and what they do not need for food they can exchange for clothing. But they will have but little for either, unless the weather is more favorable the last half than it has been the first part of this month. And they are so superstitious that some, I presume, will attribute the unpropitious sky and wind to our influence. Mr. Hopkins visited several camps about ten miles distant, soon after the first and thus far the only good sugar weather. One woman said to him, 'You visited us last winter; before you came there were a great many deer, but afterward none; and now we have made some sugar, but you have come, and perhaps we shall make no more.'" "June 23, 1845. "_My Dear Mother_:--