Page 55 - March On! God will Provide by Brother Aubert

TO AMERICA AGAIN 35

to the Catholic Indians. This should be fertile land
near a river suitable for operating a grist mill. Schools
should be established for white chil&en where Indians
would be admitted gradually. Sisters should be brought
to look after the girls, and the Jesuit Fathers should
supervise and manage the whole project.
Badin loved to smoke. He and Ryken chatted at
length about the old days among the Pottawatomi, but
"the old days" were gone. President Andrew
Jackson
had pushed the Red Men across the Mississippi River
into Missouri to make room for the land-hungry white
settlers.
Leaving Cincinnati, Ryken went, down the Ohio River
to Louisville, Kentuckn another booming river-town.
His destination was Bardstown, the cathedrai city, forty
miles inland. Bishop Chabrar, acting for Bishop Flaget,
who was absent in France, should have been a hard man
for Ryken to interest, for he had founded a Brotherhood
in this diocese and it had failed. On December Zl,l8Z7,
he not only wrote a letter of recommendation but in it
he promised to give Ryken 500 acres of land "as soon
as said Brotherhood will have been established in our
diocese."
For at least two weeks Ryken tarried in the neighbor-
hood of Bardstown. ffere was rhe most Catholii spot
in the United States, the center of an almost unbeliev-
able number of religious institutions. One of these was
the Dominican monastery at St. Rose, a few miles away.
On January ll, 1838, the Prior, Father Jarboe, O.p., in-
dicated in writing his approval of whal Ryken had in
mind.
Nearby was the motherhouse of the Sisters of Loretto,
founded by Father Nerinckx, whose missionary exploits
were known to almost every Catholic in Holland through
the columns of George Le Sage's "Friend of Religion."