Archbishop Salpointe has 8,000 Catholic Indians in his diocese. The total
Indian population aggregates 25,000. There are 18 churches and 11 schools
in the diocese exclusively for Indians. These schools have an enrollment
of 433 pupils. Three priests devote nearly their whole time to Indian
missionary work. “We intend to carry out our school work on a better
plan,” writes the Most Rev. Archbishop. “The agents of Commissioner
Morgan are doing all in their power to ruin our schools and to pervert
our poor Catholic Indians, by means fair and foul. Their efforts are
especially directed against the faith and Catholic allegiance of the
Pueblos. If we could maintain our schools and especially if we had the
necessary means to maintain two more missionaries to attend the Pueblos
of Santa Jamingo, Saguna, Acoma and Zuni, we could arrive at splendid
results, because those Indians are better affected now towards the
Church, than they have been in years past. Moreover the several thousand
Navajoes (the tribe numbers over 20,000, most of whom reside in this
archdiocese,) are in sad need of missionaries, since the Gospel has never
been preached to them. They need schools, as we have absolutely none for
them. They are intelligent, and doubtless, many of them would be won over
easily to Catholicity.” Bishop Chapelle of the same diocese writes “I
trust that the amount asked for in the names of the Most Rev. Archbishop
and my own, will be allowed us. Our Indians are very poor indeed and
the resources of the archdiocese, I may say, are _nil_, for the work of
evangelizing these poor people.”