They are doing quite well at agriculture, raising corn and wheat, and storing hay. The Government supplies all those who seem industrious with implements and machines for use in farming; and some of the men learn quickly their use and manipulation, so that the results of their labor would often do a white farmer credit. The great drawback to their success is their natural tendency to work awhile and then shirk awhile. They soon tire of steady employment, and form all kinds of excuses for absence. Like the Irish, they always have sick relatives who demand their attention at the most inopportune times. This is not more characteristic of the Mandans than of all Indians. The lack of discipline in their natures is a very great disadvantage, and is something that missionaries and agents have constantly to fight. Of course, for generations back the Indians have followed their own sweet wills, and have roamed the prairie and forest at pleasure, traveling when they wished to travel, and halting when they wished to halt, so that the idea of any necessity for steady toil day after day, is one that they grasp with difficulty. They must learn first that there is a to-morrow—a fact they have never realized. This accomplished, a long step ahead will be gained. Little missionary work has been done among the Mandans in their own language, and few of them understanding other languages—even those of the Arickarees and Gros Ventres—it is little they can learn of the Christian’s God and religion. The fear of their own gods arouses them to sacrifice and worship, often of the most horrible kind, and even while they gaze with red, swollen eyes at the sun, in painful worship, there is a yearning in their hearts for better, higher things, and this it is that prompts their heathen prayers to all nature, through their ignorance of the one true source from which these better things can be. While I have spoken of their ambitious attempts at agriculture as a tribe, there are still many among them who are idle. Young Indian men in the very prime of life, powerful, and abundantly able to labor with the strongest, spend their days sitting around the camp fires with the old men and the dogs, in among blackened kettles, and all the filthy paraphernalia of their lodges—sit, and smoke, and talk, and sleep. I asked, one day: “What are these people saying—what can they find to talk so much about?” “Oh,” said my Indian companion, “they talk of the old times—of their wars and their dances!” Sad enough was the picture!