VII
INTO THE LAND OF ANARCHY

The boats were ready, the red pirogue and the white, from St. Louis, fresh painted, trim and slim upon the water, and the big bateau, fifty-five feet from stem to stern, with setting poles, sweeps, a square sail to catch the breeze, and twenty-two oars at the rowlocks.

Down under the decks and in the cabins, had been packed the precious freightage, government arms, rifles made at Harper's Ferry under Lewis's own superintendence, tents, ammunition, bales and boxes of Indian presents, provisions, tools. Into the securest lockers went Lewis's astronomical instruments for ascertaining the geography of the country, and the surgical instruments that did good service in the hands of Clark.

Nothing was forgotten, even small conveniences, candles, ink, mosquito bars. It took half a million to send Stanley to Africa. For twenty-five hundred dollars Lewis and Clark made as great a journey.

To assist in carrying stores and repelling Indian attacks, Corporal Warfington and six soldiers had been engaged at St. Louis and nine French boys of Cahokia, inured to the paddle and the camp. Feather-decked and beaded they came, singing the songs of old Cahokia to start the little squadron.

The Americans had knives in their belts, pistols in their holsters, knapsacks on their backs, powder horns and pouches of ammunition, ink horns and quills, ready to face the wilderness and report. Lewis encouraged every one to keep a journal.

"I niver wint to school but nineteen days in me boyhood and that was whin I was a man," said Patrick Gass. But what Pat lacked in books he made up in observation and shrewd reasoning; hence it fell out that Patrick Gass's journal was the first published account of the Lewis and Clark expedition. All honour to Patrick Gass. Of such are our heroes.

The cession was on Wednesday, May 9, 1804, and all the men were there but a few who guarded camp. At three o'clock the following Monday, May 14, Captain Clark announced, "All aboard!" The heavy-laden bateau and two pirogues swung out, to the voyageurs' chanson, thrilling like a brass band as their bright new paddles cut the water:

And hill and hollow echoed,

"San Chawle!" cried Cruzatte the bowsman at two o'clock, Wednesday, when the first Creole village hove in sight. At a gun, the signal of traders, all St. Charles rushed to see the first Americans that had ever come up the Missouri. And straggling behind the Frenchmen came their friends, the Kickapoos of Kaskaskia, now on a hunt in the Missouri.

"Meet us up the river with a good fat deer," said Captain Clark. The delighted Kickapoos scattered for the hunt.

Five days the boats lay at St. Charles, waiting for Captain Lewis who was detained fixing off the Osage chiefs at St. Louis.

Patrick Gass wrote in his journal, "It rained." Sergeant Floyd adds, "Verry much Rain." Captain Clark chronicles, "Rain, thunder, and lightning for several days." But never on account of a flurry of rain did the sociable French of St. Charles fail in polite attentions to their guests on the river bank.

On Sunday, boats were descried toiling up from St. Louis with a dozen gentlemen, who had come to escort Captain Lewis and bid "God speed!" to the expedition. Captain Stoddard was there, and Auguste Chouteau, availing himself of every opportunity to forward the enterprise. Monsieur Labbadie had advice and Gratiot and Dr. Saugrain, little and learned, with the medicine chest.

With throbbing hearts the captains stole a moment for a last home letter to be sent by the returning guests.

"My route is uncertain," wrote Clark to Major Croghan at Locust Grove. "I think it more than probable that Captain Lewis or myself will return by sea."

"Bon voyage! bon voyage, mes voyageurs!" cried all the French habitants of St. Charles, waving caps and kerchiefs to answering cheers from the crew and the guns. "Bonsoir et bon voyage—tak' care for you—prenez garde pour les sauvages." With a laugh the voyageurs struck up a boat song.

The boats slid away into the west, that West where France had stretched her shadowy hand, and Spain, and England. The reign of France fell with Montcalm on the Heights of Abraham, flickering up again only in that last act when Napoleon gave us Louisiana.

"The Kickapoos! The Kickapoos!" Through bush and brier above St. Charles, the bedraggled Indians came tugging down to the shore four fine fat deer. Bacon fare and hardtack were relegated to the hold. From that hour Lewis and Clark threaded the gameland of the world.

"Joost wait onteel dey get ento de boofalo!" commented those wise young voyageurs, Cruzatte and Drouillard, nodding at one another as the cooks served out the savoury meat on the grass, and every man drew forth his long hunting-knife and little sack of salt.

"Where is my old friend, Daniel Boone?" inquired Captain Clark, three days later at Charette, the last settlement on the Missouri border. This, but for Spanish interference, would have been their camping station the previous winter. Colonel Boone, six miles from the Missouri, was holding court beneath his Judgment Tree.

The June rise of the Missouri was at hand. Days of rain and melting snows had set the mad streams whirling. The muddy Missouri, frothing, foaming, tore at its ragged banks that, yawning, heavily undermined, leaped suddenly into the water. Safety lay alone in mid-stream, where the swift current, bank-full and running like a millrace, bore down toward the Mississippi.

To stem it was terrific. In spite of oars and sails and busy poling, the bateau would turn, raked ever and anon with drifts of fallen trees. And free a moment, some new danger arose. Down out of sight, water-soaked logs scraped the keel with vicious grating. And above, formidable battering-rams of snags sawed their black heads up and down defiantly, as if Nature herself had blockaded the way with a chevaux de frise.

Poles broke, oars splintered, masts went headlong, the boat itself careened almost into the depths. It was a desperate undertaking to stem the mad Missouri in the midst of her wild June rise.

But that very rise, so difficult to oppose upstream, was a sliding incline the other way. May 27, two canoes loaded with furs came plunging full tilt out of the north.

"Where from? What news?"

"Two months from the Omaha nation, seven hundred miles up the river," sang out the swiftly passing Frenchmen bound for St. Louis.

Behind them a huge raft,—

"From the Pawnees on the Platte!"

And yet behind three other rafts, piled, heaped, and laden to the water's edge,—

"From the Grand Osage!"

Such alone was greeting and farewell, as the barks, unable to be checked, went spinning down the water.

What a gala for the winter-bound trapper! Home again! home again! flying down the wild Missouri in the mad June rise! They stopped not to camp or to hunt, but skimming the wave, fairly flew to St. Louis. They came, those swift-gliding boats, like visions of another world, the world Lewis and Clark were about to enter.

June 5, two more canoes flashed by with beaver,—

"From eighty leagues up the Kansas river!"

June 8, boats with beaver and otter slid by, and rafts of furs and buffalo tallow,—

"From the Sioux nation!"

Dorion, an old Frenchman on a Sioux raft, engaged to go back with Lewis and Clark to interpret for them the language of his wife's relations.

A thousand miles against the current! Now and then a southwest wind would fill out the big square-cut sail and send the heavy barge ploughing steadily up. Again, contrary winds kept them on the walking boards all day long, with heads bent low over the setting-pole.

Warm and warmer grew the days. Some of the men were sunstruck. The glitter of sun on the water inflamed their eyes. Some broke out with painful boils, and mosquitoes made night a torture.

Now and then they struck a sand-bar, and leaping into the water the voyageurs ran along shore with the cordelle on their shoulders, literally dragging the great boat into safety.

"Mon cher Captinne! de win' she blow lak' hurricane!" cried the voyageurs.

Down came the prairie gale, almost a tornado, snapping the timber on the river-banks, and lashing the water to waves that surged up, over, and into the boats. The sky bent black above them, the fierce wind howled, and the almost exhausted men strained every nerve to hold the rocking craft.

"I strong lak' moose, not 'fraid no t'ing," remarked Cruzatte, clambering back into the boat wet as a drowned kitten.

Hot and tired, June 26 they tied up at the mouth of Kansas River. "Eat somet'ing, tak' leetle drink also," said the voyageurs. On the present site of Kansas City they pitched their tents, and stretched their limbs from the weariness of canoe cramp.

"The most signs of game I iver saw," said Patrick Gass, wandering out with his gun to find a bear. "Imince Hurds of Deer," bears in the bottoms, beaver, turkeys, geese, and a "Grat nomber of Goslins," say the journals, but not an Indian.

"Alas!" sighed the old voyageurs with friendly pity. "De Kansas were plaintee brave people, but de Sac and de Sioux, dey drive 'em up de Kansas River."

Cæsar conquered Gaul, but the mercatores were there before him. Lewis and Clark ascended the Missouri, but everywhere the adventurous Frenchmen had gone before them, peddlers of the prairie, out with Indian goods buying skins.

But now Americans had come. The whippoorwill sang them to sleep, the wolf howled them awake. The owl inquired, "Who? Who? Who?" in the dark treetops at the mouth of the Kansas River.

On, on crept the boats, past grand old groves of oak and hickory, of walnut, ash, and buckeye, that had stood undisturbed for ages. Swift fawn flitted by, and strange and splendid birds that the great Audubon should come one day to study. On, on past the River-which-Cries, the Weeping Water, the home of the elk. Tall cottonwoods arose like Corinthian columns wreathed with ivy, and festoons of wild grape dipped over and into the wave.

The River-which-Cries marked the boundary of two nations, the Otoes and Omahas. Almost annually its waters were reddened with slaughter. Then came the old men and women and children from the Otoe villages on the south and from the Omahas on the north and wept and wept there, until it came to be known as Nehawka, the Weeping Water.

July came and the waters were falling. With a fair wind, on the 21st they sailed past the mouth of the great river Platte. In the summer evening Lewis and Clark in their pirogue paddled up the Platte.

"Here I spen' two winter wit' de Otoe," said Drouillard the hunter. "De Otoe were great nation, but de Sioux an' de 'Maha drove dem back on de Pawnee."

"And the Pawnees?"

"Dey built villages an' plant corn an' wage war wid de Osage."

Ten days later preparations were made to meet the Otoes at Council Bluffs. On a cottonwood pole the flag was flying. A great feast was ready, when afar off, Drouillard and Cruzatte were seen approaching with their friends.

"Boom," went the blunderbuss, and the council smoke arose under an awning made of the mainsail of the bateau. Every man of the expedition, forty-five in all, paraded in his best uniform.

Lewis talked. Clark talked. All the six chiefs expressed satisfaction in the change of government. They begged to be remembered to their Great Father, the President, and asked for mediation between them and the Omahas.

"What is the cause of your war?"

"We have no horses," answered the childlike Otoes. "We borrow their horses. Then they scalp us. We fear the Pawnees also. We very hungry, come to their village when they are hunting, take a little corn!"

The Captains could scarce repress a smile, nor yet a tear. Thefts, reprisals, midnight burnings and slaughter, this was the reign immemorial in this land of anarchy. In vain the tribes might plant,—never could they reap. "We poor Indian," was the universal lament.

Severely solemn, Lewis and Clark hung medals on the neck of each chief, and gave him a paper with greetings from Thomas Jefferson with the seals of Lewis and Clark impressed with red wax and attached with a blue ribbon.

"When you look at these, remember your Great Father. You are his children. He bids you stop war and make peace with one another." In 1860, the Otoe Indians exhibited at Nebraska City those identical papers, borne for more than half a century in all their homeless wanderings, between flat pieces of bark and tied with buckskin thongs.

Then gifts were distributed and chiefs' dresses. With more handshakings and booming of cannon, the flotilla sailed away that sultry afternoon one hundred years ago. The chiefs stood still on the shore and wonderingly gazed at one another.

"These are the peacemakers!"

A week later Lewis and Clark entered the Omaha country and raised a flag on the grave of Blackbird. Encamping on a sandbar opposite the village, Sergeant Ordway and Cruzatte were dispatched to summon the chiefs. Here Cruzatte had traded two winters. Up from the river he found the old trails overgrown. Breaking through sunflowers, grass, and thistles high above their heads, they came upon the spot where once had stood a village. Naught remained but graves.

The Omahas had been a military people, feared even by the Sioux, the Kansas, and the far-away Crows. Strange mystery clung to Blackbird. Never had one so powerful ruled the Missouri. At his word his enemy perished. Stricken by sudden illness, whoever crossed the will of Blackbird died, immediately, mysteriously.

Then came the smallpox in 1800. Blackbird himself died and half his people. In frenzy the agonised Omahas burnt their village, slew their wives and children, and fled the fatal spot,—but not until they had buried Blackbird. In accord with his last wish, they took the corpse of the Omaha King to the top of the highest hill and there entombed him, sitting upright on his horse that he might watch the traders come and go.

And one of those traders bore in his guilty heart the secret of Blackbird's power. He had given to him a package of arsenic. Blackbird and Big Elk's father went to St. Louis in the days of the French and made a treaty. A portrait of the chief was then painted that is said to hang now in the Louvre at Paris.

A delegation of Otoes had been persuaded to come up and smoke the peace-pipe with the Omahas. But not an Omaha appeared. And the Otoes, released from overwhelming fear, Big Horse and Little Thief, Big Ox and Iron Eyes, smoked and danced on the old council ground of their enemies, whose scalps they had vowed to hang at their saddle bow.

Sergeant Floyd danced with the rest that hot August night, and became overheated. He went on guard duty immediately afterward, and lay down on a sandbar to cool. In a few moments he was seized with frightful pains.

Nathaniel Pryor awakened the Captains.

"My cousin is very ill."

All night Lewis and Clark used every endeavour to relieve the suffering soldier. At sunrise the boats set sail, bearing poor Floyd, pale and scarce breathing. There was a movement of the sick boy's lips,—

"I am going away. I want you to write me a letter."

And there, on the borders of Iowa, he dispatched his last message to the old Kentucky home. When they landed for dinner Floyd died.

With streaming tears Patrick Gass, the warm-hearted, made a strong coffin of oak slabs. A detail of brother soldiers bore the body to the top of the bluff and laid it there with the honours of war, the first United States soldier to be buried beyond the Mississippi, and on a cedar post they carved his name.

With measured tread and slow the soldiers came down and camped on Floyd's River below, in the light of the setting sun.

Years passed. Around that lovely height, Floyd's Bluff, Sioux City grew. Travellers passed that way and said, "Yonder lies Charles Floyd on the bluff." Relic hunters chipped away the cedar post. Finally, the Missouri undermined the height, and the oakwood coffin came near falling into the river, but it was rescued and buried farther back in 1857. Recently a magnificent monument was dedicated there, to commemorate his name and his mission for ever,—the first light-bearer to perish in the West.

A few days later a vote was cast for a new sergeant in the place of Floyd, and Patrick Gass received the honour. Every day Floyd had written in his journal, and now it was given into the hand of Captain Clark to be forwarded, on the first opportunity, to his people.

VIII
"THE SIOUX! THE SIOUX!"

"What river is this, Dorion?" Captain Lewis had thrown open his infantry uniform to catch the cooling gust down a silver rift in the shore.

"Petite Rivière des Sioux. Go to Des Moines country. Pass tro te Lake of te Spirit, full of islands. Lead to Dog Plain, Prairie du Chien, four days from te Omaha country. Des Sioux—"

Dorion drew his forefinger across his throat and lapsed into silence. They were his people, he would not traduce them. But his listeners understood,—the Sioux were "cut-throats," this was their name among the tribes.

The voyageurs trembled, "Bon Dieu! le Sioux sauvage, he keel de voyageur an' steal deir hair!"

The Sioux, the terrible Sioux, were dog Indians, ever on the move, raiding back and forth, restless and unsleeping. Almost to Athabasca their travoises kicked up the summer dust, their dog trains dragged across the plains of Manitoba. On the Saskatchewan they pitched their leather tents and chased the buffalo; around Lake Winnipeg they scalped the Chippeways. At the Falls of St. Anthony they spread their fishing nets, and at Niagara Falls the old French Jesuits found them.

Now they were stealing horses. For horses, down the Mississippi they murdered the Illinois. For horses, the Mandan on the upper Missouri heard and trembled. "The Sioux! the Sioux!" The Ponca paled in his mud hut on the Niobrara, the Omaha retreated up the Platte, the Cheyenne hid in the cedar-curtained recesses of the Black Hills.

More puissant than the Six Nations of the Iroquois, the Sioux Confederacy dominated from the Red River of the North to the Red River of Texas. Wilder than the Comanches they rode, more cunning in theft than the Crows, more bloodthirsty than the Blackfeet. On the red man's triple plea for war,—horses, scalps, and wives,—the Sioux were pirates of the streams and despots of the prairie.

Mettlesome with the bow, fiery in battle, strong, brave, wild, kings of the hills and monarchs of the trails, they ruled the earth in splendid savagery. The buffalo was theirs, the beaver and the deer, and woe betide the rival that poached on their preserves. Did the poor Shoshone venture beyond the Rockies, he was flayed and burned alive. No lake, no stream, no river between the Mississippi and the Rockies remained unstained by their red hatchet.

And what a chapter when the traders came! Unwritten yet are those days of fierce and constant battle.

Even Dorion himself dreaded the daring freebooters into whose tribe he had married. His own offspring partook of the wild fierce spirit of their people. Like eaglets or young panthers, they clutched at him with claws and talons,—with difficulty the little Frenchman held them back as the lion-tamer holds the whelps.

Of Dorion's possessions the Sioux took what they pleased. For the privilege of trading he smiled and gave them all, then in generosity he was heaped with skins. Dorion knew the Sioux, knew their best and worst. Somewhere in this Sioux country his faithful spouse was waiting; he was looking for her now,—a model squaw, a tireless slave who dug his roots and made his garments, brought his wood and water, and, neglected, bore his children.

"Pilicans! pilicans!"

It was the voice of Patrick Gass, beyond the Little Sioux. A low sand island was covered with huge, white, web-footed beauties fishing in the chocolate Missouri.

When the scrimmage was over two handsome birds lay in the bateau, one, the queen of the flock, brought down by Lewis himself. She was a splendid specimen, six feet from tip to tip, pure white with a tinge of rose, and an enormous pouch full of fish under her bill.

"Out with the fish. Let us measure that pouch."

Lewis's enthusiasm was contagious. All hands gathered while he poured in water, five gallons.

"The average capacity is but two," said Captain Clark. "We must preserve this trophy."

To-day that beautiful bird, of strong maternal instincts, is the emblem of the State of Louisiana.

Again Lewis put the question, "What stream, Dorion?"

"Te Great Sioux! Two hundret mile to te Sioux Fall, an' beyont—almost to St. Peters."

A smile relaxed old Dorion's leathern face,—

"Below te Fall, a creek from te cliffs of red rock. All Indian get te peace-pipe. No battle dere, no war."

Of the famous red pipestone quarry old Dorion spoke, the beautiful variegated rock out of which resplendent Dakota cities should be built in the future.

"Te rock ees soft, cut it wit te knife, then hard and shining."

All tribes, even those at war, could claim asylum at the red pipestone. The Sioux came, and the Pawnee, to camp on its banks and fashion their calumets. The soft clay pipes, hardened into things of beauty, were traded from tribe to tribe, emblems and signals of peace. Captain Lewis himself had one, bought in St. Louis, brought down from that quarry by some enterprising French trader.

"Buffalo! buffalo! buffalo!" A grand shout arose at sight of the surging herds. "Plaintee boofalo now," said the voyageurs. Upon the led horses along shore, Clark and Joseph Fields dashed away for a first shot.

Again rejoicing cooks went hunting up the kettles, and the whole expedition paused a day for a grand hunt.

"Te Yankton Sioux!" joyfully announced old Dorion, as they neared the familiar chalk bluffs of "des rivière Jaques, tat go almost to te Red Rivière of te Winnipeg." All over these streams old Dorion had trapped the beaver.

With Sergeant Pryor and another, Dorion set out for the Indian camp. The Yankton Sioux saw the white men approaching and ran with robes to carry them in state to camp.

"No," answered the Sergeant, "we are not the commanders. They are at the boats."

Dorion led the way to his wigwam. His polite old squaw immediately spread a bearskin for them to sit on. Another woman killed a dog, cut it up, and boiled it and gave it to them to eat, a token of friendship.

Forty clean and well-kept lodges were in this Yankton village, of dressed buffalo and elk skin, painted red and white and very handsome. And each lodge had a cooking apartment attached.

Under the Calumet bluffs the flag was flying when the Yankton Sioux came down in state and crossed the river to the council. The Yankton Sioux were reputed to be the best of their nation, and brave as any, with their necklaces of bear's claws, paints, and feathers. They were kingly savages, dignified and solemn, with heads shaved to the eagle plume, and arrayed in robes wrought with porcupine quills.

With Dorion as interpreter Captain Lewis delivered the usual speech, and presented flags, medals, and a chief's dress, a richly laced coat, cocked hat, and red feather. The ceremonious Indians withdrew to consider a suitable answer.

The next morning again the chiefs assembled, solemnly seated in a row with enormous peace-pipes of red stone and stems a yard long, all pointing toward the seats intended for Lewis and Clark.

But the great Indian diplomats did not hasten.

"Ha!"

Even the stoic Sioux could not refrain from an ejaculation of admiration as they half rose, pipe in hand, to gaze in awe and wonder as the white chiefs entered the council. No such traders ever came up the Missouri, no such splendid apparitions as the Red Head Chief and his brother, pink and white as the roses on the river Jaques.

Captain Lewis habitually wore his sunny hair in a queue; to-day it was loosened into a waving cataract, and Clark, slipping off his eelskin bag, let his red locks fall, a strange and wondrous symbol. No such red and gold had ever been seen in the Indian country. With pale berries they stained their porcupine quills, with ochre painted the buffalo lodges, with vermilion rouged their faces, but none like these growing on the heads of men!

Seating themselves with all due dignity, Lewis and Clark scarce lifted their eyes from the ground as the Grand Chief, Weucha, extended his decorated pipe in silence. A full hour elapsed before Weucha, slipping his robe to give full play to his arm, arose before them.

"I see before me my Great Father's two sons. We very poor. We no powder, ball, knives. Our women and children at the village no clothes. I wish my brothers would give something to those poor people.

"I went to the English, they gave me a medal and clothes. I went to the Spanish, they gave me a medal. Now you give me a medal and clothes. Still we are poor. I wish you would give something for our squaws."

Then other chiefs spoke. "Very poor. Have pity on us. Send us traders. We want powder and ball."

Deadly as were the Sioux arrows,—one twang of their bowstring could pierce a buffalo,—yet a better weapon had crossed their vision. Firearms, powder, ball, fabulous prices, these problems changed Indian history.

Congratulating themselves on this favourable encounter with the dreaded Sioux, and promising everything, Lewis and Clark went forward with renewed courage.

More and more buffaloes dotted the hills, and herds of antelope, strange and new to science.

"I must have an antelope," said Lewis.

At that moment he saw seven on a hilltop. Creeping carefully near, they scented him on the wind. The wild beauties were gone, and a similar flock of seven appeared on a neighbouring height.

"Can they have spanned the ravine in this brief time?"

He looked, and lo! on a third height and then a fourth they skimmed the hills like cloud shadows, or winged griffins of the fabled time, half quadruped and half bird.

"A cur'ous lill animal here, Captain," said one of the hunters, handing him a limp little body. Its head was like a squirrel's. Lewis stroked the long fine hair.

"What is it?"

Cruzatte, the bowman, paddle in hand, leaned over, peering with his one near-sighted but intelligent eye.

"Ha! ha! ha! le petit chien!" he laughed. "Live in te hole een te prairie. Leetle dog. Bark, yelp, yelp, yelp, like te squirrel. All over te countree, whole towns," spreading his brown hands expressively.

After this lucid explanation the Captains, Lewis and Clark, set out for a prairie-dog town. A few yelps, heels in air, the town was deserted save for the tiny mounds that told where each had hidden.

"Let us drown one out."

Forthwith, every man came puffing up with big brass kettles full of water.

"Five barrels," says Clark in his journal, "were poured into the holes but not a dog came out," and Patrick Gass adds, "Though they worked at the business until night they only caught one of them."

More and more the hills were thronged with buffalo. Even York, Captain Clark's black servant, went out and killed two at one ride.

On the top of a high bluff the men had found the skeleton of a huge fish, forty-five feet long and petrified.

George Shannon, the boy of the expedition, had enlivened many a sunrise with his jolly, rollicking Irish songs. But Shannon was lost! On the 28th of August he had gone out to look for the strayed horses. It was now September. Captain Lewis was wild, for at his request George had joined the expedition and at his order he had gone after the horses. Hunters had sought in every direction, guns had been fired and the blunderbuss, and smokes had been kindled from point to point.

"Shannon!" A great shout went up as the forlorn boy, emaciated and weary, came dragging into camp on the 11th of September.

It was a short story, soon told. He found the horses and followed by mistake the trail of recent Indians, which he mistook for footprints of the party. For days he followed the trail, exhausted his bullets, and lived on wild grapes and a rabbit he killed with a stick. But he heard no guns, saw no smoke.

In despair at last he came down to the river, to discover that all this time he had been travelling ahead of the boats! The fatted buffalo-calf was killed and great was the rejoicing, and at daylight next morning, Shannon's

rang again joyously over the Missouri.

"Danger! Quick! The bank is caving!"

At one o'clock in the night the guard gave the startled cry. Barely was there time to loosen the boats and push into midstream before the whole escarpment dropped like an avalanche over the recent anchorage. Thus in one instant might have been blotted out the entire expedition, to remain for all time a mystery and conjecture.

On the evening of September 24 the cooks and a guard went ashore to get supper at the mouth of the river Teton, the present site of Pierre, South Dakota. Five Indians, who had followed for some time, slept with the guard on shore.

Early next morning sixty Indians came down from a Sioux camp and the Captains prepared for a council. Under the flag and an awning, at twelve o'clock the company paraded under arms. Dorion had remained behind at the Yankton village, so with difficulty, by the aid of Drouillard and much sign language, a brief speech was delivered. Black Buffalo, head chief, was decorated with a medal, flag, laced coat, cocked hat, and red feather, nor were the rest forgotten with smaller gifts, medals, and tobacco.

The Captains would have gone on, but, "No! No!" insisted Black Buffalo, seizing the cable of Clark's departing pirogue.

Finally Clark and several of the men rowed them ashore. But no sooner had they landed than one seized the cable and held the boat fast. Another flung his arms around the mast and stood immovable.

"Release me," demanded Clark, reddening at evidence of so much treachery.

Black Buffalo advanced to seize Clark. The Captain drew his sword. At this motion Captain Lewis, watching from the bateau, instantly prepared for action.

The Indians had drawn their arrows and were bending their great bows, when the black mouth of the blunderbuss wheeled toward them.

At this Black Buffalo ordered his men to desist, and they sullenly fell away, but never was forgotten that time when the Teton Sioux attempted to carry off Captain Clark.

"We wished to see the boat more," said the Indians, by way of excuse. "We wished to show it to our wives and children."

To conciliate and to depart without irritation, Captain Clark offered his hand. The chiefs refused to take it. Turning, Clark stepped into the boat and shoved off. Immediately three warriors waded in after him, and he brought them on board. That night the whole expedition slept under arms, with the Indians as guests. At daylight crowds of Indian men, women, and children waited on shore in the most friendly manner.

Ten well-dressed young men took Lewis and Clark up on a highly decorated robe and carried them up to the council tent. Dressed like dandies, seventy Indians sat in this roomy council hall, the tail feathers of the golden eagle scarce quivering in their topknots. Impressively in the centre on two forked sticks lay the long peace-pipe above a bed of swan's down.

Outside, the redmen were roasting a barbecue. All day they sat and smoked, and ate of buffalo beef and pemmican. After sunset a huge council fire illuminated the interior of the great lodge, and the dance began. Wild Indian girls came shuffling with the reeking scalps of Omahas, from a recent raid. Outside twenty-five Omaha women prisoners and their children moaned in the chill of an icy autumn night. It was their trail that Shannon had followed for sixteen days.

About midnight, fatigued by the constant strain of watchful anxiety, the Captains returned to the boats. But not yet were they safely away. "To oars! to oars! the cable's parted!"

The Indians heard the call.

"The Omahas! the Omahas!" rang the cry up from the Teton camp, that on every wind anticipated the whoop of retaliating Omahas in search of their stolen wives and children.

Then followed pandemonium of rushing Indians and frightened calls. All night, with strained eyes, every man held his rifle ready as they lay unanchored on the water.

At daylight the wily Indians held the ropes and still detained the boats. Resort to force seemed inevitable. Flinging a carat of tobacco, "Black Buffalo," said Lewis, "you say you are a great chief. Prove it by handing me that rope." Flattered, Black Buffalo gave the rope, and thankfully the boats pulled out with no more desire to cultivate the Sioux.

IX
THE ROMANCE OF THE MANDANS

"What will they find?" asked the people of the United States, discussing the journey of Lewis and Clark.

"Numerous powerful and warlike nations of savages, of gigantic stature, fierce, treacherous, and cruel, and particularly hostile to white men."

"The mammoth of prehistoric time feeding from the loftiest forests, shaking the earth with its tread of thunder."

"They will find a mountain of solid salt glistening in the sun with streams of brine issuing from its caverns."

"They will find blue-eyed Indians, white-haired, fairer than other tribes, planting gardens, making pottery, and dwelling in houses."

"Oh, yes," said the Federalists, "Jefferson has invented these stories to aggrandise the merit of his purchase. They never can cross the mountains. Human enterprise and exertion will attempt them in vain."

"It was folly! folly to send those men to perish miserably in the wilderness! It was a bold and wicked scheme of Jefferson. They will never return alive to this country."

Had not Jefferson himself in his anxiety directed Lewis and Clark to have recourse to our consuls in Java, the Isles of France and Bourbon, and the Cape of Good Hope? Heaven alone knew whither the Missouri—Columbia might lead them!

But the white Indians—

In the history of Wales there is a story that on account of wars in Wales a Welsh Prince in 1170 "prepared certain shipps, with men and munition, and sought adventures by seas, sailing west, and leaving the coast of Ireland so farre north, that he came to land unknowne, where he saw many strange things.... This Madoc arriving in the countrey, in the which he came in the year 1170, left most of his people there, and returning back for more of his nation, went thither again with ten sails," and was never again heard of.

Six hundred years later Welshmen in America imagined that they could talk with some tribes, who said "they came from white people but were now Indians," and the legend was related that white people had once lived on the Atlantic coast, but had so many wars they crossed the mountains and made boats and went down the Ohio and up the Missouri, "where to this day live the fair-haired, blue-eyed Mandans."

Our grandfathers believed this story, believed these whites might have been cut off at the Falls of the Ohio and some escaped. This is the excuse that Cornstalk gave to Lord Dunmore for the attack at Point Pleasant:

"Long ago our fathers destroyed the whites in a great battle at the Falls of the Ohio. We thought it might be done again."

As if in proof of this statement, George Rogers Clark and other first explorers at the Falls found Sand Island at low water a mass of hacked and mutilated human bones, whether of Indians or whites, no man could tell.

And here now were Lewis and Clark, in the Autumn of 1804, among the fabled Mandans, and here before them was a Mr. Hugh McCracken, an Irishman, and René Jussaume, a Frenchman, independent traders, who for a dozen winters had drawn their goods on dog sleds over from the British fort on the Assiniboine to trade with the Mandans for buffalo robes and horses. Thirty dogs they owned between them, great Huskies of the Eskimo breed.

Jussaume was immediately engaged as interpreter, and the first Sunday was spent in conversation with Black Cat, head chief of the Mandans. All day the hospitable blue-eyed, brown-haired Mandan women, fairer than other Indians, kept coming in with gifts of corn, boiled hominy, and garden stuffs, raised by their own rude implements. Girls of ten years old with silver-gray hair hanging down to their knees stood around and listened.

Yes, they had earthen pots and gardens, even extensive fields of corn, beans, squashes, and sunflowers, and houses—mud huts. They lived in little forted towns that had been moved successively up, up, up the Missouri.

"I believe what you have told us," said one of the chiefs in the great council on Monday. "We shall now have peace with the Ricaras. My people will be glad. Then our women may lie down at night without their moccasins on. They can work in the fields without looking every moment for the enemy."

"We have killed the Ricaras like birds," said another, "until we are tired of killing them. Now we will send a chief and some warriors to smoke with them."

Thus was the first effort for peace in the Mandan country.

The high chill wind almost blew down the awning over the great council. The men paraded up from the boats, the blunderbuss was fired from the bow of the big bateau, the long reed-stemmed stone-bowled pipes were smoked in amity.

"Here are suits of clothes for your chiefs," said Lewis, handing out of a wooden chest the handsome laced uniforms, cocked hats, and feathers. "To your women I present this iron corn-mill to grind their hominy."

The solemn, sad-faced chiefs took the clothes and put them on. The women flew at the corn-mill. All day long they ground and ground and wondered at "the great medicine" that could make meal with so little trouble. Mortars and pestles were thrown behind the lodges, discarded.

The next day Mr. McCracken set out on his return to Fort Assiniboine, one hundred and fifty miles away, with a friendly letter to the Chief Factor, Chaboillez, enclosing the passport of Lewis and Clark from the British minister at Washington.

Yes, a passport,—so uncertain was that boundary—never yet defined. Where lay that line? To the sources of the Mississippi? But those sources were as hidden as the fountain of the Nile. No white man yet had seen Itasca.

Since before the Revolution the Chaboillez family had traded at Michilimackinac. They were there in the days when Wabasha descended on St. Louis, and had a hand in all the border story.

While Lewis was negotiating with the Indians, Captain Clark set out with Black Cat to select a point where timber was plenty to build a winter camp.

"Hey, there! are ye going to run aff and leave me all to mesilf?" exclaimed Patrick Gass, head carpenter, busy selecting his tools and equipments. "Niver moind, I can outwalk the bist o' thim."

Strong, compact, broad-chested, heavy-limbed, but lean, sprightly, and quick of motion, Pat was soon at the side of his Captain. "I can show ye a pint or two about cabins, I'm thinkin'."

Clark smiled. He knew something about cabins himself.

The day was fine and crowds of Indians came to watch proceedings as Clark's men began to cut the tall cottonwoods and roll up the cabins.

Every day the Indians came in crowds to watch the wonderful building of the white men's fort, the deer-skin windows and mud-plastered chimneys. Turning loose their horses, all day long the red men lay on the grass watching the details of this curious architecture. At night, gathering an armful of cottonwood boughs stripped from the fort timber, each fed his horse and meandered thoughtfully homeward in the red sunset.

One day two squaws came, a leathery old dame and a captive Indian girl from the Rocky Mountains,—the handsome young Sacajawea, the Bird-Woman.

"She my slave," said Charboneau, a Frenchman in blanket capote and kerchief around his head. "I buy her from de Rock Mountain. I make her my wife." Charboneau lived with the Minnetarees, friends and neighbours of the Mandans.

Shahaka, the Big White Head Chief, came, too, with his squaw packing on her back "one hundred pounds of very fine meat." Whenever Shahaka crossed the river his squaw picked up the buffalo-skin canoe and carried it off on her back. Those canoes were made exactly like a Welsh coracle.

The days grew colder, the frost harder. Ice began to run in the river and the last boats in from the hunt brought thirty-two deer, eleven elk, and buffalo that were jerked and hung in the winter smoke-house.

By November 20 the triangular fort was ready,—two rows of cabins of four rooms each, with lofts above where, snug and warm under the roof next to the chimneys, the men slept through the long cold winter nights on beds of grass, rolled up in their blankets and fuzzy robes of buffalo.

In the frosty weather there came over the prairies from Fort Assiniboine seven Northwest traders, led by François Antoine Larocque and Charles Mackenzie, with stores of merchandise to trade among the Mandans. They immediately waited upon Lewis and Clark.

"We are not traders," said the Americans, "but explorers on our way to the Pacific."

Through Larocque's mind flashed the journey of Sir Alexander Mackenzie and its outcome. That might mean more than a rival trader. "He is distributing flags and medals among the Mandans," came the rumour.

"In the name of the United States I forbid you from giving flags and medals to the Indians, as our Government looks upon those things as sacred emblems of the attachment of the Indians to our country," said Captain Lewis to Monsieur Larocque when next he called at Fort Mandan.

"As I have neither flags nor medals, I run no risk of disobeying those orders, I assure you," answered the easy Frenchman.

"You and all persons are at liberty to come into our territories to trade or for any other purpose, and will never be molested unless your behaviour is such as would subject an American citizen himself to punishment," continued Lewis.

"And will the Americans not trade?"

"We may and shall probably have a public store well assorted of all kinds of Indian goods. No liquors are to be sold."

"A very grand plan they have schemed," muttered Larocque, as he went away, "but its being realised is more than I can tell."

While talking with the Captains, Larocque had an eye on a Hudson's Bay trader who had appeared on the scene.

"Beg pardon. I must be off," said Larocque, slipping out with Charboneau to outwit if possible the Hudson's Bay man and reach the Indians first. But before he got off a letter arrived from Chaboillez that altered all plans.

Unknown to Lewis and Clark, though they gradually came to discover it, hot war was waging in the north. For the sake of furs, rival traders cut and carved and shot and imprisoned each other. For the sake of furs those same traders had held Detroit thirteen years beyond the Revolution. Furs came near changing the balance of power in North America.

The old established Hudson's Bay Company claimed British America. The ambitious, energetic Northwesters of Montreal disputed the right. And now that Sir Alexander Mackenzie, a Canadian bourgeois, had become a famous explorer, knighted by the King, jealousies broke out in the Northwest company itself.

Simon McTavish, lord of the Northwesters, who had done all he could to hold the Lakes for Britain, would rule or ruin. But the Northwesters swore by Mackenzie. So the two factions fought each other, and both fought the Hudson's Bay Company.

"The Northwesters are no better than they ought to be," said the men of Hudson's Bay. "They sent an embassy to Congress in 1776." In fact a little change in the balance might have thrown the Northwesters over to the American side and altered the history of a continent.

"The quarrelling traders of the North are almost as bad as the Indians," said Lewis,—"they demoralise and inflame the Indians."

"Trade with me," said Hudson's Bay. "The Northwesters will cheat you."

"Trade with me," said the Northwester. "Hudson's Bay are bad men."

With troubled eyes the Indians listened, then scalped them both. Some bloody tales that North could tell, around the plains of lovely Winnipeg, out on the lone Saskatchewan, and over to Athabasca.

But now the Americans,—this was a new force in the West.

December 1, the Americans began to cut and carry pickets to complete the high stockade and gate across the front of Fort Mandan. December 6 it was too cold to work, and that night the river froze over in front of the fort with solid ice an inch and a half thick.

At nine o'clock next morning Chief Shahaka, Big White, came puffing in with news.

"De boofalo! de boofalo!" interpreted Jussaume, listening intently to the long harangue of the chief who was making all sorts of sign language and excitedly pointing up the river.

"De boofalo, on de prairie, comin' eento de bottom."

In short order Lewis, Clark, and fifteen men were out with the Indians mounted on horseback. Then came the din and chase of battle, a sight to fire the blood and thrill the calmest heart.

Riding among the herd, each Indian chose his victim, then, drawing his arrow to the last notch of the bowstring, let it fly. Another and another whizzed from the same string until the quiver was exhausted. The wounded beast, blinded by its mane, sometimes charged the hunter. But the swift steed, trained for the contest, wheeled and was gone. The buffalo staggered for a little, then, struck in a mortal part, fell headlong, pawing up the dust and snow in frantic efforts to rise and fly.

Into the midst came the Captains and their men, and every man brought down his buffalo. At twelve degrees below zero and in a northwest wind, Lewis and his men started out again the next morning to chase the herds that darkened the prairie. The air was filled with frosty flakes, the snow was deep and clinging, but all day and until after dark the exciting hunt held them to the saddle, and only when they came to the fire did the participants realise that their hands and feet were frostbitten.

Cold and colder grew the days. Two suns shone in the sky, prognosticator of still deeper frost. Brilliant northern lights glowed along the Arctic, but still they chased the buffalo until the morning of December 13, when Dr. Saugrain's thermometer stood twenty degrees below zero at sunrise. In fur caps, coats, mittens, and double moccasins they brought home horseload after horseload of juicy beef to hang in the winter storehouse. And fortunately, too, for one day they awoke to find the buffalo gone.

Some winters there was great suffering for food among the Mandans, but this was destined to be a year of plenty. Out of their abundance the chiefs, also, came to the fort with their dog sleds loaded with meat for their friends at the garrison.

X
THE FIRST DAKOTA CHRISTMAS

On Christmas eve the stockade was finished and the gate was shut. With forty-five men and a blunderbuss Fort Mandan stood impregnable to any force the northern savages could bring against it.

But there was no hostility,—far from it. From curiosity or for trade the Indians came in throngs, until on Christmas eve Captain Lewis sent out the announcement: "Let no one visit us to-morrow. It is our great medicine day."

Before daylight the wondering redmen were aroused from their buffalo couches by three volleys fired from the fort. Awe-struck they sat up and whispered: "White men making medicine." At sunrise a flag was floating above the palisade, but no Indian ventured to approach the mysterious newly closed walls of Fort Mandan.

For his Christmas stocking every man received an allowance of flour, dried apples, and pepper, which together with corn, beans, squash, and unlimited buffalo meat and marrow bones made out a Christmas feast.

At one o'clock the gun was fired for dinner. At two came the signal for the dance.

"Play up ole fashion reel. Everybody he mus' dance," said Cruzatte, tuning his fiddle. "We'll do our possible."

Cruzatte and Gibson played, Gass and Shannon led, Clark called the changes; and with crackling fires, and a stamping like horses, away up there under the Northern stars the first American Christmas was celebrated on the upper Missouri.

Three wide-eyed spectators sat ranged around the walls. These were the squaws of the interpreters, Madame René Jussaume, and the two wives of Charboneau, Madame the old dame, and Sacajawea, the beautiful Indian captive stolen beyond the Rockies.

The Indians, in their cheerless winter villages, found much to attract them at the fort of the white men. Soon after Christmas, William Bratton and John Shields set up their forge as blacksmiths, gunsmiths, and armourers. Day after day, with the thermometer forty degrees below zero, a constant procession of Indians came wending in on the well-beaten snow-track, with axes to grind and kettles to mend. It seemed as if all the broken old kettles that had ever drifted into the country, from Hudson's Bay or Fort William or up from St. Louis, were carried to Fort Mandan filled with corn to pay for mending.

Especially the Indians wanted battle-axes, with long thin blades like the halberds of ancient warfare. Some wanted pikes and spears fixed on the pointed ends of their long dog-poles. A burnt-out old sheet-iron cooking stove became worth its weight in gold. For every scrap of it, four inches square, the Indians would give seven or eight gallons of corn, and were delighted with the exchange. These bits of square sheet iron were invaluable for scrapers for hides, and every shred of cutting that fell to the ground was eagerly bought up to fashion into arrow tips. Metal, metal, metal,—the sine qua non of civilisation had come at last to the Mandans.

While Bratton was busy over his forge, and Shields at the guns, some of the men were out hunting, some were cutting wood to keep the great fires roaring, and some were making charcoal for the smithy.

So the days went on. New Year's, 1805, was ushered in with the blunderbuss. By way of recreation the captains permitted the men to visit the Indian villages where crowds gathered to see the white men dance, "heeling it and toeing it" to the music of the fiddles. The white men in turn were equally diverted by the grotesque figures of the Indians leaping in the buffalo dances.

Captain Clark noted an old man in one of the Mandan villages and gave him a knife.

"How old are you?"

"More than one hundred winters," was the answer. "Give me something for the pain in my back."

But a grandson rebuked the old man. "It isn't worth while. You have lived long enough. It is time for you to go to your relations who can take better care of you than we can."

The old man settled back in his robes by the fire and said no more.

"What accident has happened to your hand?" inquired Lewis of a chief's son.

"Grief for my relatives," answered the boy.

It was a Mandan custom to mutilate the body, as a mark of sorrow for the dead, until some had lost not only all their fingers, but their ears and hair. Sacred ceremonies of flagellations, knife thrusts into the flesh, piercing with thorns and barbaric crucifixions,—thirty years later George Catlin found these still among the Mandans, and ascribed them to an effort to perpetuate some Christian ceremonial of a remote ancestry.

Could it have been a corrupted tradition of the crucifixion of Christ? Who can tell? The Welsh of 1170 were Catholic Christians who believed in self-inflicted penance to save the soul. Degraded, misguided, interblent with Indian superstition through generations, it might have come to this.

But everywhere, at feast or council, one walked as conqueror,—Clark's negro servant, York. Of fine physical presence and remarkable stature, very black and very woolly, York was viewed as superhuman.

"Where you come from?" whispered the awe-struck savages.

Grinning until every ivory tooth glistened, and rolling up the whites of his eyes, he would answer, "I was running wild in the wood, and was caught and tamed by my mastah." Then assuming an air of ferocity, York would exhibit feats of strength that to the Indians seemed really terrible.

"If you kill white men we make you chief," the Arikaras whispered in his ear. York withstood great temptation,—he fought more battles than Clark.

"Delay! delay! delay!" was the Indian plea at every village. "Let our wives see you. Let our children see, especially the black man."

From Council Bluffs to Clatsop, children followed York constantly. If he chanced to turn, with piercing shrieks they ran in terror.

"Mighty warrior. Born black. Great medicine!" sagely commented the wise old men, watching him narrowly and shaking their heads at the unheard-of phenomenon. Even his jerks, contortions, and grimaces seemed a natural part of such a monstrosity. York was a perpetual exhibit, a menagerie in himself.

In these holiday visits to the Mandan towns a glimpse was caught of domestic life. Wasteful profusion when the buffalo came, when the buffalo left, days of famine. Then they opened their cellar-holes of corn and vegetables, hidden away as a last resource in protracted siege when the Sioux drove off the game and shut them up in their picketed villages.

So often were the horses of the Mandans stolen, that it had become a habitual custom every night to take them into the family lodge where they were fed on boughs and bark of the cottonwood. All day long in the iciest weather, the wrinkled, prematurely aged squaws were busy in the hollows, cutting the horse-feed with their dull and almost useless knives. On New Year's day Black Cat came down with a load of meat on his wife's back. A happy woman was she to receive a sharp new knife to cut her meat and cottonwood.

It was easy to buy a Mandan wife. A horse, a gun, powder and ball for a year, five or six pounds of beads, a handful of awls, the trade was made, and the new spouse was set to digging laboriously with the shoulder-blade of an elk or buffalo, preparing to plant her corn.

The Indian woman followed up the hunt, skinned and dressed the buffalo, and carried home the meat. Indian women built the lodges and took them down again, dragging the poles whenever there were not horses enough for a summer ramble.

When not at the hunt or the council, the warrior sat cross-legged at his door, carving a bow, pointing an arrow, or smoking, waited upon by his squaw, who never ate until the braves were done, and then came in at the last with the children and the dogs. Wrinkled and old at thirty, such was the fate of the Indian girl.

Sunday, January 13, Charboneau came back from a visit to the Minnetarees at Turtle Mountain with his face frozen. It was fortunate he returned with his life. Many a Frenchman was slain on that road, many an imprecation went up against the Assiniboine Sioux,—"Les Gens des Grands Diables du Nord," said Charboneau.

Touissant Charboneau, one of the old Canadian French Charboneaus, with his brothers had tramped with Alexander Henry far to the north under sub-arctic forests, wintered on the Assiniboine, and paddled to Winnipeg. Seven years now he had lived among the Minnetarees, an independent trader like McCracken and Jussaume, and interpreter for other traders.

Moreover, Charboneau was a polygamist with several wives to cook his food and carry his wood and water. But he had been kind to the captive Indian girl, and her heart clung to the easy-going Frenchman as her best friend. The worst white man was better than an Indian husband.

Captured in battle as a child five years before, Sacajawea had been brought to the land of the Dakotas and sold to Charboneau. Now barely sixteen, in that February at the Mandan fort she became a mother. Most of the men were away on a great hunting trip; when they came back a lusty little red-faced pappoose was screaming beside the kitchen fire.

The men had walked thirty miles that day on the ice and in snow to their knees, but utterly fatigued as they were, the sight of that little Indian baby cuddled in a deerskin robe brought back memories of home.

Clark came in with frosty beard, and moccasins all worn out.

"Sacajawea has a fine boy," said Lewis.

No wonder the Captains watched her recovery with interest. All winter they had sought an interpreter for those far-away tongues beyond the mountains, and no one could be found but Sacajawea, the wife of Charboneau. Clark directed York to wait on her, stew her fruit, and serve her tea, to the great jealousy of Jussaume's wife, who packed up her pappooses in high dudgeon and left the fort. Sacajawea was only a slave. She, Madame Jussaume, was the daughter of a chief!

Poor little Sacajawea! She was really very ill. If she died who would unlock the Gates of the Mountains?

Charboneau was a cook. He set himself to preparing the daintiest soups and steaks, and soon the "Bird Woman" was herself again, packing and planning for the journey.

Busy every day now were Lewis and Clark making up their reports and drawing a map of the country. Shahaka, Big White, came and helped them. Kagohami of the Minnetarees came, and with a coal on a robe made a sketch of the Missouri that Clark re-drew.

But in the midst of the map-making all the Indian talk was of "war, war, war."

"I am going to war against the Snakes in the Spring," said Kagohami.

"No," said Lewis, "that will displease the President. He wants you to live at peace."

"Suffer me to go to war against the Sioux," begged another chief.

"No," answered Lewis. "These wars are the cause of all your troubles. If you do not stop it the Great Father will withdraw his protection from you. He will come over here and make you stop it."

"Look on the many nations whom war has destroyed," continued Lewis. "Think of your poverty and misfortunes. If you wish to be happy, cultivate peace and friendship. Then you will have horses. Then you will grow strong."

"Have you spoken thus to all the tribes?" inquired Kagohami.

"We have."

"And did they open their ears?"

"They did."

"I have horses enough," reflected Kagohami, "I will not go to war. I will advise my nation to remain at home until we see whether the Snake Indians desire peace."

One night the hunters came in with the report, "A troop of whooping Sioux have captured our horses and taken our knives."

It was midnight, but Lewis immediately routed up the men and set out with twenty volunteers on the track of the marauding Sioux. In vain. The boasting freebooters had escaped with the horses beyond recovery.

"We are sorry we did not kill the white men," was the word sent back by an Arikara. "They are bad medicine. We shall scalp the whole camp in the Spring."