William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1

[13] a small cross at his belt; which he raised and pressed to his lips whenever he either stopped to sing or knelt to pray. The fathers built an altar, spread a cloth, and, though the sun was burning, lit some candles. They unfurled the banner of a beautiful white squaw, whom they described as the mother of a mighty prince; a prince, who, in a land beyond the sea, had suffered on the cross and thereby saved the souls of men. They sang a psalm which sounded to these children of the forest like a strain of music from the spirit land.

At first the Indians held aloof. These strangers came across the sea, like birds, no one knew whence. Why had they come, unless to steal the squaws, to cut the grass, and take away the elk and antelope? Yet, when the fathers raised the image of that lovely squaw, and sang that music from the spirit land, the Red men crept beneath the fence of sundried bricks, in order to behold that face and hear that psalm. In time their fears were calmed. By offering food to the hungry, clothes to the naked, and potions to the sick, the good fathers won their way into these savage and suspicious hearts. They told the natives they had brought to them a message