GERTRUDE ATHERTON,
in Rulers of Kings.
MAY 26.
INVITATION TO AN INDIAN FEAST IN YOSEMITE.
As the time of the feast drew near, runners were sent across the mountains, carrying a bundle of willow sticks, or a sinew cord or leaf of dried grass tied with knots, that the Monos might know how many suns must cross the sky before they should go to Ah-wah-nee to share the feast of venison with their neighbors. And the Monos gathered together baskets of pinion nuts, and obsidian arrow-heads, and strings of shells, to carry with them to give in return for acorns and chinquapin nuts and basket willow.
BERTHA H. SMITH,
in Yosemite Legends.
MAY 27.
It is owing to the ever active missionary spirit among the Friars Minor (Franciscans) that millions upon millions of American Indians have obtained the Christian faith. The children of St. Francis were, indeed, the principal factors in the very discovery of America, inasmuch as the persons most prominently connected with that event belonged to the Seraphic Family. Fr. Juan Perez de Marchena, the friend and counsellor of Christopher Columbus, was the guardian or superior of the Franciscan monastery at La Rabida; ∗ ∗ ∗ and the great navigator likewise belonged to the Third Order.
FR. ZEPHYRIN,
in Missions and Missionaries of California.