The Indian hunt was over; they were done making their sugar; the women were planting corn. The warriors hid in the thick foliage of the river borders, preparing for war.
"Madison has declared war against England!"
The news was hailed with delight. Now would end this frightful suspense. In Illinois alone, fifteen hundred savages under foreign machinations held in terror forty thousand white people,—officers and soldiers of George Rogers Clark and others who had settled on the undefended prairies.
"Mackinac is gone!"
"The savages have massacred the garrison at Fort Dearborn!"
"They are planning to attack the settlements on the Mississippi. If the Sioux join the confederacy—" cheeks paled at the possibility.
The greatest body of Indians in America resided on the Mississippi. Who could say at what hour the waters would resound with their whoops? Thousands of them could reach St. Louis or Cahokia from their homes in five or six days. Immense quantities of British gifts were coming from the Lakes to the Indians at Peoria, Rock Island, Des Moines.
"Yes, we shall attack when the corn is ripe," said the Indians at Fort Madison.
"Unless I hear shortly of more assistance than a few rangers I shall bury my papers in the ground, send my family off, and fight as long as possible," said Edwards, the Governor of Illinois.
In Missouri, surrounded by Pottawattamies, champion horsethieves of the frontier, and warlike Foxes, Iowas, and Kickapoos, the settlers ploughed their fields with sentinels on guard. Horns hung at their belts to blow as a signal of danger. In the quiet hour by the fireside, an Indian would steal into the postern gate and shoot the father at the hearth, the mother at her evening task.
Presently the settlers withdrew into the forts, unable to raise crops. With corn in the cabin loft, the bear hunt in the fall, the turkey hunt at Christmas, and venison hams kept over from last year, still there was plenty.
Daniel Boone, the patriarch of about forty families, ever on the lookout with his long thin eagle face, ruled by advice and example. The once light flaxen hair was gray, but even yet Boone's step was springy as the Indian's, as gun in hand he watched around the forts.
Maine, Montana, each has known it all, the same running fights of Kentucky and Oregon. Woe to the little children playing outside the forted village,—woe to the lad driving home the cows,—woe to the maid at milking time.
The alarm was swelled by Quas-qua-ma, a chief of the Sacs, a very pacific Indian and friend of the whites, who came by night to bring warning and consult Clark. In his search Quas-qua-ma tip-toed from porch to porch. Frightened habitants peered through the shutters.
"What ees wanted?"
"The Red Head Chief."
But Clark had not arrived.
"We must take this matter into our own hands," said the people. "British and Indians came once from Mackinac. They may again."
"Mackinac? They are at Fort Madison now, murdering our regulars and rangers. How long since they burned our boats and cargoes at Fort Bellevue? Any day they may drop down on St. Louis."
"We must fortify."
"The old bastions may be made available for service."
"The old Spanish garrison tower must be refitted for the women and children."
Such were the universal conclusions. Men went up the river to the islands to bring down logs. Another party set to work to dig a wide, deep ditch for a regular stockade.
When Clark arrived to begin his duties as Territorial Governor he found St. Louis bordering on a state of panic. There was the cloud-shadow of the north. Below, one thousand Indians, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Catawbas on a branch of the Arkansas within three days' journey of Saint Genevieve were crossing the river at Chickasaw Bluffs. Tecumseh's belts of wampum were flying everywhere.
In their best necklaces of bears' claws Clark's ninety chiefs came home, laden with tokens of esteem. Civilised military dress had succeeded the blanket; the wild fierce air was gone.
"We have declared war against Kinchotch [King George]," said the proud chiefs, taking boat to keep their tribes quiet along the west.
A sense of security returned to St. Louis. Would they not act as a barrier to tribes more remote? The plan for local fortification was abandoned, but a cordon of family blockhouses was built from Bellefontaine to Kaskaskia, a line seventy-five miles in length, along which the rangers rode daily, watching the red marauders of Illinois. The Mississippi was picketed with gunboats.
"Whoever holds Prairie du Chien holds the Upper Mississippi," said Governor Clark. "I will go there and break up that rendezvous of British and Indians."
Who better than Clark knew the border and the Indian? He could ply the oar, or level the rifle, or sleep at night on gravel stones.
"It requires time and a little smoking with Indians if you wish to have peace with them."
As soon as possible a gunboat, the Governor Clark, and several smaller boats, manned with one hundred and fifty volunteers and sixty regular troops, went up into the hostile country. Fierce Sacs glared from Rock Island, Foxes paused in their lead digging at Dubuque's mines,—lead for British cannon.
Although on Missouri territory, Prairie du Chien was still occupied by Indians and traders to the exclusion of Americans. Six hundred, seven hundred miles above St. Louis, a little red bird whispered up the Mississippi, "Long Knives coming!" The traders retired.
"Whoever enjoys the trade of the Indians will have control of their affections and power," said Clark. "Too long have we left this point unfortified."
A great impression had been made on the savages by the liberality of the British traders. Their brilliant red coats—"Eenah! eenah! eenamah!" exclaimed the Sioux.
But now the Long Knives! Wabasha, son of Wabasha of the Revolution, remembered the Long Knives. When Clark arrived at Prairie du Chien Wabasha refused to fight him. Red Wing came down to the council. Upon his bosom Rising Moose proudly exhibited a medal given him by Captain Pike in 1805. The Indians nicknamed him "Tammaha, the Pike."
Twenty-five leagues above Tammaha's village lived Wabasha, and twenty-five above Wabasha, the Red Wing, all great chiefs of the Sioux, all very friendly now to the Long Knife who had come up in his gunboat.
Since time immemorial Wabasha had been a friend of the British, twice had he, the son of Wabasha I., been to Quebec and received flags and medals. But now he remembered Captain Pike who visited their northern waters while Lewis and Clark were away at the west. Grasping the hand of Clark,—
"We have the greatest friendship for the United States," said the chiefs,—all except Little Crow. He was leading a war party to the Lakes.
Leaving troops to erect a fort and maintain a garrison at the old French Prairie du Chien, Governor Clark returned to his necessary duties at St. Louis. Behind on the river remained the gunboat to guard the builders.
"A fort at the Prairie?" cried the British traders at Mackinac. "That cuts off our Dakota trade." And forthwith an expedition was raised to capture the garrison.
Barely was the rude fortification completed before a force of British and Chippewas were marching upon it.
"I will not fight the Big Knives any more," said Red Wing.
"Why?" asked the traders.
"The lion and the eagle fight. Then the lion will go home and leave us to the eagle." Red Wing was famed for foretelling events at Prairie du Chien.
In June Manuel Lisa came down the Missouri.
"De Arrapahoe, Arikara, Gros Ventre, and Crow are at war wit' de American. De British Nort'west traders embroil our people wit' de sauvages to cut dem off!"
"We must extend the posts of St. Louis to the British border," cautioned Clark to Lisa. "And if necessary arm the Yanktons and Omahas against the Sacs and Iowas. I herewith commission you, Lisa, my especial sub-agent among the nations of the Missouri to keep them at peace."
Very well Clark knew whom he was trusting. Now that war had crippled the Missouri Fur Company, Lisa alone represented them in the field. Familiar with the fashions of Indians, the size and colour of the favourite blanket, the shape and length of tomahawks, no trader was more a favourite than Manuel Lisa. Besides, he still maintained the company's posts,—Council Bluffs with the Omahas, six hundred miles up the Missouri, and another at the Sioux, six hundred miles further still, with two hundred hunters in his employ. Here was a force not to be despised.
Ten months in the year Lisa was buried in the wilderness, hid in the forest and the prairie, far from his wife in St. Louis. Wily, winning, and strategic, no trader knew Indians better.
"And," continued the Governor, "I offer you five hundred dollars for sub-agent's salary."
"A poor five hundred tollar!" laughed Lisa. "Eet will not buy te tobacco which I give annually to dose who call me Fader. But Lisa will go. His interests and dose of de Government are one."
Then after a moment's frowning reflection,—"I haf suffered enough," almost wailed Lisa, "I haf suffered enough in person and in property under a different government, to know how to appreciate de one under w'ich I now live."
Even while they were consulting, "Here is your friend, de Rising Moose!" announced old Antoine Le Claire.
"Rising Moose?" Governor Clark started to his feet as one of the Prairie du Chien chiefs came striding through the door.
"The fort is taken, but I will not fight the Long Knife. Tammaha is an American."
All the way down on the gunboat riddled with bullets, Tammaha had come with the fleeing soldiers to offer his tomahawk to Governor Clark. The guns were not yet in when the enemy swept down on the fort at Prairie du Chien.
"Prairie du Chien lost? It shall be recovered. Wait until Spring."
And the British, too, said, "Wait until Spring and we will take St. Louis." But they feared the gunboats.
Governor Clark accepted Tammaha's service, commissioning him a chief of the Red Wing band of Sioux. "Wait and go up with Lisa. Tell your people the Long Knife counsels them to remain quiet."
When Lisa set out for the north as agent of both the fur business and that of the Government, he carried with him mementoes and friendly reminders to all the principal chiefs of the northern tribes.
Big Elk of the Omahas, Black Cat and Big White of the Mandans, Le Borgne of the Minnetarees, even the chiefs of the dreaded Teton Sioux were not forgotten. The Red Head had been there, had visited their country. He was the son of their Great Father,—they would listen to the Red Head Chief.
At this particular juncture of our national history, Clark the Red Head and Manuel Lisa the trader formed a fortunate combination for the interests of the United States. Their words to the northern chiefs were weighty. Their gifts were continued pledges of sacred friendship. While the eyes of the nation were rivetted on the conflict in the East and on the ocean, Clark held the trans-Mississippi with even a stronger grip than his illustrious brother had held the trans-Alleghany thirty years before.
Along with Lisa up the Missouri to the Dakotas went Tammaha, the Rising Moose, and crossed to Prairie du Chien.
"Where do you come from and what business have you here?" cried the British commander, rudely jerking Tammaha's bundle from his back and examining it for letters.
"I come from St. Louis," answered the Moose. "I promised the Long Knife I would come to Prairie du Chien and here I am."
"Lock him in the guard house. He ought to be shot!" roared the officer.
"I am ready for death if you choose to kill me," answered Rising Moose.
At last in the depth of winter they sent him away.
Determined now, the old chief set out in the snows to turn all his energy against the British.
"The Old Priest," said some of the Indians, "Tammaha talks too much!"
All along the Missouri, from St. Louis to the Mandans, Lisa held councils with the Indians with wonderful success. But the Mississippi tribes, nearer to Canada, were for the most part won over to Great Britain.
In other directions Governor Clark sent out for reports from the tribes. The answer was appalling. As if all were at war, a cordon of foes stretched from the St. Lawrence to the Arkansas and Alabama.
Even Black Partridge,—at the Fort Dearborn massacre he had snatched Mrs. Helm from the tomahawk and held her in the lake to save her life. Late that night at an Indian camp a friendly squaw-mother dressed her wounds. Black Partridge loved that girl.
"Lieutenant Helm is a prisoner among the Indians," said agent Forsythe at Peoria. "Here are presents, Black Partridge. Go ransom him. Here is a written order on General Clark for one hundred dollars when you bring him to the Red Head Chief."
Black Partridge rode to the Kankakee village and spread out his presents. "And you shall have one huntret tollars when you bring him to te Red Head Chief."
"Not enough! Not enough!" cried the Indians.
"Here, then, take my pony, my rifle, my ring," said the Partridge, unhooking the hoop of gold from his nose. The bargain was made. The man was ransomed, and mounted on ponies all started for St. Louis. Lieutenant Helm was saved.
Late at night, tired and hungry, the rain falling in torrents, without pony or gun, Black Partridge arrived at his village on Peoria Lake. His village? It was gone. Black embers smouldered there.
Wrapped in his blanket, Black Partridge sat on the ground to await the revelation of dawn. Wolves howled a mournful wail in his superstitious ear. Day dawned. There lay the carnage of slaughter,—his daughter, his grandchild, his neighbours, dead. The rangers had burnt his town.
Breathing vengeance, "I will go on the war path," said Black Partridge, the Pottawattamie.
Two hundred warriors went from the wigwams of Illinois under Black Partridge, Shequenebec sent a hundred from his stronghold at the head of Peoria Lake, Mittitass led a hundred from his village at the portage on the Rivière des Plaines. Painted black they came, inveterate since Tippecanoe.
"Look out for squalls," wrote John O'Fallon from St. Louis to his mother at Louisville. "An express arrived from Fort Madison yesterday informing that the sentinels had been obliged to fire upon the Indians almost every night to keep them at their distance. Indians are discovered some nights within several feet of the pickets."
Black Hawk was there. Very angry was Black Hawk at the building of Fort Madison at the foot of Des Moines rapids.
While Lewis and Clark were gone in 1804, William Henry Harrison, directed by Jefferson, made a treaty with the Sacs and Foxes by which they gave up fifty millions of acres. Gratiot, Vigo, the Chouteaus, and officers of the state and army, Quasquama and four other chiefs, attached their names to that treaty in the presence of Major Stoddard.
"I deny its validity!" cried Black Hawk. "I never gave up my land."
Now Black Hawk was plotting and planning and attacking Fort Madison, until early in September a panting express arrived at St. Louis.
"Fort Madison is burned, Your Excellency."
"How did it happen?" inquired the Governor.
"Besieged until the garrison was reduced to potatoes alone, we decided to evacuate. Digging a tunnel from the southeast blockhouse to the river, boats were made ready. Slipping out at night, crowding through the tunnel on hands and knees, our last man set fire to Fort Madison. Like tinder the stockade blazed, kissing the heavens. Indians leaped and yelled with tomahawks, expecting our exit. At their backs, under cover of darkness, we escaped down the Mississippi."
"Show me what kind of country we have to march through," said the British General to Tecumseh, after Detroit had fallen.
Taking a roll of elm-bark Tecumseh drew his scalping knife and etched upon it the rivers, hills, and woods he knew so well. And the march began,—to be checked at Fort Stephenson by a boy of twenty-one.
It was the dream and hope of the British Fur Companies to extend their territory as far within the American border as possible. The whole War of 1812 was a traders' war. Commerce, commerce, for which the world is battling still, was the motive power on land and sea.
At the Lakes now, the British fur traders waved their flags again above the ramparts of Detroit. "We must hold this post,—its loss too seriously deranges our plans."
Smouldering, the old Revolutionary fires had burst anew. Did George III. still hope to conquer America?
"Hull surrendered?" America groaned at the stain, the stigma, the national disgrace! In a day regiments leaped to fill the breach. "Detroit must be re-taken!"
Along the Lakes battle succeeded battle in swift succession.
At Louisville two mothers, Lucy and Fanny, were anxious for their boys. Both George Croghan and John O'Fallon had been with Harrison at Tippecanoe. Both had been promoted. Then came the call for swords.
"Get me a sword in Philadelphia," wrote O'Fallon to his mother.
"Send me a sword to Cincinnati," begged Croghan.
Sitting under the trees at Locust Grove the sisters were discussing the fall of Detroit. Fanny had John O'Fallon's letter announcing the burning of Fort Madison. Lucy was devouring the last impatient scrawl from her fiery, ambitious son, George Croghan, now caged in an obscure fort on Sandusky River near Lake Erie.
"The General little knows me," wrote Croghan. "To assist his cause, to promote in any way his welfare, I would bravely sacrifice my best and fondest hopes. I am resolved on quitting the army as soon as I am relieved of the command of this post."
Scarcely had the two mothers finished reading when a shout rang through the streets of Louisville.
"Hurrah for Croghan! Croghan! Croghan!"
"Why, what is the matter?"
Pale with anxiety Lucy ran to the gate. The whole street was filled with people coming that way. In a few hurried words she heard the story from several lips at once.
"Why, you see, Madam, General Harrison was afraid Tecumseh would make a flank attack on Fort Stephenson, in charge of George Croghan, and so ordered him to abandon and burn it. But no,—he sent the General word, 'We are determined to hold this place, and by heaven we will!'
"That night George hastily cut a ditch and raised a stockade. Then along came Proctor and Tecumseh with a thousand British and Indians, and summoned him to surrender.
"The boy had only one hundred and sixty inexperienced men and a single six-pounder, but he sent back answer: 'The fort will be defended to the last extremity. No force, however great, can induce us to surrender. We are resolved to hold this post or bury ourselves in its ruins.'"
Tears ran down Lucy's cheeks as she listened,—she caught at the gate to keep from falling. Before her arose the picture of that son with red hair flying, and fine thin face like a blooded warhorse,—she knew that look.
"Again Proctor sent his flag demanding surrender to avoid a terrible massacre.
"'When this fort is taken there will be none to massacre,' answered the boy, 'for it will not be given up while a man is left to resist!'
"The enemy advanced, and when close at hand, Croghan unmasked his solitary cannon and swept them down. Again Proctor advanced, and again the rifle of every man and the masked cannon met them. Falling back, Proctor and Tecumseh retreated, abandoning a boatload of military stores on the bank."
"Hurrah for Croghan! Croghan! Croghan!" again rang down the streets of Louisville. The bells rang out a peal as the Stars and Stripes ran up the flag-staff.
"The little game cock, he shall have my sword," said George Rogers Clark, living again his own great days.
And with that sword there was a story.
When Tippecanoe was won and the world was ringing with "Harrison!" men recalled another hero who "with no provisions, no munitions, no cannon, no shoes, almost without an army," had held these same redmen at bay.
"And does he yet live?"
"He lives, an exile and a hermit on a Point of Rock on the Indiana shore above the Falls of the Ohio."
"Has he no recognition?"
Men whispered the story of the sword.
When John Rogers went back from victorious Vincennes with Hamilton a prisoner-of-war, the grateful Virginian Assembly voted George Rogers Clark a sword.
"And you, Captain Rogers, may present it."
The sword was ready, time passed, difficulties multiplied. Clark presented his bill to the Virginia Legislature. To his amazement and mortification the House of Delegates refused to allow his claim.
Clark went home, sold his bounty lands, and ruined himself to pay for the bread and meat of his army.
And then it was rumoured, "To-day a sword will be presented to George Rogers Clark."
All the countryside gathered, pioneers and veterans, with the civic and military display of that rude age to see their hero honoured. The commissioner for Virginia appeared, and in formal and complimentary address delivered the sword. The General received it; then drawing the long blade from its scabbard, plunged it into the earth and broke it off at the hilt. Turning to the commissioner, he said, "Captain Rogers, return to your State and tell her for me first to be just before she is generous."
For years those old veterans had related to their children and grandchildren the story of that tragic day when Clark, the hero, broke the sword Virginia gave him.
But a new time had come and new appreciation. While the smoke of Tippecanoe was rolling away a member of the Virginia Legislature related anew the story of that earlier Vincennes and of the sword that Clark, "with haughty sense of wounded pride and feeling had broken and cast away." With unanimous voice Virginia voted a new sword and the half-pay of a colonel for the remainder of his life.
The commissioners found the old hero partially paralysed. Lucy had gone to him at the Point of Rock. "Brother, you are failing, you need care, I will look after you," and tenderly she bore him to her home at Locust Grove, where now, all day long, in his invalid chair, George Rogers Clark studied the long reach of the blue Ohio or followed Napoleon and the boys of 1812.
Nothing had touched him like this deed of his nephew,—"Yes, yes, he shall have my sword!"
The next morning after the battle General Harrison wrote to the Secretary of War: "I am sorry I cannot submit to you Major Croghan's official report. He was to have sent it to me this morning, but I have just heard that he was so much exhausted by thirty-six hours of constant exertion as to be unable to make it. It will not be among the least of General Proctor's mortifications to find that he has been baffled by a youth who has just passed his twenty-first year. He is, however, a hero worthy of his gallant uncle, General George Rogers Clark."
The cannon, "Old Betsy," stands yet in Fort Stephenson at Fremont, Ohio, where every passing year they celebrate the victory of that second day of August, 1813,—the first check to the British advance in the War of 1812.
A few days later, Perry's victory on Lake Erie opened the road to Canada and Detroit was re-taken.
"Britannia, Columbia, both had set their heels upon Detroit, and young Columbia threw Britannia back across the Lakes," says the chronicler.
Then followed the battle of the Thames and the death of Tecumseh. A Canadian historian says, "But for Tecumseh, it is probable we should not now have a Canada."
What if he had won Rebecca? Would Canada now be a peaceful sister of the States?
Tecumseh fought with the fur traders,—their interests were his,—to keep the land a wild, a game preserve for wild beasts and wilder men. Civilisation had no part or place in Tecumseh's plan.
With the medal of George III. upon his breast, Tecumseh fell, on Canadian soil, battle-axe in hand, hero and patriot of his race, the last of the great Shawnees. Tecumseh's belt and shot pouch were sent to Jefferson and hung on the walls of Monticello. Tecumseh's son passed with his people beyond the Mississippi.
From his invalid chair at Locust Grove George Rogers Clark was writing to his brother:
"Your embarkation from St. Louis on your late hazardous expedition [to Prairie du Chien] was a considerable source of anxiety to your friends and relatives. They were pleased to hear of your safe return....
"As to Napoleon ... the news of his having abdicated the throne—"
"Napoleon abdicated?" Governor Clark scarce finished the letter. Having crushed him, what armies might not England hurl hitherward! New danger menaced America.
"Napoleon abdicated!" New Orleans wept.
Then followed the word, "England is sailing into the Gulf,—Sir Edward Pakenham, brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, with a part of Wellington's victorious army, fifty ships, a thousand guns and twenty thousand men!"
Never had Great Britain lost sight of the Mississippi. This was a part of the fleet that burned Washington and had driven Dolly Madison and the President into ignominious flight.
Terrified, New Orleans, the beautiful Creole maiden, beset in her orange bower, flung out her arms appealing to the West! And that West answered, "Never, while the Mississippi rolls to the Gulf, will we leave you unprotected." And out of that West came Andrew Jackson and tall Tennesseeans, Kentuckians, Mississippians, in coonskin caps and leathern hunting shirts, to seal for ever our right to Louisiana.
The hottest part of the battle was fought at Chalmette, above the grave of the Fighting Parson. Immortal Eighth of January, 1815! Discontented Creoles of 1806 proved loyal Americans, vindicating their right to honour.
Napoleon laughed when he heard it at Elba,—"I told them I had given England a rival that one day would humble her pride."
Even the Ursuline nuns greeted their deliverers with joy, and the dim old cloistered halls were thrown open for a hospital.
"I expect at this moment," said Lord Castlereagh in Europe, "that most of the large seaport towns of America are laid in ashes, that we are in possession of New Orleans, and have command of all the rivers of the Mississippi Valley and the Lakes."
But he counted without our ships at sea. The War of 1812 was fought upon the ocean, "the golden age of naval fighting." Bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh, under the "Gridiron Flag," tars of the American Revolution, sailor boys who under impressment had fought at Trafalgar, led in a splendid spectacular drama, the like of which England or the world had never seen. She had trained up her own child. A thousand sail had Britain—America a dozen sloops and frigates altogether,—but the little tubs had learned from their mother.
"The territory between the Lakes and the Ohio shall be for ever set apart as an Indian territory," said England at the opening of the peace negotiations. "The United States shall remove her armed vessels from the lakes and give England the right of navigating the Mississippi."
Clay, Gallatin, Adams packed up their grips preparatory to starting home, when England bethought herself and came to better terms.
The next year America passed a law excluding foreigners from our trade, and the British fur traders reluctantly crossed the border. But they held Oregon by "Joint Occupation."
"All posts captured by either power shall be restored," said the treaty. "There shall be joint occupancy of the Oregon Country for ten years."
"A great mistake! a great mistake!" cried out Thomas Hart Benton, a young lawyer who had settled in St. Louis. "In ten years that little nest egg of 'Joint Occupation' will hatch out a lively fighting chicken."
Benton was a Western man to the core,—he felt a responsibility for all that sunset country. And why should he not? Missouri and Oregon touched borders on the summit of the Rockies. Were they not next-door neighbours, hobnobbing over the fence as it were? Every day at Governor Clark's at St. Louis, he and Benton discussed that Oregon "Joint Occupancy" clause.
"As if two nations ever peacefully occupied the same territory! I tell you it is a physical impossibility," exclaimed Benton, jamming down his wine-glass with a crash.
The War of 1812,—how Astor hated it! "But for that war," he used to say, "I should have been the richest man that ever lived." As it was, the British fur companies came in and gained a foothold from which they were not ousted until American ox-teams crossed the plains and American frontiersmen took the country. A million a year England trapped from Oregon waters.
"Come and make treaties of friendship."
As his brother had done at the close of the Revolution, so now William Clark sent to the tribes to make peace after the War of 1812.
"No person ought to be lazy to be de bearer of such good news," said old Antoine Le Claire, the interpreter.
Up the rivers and toward the Lakes, runners carried the word of the Red Head Chief, "Come, come to St. Louis!"
To the clay huts of the sable Pawnees of the Platte, to the reed wigwams of the giant Osages, to the painted lodges of the Omahas, and to the bark tents of the Chippewas, went "peace talks" and gifts and invitations.
"De Iowas are haughty an' insolent!" St. Vrain, first back, laid their answer on the table.
"De Kickapoo are glad of de peace, but de Sauk an' Winnebago insist on war! De Sauk haf murdered deir messenger!"
That was Black Hawk. With a war party from Prairie du Chien he was met by the news of peace.
"Peace?" Black Hawk wept when he heard it. He had been at the battle of the Thames.
"De messenger to de Sioux are held at Rock River!"
One by one came runners into the Council Hall, and, cap in hand, stood waiting. Outside, their horses pawed on the Rue, their boats were tied at the river.
"Some one must pass Rock River, to the Sioux, Chippewas, and Menomonees," said Clark. Not an interpreter stirred.
"We dare not go into dose hostile countrie," said Antoine Le Claire, spokesman for the rest.
"What? With an armed boat?"
The silence was painful as the Governor looked over the council room.
"I will go."
Every eye was turned toward the speaker, James Kennerly, the Governor's private secretary, the cousin of Julia and brother of Harriet of Fincastle. The same spirit was there that led a whole generation of his people to perish in the Revolution. His father had been dragged from the field of Cowpens wrapped in the flag he had rescued.
At the risk of his life, when no one else would venture, the faithful secretary went up the Mississippi to bring in the absent tribes. Black-eyed Elise, the daughter of Dr. Saugrain, wept all night to think of it. Governor Clark himself had introduced Elise to his secretary. How she counted the days!
"The Chippewas would have murdered me but for the timely arrival of the Sioux," said Kennerly, on his safe return with the band of Rising Moose.
"The Red Coats are gone!" said Rising Moose. "I rush in. I put out the fire. I save the fort."
Without waiting for troops from St. Louis, forty-eight hours after the news of peace the British had evacuated Prairie du Chien. A day or two later they returned, took the cannon, and set fire to the fort with the American flag flying.
Into the burning fort went Rising Moose, secured the flag and an American medal, and brought them down to St. Louis.
While interpreters were speeding by horse and boat over half a hundred trails, Manuel Lisa, sleepless warden of the plains, arrived with forty-three chiefs and head men of the Missouri Sioux. Wild Indians who never before had tasted bread, brought down in barges camped on the margin of the Mississippi, the great council chiefs of their tribes, moody, unjoyous, from the Stony Mountains. For weeks other deputations followed, to the number of two thousand, to make treaties and settle troubles arising out of the War of 1812.
Whether even yet a council could be held was a query in Governor Clark's mind. Across the neighbouring Mississippi, Sacs, Foxes, Iowas were raiding still, capturing horses and attacking people. That was Black Hawk.
The eyes of the Missouri Sioux flashed. "Let us go and fight those Sacs and Iowas. They shall trouble us no more." With difficulty were they held to the council.
There was a steady and unalterable gloom of countenance, a melancholy, sullen musing among the gathered tribes, as they camped on the council ground at Portage des Sioux on the neck of land between the two rivers at St. Charles. Over this neck crossed Sioux war parties in times past, avoiding a long detour, bringing home their scalps.
Resplendent with oriental colour were the bluffs and the prairies. Chiefs and warriors had brought their squaws and children,—Sioux from the Lakes and the high points of the Mississippi in canoes of white birch, light and bounding as cork upon the water; Sioux of the Missouri in clumsy pirogues; Mandans in skin coracles, barges, dug-outs, and cinnamon-brown fleets of last year's bark.
The panorama of forest and prairie was there,—Sioux of the Leaf, Sioux of the Broad Leaf, and Sioux Who Shoot in the Pine Tops, in hoods of feathers, Chinese featured Sioux, of smooth skins and Roman noses, the ideal Indian stalking to and fro with forehead banded in green and scarlet and eagle plumes.
For Wabasha, Little Crow, and Red Wing had come, great sachems of the Sioux nation. The British officers at Drummond's Island in Lake Huron had sent for Little Crow and Wabasha.
"I would thank you in the name of George III. for your services in the war."
"My father," said Wabasha, "what is this I see on the floor before me? A few knives and blankets! Is this all you promised at the beginning of the war? Where are those promises you made? You told us you would never let fall the hatchet until the Americans were driven beyond the mountains. Will these presents pay for the men we lost? I have always been able to make a living and can do so still."
"After we have fought for you," cried Little Crow, "endured many hardships, lost some of our people, and awakened the vengeance of our powerful neighbours, you make a peace and leave us to obtain such terms as we can! You no longer need us and offer these goods for having deserted us. We will not take them."
Kicking the presents contemptuously with his foot, Little Crow turned away.
"Arise, let us go down to the Red Head Parshasha!" In handsome bark canoes propelled by sails alone, the Sioux came down to St. Louis.
Walking among their elliptical tents, lounging on panther skins at their wigwam doors, waited the redmen, watching, lynx-eyed, losing nothing of the scene before them. Beaded buckskin glittered in the sun, tiny bells tinkled from elbow to ankle, and sashes outrivalled Louisiana sunsets.
Half-naked Osages with helmet-crests and eagle-quills, full-dressed in breech-clouts and leggings fringed with scalp-locks, the tallest men in North America, from their warm south hills, mingled with Pottawattamies of the Illinois, makers of fire, Shawnees with vermilion around their eyes, Sacs, of the red badge, and Foxes, adroitest of thieves, all drumming on their tambourines. Winnebagoes, fish eaters, had left their nets on the northern lakes, Omahas their gardens on the Platte, and Ojibway arrow makers sat chipping, chipping as the curious crowds walked by. For all the neighbouring country had gathered to view the Indian camp of 1815.
Oblivious, contemptuous perhaps, of staring crowds, the industrious women skinned and roasted dogs on sticks, the warriors gambled with one another, staking their tents, skins, rifles, dogs, and squaws. Here and there sachems were mending rifles, princesses carrying water, children playing ball.
About the first of July, Governor Clark of Missouri, Governor Ninian Edwards of Illinois, and Auguste Chouteau of St. Louis, opened the council,—one of the greatest ever held in the Mississippi Valley.
Auguste Chouteau, prime vizier of all the old Spanish commandants, now naturally slipped into the same office with Clark, and Governor Edwards of Illinois, who as a father had guarded the frontier against the wiles of Tecumseh, and had risked his entire fortune to arm the militia,—all in queues, high collared coats, and ruffled shirts, faced each other and the chiefs.
In front of their neatly arranged tents sat the tawny warriors in imposing array, with dignified attention to the interpretation of each sentence.
"The long and bloody war is over. The British have gone back over the Big Water," said Governor Clark, "and now we have sent for you, my brothers, to conclude a treaty of peace."
"Heigh!" cried all the Indians in deep-toned resonance that rolled like a Greek chorus to the bluffs beyond. The sky smiled down as on the old Areopagus, the leaves of the forest rustled, the river swept laughing by.
"Every injury or act of hostility by one or either of us against the other, shall be mutually forgiven and forgot."
"Heigh! heigh! heig-h!"
"There shall be perpetual peace and friendship between us."
"Heigh!"
"You will acknowledge yourselves under the protection of the United States, and of no other nation, power, or sovereign whatsoever."
"Heigh!"
A Teton Sioux who had come down with Lisa struggled to his feet, approached, shook hands with the commissioners, then retreated and fixed his keen eye on the Governor. His voice rang clear over the assembled thousands,—
"We have come down expressly to notify you, our father, that we will assist in chastising those nations hostile to our government."
The two factions faced each other. Scowls of lightning hate flashed over the council. But the wisdom and tact of Clark were equal to regiments. "The fighting has ended," he said. "The peace has come."
"Heigh!" shouted all the Indians. "Heig-h!"
Partisan was there, the Teton chief, who with Black Buffalo had made an attempt to capture Clark on the way to the Pacific. And now Partisan was bristling to fight for Clark.
Wabasha arose, like a figure out of one of Catlin's pictures, in a chief's costume, with bullock horns and eagle feathers. There was a stir. With a profile like the great Condé, followed by his pipe bearers with much ceremony, the hereditary chief from the Falls of St. Anthony walked up to Governor Clark.
"I shake hands," he said.
Every neck was craned. When before had Wabasha stood? In their northern councils he spoke sitting. "I am called upon to stand only in the presence of my Great Father at Washington or Governor Clark at St. Louis. But I am not a warrior," said Wabasha. "My people can prosper only at peace with one another and the whites. Against my advice some of my young men went into the war."
The fiery eyes of Little Crow flashed, the aquiline curve of his nose lifted, like the beak of an eagle. He had come down from his bark-covered cabin near St. Paul.
"I am a war chief!" said Little Crow. "But I am willing to conclude a peace."
"I alone was an American," said Rising Moose, "when all my people fought with the British." All the rest of his life Tammaha, Rising Moose, wore a tall silk hat and carried Governor Clark's commission in his bosom.
Big Elk, the Omaha, successor of Blackbird, spoke with action energetic and graceful.
"Last Winter when you sent your word by Captain Manuel Lisa, in the night one of the whites wanted my young men to rise. He told them if they wanted good presents, to cross to the British. This man was Baptiste Dorion. When I was at the Pawnees I wanted to bring some of them down, but the whites who live among them told them not to go, that no good came from the Americans, that good only came from the British. I have told Captain Manuel to keep those men away from us. Take care of the Sioux. Take care. They will fly from under your wing."
Sacs who had been hostile engaged in the debate. Noble looking chiefs, with blanket thrown around the body in graceful folds, the right arm, muscular and brawny, bare to the shoulder, spoke as Cato might have spoken to the Roman Senate.
"My father, it is the request of my people to keep the British traders among us." As he went on eloquently enumerating their advantages in pleading tone and voice and glance and gesture,—hah! the wild rhetoric of the savage! how it thrilled the assembled concourse of Indians and Americans!
Clark shook his head. "It cannot be. We can administer law, order, and justice ourselves. Come to us for goods,—the British traders belong beyond the border."
The Indians gave a grunt of anger.
"It has been promised already," cried another chief. "The Americans have double tongues!"
"Heigh!" ran among the Indians. Many a one touched his tongue and held up two fingers, "You lie!"
With stern and awful look Clark immediately dismissed the council. The astonished chiefs covered their mouths with their hands as they saw the commissioners turn their backs to go out.
That afternoon a detachment of United States artillery arrived and camped in full view of the Indians. They had been ordered to the Sac country. Colonel Dodge's regiment of dragoons, each company of a solid colour, blacks and bays, whites, sorrels, grays and creams, went through the manœuvres of battle, charge and repulse, in splendid precision. It was enough. The Sac chiefs, cowed, requested the renewal of the council.
"My father," observed the offending chief of the day before, "you misunderstood me. I only meant to say we have always understood from our fathers that the Americans used two languages, the French and the English!"
Clark smiled and the council proceeded.
But by night, July 11, the Sacs, Foxes, and Kickapoos secretly left the council. At the same time came reports of great commotion at Prairie du Chien where the northern tribes were divided by the British traders.
Head bent, linked arm in arm with Paul Louise, his little interpreter, the giant Osage chief, White Hair, gave strict attention. White Hair had been in St. Clair's defeat, and in seeking to scalp a victim had grasped—his wig! This he ever after wore upon his own head, a crown of white hair. He said, "I felt a fire within me,—it drove me to the fight of St. Clair. His army scattered. I returned to my own people. But the fire still burned, and I went over the mountains toward the western sea."
Every morning the Osages set up their matutinal wail, dolefully lamenting, weeping as if their hearts would break.
"What is the matter?" inquired Governor Clark, riding out in concern.
"We are mourning for our ancestors," answered the chief, shedding copious tears and sobbing anew, for ages the custom of his people.
"They are dead long ago,—let them rest!" said the Governor.
Brightening up, White Hair slipped on his wig and followed him to the council.
Houseless now and impoverished Black Partridge and his people clung to Colonel George Davenport as to a father. Poor helpless Pottawattamies!
"Come with me," said Davenport, "I will take you to St. Louis."
So down in a flotilla of canoes had come Davenport with thirteen chiefs, all wreathed in turkey feathers, emblems of the Pottawattamies. No more they narrated their heroic exploits in fighting with Tecumseh.
Grave, morose, brooding over his wrongs, Black Partridge was seventy now, his long coarse unkempt hair in matted clusters on his shoulders, but figure still erect and firm. "I would be a friend to the whites," he said. "I was compelled to go with my tribe." The silver medallion of George Washington was gone from his breast. Many and sad had been the vicissitudes since that day, when, in a flood of tears, he had thrown it down at the feet of the commander at Fort Dearborn. Tall, slim, with a high forehead, large nose and piercing black eyes, with hoops of gold in his ears, Black Partridge was a typical savage,—asking for civilisation. But it rolled over him. Here and there a missionary tarried to talk, but commerce, commerce, the great civiliser, arose like a flood, drowning the redmen.
"The settlements are crowding our border," Black Partridge spoke for his people on their fairy lake, Peoria. "And whom shall we call Father, the British at Malden or the Americans at St. Louis? Who shall relieve our distresses?"
"Put it in your mind," said Auguste Chouteau, the shrewd old French founder of St. Louis, "put it in your mind, that when de British made peace with us, dey left you in de middle of de prairie without a shade against sun or rain. Left you in de middle of de prairie, a sight to pity. We Americans have a large umbrella; keeps off de sun and rain. You come under our umbrella."
And they did.
The Indian has a fine sense of justice. The situation was evident. Abandoned by the British who had led him into the war, he stood ready at last to return to the friends on whom he was most dependent.
One by one the chiefs came forward and put their mark to the treaty of peace and friendship. Clark brought the peace pipes,—every neck was craned to scan them.
Sioux pipes sometimes cost as much as forty horses,—finely wrought pipes of variegated red and white from the Minnesota quarries, Shoshone pipes of green, and pipes of purple from Queen Charlottes, were sold for skins and slaves,—but these, Clark's pipes of silver bowls and decorated stems, these were worth a hundred horses!
Puffing its fragrant aroma, the fierce wild eye of the savage softened. Twenty thousand dollars' worth of goods was distributed in presents, flags, blankets, and rifles, ornaments and clothing.
"Ah, ha! Great Medicine!" whispered the Indians as the beautiful gifts came one by one into their hands.
"We need traders," said Red Wing, sliding his hand along the soft nap of the blankets. "That made us go into the war. Without traders we have to clothe ourselves in grass and eat the earth."
"You shall have traders," answered Clark. "I shall not let you travel five or six hundred miles to a British post."
Every September thereafter he sent them up a few presents to begin their fall hunting, and counselled his agents to listen to their complaints and render them justice.
"We must depend on policy rather than arms," said the Governor. "For they are our children, the wards of the nation."
The Indians were dined in St. Louis and entertained with music and dancing. By their dignity, moderation, and untiring forbearance, the Commissioners of Portage des Sioux exemplified the paternal benevolence of the Government.
At the end of the council Lisa started back with his chiefs, on a three months' voyage to their northern home, and on the last day of September Clark dismissed the rest.
Thus making history, the summer had stolen away. All next summer and the next were spent in making treaties, until at last there was peace along the border.
"Did you sign?" finally asked some one of Black Hawk of the British band.
"I touched the goose quill," answered the haughty chief.
As soon as the Indian scare was silenced, all the world seemed rushing to Missouri. Ferries ran by day and night. Patriarchal planters of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia passed ever west in long, unending caravans of flocks, servants, herds, into the new land of the Louisianas. New Englanders and Pennsylvanians, six, eight, and ten horses to a waggon, and cattle with their hundred bells, tinkled through the streets of St. Louis.
"Where are you going, now?" inquired the citizens.
"To Boone's Lick, to be sure."
"Go no further," said Clark, ever enthusiastic about St. Louis. "Buy here. This will be the city."
"But ah!" exclaimed the emigrant. "If land is so good here what must Boone's Lick be!"
Perennial childhood of the human heart, ever looking for Canaan just beyond!
The Frenchmen shrugged their shoulders at the strange energy of these progressive "Bostonnais." It annoyed them to have their land titles looked into. "A process! a lawsuit!" they clasped their hands in despair. But ever the people of St. Louis put up their lands to a better figure, and watched out of their little square lattices for the coming of les Américains.
All the talk was of land, land, land! The very wealth of ancient estates lay unclaimed for the first heir to enter, the gift of God.
In waggons, on foot and horseback, with packhorses, handcarts, and wheelbarrows, with blankets on their backs and children by the hand, the oppressed of the old world fled across the new.
"Why do you go into the wilderness?"
"For my children, my children," answered the pioneer.
More and more came people in a mighty flood, peasants, artisans, sons of the old crusaders, children of feudal knights of chivalry and romance, descendants of the hardy Norsemen who captured Europe five hundred years before, scions of Europe's most titled names, thronging to our West.
Frosts and crop failures in the Atlantic States and a financial panic uprooted old Revolutionary centres. "A better country, a better country!" was the watchword of the mobile nation.
"Let's go over to the Territory," said the soldiers of 1812. "Let us go to Arkansas, where corn can be had for sixpence a bushel and pork for a penny a pound. Two days' work in Texas is equal to the labour of a week in the North." And on they pressed into No Man's Land, a land of undeveloped orchards, maple syrup and honey, fields of cotton and wool and corn.
Conestoga waggons crowded on the Alleghanies, teams fell down precipices and perished, but the tide pushed madly on. Colonies of hundreds were pouring into Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois. New towns were named for their founders, new counties, lakes, rivers, streams, and hills,—the settlers wrote their names upon the geography of the nation.
In the midst of the war Daniel Boone had come down to Clark at St. Louis.
"I have spoken to Henry Clay about your claim," said the Governor. "He says Congress will do something for you."
"Now Rebecca, thee shall hev a house!"
That house, the joint product of Nathan, the Colonel, and his slaves, was a work of years. Not far from the old cabin by the spring it stood, convenient to the Judgment Tree. For Boone still held his court beneath the spreading elm.
The stones were quarried and chiselled, two feet thick, and laid so solidly that to-day the walls of the old Boone mansion are as good as new. The plaster was mixed and buried in the ground over winter to ripen. Roomy and comfortable, two stories and an attic it was built, with double verandas and chimneys at either end, the finest mansion on the border.
But in March Rebecca died. Boone buried her where he could watch the mound.
The house was finished. The Colonel bought a coffin and put it under the bed to be ready. Sometimes he tried his coffin, to see how it would seem when he slept beside Rebecca.
In December came the land, a thousand arpents in his Spanish grant. "If I only cud hev told Rebecca," sobbed Daniel, kneeling at her grave. "She war a good woman, and the faithful companion of all my wanderings."
In the Spring Boone sold his land, and set out for Kentucky.
"Daniel Boone has come! Daniel Boone has come!" Old hunters, Revolutionary heroes, came for miles to see their leader who had opened Kentucky. There was a reception at Maysville. Parties were given in his honour wherever he went. Once more he embraced his old friend, Simon Kenton.
"How much do I owe ye?" he said to one and another.
Whatever amount they named, that he paid, and departed. One day the dusty old hunter re-entered his son's house on the Femme Osage with fifty cents in his pocket.
"Now I am ready and willing to die. I have paid all my debts and nobody can say, 'Boone was a dishonest man.'"
Then came the climax of his life.
"Nate, I am goin' to the Yellowstone."
While Clark was holding his peace treaties, Daniel Boone, eighty-two years old, with a dozen others set out in boats for the Upper Missouri.
Autumn came. Somewhere in the present Montana, they threw up a winter camp and were besieged by Indians. A heavy snow-storm drove the Indians off. In early Spring, coming down the Missouri on the return, again they were attacked by Indians and landed in a thicket of the opposite shore. Under cover of a storm in the night Boone ordered them into the boat, and silently in the pelting rain they escaped.
Boone himself brought the furs to St. Louis, and went back with a bag full of money and a boat full of emigrants.
Farther and farther into his district emigrants began setting up their four-post sassafras bedsteads and scouring their pewter platters. Women walked thirty miles to hear the first piano that came into the Boone settlement.
In the last year of the war Boone's favourite grandson was killed at Charette.
"The history of the settlement of the western country is my history," said the old Colonel in his grief. "Two darling sons, a grandson, and a brother have I lost by savage hands, besides valuable horses and abundance of cattle. Many sleepless nights have I spent, separated from the society of men, an instrument ordained of God to settle the wilderness."
"You must paint Daniel Boone," said Governor Clark to Chester Harding, a young American artist fresh from Paris in the summer of 1819. The Governor was Harding's first sitter. He invited the Indians into his studio.
"Ugh! ugh! ugh!" grunted the Osage chiefs, putting their noses close and rubbing their fingers across the Governor's portrait.
In June Harding set out up the Missouri to paint Boone. In an old blockhouse of the War of 1812, he found him lying on a bunk, roasting a strip of venison wound around his ramrod, turning it before the fire.
"What? Paint my pictur'?"
"Yes, on canvas. Make a portrait, you know."
The old man consented. With amazement the frontiersman saw the picture grow,—still more amazed, his grandchildren watched the likeness of "granddad" growing on the canvas.
Ruddy and fair, with silvered locks, always humming a tune, he sat in his buckskin hunting-shirt trimmed with otter's fur, and the knife in his belt he had carried on his first expedition to Kentucky.
Every day now, in his leisure hours, the old pioneer was busily scraping with a piece of glass. "Making a powder-horn," he said. "Goin' to hunt on the Fork in the Fall."
A hundred miles up the Kansas he had often set his traps, but Boone's legs were getting shaky, his eyes were growing dim. Every day now he tried his coffin,—it was shining and polished and fair, of the wood he loved best, the cherry. People came for miles to look at Boone's coffin.
Manuel Lisa had out-distanced all his competitors in the fur trade. But the voice of envy whispered, "Manuel must cheat the Government, and Manuel must cheat the Indians, otherwise Manuel could not bring down every summer so many boats loaded with rich furs."
"Good!" exclaimed Lisa to Governor Clark, when the fleets were tying up at St. Louis in 1817. "My accounts with the Government will show whether I receive anything out of which to cheat it."
"I have not blamed you, Manuel," explained the Governor. "On the contrary I have conveyed to the Government my high appreciation of your very great services in quieting the Indians of the Missouri. It is not necessary to worry yourself with the talk of babblers who do not understand."
"Cheat the Indians!" The Spaniard stamped the floor. "The respect and friendship which they have for me, the security of my possessions in the heart of their country, respond to this charge, and declare with voices louder than the tongues of men that it cannot be true.
"'But Manuel gets so much rich fur.'" Lisa ground out the words with scorn.
"Well, I will explain how I get it. First I put into my operations great activity,—I go a great distance, while some are considering whether they will start to-day or to-morrow. I impose upon myself great privations,—ten months in a year I am buried in the forest, at a vast distance from my own house. I appear as the benefactor, and not as the pillager, of the Indians. I carried among them the seed of the large pumpkin, from which I have seen in their possession the fruit weighing one hundred and sixty pounds. Also the large bean, the potato, the turnip, and these vegetables now make a great part of their subsistence. This year I have promised to carry the plough. Besides, my blacksmiths work incessantly for them, charging nothing. I lend them traps, only demanding preference in their trade. My establishments are the refuge of the weak and of the old men no longer able to follow their lodges; and by these means I have acquired the confidence and friendship of these nations, and the consequent choice of their trade. These things I have done, and I propose to do more."
In short, Manuel Lisa laid down his commission as sub-agent to embark yet more deeply in the fur trade.
"What is that noise at the river?"
Ten thousand shrieking eagles and puffs of smoke arose from the yellow-brown Mississippi below. The entire population of St. Louis was flocking to the river brink to greet the General Pike, the first steamboat that ever came up to St. Louis. People rushed to the landing but the Indians drew back in terror lest the monster should climb the bank and pursue them inland. Pell-mell into Clark's Council House they tumbled imploring protection.
Never had St. Louis appeared so beautiful as when Julia and the children came into their new home in 1819. Clark, the Governor, had built a mansion, one of the finest in St. Louis. Wide verandas gave a view of the river, gardens of fruit and flowers bloomed.
But Julia was ill.
"Take her back to the Virginia mountains," said Dr. Farrar, the family physician. "St. Louis heats are too much for her."
In dress suit, silk hat, and sword cane, Farrar was a notable figure in old St. Louis, riding night and day as far out as Boone's Lick, establishing a reputation that remains proverbial yet. He had married Anne Thruston, the daughter of Fanny.
"Let her try a trip on the new steamboat," said the Doctor.
So after her picture was painted by Chester Harding in that Spring of 1819, Clark and Julia and the little boys, Meriwether Lewis, William Preston, and George Rogers Hancock, set out for New Orleans in the "new-fangled steamboat."
It was a long and dangerous trip; the river was encumbered with snags; every night they tied up to a tree.
"Travel by night? Couldn't think of it! We'd be aground before morning!" said the Captain.
Around by sea the Governor and his wife sailed by ship to Washington.
"I will join you at the Sweet Springs," said President Monroe to the Governor and his wife in Washington.
"The Sweet Springs cure all my ills," said Dolly Madison at Montpelier.
"She will recover at the Sweet Springs," said Jefferson at Monticello.
But at the Sweet Springs Julia grew so ill they had to carry her on a bed to Fotheringay.
"Miss Judy done come home sick!" The servants wept.
Something of a physician himself, Clark began the use of fumes of tar through a tube, and to the surprise of all "Miss Judy" rallied again.
"As soon as I can leave her in safety I shall return to St. Louis," wrote the Governor to friends at the Missouri capital.
"If I should die," said Julia sweetly one day, "and you ever think of marrying again, consider my cousin Harriet."
"Ah, but you will be well, my darling, when Spring comes."
And she was better in the Spring, thinking of the new house at St. Louis. Julia was a very neat and careful housekeeper. Everything was kept under lock and key, she directed the servants herself, and was the light of a houseful of company. For the Governor's house was the centre of hospitality,—never a noted man came that way, but, "I must pay my respects to the Governor." Savants from over the sea came to look at his Indian museum. General Clark had made the greatest collection in the world, and had become an authority on Indian archæology.
Governor Clark, too, was worried about affairs in St. Louis. Missouri was just coming in as a State, and a new executive must be elected under the Constitution.
"Go," said Julia, "I shall be recovered soon now." Indeed, deceptive roses were blooming in her cheeks.
With many regrets and promises of a speedy return, Clark hastened back to his official duties. He found Missouri in the midst of a heated campaign, coming in as a State and electing a Governor. For seven years he had held the territorial office with honour.
But a new candidate was before the people.
"Governor Clark is too good to the Indians!" That was the chief argument of the opposing faction. "He looks after their interests to the disadvantage of the whites."
"To the disadvantage of the whites? How can that be?" inquired his friends. "Did he not in the late war deal severely with the hostile tribes? And what do you say of the Osage lands? When hostilities began President Madison ordered the settlers out of the Boone's Lick country as invaders of Indian lands. What did the Governor do? He remonstrated, he delayed the execution of those orders until they were rescinded, and the settlers were allowed to remain."
"How could he do that?"
"How? Why, he simply told the Indians those lands were included in the Osage treaty of 1808. He made that treaty, and he knew. No Indian objected. They trusted Clark; his explanation was sufficient. And his maps proved it."
"Too good to the Indians! Too good to the Indians!" What Governor before ever lost his head on such a charge?
At that moment, flying down the Ohio, came a swift messenger,—"Mrs. Clark is dead at Fotheringay."
With the shock upon him, General Clark sent a card to the papers, notifying his fellow citizens of his loss, and of his necessary absence until the election was over. And with mingled dignity and sorrow he went back to Fotheringay to bury the beloved dead.
Granny Molly, "Black Granny," who had laced "Miss Judy's" shoes and tied up her curls with a ribbon in the old Philadelphia days, never left her beloved mistress.
A few days before "Miss Judy" went away, little Meriwether Lewis, then eleven years of age, came to her bedside with his curly hair dishevelled and his broad shirt collar tumbled.
"Aunt Molly," said the mother, "watch my boy and keep him neat. He is so beautiful, Granny!"
After her body was placed on two of the parlour chairs, Granny Molly noticed a little dust on the waxed floor. "Miss Judy would be 'stressed if she could see it." Away she ran, brought a mop, and had it all right by the time the coffin came.
Down on her knees scrubbing, scrubbing for the last time the floor for "Miss Judy," tears trickled down the ebony cheeks.
"Po', po' Miss Judy. You's done gwine wid de angels."
They laid her in the family tomb, overlooking the green valley of the Roanoke. Two weeks after her death, Colonel Hancock himself also succumbed.