Page 41 - March On! God will Provide by Brother Aubert

TO AMERICA 2I

good Brother Nicholas who spent practically three
months with me in the territory of this same tribe."
Mr. Ryken also helps out in this identification: "At
the St. Joseph River in the vicinity of where I lived
among the Indians and where I was able to study their
character and way of living, there was a small village
composed of about eighteen huts and a little further on
twelve others, so that there lived some thirty families.
"There was a priest living with them as they were all
Catholics and even very devout ones, frequenting the
Holy Sacraments, praying devputly, and observing fast
days faithfully.
"Many of them carried the rosary around their necks
even in public. They took holy water with them when
going hunting. They cultivated the ground around the
village and they were engaged in all sorts of handicrafts.
They were very gentle and patient. Their chief, Po-
kegan, is an excellent man, very pious, preaching as a
zealous missionary. They obey their priests as rhey do
their parents."
This Indian village was located on a high bank of
the Saint Joseph River, near the road to Niles, Michigan.
Father Badin had lived there nhen he first came among
the Pottawatomi in 1830, but in the spring of 1832,
when Deacon Boheme and "good Brother Nicholas"
accompanied him north from Cincinnati, he brought
them to the three hundred acre rracr which he had pur-
chased at what is now South Bend, Indiana. Here he
converted a two-story log cabin, acquired with the prop-
erty, into a chapel and residence. This property even-
tually passed into the hands of Father Sorin and his
associates. A replica of the Badin log cabin holds an
honored place on the campus of Notre Dame University.
On September 26, 1832, Bishop Fenwick, while on a
visitation of his diocese, died of cholera ar 'Wooster,