To a double funeral the Governor came back. High on the hillside they laid them, in a mausoleum excavated out of the solid rock.
"De Cunnel, he done watch us out ob dat iron window up dah," said the darkies. "He sits up dah in a stone chair so he can look down de valley and see his slaves at deir work."
To this day the superstitious darkies will not pass his tomb.
On his way to Washington, Governor Clark stopped again at Monticello.
"Ah, the joyous activity of my grandfather!" exclaimed Thomas Jefferson Randolph. "He mounts his horse early in the morning, canters down the mountain and across country to the site of the university. All day long he assists at the work. He has planned it, engaged workmen, selected timber, bought bricks. He has sent to Italy for carvers of stone."
Out of those students flocking to consult Jefferson had grown the University of Virginia. Books and professors were brought from England, and the institution opened in 1825.
Martha Jefferson's husband, Thomas Mann Randolph, was Governor of Virginia now, but the sage of Monticello paid little attention. All his talk was of schools,—schools and colleges for Virginia.
"Slavery in Missouri?" Clark broached the discussion that was raging at the West.
Instantly the sage of Monticello was attentive.
"This momentous question, like a firebell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. It is the knell of the Union. Since Bunker Hill we have never had so ominous a question." He who had said, "Pensacola and Florida will come in good time," and, "I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could be made to our system of States," had corresponded with the Spanish minister concerning a canal through the isthmus, and sent Lewis and Clark to open up a road to Asia,—Jefferson, more than any other, had the vision of to-day.
Governor Clark went on to Washington.
Ramsay Crooks and Russell Farnham of the Astor expedition were quartered at the same hotel with Floyd of Virginia and Benton of Missouri.
Beside their whale-oil lamps they talked of Oregon. Benton was writing for Oregon,—he made a noise in all the papers. John Floyd framed a bill, the first for Oregon occupancy.
Missouri was just coming in as a State. The moment Benton, her first Senator, was seated, he flew to Floyd's support.
"We must occupy the Columbia," said Benton. "Mere adventurers may enter upon it as Æneas entered upon the Tiber, and as our forefathers came upon the Potomac, the Delaware, and the Hudson, and renew the phenomenon of individuals laying the foundation of future empire. Upon the people of eastern Asia the establishment of a civilised power upon the opposite coast of America cannot fail to produce great and wonderful results. Science, liberal principles, government, and the true religion, may cast their lights across the intervening sea. The valley of the Columbia may become the granary of China and Japan, and an outlet for their imprisoned and exuberant population."
Staid Senators smiled and called Benton a dreamer, but he and Floyd were the prophets of to-day.
For thirty years after Astor had been driven out, England and her fur companies enriched themselves in Oregon waters. For thirty years Benton stood in his place and fought to save us Oregon. From the bedside of the dying Jefferson, and from the lips of the living Clark, he took up the great enterprise of an overland highway to India.
When Governor Clark came sorrowing back to St. Louis with the little boys, Missouri was a State and a new Governor sat in the chair, but though governors came and governors went, the officer that had held the position through all the territorial days was always called "Governor" Clark. As United States superintendent of Indian affairs for the West, Governor Clark now became practically autocrat of the redmen for life.
"If you ever think of marrying again, consider my cousin Harriet."
More than a year Governor Clark "considered," and then the most noted citizen of St. Louis married the handsome widow Radford.
"From Philadelphia she haf a wedding trousseau," said the vivacious Creole girls, drinking tea in their wide verandas. "She haf de majesty look, like one queen."
From the home of her brother, James Kennerly, the fun-loving Harriet of other years went to become the grave and dignified hostess in the home of the ex-governor.
"Hasten, Ruskosky, rebraid my queue. Kings and half kings are in there as plenty as blackberries in the woods, and I must see what is the matter."
Hurriedly the Polish valet, who dressed Clark in his later years, knelt to button the knees of his small clothes and fasten on a big silk bow in place of a buckle. Directly the tall figure wrapped in a cloak entered the council chamber connected with his study.
The walls of the council chamber were covered with portraits of distinguished chiefs, and with Indian arms and dresses, the handsomest the West afforded. Nothing pleased the redmen better than to be honoured by the acceptance of some treasure for this museum.
Against this wall the Indians sat, and the little gray-haired interpreter, Antony Le Claire, lit the tomahawk pipe. As the fumes rolled upward the Red Head Chief took his seat at the table before him. The Indians lifted their heads. Justice would now be done.
It was a sultry day and the council doors were open. But sultrier still was the debate within.
"Our Father," said the Great and Little Osages, "we have come to meet our enemies, the Delawares and Shawnees and Kickapoos and Peorias, in your Council Hall. We ourselves can effect a peace."
And so the Red Head listened. "Make your peace."
Six days they argued, Paul Louise interpreter. Hot and hotter grew the debate, and mutual recriminations.
"White Hair's warriors shot at one of my young men."
"But you, Delawares, robbed our relations," cried the Osage chiefs.
"You stole our otter-skins," retorted the Delawares.
"And you hunted on our lands."
"Last Summer when we were absent, you bad-hearted Osages destroyed our fields of corn and cut up our gardens," cried the angry Shawnees, who always sided with the Delawares.
"You speak with double tongues—"
Clark stepped in and hushed the controversy.
"Who gave you leave to hunt on Osage lands?"
"White Hair and his principal braves," answered the Delawares.
"When did they shoot at your man?"
"At the Big Bend of the Arkansas."
"Who owned the peltries the Osages took?"
"All of us."
"Very well then, restitution must be made."
Soothing as a summer breeze was his gentle voice, "My children, I cannot have you injured. The Delawares are my children, and the Osages, the Shawnees, the Kickapoos, and the Peorias. I cannot permit any one to injure my children. Whoever does that is no longer child of mine. You must bury the sharp hatchet underground."
He calmed the heated tribes and effected peace. Like little children they gave each other strings of beads, pipes, and tobacco, and departed reconciled.
"Bring all your difficulties to me or to Paul Louise and we will judge for you," said the Red Head Chief, as one by one they filed in plumed array down the steps of the Council House.
Scarce had the reconciled tribes departed before officers of the law brought in seven chiefs, hostages of the Iowas,—"Accused by the Sacs, Your Honour, of killing cattle; accused by the whites of killing settlers."
"My father." The mournful appealing tone of the Indian speaker always affected Clark. He was singularly fitted to be their judge and friend. "My son." There was an air of sympathy and paternal kindness as the Red Head Chief listened. His heart was stirred by their wrongs, and his face would redden with indignation as he listened to the pitiful tales of his children.
With bodies uncovered to the waist, with blanket on the left arm and the right arm and breast bare, a chief stepped forth to be examined concerning a border fray with the backwoodsmen.
Drawing himself to his full height, and extending his arm toward Clark, the Iowa began:
"Red Head, if I had done that of which my white brother accuses me, I would not stand here now. The words of my red head father have passed through both my ears and I have remembered them. I am accused. I am not guilty.
"I thought I would come down to see my red head father to hold a talk with him.
"I come across the line. I see the cattle of my white brother dead. I see the Sauk kill them in great numbers. I said there would be trouble. I thought to go to my village. I find I have no provisions. I say, 'Let us go down to our white brother and trade for a little.' I do not turn on my track to my village."
Then turning to the Sacs and pointing,—
"The Sauk who tells lies of me goes to my white brother and says, 'The Ioway has killed your cattle.'
"When the lie has talked thus to my white brother, he comes up to my village. We hear our white brother coming. We are glad and leave our cabins to tell him he is welcome. While I shake hands with my white brother, my white brother shoots my best chief through the head,—shoots three my young men, a squaw, and her children.
"My young men hear, they rush out, they fire,—four of my white brothers fall. My people fly to the woods, and die of cold and hunger."
Dropping his head and his arm, in tragic attitude he stands, the picture of despair. The lip of the savage quivers. He lifts his eyes,—
"While I shake hands my white brother shoots my chief, my son, my only son."
Only by consummate tact can Clark handle these distressing conflicts of the border. Who is right and who is wrong? The settlers hate the Indians, the Indians dread and fear the settlers.
"Governor Clark," said the Shawnees and Delawares, "since three or four years we are crowded by the whites who steal our horses. We moved. You recommended us to raise stock and cultivate our ground. That advice we have followed, but again white men have come."
The Cherokees complained, "White people settle without our consent. They destroy our game and produce discord and confusion."
Clark could see the heaving of their naked breasts and their lithe bodies, the tigers of their kind, shaken by irrepressible emotion.
And again in the Autumn,—
"What is it?" inquired the stranger as pennons came glittering down the Missouri.
"Oh, nothing, only another lot of Indians coming down to see their red-headed daddy," was the irreverent response, as the solemn, calm-featured braves glided into view, gazing as only savages can gaze at the wonders of civilisation.
"What! going to war?" cried Clark, in a tone of thunder, as they made known their errand at the Council House. "Your Great Father, the President, forbids it. He counsels his children to live in peace. If you insist on listening to bad men I shall come out there and make you desist."
The stormy excitement subsided. They shrank from his reproofs, and felt and feared his power.
"Go home. Take these gifts to my children, and tell them they were sent by the Red Head Chief."
Viewed with admiration, the presents were carefully wrapped in skins to be laid away and treasured on many a weary march and through many a sad vicissitude. A few days in St. Louis, then away go the willowy copper-skin paddlers to dissuade their braves from incurring the awful displeasure of the Red Head Chief. The West of that day was sown with his medals that disappeared only with the tribes.
In time they came to know Clark's signature, and preserved it as a sacred talisman. Could the influence of one man have availed against armies of westward pressing trappers, traders, and pioneers, the tribes would have been civilised.
"Shall we accept the missionaries? Shall we hearken to their teaching?"
"Yes," he said to the Osages. "Yes," to the Pawnees, to the Shawnees, and "Yes," to a delegation that came from the far-off Nez Percés beyond the Rocky Mountains.
In days of friction and excitement Clark did more than regiments to preserve peace on the frontier. He was a buffer, a perpetual break-water between the conflicting races.
As United States superintendent of Indian affairs the Red Head Chief grew venerable. The stately old officer lived in style in St. Louis, and as in the colonial time Sir William Johnson ruled from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, so now Clark's word was Indian law from the Mississippi to the Pacific. His voice was raised in continual advantage to the Indian. While civilisation was pushing west and west, and crowding them out of their old domains, he was softening as much as possible the rigour of their contact with whites.
"Our position with regard to the Indians has entirely changed," he used to say. "Before Wayne's campaigns in 1794 and events of 1818, the tribes nearest our settlements were a formidable and terrible enemy. Since then their power has been broken, their warlike spirit subdued, and themselves sunk into objects of pity and commiseration. While strong and hostile, it has been our obvious duty to weaken them; now that they are weak and harmless, and most of their lands fallen into our hands, justice and humanity require us to cherish and befriend them. To teach them to live in houses, to raise grain and stock, to plant orchards, to set up landmarks, to divide their possessions, to establish laws for their government, to get the rudiments of common learning, such as reading, writing, and ciphering, are the first steps toward improving their condition."
This was the policy of Jefferson, reaffirmed by Clark. It was the key to all Clark's endeavours.
At Washington City he discussed the question with President Monroe.
"But to take these steps with effect the Indians should be removed west of the Mississippi and north of the Missouri."
"Let them move singly or in families as they please," said Clark. "Place agents where the Indians cross the Mississippi, to supply them with provisions and ammunition. A constant tide is now going on from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois. They cross at St. Louis and St. Genevieve, and my accounts show the aid which is given them. Many leading chiefs are zealous in this work, and are labouring hard to collect their dispersed and broken tribes at their new and permanent homes."
"And the land?" inquired the President.
"It is well watered with numerous streams and some large rivers, abounds with grass, contains prairies, land for farms, and affords a temporary supply of game.
"It is in vain for us to talk about learning and religion; these Indians want food. The Sioux, the Osages, are powerful tribes,—they are near our border, and my official station enables me to know the exact truth. They are distressed by famine; many die for want of food; the living child is buried with the dead mother because no one can spare it food through its helpless infancy.
"Grain, stock, fences are the first things. Property alone can keep up the pride of the Indian and make him ashamed of drunkenness, lying, and stealing.
"The period of danger with an Indian is when he ceases to be a hunter and before he gets the means of living from flocks and agriculture. In the transit from a hunter to a farmer, he degenerates from a proud and independent savage to a beggar, drunkard, thief. To counteract the danger, property in horses, hogs, and cattle is indispensable. They should be assisted in making fences and planting orchards, and be instructed in raising cotton and making cloth. Small mills should be erected to save the women the labour of pounding corn, and mechanics should be employed to teach the young Indians how to make ploughs, carts, wheels, hoes, and axes."
Benton and other great men argued in the Senate. "In contact with the white race the Indians degenerate. They are a dangerous neighbour within our borders. They prevent the expansion of the white race, and the States will not be satisfied until all their soil is open to settlement."
And so, to remove the Indians to a home of their own became the great work of Clark's life.
"A home where the whites shall never come!" the Indians were delighted. "We will look at these lands."
"I recommend that the government send special agents to collect the scattered bands and families and pay their expenses to the lands assigned them," said Clark, estimating the cost at one hundred thousand dollars. But not all of the tribes would listen.
In November, 1826, Clark drove from St. Louis in his carriage to the Choctaw nation in Alabama, to persuade them to move west of the Mississippi.
"After many years spent in reflection," said the Commissioners, "your Great Father, the President, has determined upon a plan for your happiness. The United States has a large unsettled country on the west side of the great river Mississippi into which they do not intend their white settlements shall enter. This is the country in which our Great Father intends to settle his red children.
"Many of the tribes are now preparing to remove and are making application for land. The Cherokees and Muscogees have procured lands, and your people can have five times as much land in that fine country as they are now living on in this."
Never before in the conquest of nations had the weaker race been offered such advantageous terms. Two days passed while the Indians considered and argued among themselves.
"What shall we give to you?" asked the Commissioners. "These lands and titles to them, provisions and clothing, a cow and corn and farming implements to each family, and blacksmiths and ploughmakers and annuities."
"Friends and brothers of the Choctaw nation," said Clark in the council, "I have spent half the period of an accustomed life among you. Thirty-six years ago I passed through your country and saw your distressed condition. Now I see part of your nation much improved in prosperity and civilisation. This affords me much happiness. But I am informed that a very large majority of the Choctaw nation are seeking food among the swamps by picking cotton for white planters.
"Cannot provision be made to better their condition?
"Let me recommend that the poorer and less enlightened be moved without delay to their lands west of the Mississippi. There will I take pleasure in advancing their interests. In my declining years it would be a great consolation to me to see them prosper in agriculture.
"Come to my country where I can have it in my power to act as your father and your friend. You shall be protected and peaceful and happy."
The Choctaws were touched, but they answered,—
"We cannot part with our country. It is the land of our birth,—the hills and streams of our youth."
St. Louis was a cold place in those prairie years; a great deal of snow fell, and sleighbells rang beside the Great River. No Indians came during the cold weather, but with the springing grass and blossoming trees, each year the Indians camped around the twin lakes at Maracasta, Clark's farm west of St. Louis.
There were wigwams all over Maracasta. James Kennerly, Clark's Indian deputy, busy ever with the ruddy aborigines, dealing out annuities, arranging for treaties and instructing the tribes, kept open house for the chiefs at Côte Plaquemine, the Persimmon Hill. Clark's boys shot bows and arrows with the little Indians, Kennerly's little girls made them presents of "kinnikinick," dried leaves of the sumac and red osier dogwood, to smoke in their long pipes.
Every delegation came down laden with gifts for the Red Head,—costly furs, buffalo robes, bows, arrows, pipes, moccasins.
Tragedies of the plains came daily to the ears of General Clark, far, far beyond the reach of government in the wild battle-ground of the West.
In 1822 the Sioux and Cheyennes combined against the Crows and fell upon their villages. In the slaughter of that day five thousand defenceless men, women, and children were butchered on the prairie. All their lodges and herds of horses and hundreds of captive girls were carried away. As a people the Crows never recovered.
Drunk with victory the triumphant Sioux rolled back on the Chippewas, Sacs, Foxes, and Iowas.
"If continued, these wars will embroil all the tribes of the West," said Clark. "We must do something more to promote peace. They must become civilised."
President Monroe was working up a new Indian policy, with Clark as a chief adviser.
"Go, Paul Louise, take this talk to my Osages. I am coming up to their country. Tell them to meet me on the first of June."
In his canoe, with his squaw and his babies, the wizened little Frenchman set out. He could not read, he could not write, he could only make his mark, but the Indians loved and trusted Paul Louise.
"And you, Baronet Vasquez, take this to the Kansas nation."
Vasquez belonged to the old Spanish régime. As a youth he had gone out with the Spanish garrison at the cession of St. Louis, to return a fur trader.
Then came Lafayette from the memories of Monticello. Escorted by a troop of horse, he had ascended that historic mountain. The alert lithe figure of the little Marquis leaped from the carriage; at the same moment the door opened, revealing the tall, bent, wasted figure of Jefferson in the pillared portico. The music ceased, and every head uncovered. Slowly the aged Jefferson descended the steps, slowly the little Marquis approached his friend, then crying, with outstretched arms, "Ah, Jefferson!" "Ah, Lafayette!" each fell upon the other's bosom. The gentlemen of the cavalcade turned away with tears, and the two were left to solitude and recollection.
Long and often had Jefferson and Lafayette laboured together in anxious and critical periods of the past. It was in chasing "the boy" Lafayette that the British came to Charlottesville. When Jefferson was minister in Paris, the young and popular nobleman assisted the unaccustomed American at the Court of France. Together they had seen the opening of the French Revolution. What memories came back as they sat in the parlour at Monticello, discussing the momentous events of two continents in which they had been actors!
"What would I have done with the Queen?" asked the aged Jefferson. "I should have shut her up in a convent, putting harm out of her power. I have ever believed if there had been no Queen there would have been no French Revolution."
Lafayette went to Montpelier to see Madison, and then to Yorktown, over the same road which he himself had opened in 1781 in the retreat before Cornwallis. One long ovation followed his route. Even old ladies who had seen him in their youth pressed forward with the plea, "Let me see the young Marquis again!" forgetful of the flight of years. Echoes of his triumphal tour had reached the border. St. Louis, a city and a State not dreamed of in Revolutionary days, begged the honour of entertaining Lafayette.
Far down the river they saw the smoke of his steamer, coming up from New Orleans.
"Welcome!" the hills echoed. "Vive Lafayette!"
The Marquis lifted his eyes,—white stone houses gay with gardens and clusters of verdure arose before him in a town of five thousand inhabitants. Below stood the massive stone forts of the Spanish time, and on the brow of the bluff frowned the old round tower, the last fading relic of feudalism in North America.
Every eye was fixed upon the honoured guest. A few were there who could recall the pride of Lafayette in his American troops, with their helmets and flowing crests and the sabres he himself had brought from France. The banquet, the toasts, the ball, all these have passed into tradition.
The Marquis visited Clark's cabinet of Indian curios.
"I present you this historic cloak of an Indian chief," said the General, offering a robe like a Russian great coat.
In turn, Lafayette presented his mess chest, carried through the Revolution, and placed on the Governor's finger a ring of his hair. Later Clark sent him the live cub of a grizzly bear, that grew to be a wonder in the Jardin des Plantes of Paris.
"And your great brother, George Rogers Clark?" inquired the Marquis.
"He died seven years ago at Louisville," answered the Governor.
"In securing the liberties of this country I esteem him second only to Washington," said Lafayette.
"Those thieving Osages have taken six more of my horses," complained Chouteau the next morning at the office of Governor Clark.
"And four blankets and three axes of me," added Baptiste Dardenne.
"Worse yet, they have stolen my great-coat and razor case," said Manuel Roderique.
Two thousand dollars' worth of claims were paid in that summer of 1825.
"We must get them out of the way," persisted the exasperated whites.
"Acts and acts of Congress regulating trade and intercourse with the tribes are of no avail. They must be removed, and as far as possible. They are banditti, robbers!" said Benton.
In spite of all proclamations clothes disappeared from the line, silk stockings and bed-quilts and ladies' hats mysteriously went into the wigwams of the vagrants.
"This state of affairs is intolerable!" exclaimed Benton. "Governor Clark, if you will conclude a treaty removing those tribes to the West I will stake my honour on putting a ratification through Congress. I'll present the case!"
Again the great senator ground out the words between his teeth, "I'll present the case. It will be a kindness to both parties. The poor Indians have lost all,—we must reimburse them, we must take care of them, they must have a home,—but far away, far away!" shaking his fingers and closing his eyes with the significant shrug so well known to the friends of Colonel Benton.
"Not so bad as eet once was," urged the kind-hearted Creoles. "Not so bad by far. In de old Spanish days dey once left St. Genevieve wit'out a horse to turn a mill. Dey came in to de village in de night and carried away everyt'ing dey could find. Nobody ever pursue dem. But les Américains, dey chase dem. But den," commented the tolerant Creoles, "de Osage do not kill, like de Kickapoo and de Cherokee. Dey take de goods, steal de furs, beat with ramrods, drive him off,—but dey don't kill!"
So in May, after the departure of Lafayette, Governor Clark steamed up the Missouri, met the Kansas and Osage Indians, and made treaties for the cession of all their lands within the present boundary of Missouri.
"You shall have lands, hogs, fowls, cattle, carts, and farming tools to settle farther west."
This was wealth to the poor Osages, whose hunting fields had become exhausted.
"Go to the earth and till it, it will give you bread and meat and clothes and comfort and happiness. You may talk about your poverty always, and it will never make you better off. You must be industrious," said Clark. "And your old friend, Boone, shall be your farmer."
For almost forty years now they had known Daniel M. Boone, the son of the great pioneer,—since, indeed, those days when as a boy of eighteen he trapped on the Kansas. Two springs later the removal was made, and Boone, as "farmer for the Kansas Indians," took up his residence in the Kaw Valley where his chimney stacks may yet be seen near the present Lecompton. The next year was born Napoleon Boone, the first white child in Kansas.
All this time the northern clans were gathering at Prairie du Chien, a work of months. June 30 Governor Clark's barge started north from St. Louis, laden with presents, provisions, interpreters.
"We are afraid to come," said the Omahas. "We are afraid to cross the hostile territory."
William Preston Clark, in looks and dress the blonde double of the poet Byron, said, "Let me bring them, father."
So young Clark, intimate with Indians, went after the Omahas and brought them safely in. But Big Elk left his medal with his son, "I never expect to reach home alive," he said. "We cross the country of the Sacs!"
The Yanktons refused. "Shall we be butchered by the Sacs?" But later they came to St. Louis, smoked with the Sacs and shook hands. Even the Sioux feared the Sacs, the warriors of the central valley.
Mahaska, head chief of the Iowas, with his braves went up with Clark, and Rant-che-wai-me, the Flying Pigeon. Rant-che-wai-me had been to Washington. A year ago, when her husband left her alone at the wigwam on the Des Moines, she set out for St. Louis. The steamer was at the shore, the chief was about to embark, when he felt a blow upon his back. Shaking his plumes in wrath, Mahaska turned,—to behold the Flying Pigeon, with uplifted tomahawk in her hand.
"Am I your wife?" she cried.
"You are my wife," answered the surprised chief.
"Are you my husband?"
"I am your husband."
"Then will I, too, go with you to shake the Great Father by the hand."
Mahaska smiled,—"You are my pretty wife, Flying Pigeon; you shall go to Washington." Clark, too, smiled,—"Yes, she can go."
The pretty Rant-che-wai-me was feted at the White House, and had her picture painted by a great artist as a typical Iowa Princess. And now she was going to Prairie du Chien.
Not for ten years had Clark visited his northern territory. Few changes had come on the Mississippi. Twice a year Colonel George Davenport brought a hundred thousand dollars' worth of goods to his trading post at Rock Island.
Beyond, Julien Dubuque lay in perpetual state on his hills, wrapped only in a winding sheet in his tomb, exposed to the view of every traveller that cared to climb the grassy height to gaze through the grated windows of his lonely mausoleum.
"The Great Chief, the Red Head is coming," whispered all the Indians, as Clark's barges hove in sight.
Prairie du Chien was alive with excitement. Governor Cass of Michigan was already there. Not only the village, but the entire banks of the river for miles above and below were covered with high-pointed buffalo tents. Horses browsed upon the bluffs in Arabian abandon. Below, tall and warlike, Chippewas and Winnebagoes from Superior and the valley of St. Croix jostled Menomonees, Pottawattamies, and Ottawas from Lake Michigan and Green Bay.
"Whoop-oh-hoo-oh!"
Major Taliferro from the Falls of St. Anthony made the grand entry with his Sioux and Chippewas, four hundred strong, drums beating, flags flying. Taliferro was very popular with the Sioux,—even the squaws said he was "Weechashtah Washtay,"—a handsome man.
Over from Sault Ste. Marie the learned agent Schoolcraft had brought one hundred and fifty Chippewas, brothers of Hiawatha.
Keokuk, the Watchful Fox, with his Sacs and Iowas, was the last to arrive. Leagued against the Sioux, they had camped on an island below to paint and dress, and came up the Mississippi attired in full war costume singing their battle-song. It was a thrilling sight when they came upon the scene with spears, battle-lances, and crested locks like Roman helmets, casting bitter glances at their ancient foe, the Sioux. Nearly nude, with feather war-flags flying, and beating tambourines, the Sacs landed in compact ranks, breathing defiance. From his earliest youth Keokuk had fought the Sioux.
"Bold, martial, flushed with success, Keokuk landed, majestic and frowning," said Schoolcraft, "and as another Coriolanus spoke in the council and shook his war lance at the Sioux."
At the signal of a gun, every day at ten o'clock, the chiefs assembled.
"Children," said Governor Clark to the assembled savages, "your Great Father has not sent us here to ask anything from you—we want nothing—not the smallest piece of your land. We have come a great way to meet for your own good. Your Great Father the President has been informed that war is carried on among his red children,—the Sacs, Foxes, and Chippewas on one side and the Sioux on the other,—and that the wars of some of you began before any of you were born."
"Heigh! heigh!" broke forth the silent smokers. "Heigh! heigh!" exclaimed the warriors. "Heigh! heigh!" echoed the vast and impatient concourse around the council.
"Your father thinks there is no cause for continuation of war between you. There is land enough for you to live and hunt on and animals enough. Why, instead of peaceably following the game and providing for your families, do you send out war parties to destroy each other? The Great Spirit made you all of one colour and placed you upon the land. You ought to live in peace as brothers of one great family. Your Great Father has heard of your war songs and war parties,—they do not please him. He desires that his red children should bury the tomahawk."
"Heigh! heigh!"
"Children! look around you. See the result of wars between nations who were once powerful and are now reduced to a few wandering families. You have examples enough before you.
"Children, your wars have resulted from your having no definite boundaries. You do not know what belongs to you, and your people follow the game into lands claimed by other tribes."
"Heigh! heigh!"
"Children, you have all assembled under your Father's flag. You are under his protection. Blood must not be spilt here. Whoever injures one of you injures us, and we will punish him as we would punish one of our own people."
"Heigh! heigh! heigh!" cried all the Indians.
"Children," said General Cass, "your Great Father does not want your land. He wants to establish boundaries and peace among you. Your Great Father has strong limbs and a piercing eye, and an arm that extends from the sea to Red River.
"Children, you are hungry. We will adjourn for two hours."
"Heigh! heigh! heigh-h!" rolled the chorus across the Prairie.
As to an army, rations were distributed, beef, bread, corn, salt, sugar, tobacco. Each ate, ate, ate,—till not a scrap was left to feed a humming-bird.
Revered of his people, Wabasha and his pipe-bearers were the observed of all.
"I never yet was present at so great a council as this," said Wabasha. Three thousand were at Prairie du Chien.
The Sioux? Far from the northwest they said their fathers came,—the Tartar cheek was theirs. Wabasha and his chiefs alone had the Caucasian countenance.
Three mighty brothers ruled the Sioux in the days of Pontiac,—Wabasha, Red Wing, and Little Crow. Their sons, Wabasha, Red Wing, and Little Crow ruled still.
"Boundaries?" they knew not the meaning of the word. Restless, anxious, sharp-featured Little Crow fixed his piercing hazel eye upon the Red Head,—
"Taku-wakan!—that is incomprehensible!"
"Heigh! What does this mean?" exclaimed the Chippewas.
"We are all one people," sagely observed Mahaska, the Iowa. "My father, I claim no lands in particular."
"I never yet heard that any one had any exclusive right to the soil," said Chambler, the Ottawa.
"I have a tract of country. It is where I was born and now live," said Red Bird, the Winnebago. "But the Foxes claim it and the Sacs, the Menomonees, and Omahas. We use it in common."
Red Bird was a handsome Indian, dressed Yankton fashion in white unsoiled deerskin and scarlet, and glove-fitting moccasins,—the dandy of his tribe.
The debate grew animated. "Our tract is so small," cried the Menomonees, "that we cannot turn around without touching our neighbours." Then every Indian began to describe his boundaries, crossing and recrossing each other.
"These are the causes of all your troubles," said Clark. "It is better for each of you to give up some disputed claim than to be fighting for ever about it."
That night the parties two by two discussed their lines, the first step towards civilisation. They drew maps on the ground,—"my hunting ground," and "mine," and "mine." After days of study the boundary rivers were acknowledged, the belt of wampum was passed, and the pipe of peace.
Wabasha, acknowledged by every chief to be first of the Seven Fires of the Sioux, was treated by all with marked distinction and deference. And yet Wabasha, dignified and of superior understanding, when asked, "Wabasha? What arrangement did you make with the Foxes about boundaries?" replied, "I never made any arrangement about the line. The only arrangement I made was about peace!"
"When I heard the voice of my Great Father," said Mongazid, the Loon's Foot, from Fond du Lac, "when I heard the voice of my Father coming up the Mississippi, calling to this treaty, it seemed as a murmuring wind. I got up from my mat where I sat musing, and hastened to obey. My pathway has been clear and bright. Truly it is a pleasant sky above our heads this day. There is not a cloud to darken it. I hear nothing but pleasant words. The raven is not waiting for his prey. I hear no eagle cry, 'Come, let us go,—the feast is ready,—the Indian has killed his brother.'"
Shingaba Wassin of Sault Ste. Marie, head chief of the Chippewas, had fought with Britain in the War of 1812 and lost a brother at the battle of the Thames. He and a hundred other chiefs with their pipe bearers signed the treaty. Everybody signed. And all sang, even the girls, the Witcheannas of the Sioux.
"We have buried our bad thoughts in the ashes of the pipe," said Little Crow.
"I always had good counsel from Governor Clark," observed Red Wing.
"You put this medal on my neck in 1812," said Decorah, the Winnebago, "and when I returned I gave good advice to the young men of our village."
After a fierce controversy and the rankling of a hundred wrongs, the warring tribes laid down their lances and buried the tomahawk. Sacs and Sioux shook hands; the dividing lines were fixed; all the chiefs signed, and the tribes were at peace for the first time in a thousand years.
"Pray God it may last," said Clark, as his boat went away homeward along with the Sacs down the Mississippi.
The great Council at Prairie du Chien was over.
For thirty years after the cession, St. Louis was a great military centre. Sixty thousand dollars a year went into the village from Bellefontaine, and still more after the opening of Jefferson Barracks in 1826. Nor can it be denied that the expenditure of large sums of money in Indian annuities through the office of Governor Clark did much for the prosperity of the frontier city.
And ever the centre of hospitality was the home of Governor Clark. Both the Governor and his wife enjoyed life, took things leisurely, both had the magnetic faculty of winning people, and they set a splendid table.
"I like to see my house full," said the Governor. There were no modern hotels in those days, and his house became a stopping place for all noted visitors to St. Louis.
Their old-fashioned coach, with the footman up behind in a tall silk hat, met at the levee many a distinguished stranger,—travellers, generals, dukes, and lords from Europe who came with letters to the Indian autocrat of the West. All had to get a pass from Clark, and all agents and sub-agents were under and answerable to him.
But unspoiled in the midst of it passed the plain, unaristocratic Red Head Chief and friend of the oppressed. For years he corresponded with Lafayette, and yet Clark was not a scholar. He was a man of affairs, of which this country has abounded in rich examples.
Prince Paul of Wurtemberg came, the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and Maximilian, Prince of Wied, all seeking passports for the Indian country, all coming back with curios for their palaces and castles.
Very politely Mrs. Clark listened to their broken English and patiently conversed with them when the Governor was away.
One of the first pianos came to the Clark parlours, and on special occasions the Indian council room was cleared and decorated for grand balls. Many a young "milletoer," as the Creoles called them, dashed up from Jefferson Barracks to win a bride among the girls of St. Louis.
For the preservation of peace and the facilitation of Indian removals, Fort Des Moines was built among the Iowas, Fort Atkinson near the present Omaha, Fort Snelling at the Falls of St. Anthony, and Fort Leavenworth on the borders of Kansas.
Half the area of the United States lay out there, with no law, no courts, but those of battle. As quietly as possible, step by step, the savage land was taken into custody. And the pretty girls of St. Louis did their share to reconcile the "milletoers" to life at the frontier posts.
"Ho for Santa Fé!" One May morning in 1824 a caravan of waggons passed through the streets of St. Louis.
Penned in the far-off Mexican mountains a little colony of white people were shut from the world. Twice before a few adventurous pack-trains had penetrated their mountain solitudes, as Phœnicians of old went over to Egypt, India, Arabia.
"Los Americanos! Los Americanos!" shouted the eager mountain dwellers, rushing out to embrace the traders and welcome them to their lonely settlement. Silks, cottons, velvets, hardware, were bought up in a trice, and the fortunate traders returned to St. Louis with horseload after horseload of gold and silver bullion.
"Those people want us. But the Spanish authorities are angry and tax us as they used to tax the traders at New Orleans. The people beg us to disregard their tyrannous rulers,—they must have goods."
In 1817 young Auguste Chouteau tried it, and was cast into prison and his goods confiscated.
"What wish you?" demanded the Spanish Governor, in answer to repeated solicitations from the captive.
"Mi libertad Gobernador."
Wrathfully they locked him closer than ever in the old donjon of Santa Fé.
"My neighbour's son imprisoned there without cause!" exclaimed Governor Clark. All the old Spanish animosity roiled in his veins. He appealed to Congress. There was a rattling among the dry bones, and Chouteau and his friends were released.
And now, on the 15th of May, 1824, eighty men set out in the first waggon train, with twenty thousand dollars' worth of merchandise for the isolated Mexican capital. In September the caravan returned with their capital increased a hundred-fold in sacks of gold and silver and ten thousand dollars' worth of furs.
The Santa Fé trade was established never to be shaken, though Indian battles, like conflicts with Arab sheiks of the desert, grew wilder than any Crusader's tale. Young men of the Mississippi dreamed of that "farther west" of Santa Fé and Los Angeles.
"We must have a safe road," said the traders. "We may wander off into the desert and perish."
In the same year Senator Benton secured an appropriation of ten thousand dollars for staking the plains to Santa Fé.
"We must have protection," said the traders to Governor Clark at the Council House. At Council Grove, a buffalo haunt in a thickly wooded bottom at the headwaters of the Neosho in the present Kansas, Clark's agents met the Osage Indians and secured permission for the caravans to pass through their country. But the dreaded Pawnees and Comanches were as yet unapproachable.
In spite of the inhumanity of Spaniards, in spite of murderous Pawnees, in spite of desert dust and red-brown grass and cacti, year by year the caravans grew, the people became more friendly and solicitous of each other's trade, until one day New Mexico was ready to step over into the ranks of the States.
And one day Kit Carson, whose mother was a Boone, only sixteen and small of his age, ran away from a hard task-master to join the Santa Fé caravan and grow up on the plains.
Daniel Boone was dead, at eighty-six, just as Missouri came in as a State. Jesse, the youngest of the Boone boys to come out from Kentucky, was in the Constitutional Convention that adjourned in his honour, and Jesse's son, Albert Gallatin Boone, in 1825, joined as private secretary that wonderful Ashley expedition that keel-boated up the Platte, crossed from its head-waters over to Green River, kept on west, discovered the Great South Pass of the Rockies, the overland route of future emigration, and set up its tents on the borders of Utah Lake.
Overwhelmed with debt Ashley set out,—he came back a millionaire with the greatest collection of furs ever known up to that time. Everything was Ashley then, "Ashley boats" and "Ashley beaver,"—he was the greatest man in St. Louis, and was sent to Congress.
Sixty years ago the Lords of the Rivers ruled St. Louis.
The Rocky Mountain Fur Company went out and camped on the site of a dozen future capitals. From the Green River Valley under the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, from the Tetons of Colorado, the Uintahs of Utah, and the Bitter Roots of Idaho, from the shining Absarokas and the Bighorn Alps, they came home with mink and otter, beaver, bear, and buffalo.
The American Fur Company came to St. Louis, and the Chouteaus, at first the rivals, became the partners of John Jacob Astor. Born in the atmosphere of furs, for forty years Pierre Chouteau the younger had no rival in the Valley except Clark. The two stood side by side, one representing commerce, the other the Government.
Pierre Chouteau, the largest fur trader west of the Alleghanies, sent his boats to Itasca, the headwaters of the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Yellowstone, the Osage, the Kansas, and the Platte, employing a thousand men and paying skilled pilots five thousand dollars for a single expedition. With Chouteau's convoys came down Clark's chiefs, going back in the same vessels. To their untutored minds the trader's capital and the Red Head Town were synonymous.
If there was a necessary conflict between the policy of the government and that of the fur trade, no one could have softened it more than the Red Head diplomat. With infinite tact and unfailing good sense, he harmonised, reconciled, and pushed for the best interest of the Indian.
"Give up the chase and settle into agricultural life," said Clark's agents to the Indians.
"Go to the chase," said the trader.
Clark sent up hoes to supersede the shoulder-blade of the buffalo. The trader sent up fusils and ammunition. The two combined in the evolution of the savage. The squaw took the hoe, the brave the gun.
Winter expresses came down to St. Louis from the far-off Powder and the Wind River Mountains. "Send us merchandise." With the first breaking ice of Spring the boats were launched, the caravans ready.
Deck-piled, swan-like upon the water the Missouri steamboat started. Pierre Chouteau was there to see her off, Governor Clark was there to bid farewell to his chiefs. Engagés of the Company, fiercely picturesque, with leg knives in their garters, jumped to store away the cargo.
Up as far as St. Charles Clark and the Chouteaus sometimes went with the ladies of their families to escort the up-bound steamer, and with a last departing, "Bon voyage! bon voyage, mes voyageurs!" disembarked to return to St. Louis.
On, on steamed the messenger of commerce and civilisation, touching later at Fort Pierre Chouteau in the centre of the great Sioux country, the capital of South Dakota to-day, at Fort Union at the Yellowstone, where McKenzie lived in state like the Hudson's Bay magnates at the north, at Fort Benton at the foot of the Great Falls of the Missouri. Traders from St. Louis laid the foundations of Kansas City and Topeka, built the first forts at Council Bluffs and Omaha, pre-empted the future sites of Yankton and Bismarck.
"A boat! a boat!"
For a hundred miles Indian runners brought word.
Barely had the steamer touched the wharf before the solitude became populous with colour and with sound. Night and day went on the loading and unloading of furs and merchandise. A touch of the hand, a farewell,—before the June rise falls, back a hundred miles a day she snorts to St. Louis with tens of thousands of buffalo robes, buffalo tongues, and buffalo hides, and carefully wrapped bales of the choicest furs. The cargoes opened, weighed, recounted, repacked, down the river the smokestacks go in endless procession on the way to New York.
Overland on horseback rode Pierre Chouteau to Philadelphia or New York, to arrange shipments to France and England, and to confer with John Jacob Astor. Back up from New Orleans came boatloads of furniture to beautify the homes of St. Louis, bales on bales of copper and sheet-iron kettles, axes and beaver traps, finger rings, beads, blankets, bracelets, steel wire and ribbons, the indispensables of the frontier fur trade.
Sometimes fierce battles were fought up the river, and troops were dispatched,—for commerce, the civiliser, stops not. The sight of troops paraded in uniforms, the glare of skyrockets at night, the explosion of shells and the colours of bunting and banners, the blare of brass bands and the thunder of artillery, won many a bloodless victory along the prairies of the West.
But blood flowed, fast and faster, when trapping gave way to Days of Gold and the pressure of advancing settlement.
The trapper saw no gold. Otter, beaver, mink, and fox filled his horizon. Into every lonely glen where the beaver built his house, the trapper came. A million dollars a year was the annual St. Louis trade.
Rival fur companies kept bubbling a tempest in a teapot. They fought each other, fought the Hudson's Bay Company. West and west passed the fighting border,—St. Lawrence, Detroit, Mackinaw, Mandan, Montana, Oregon.
Astor, driven out by the War of 1812, had been superseded on the Columbia by Dr. John McLoughlin, a Hudson's Bay magnate who combined in himself the functions of a Chouteau and a Clark. But the story of McLoughlin is a story by itself.
As the years went by Clark's plant of the Indian Department extended. In his back row were found the office and Council House, rooms for visiting Indians, an armory for repairs of Indian guns and blacksmiths' shops for Indian work, extending from Main Street to the river.
Daily he sat in his office reading reports from his agents of Indian occurrences.
Four muskrats or two raccoon skins the Indians paid for a quart of whiskey.
"Whiskey!" Clark stamped his foot. "A drunken Indian is more to be dreaded than a tiger in the jungle! An Indian cannot be found among a thousand who would not, after a first drink, sell his horse, his gun, or his last blanket for another drink, or even commit a murder to gratify his passion for spirits. There should be total prohibition." And the Government made that the law.
"I hear that you have sent liquor into the Indian country," he said to the officers of the American Fur Company. "Can you refute the charge?"
And the great Company, with Chouteau and Astor at its head, hastened to explain and extenuate.
There was trouble with Indian agents who insisted on leaving their posts and coming to St. Louis, troubles with Indians who wanted to see the President, enough of them to have kept the President for ever busy with Indian affairs.
The Sacs and the Sioux were fighting again.
"Why not let us fight?" said Black Hawk. "White men fight,—they are fighting now."
Twice in the month of May, 1830, Sacs and Foxes came down to tell of their war with the Sioux. "We might sell our Illinois lands and move west," hinted the Sacs and Foxes. Instantly Clark approved and wrote to Washington.
"I shall have to go up there and quiet those tribes," said Clark. In July, 1830, again he set out for Prairie du Chien. Indian runners went ahead announcing, "The Red Head Chief! the Red Head Chief!"
Seventy-eight Sacs and Foxes crowded into his boats and went up. This time in earnest, Clark began buying lands, giving thousands of dollars in annuities, provisions, clothing, lands, stock, agricultural implements. Many of these Indians came on with him down to St. Louis to get their presents and pay.
There came a wailing from the Indians of Illinois. "The game is gone. Naked and hungry, we need help."
"Poor, misguided, and unreflecting savages!" exclaimed the Governor. "The selfish policy of the traders would keep them in the hunter's state. The Government would have them settled and self-supporting."
Funds ran out, but Clark on his own credit again and again went ahead with his work of humanity, moving families, tribes, nations. Assistance in provisions and stock was constantly called for. The great western migration of tribes from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, was sweeping on, the movement of a race. The Peorias were crossing, the Weas, Piankeshaws, and others forgotten to-day.
"Those miserable bands of Illinois rovers, those wretched nations in want of clothes and blankets!" Clark wrote to Washington, begging the Department for help. Their annuities, a thousand dollars a year for twelve years, had expired.
"Exchange your lands for those in the West," he urged the Indians. To the Government he recommended an additional annuity to be used in breaking up, fencing, and preparing those lands for cultivation.
Horses were stolen from the settlers by tens and twenties and fifties, and cattle killed. The farmers were exasperated.
"Banditti, robbers, thieves, they must get out! The Indians hunt on our lands, and kill our tame stock. They are a great annoyance."
For two years Governor Edwards had been asking for help.
"The General Government has been applied to long enough to have freed us from so serious a grievance. If it declines acting with effect, it will soon learn that these Indians will be removed, and that very promptly."
Clark himself was personally using every exertion to prevail on the Indians to move as the best means of preserving tranquillity, and did all he could without actual coercion. The Indians continued to promise to go, but they still remained.
"More time," said the Indians. "Another year."
The combustible train was laid,—only a spark was needed, only a move of hostility, to fire the country. Will Black Hawk apply that spark?
"We cannot go," said the Pottawattamies. "The sale of our lands was made by a few young men without our consent."
Five hundred Indians determined to hold all the northern part of Illinois for ever.
Sacs, Foxes, Pottawattamies, sent daily letters and complaints. "Our Father! our Father! our Father!"—it was a plea and a prayer, and trouble, trouble, trouble. Black Partridge's letters make one weep. "Some of my people will be dead before Spring."
Meanwhile agents were ahead surveying lands in that magic West. The Indians were becoming as interested in migration as the whites had been; the same causes were pushing them on.
Clark was busily making contracts for saw-mills and corn-mills on the Platte and Kansas, arranging for means of transportation, for provisions for use on the way and after they settled, for oxen and carts and stock,—when one day four strange Indians, worn and bewildered, arrived at St. Louis, out of that West. Some kind hand guided them to the Indian office.
That tunic, that bandeau of fox skins,—Clark recalled it as the tribal dress of a nation beyond the Rocky Mountains. With an expression of exquisite joy, old Tunnachemootoolt, for it was he, the Black Eagle, recognised the Red Head of a quarter of a century before. Clark could scarcely believe that those Indians had travelled on foot nearly two thousand miles to see him at St. Louis.
As but yesterday came back the memory of Camp Chopunnish among the Nez Percés of Oregon. Over Tunnachemootoolt's camp the American flag was flying when they arrived from the Walla Walla.
It did not take long to discover their story. Some winters before an American trapper (in Oregon tradition reputed to have been Jedediah Smith), watched the Nez Percés dance around the sun-pole on the present site of Walla Walla.
"It is not good," said the trapper, "such worship is not acceptable to the Great Spirit. You should get the white man's Book of Heaven."
Voyageurs and Iroquois trappers from the Jesuit schools of Canada said the same. Then Ellice, a chief's son, came back from the Red River country whither the Hudson's Bay Company had sent him to be educated. From several sources at once they learned that the white men had a Book that taught of God.
"If this be true it is certainly high time that we had the Book." The chiefs called a national council. "If our mode of worship is wrong we must lay it aside. We must know about this. It cannot be put off."
"If we could only find the trail of Lewis and Clark they would tell us the truth."
"Yes, Lewis and Clark always pointed upward. They must have been trying to tell us."
So, benighted, bewildered, the Nez Percés talked around their council fires. Over in the buffalo country Black Eagle's band met the white traders.
"They come from the land of Lewis and Clark," said the Eagle. "Let us follow them."
And so, four chiefs were deputed for that wonderful journey, two old men who had known Lewis and Clark,—Black Eagle and the Man-of-the-Morning, whose mother was a Flathead,—and two young men,—Rabbit-Skin-Leggings of the White Bird band on Salmon River, Black Eagle's brother's son, and No-Horns-On-His-Head, a young brave of twenty, who was a doubter of the old beliefs.
"They went out by the Lolo trail into the buffalo country of Montana," say their descendants still living in Idaho.
One day they reached St. Louis and inquired for the Red Head Chief.
Very well Governor Clark remembered his Nez Percé-Flathead friends. His silver locks were shaken by roars of laughter at their reminders of his youth, the bear hunts, the sale of buttons for camas and for kouse. The hospitality of those chiefs who said, "The horses on these hills are ours, take what you need," should now be rewarded.
With gratitude and with the winsomeness for which he was noted, he invited them into his own house and to his own table. Mrs. Clark devoted herself to their entertainment.
Black Eagle insisted on an early council. "We have heard of the Book. We have come for the Book."
"What you have heard is true," answered Clark, puzzled and sensible of his responsibility. Then in simple language, that they might understand, he related the Bible stories of the Creation, of the commandments, of the advent of Christ and his crucifixion.
"Yes," answered Clark to their interrogatories, "a teacher shall be sent with the Book."
Just as change of diet and climate had prostrated Lewis and Clark with sickness among the Nez Percés twenty-five years before, so now the Nez Percés fell sick in St. Louis. The Summer was hotter than any they had known in their cool northland. Dr. Farrar was called. Mrs. Clark herself brought them water and medicine as they lay burning with fever in the Council House. They were very grateful for her attentions,—"the beautiful squaw of the Red Head Chief."
But neither medicine nor nursing could save the aged Black Eagle.
"The most mournful procession I ever saw," said a young woman of that day, "was when those three Indians followed their dead companion to the grave."
His name is recorded at the St. Louis cathedral as "Keepeelele, buried October 31, 1831," a "ne Percé de la tribu des Choponeek, nation appellée Tête Plate." "Keepeelele," the Nez Percés of to-day say "was the old man, the Black Eagle." Sometimes they called him the "Speaking Eagle," as the orator on occasions.
Still the other Indians remained ill.
"I have been sent by my nation to examine lands for removal to the West," said William Walker, chief of the Wyandots.
William Walker was the son of a white man, stolen as a child from Kentucky and brought up by the Indians. His mother was also the descendant of a stolen white girl. Young William, educated at the Upper Sandusky mission, became a chief.
The semi-Christian Wyandots desired to follow their friends to the West. Sitting there in the office, transacting business, Governor Clark spoke of the Flathead Nez Percés.
"I have never seen a Flathead, but have often heard of them," answered William Walker. Curiosity prompted him to step into the next room. Small in size, delicately formed, and of exact symmetry except the flattened head, they lay there parched with fever.
"Their diet at home consists chiefly of vegetables and fish," said the Governor. "As a nation they have the fewest vices of any tribe on the continent of America."
November 10, ten days after the burial of Black Eagle, Colonel Audrain of St. Charles, a member of the Legislature, died also at Governor Clark's house. His body was conveyed to St. Charles in the first hearse ever seen there. On December 25, Christmas Day, 1831, Mrs. Clark herself died after a brief illness.
There was sickness all over St. Louis. Was it a beginning of that strange new malady that by the next Spring had grown into a devouring plague,—the dreaded Asiatic cholera?
At the bedside of his dead wife, Governor Clark sat, holding her waxen hand, with their little six-year-old son, Jefferson, in his lap. "My child, you have no mother now," said the father with streaming tears. After the funeral, nothing was recorded in Clark's letter-books for some days, and when he began again, the handwriting was that of an aged man.
None mourned this sad event more than the tender-hearted Nez Percés, who remained until Spring.
When the new steamer Yellowstone of the American Fur Company, set out for its first great trip up the Missouri, Governor Clark made arrangements to send the chiefs home to their country. A day later, the other old Indian, The-Man-of-the-Morning, died and was buried near St. Charles.
Among other passengers on that steamer were Pierre Chouteau the younger and George Catlin, the Indian artist, who was setting out to visit the Mandans.
"You will find the Mandans a strange people and half white," said Governor Clark to his friend the artist, as he gave him his passport into the Indian country.
On the way up the river Catlin noticed the two young Nez Percés, and painted their pictures.
As if pursued by a strange fatality, at the mouth of the Yellowstone No-Horns-On-His-Head died,—Rabbit-Skin-Leggings alone was left to carry the word from St. Louis.
Earlier than ever that year the Nez Percés had crossed the snowy trails of the Bitter Root to the buffalo country in the Yellowstone and Judith Basin.
"For are not our messengers coming?"
And there, camped with their horses and their lodges, watching, Rabbit-Skin-Leggings met them and shouted afar off,—"A man shall be sent with the Book."
Back over the hills and the mountains the message flew,—"A man shall be sent with the Book."
Every year after that the Nez Percés went over to the east, looking for the man with the Book.
Nearly a year elapsed before William Walker got back from his explorations and wrote a public letter giving an account of the Nez Percés in their search for the Book. His account of meeting them in General Clark's office, and of the object of their errand, created a tremendous sensation.
Religious committees called upon General Clark, letters were written, and to one and all he said, "That was the sole object of their journey,—to obtain the white man's Book of Heaven."
The call rang like a trumpet summons through the churches. The next year, 1834, the Methodists sent Jason Lee and three others to Oregon. Two years later followed Whitman and Spalding and their brides, the first white women to cross the Rocky Mountains.
"A famine threatens the Upper Missouri," was the news brought back by that steamer Yellowstone in 1832. "The buffaloes have disappeared!"
The herds, chased so relentlessly on the Missouri, were struggling through the Bitter Root Mountains, to appear in vast throngs on the plains of Idaho.
Even Europe read and commented on that wonderful first journey of a steamer up the Missouri, as later the world hailed the ascent of the Nile and the Yukon.
It was a great journey. Amazed Indians everywhere had watched the monster, puffing and snorting, with steam and whistles, and a continued roar of cannon for half an hour at every fur fort and every Indian village.
"The thunder canoe!" Redmen fell on the ground and cried to the Great Spirit. Some shot their dogs and horses as sacrifices.