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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42925 ***
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 42925-h.htm or 42925-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42925/42925-h/42925-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42925/42925-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      https://archive.org/details/conquesttruestor00dyeerich
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
+
+      Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=).
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CONQUEST
+
+The True Story of Lewis and Clark
+
+by
+
+EVA EMERY DYE
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     JUST READY
+
+       [Illustration: WILLIAM CLARK]
+
+       [Illustration: MERIWETHER LEWIS]
+
+     THE EXPEDITION
+     of
+     LEWIS AND CLARK
+
+     Reprinted from the Edition of 1814
+
+     With an Introduction and Index
+     By JAMES K. HOSMER, LL.D.
+
+Notwithstanding that in America few names are more familiar upon the
+tongue than those of Lewis and Clark, it is a singular fact that the
+Journals of their expedition have for a long time been practically
+unattainable. The lack thus existing, felt now more and more as the
+centenary of the great exploration draws near, this new edition has
+been planned to fill. The text used is that of the 1814 edition, which
+must hold its place as the only account approaching adequacy.
+
+Dr. Hosmer, well-known for his work in Western history, has furnished
+an Introduction, giving the events which led up to the great
+expedition and showing the vast development that has flowed from it,
+in a way to make plain the profound significance of the achievement.
+There has also been added an elaborate analytic Index, a feature which
+the original edition lacked.
+
+The publishers offer this work in the belief that it will fill all
+requirements and become the standard popular edition of this great
+American classic.
+
+     _In two square octavo volumes, printed from new type of
+     a large clear face, with new photogravure
+     portraits and fac-simile maps._
+
+     In box, $5.00 net; delivered, $5.36.
+
+     A. C. McCLURG & CO., CHICAGO
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+THE CONQUEST
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     BY MRS. DYE
+
+     McLOUGHLIN &
+     OLD OREGON
+     A Chronicle
+
+     FOURTH EDITION
+     12mo.      $1.50
+
+"A graphic page of the story of the American pioneer."--_N.Y. Mail and
+Express._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+  [Illustration: From a Rare Painting.
+   "Judith"]
+
+
+THE CONQUEST
+
+The True Story of Lewis and Clark
+
+by
+
+EVA EMERY DYE
+
+Author of "McLoughlin and Old Oregon"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Chicago
+A. C. McClurg & Company
+1902
+
+Copyright
+A. C. McClurg & Co
+1902
+Entered at Stationers' Hall, London
+Published Nov. 12, 1902
+
+University Press · John Wilson
+and Son · Cambridge, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT
+
+
+The author hereby acknowledges obligation to the Lewis and Clark
+families, especially to William Hancock Clark of Washington, D.C., and
+John O'Fallon Clark of St. Louis, grandsons of Governor Clark, and to
+C. Harper Anderson of Ivy Depot, Virginia, the nephew and heir of
+Meriwether Lewis, for letters, documents, and family traditions; to
+Mrs. Meriwether Lewis Clark of Louisville and Mrs. Jefferson K. Clark
+of New York, widows of Governor Clark's sons, and to more than twenty
+nieces and nephews; to Reuben Gold Thwaites of the University of
+Wisconsin, for access to the valuable Draper Collection of Clark,
+Boone, and Tecumseh manuscripts, and for use of the original journals
+of Lewis and Clark which Mr. Thwaites is now editing; to George W.
+Martin of the Kansas Historical Society at Topeka, for access to the
+Clark letter-books covering William Clark's correspondence for a
+period of thirty years; to Colonel Reuben T. Durrett of Louisville,
+for access to his valuable private library; to Mr. Horace Kephart of
+the Mercantile Library, and Mr. Pierre Chouteau, St. Louis; to the
+Historical Societies of Missouri, at St. Louis and Columbia; to Mrs.
+Laura Howie, for Montana manuscripts at Helena; to Miss Kate C.
+McBeth, the greatest living authority on Nez Percé tradition; to the
+descendants of Dr. Saugrain, and to the families and friends of
+Sergeants Pryor, Gass, Floyd, Ordway, and privates Bratton, Shannon,
+Drouillard, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition; also to the Librarian
+of Congress for copies of Government Documents.
+
+     E. E. D.
+
+     OREGON CITY, OREGON,
+     September 1, 1902.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+     BOOK I
+
+     WHEN RED MEN RULED
+
+                                                   PAGE
+
+          I. A CHILD IS BORN                          1
+
+         II. THE CLARK HOME                           7
+
+        III. EXIT DUNMORE                            12
+
+         IV. THE WILDERNESS ROAD                     14
+
+          V. A BARREL OF GUNPOWDER                   17
+
+         VI. THE FEUDAL AGE                          19
+
+        VII. KASKASKIA                               24
+
+       VIII. THE SPANISH DONNA                       28
+
+         IX. VINCENNES                               32
+
+          X. THE CITY OF THE STRAIT                  38
+
+         XI. A PRISONER OF WAR                       41
+
+        XII. TWO WARS AT ONCE                        43
+
+       XIII. THE KEY OF THE COUNTRY                  47
+
+        XIV. BEHIND THE CURTAIN                      50
+
+         XV. THE ATTACK ON ST. LOUIS                 53
+
+        XVI. OLD CHILLICOTHE                         60
+
+       XVII. "DETROIT MUST BE TAKEN"                 63
+
+      XVIII. ON THE RAMPARTS                         69
+
+        XIX. EXIT CORNWALLIS                         72
+
+         XX. THE OLD VIRGINIA HOME                   77
+
+        XXI. DOWN THE OHIO                           81
+
+       XXII. MULBERRY HILL                           87
+
+      XXIII. MISSISSIPPI TROUBLES                    91
+
+       XXIV. ST. CLAIR                               97
+
+        XXV. THE SWORD OF "MAD ANTHONY" WAYNE       102
+
+       XXVI. THE SPANIARD                           106
+
+      XXVII. THE BROTHERS                           113
+
+     XXVIII. THE MAID OF FINCASTLE                  119
+
+       XXIX. THE PRESIDENT'S SECRETARY              122
+
+        XXX. THE PRESIDENT TALKS WITH MERIWETHER    131
+
+
+     BOOK II
+
+     INTO THE WEST
+
+          I. THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE                 139
+
+         II. THE KNIGHT OF THE WHITE HOUSE          144
+
+        III. RECRUITING FOR OREGON                  149
+
+         IV. THE FEUD IS ENDED                      154
+
+          V. THE CESSION OF ST. LOUIS               157
+
+         VI. SERGEANT ORDWAY WRITES A LETTER        166
+
+        VII. INTO THE LAND OF ANARCHY               167
+
+       VIII. "THE SIOUX! THE SIOUX!"                176
+
+         IX. THE ROMANCE OF THE MANDANS             185
+
+          X. THE FIRST DAKOTA CHRISTMAS             192
+
+         XI. THE BRITISH FUR TRADERS                199
+
+        XII. FAREWELL TO FORT MANDAN                204
+
+       XIII. TOWARD THE SUNSET                      208
+
+        XIV. THE SHINING MOUNTAINS                  214
+
+         XV. A WOMAN PILOT                          221
+
+        XVI. IDAHO                                  228
+
+       XVII. DOWN THE COLUMBIA                      235
+
+      XVIII. FORT CLATSOP BY THE SEA                242
+
+        XIX. A WHALE ASHORE                         249
+
+         XX. A RACE FOR EMPIRE                      257
+
+        XXI. "A SHIP! A SHIP!"                      259
+
+       XXII. BACK TO CIVILISATION                   265
+
+      XXIII. CAMP CHOPUNNISH                        272
+
+       XXIV. OVER THE BITTER ROOT RANGE             277
+
+        XXV. BEWARE THE BLACKFEET                   279
+
+       XXVI. DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE                   283
+
+      XXVII. THE HOME STRETCH                       288
+
+     XXVIII. THE OLD STONE FORTS OF ST. LOUIS       296
+
+       XXIX. TO WASHINGTON                          303
+
+        XXX. THE PLAUDITS OF A NATION               307
+
+
+     BOOK III
+
+     THE RED HEAD CHIEF
+
+          I. THE SHADOW OF NAPOLEON                 315
+
+         II. AMERICAN RULE IN ST. LOUIS             319
+
+        III. FAREWELL TO FINCASTLE                  322
+
+         IV. THE BOAT HORN                          327
+
+          V. A BRIDE IN ST. LOUIS                   331
+
+         VI. THE FIRST FORT IN MONTANA              335
+
+        VII. A MYSTERY                              337
+
+       VIII. A LONELY GRAVE IN TENNESSEE            343
+
+         IX. TRADE FOLLOWS THE FLAG                 344
+
+          X. TECUMSEH                               352
+
+         XI. CLARK GUARDS THE FRONTIER              360
+
+        XII. THE STORY OF A SWORD                   369
+
+       XIII. PORTAGE DES SIOUX                      376
+
+        XIV. "FOR OUR CHILDREN, OUR CHILDREN"       386
+
+         XV. TOO GOOD TO THE INDIANS                390
+
+        XVI. THE RED HEAD CHIEF                     397
+
+       XVII. THE GREAT COUNCIL AT PRAIRIE DU CHIEN  404
+
+      XVIII. THE LORDS OF THE RIVERS                415
+
+        XIX. FOUR INDIAN AMBASSADORS                421
+
+         XX. BLACK HAWK                             429
+
+        XXI. A GREAT LIFE ENDS                      434
+
+        XXII. THE NEW WEST                          438
+
+
+
+
+THE CONQUEST
+
+
+
+
+Book I
+
+_WHEN RED MEN RULED_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+_A CHILD IS BORN_
+
+
+The old brick palace at Williamsburg was in a tumult. The Governor
+tore off his wig and stamped it under foot in rage.
+
+"I'll teach them, the ingrates, the rebels!" Snatching at a worn
+bell-cord, but carefully replacing his wig, he stood with clinched
+fists and compressed lips, waiting.
+
+"They are going to meet in Williamsburg, eh? I'll circumvent them.
+These Virginia delegates! These rebellious colonists! I'll nip their
+little game! The land is ripe for insurrection. Negroes, Indians,
+rebels! There are enough rumblings now. Let me but play them off
+against each other, and then these colonists will know their friends.
+Let but the Indians rise--like naked chicks they'll fly to mother
+wings for shelter. I'll show them! I'll thwart their hostile plans!"
+
+Again Lord Dunmore violently rang the bell. A servant of the palace
+entered.
+
+"Here, sirrah! take this compass and dispatch a messenger to Daniel
+Boone. Bade him be gone at once to summon in the surveyors at the
+Falls of the Ohio. An Indian war is imminent. Tell him to lose no
+time."
+
+The messenger bowed himself out, and a few minutes later a horse's
+hoofs rang down the cobblestone path before the Governor's Mansion of
+His Majesty's colony of Virginia in the year of our Lord 1774.
+
+Lord Dunmore soliloquised. "Lewis is an arrant rebel, but he is
+powerful as old Warwick. I'll give him a journey to travel." Again he
+rang the bell and again a servant swept in with low obeisance.
+
+"You, sirrah, dispatch a man as fast as horse or boat can speed to
+Bottetourt. Tell Andrew Lewis to raise at once a thousand men and
+march from Lewisburg across Mt. Laurel to the mouth of the Great
+Kanawha. Here are his sealed orders." The messenger took the packet
+and went out.
+
+"An Indian war will bring them back. I, myself, will lead the right
+wing, the pick and flower of the army. I'll make of the best men my
+own scouts. To myself will I bind this Boone, this Kenton, Morgan, and
+that young surveyor, George Rogers Clark, before these agitators taint
+their loyalty. I, myself, will lead my troops to the Shawnee towns.
+Let Lewis rough it down the Great Kanawha."
+
+It was the sixth of June when the messenger drew rein at Boone's door
+in Powell's Valley. The great frontiersman sat smoking in his porch,
+meditating on the death of that beloved son killed on the way to
+Kentucky. The frightened emigrants, the first that ever tried the
+perilous route, had fallen back to Powell's Valley.
+
+Boone heard the message and looked at his faithful wife, Rebecca, busy
+within the door. She nodded assent. The messenger handed him the
+compass, as large as a saucer. For a moment Boone balanced it on his
+hand, then slipped it into his bosom. Out of a huge wooden bowl on a
+cross-legged table near he filled his wallet with parched corn, took
+his long rifle from its peg over the door, and strode forth.
+
+Other messengers were speeding at the hest of Lord Dunmore, hither and
+yon and over the Blue Ridge.
+
+Andrew Lewis was an old Indian fighter from Dinwiddie's
+day,--Dinwiddie, the blustering, scolding, letter-writing Dinwiddie,
+who undertook to instruct Andrew Lewis and George Washington how to
+fight Indians! Had not the Shawnees harried his border for years? Had
+he not led rangers from Fairfax's lodge to the farthest edge of
+Bottetourt? Side by side with Washington he fought at Long Meadows and
+spilled blood with the rest on Braddock's field. More than forty years
+before, his father, John Lewis, had led the first settlers up the
+Shenandoah. They had sown it to clover, red clover, red, the Indians
+said, from the blood of red men slain by the whites.
+
+But what were they to do when peaceful settlers, fugitives from the
+old world, staked their farms on vacant land only to be routed by the
+scalp halloo? Which was preferable, the tyranny of kings or the Indian
+firestake? Hunted humanity must choose.
+
+The Shawnees, too, were a hunted people. Driven from south and from
+north, scouted by the Cherokees, scalped by the Iroquois, night and
+day they looked for a place of rest and found it not. Beside the
+shining Shenandoah, daughter of the stars, they pitched their wigwams,
+only to find a new and stronger foe, the dreaded white man. Do their
+best, interests would conflict. Civilisation and savagery could not
+occupy the same territory.
+
+And now a party of emigrants were pressing into the Mingo country on
+the upper Ohio. Early in April the family of Logan, the noted Mingo
+chief, was slaughtered by the whites. It was a dastardly deed, but
+what arm had yet compassed the lawless frontier? All Indians
+immediately held accountable all whites, and burnings and massacres
+began in reprisal. Here was an Indian war at the hand of Lord Dunmore.
+
+Few white men had gone down the Kanawha in those days. Washington
+surveyed there in 1770, and two years later George Rogers Clark
+carried chain and compass in the same region. That meant
+settlers,--now, war. But Lewis, blunt, irascible, shrank not. Of old
+Cromwellian stock, sternly aggressive and fiercely right, he felt the
+land was his, and like the men of Bible times went out to smite the
+heathen hip and thigh. Buckling on his huge broadsword, and slipping
+into his tall boots and heavy spurs, he was off.
+
+At his call they gathered, defenders of the land beyond the Blue
+Ridge, Scotch-Irish, Protestants of Protestants, long recognised by
+the Cavaliers of tidewater Virginia as a mighty bulwark against the
+raiding red men. Charles Lewis brought in his troop from Augusta,
+kinsfolk of the Covenanters, fundamentally democratic, Presbyterian
+Irish interpreting their own Bibles, believing in schools, born
+leaders, dominating their communities and impressing their character
+on the nation yet unborn.
+
+It was August when, in hunting shirts and leggings, they marched into
+rendezvous at Staunton, with long knives in their leathern belts and
+rusty old firelocks above their shoulders. In September they camped at
+Lewisburg. Flour and ammunition were packed on horses. Three weeks of
+toil and travail through wilderness, swamp, and morass, and they were
+at the mouth of the Great Kanawha.
+
+But where was Dunmore? With his thousand men he was to march over the
+Braddock Road to meet them there on the Ohio. Rumour now said he was
+marching alone on the Shawnee towns.
+
+"And so expose himself!" ejaculated Lewis.
+
+But just then a runner brought word from Lord Dunmore, "Join me at the
+Shawnee towns."
+
+"What does it mean?" queried Lewis of his colonels, Charles Lewis of
+Augusta, Fleming of Bottetourt, Shelby and Field of Culpepper. "It
+looks like a trap. Not in vain have I grown gray in border forays.
+There's some mistake. It will leave the whole western portion of
+Virginia unprotected."
+
+Brief was the discussion. Before they could cross the Ohio, guns
+sounded a sharp surprise. Andrew Lewis and his men found themselves
+penned at Point Pleasant without a hope of retreat. Behind them lay
+the Ohio and the Kanawha, in front the woods, thick with Delawares,
+Iroquois, Wyandots, Shawnees, flinging themselves upon the entrapped
+army.
+
+Daylight was just quivering in the treetops when the battle of Point
+Pleasant began. At the first savage onset Fleming, Charles Lewis, and
+Field lay dead. It was surprise, ambuscade, slaughter.
+
+Grim old Andrew Lewis lit his pipe and studied the field while his
+riflemen and sharp-shooters braced themselves behind the white-armed
+sycamores. There was a crooked run through the brush unoccupied.
+While the surging foes were beating back and forth, Andrew Lewis sent
+a party through that run to fall upon the Indians from behind. A
+Hercules himself, he gathered up his men with a rush, cohorns roaring.
+From the rear there came an answering fire. Above the din, the voice
+of Cornstalk rose, encouraging his warriors, "Be strong! be strong!"
+But panic seized the Indians; they broke and fled.
+
+Andrew Lewis looked and the sun was going down. Two hundred whites lay
+stark around him, some dead, some yet to rise and fight on other
+fields. The ground was slippery with gore; barked, hacked, and red
+with blood, the white-armed sycamores waved their ghostly hands and
+sighed, where all that weary day red men and white had struggled
+together. And among the heaps of Indian slain, there lay the father of
+a little Shawnee boy, Tecumseh.
+
+Cornstalk, chief of the Shawnees, Red Hawk, pride of the Delawares,
+and Logan, Logan the great Mingo, were carried along in the resistless
+retreat of their people, down and over the lurid Ohio, crimson with
+blood and the tint of the setting sun.
+
+On that October day, 1774, civilisation set a milestone westward.
+Lewis and his backwoodsmen had quieted the Indians in one of the most
+hotly contested battles in all the annals of Indian warfare.
+
+"Let us go on," they said, and out of the debris of battle, Lewis and
+his shattered command crossed the Ohio to join Lord Dunmore at the
+Shawnee towns.
+
+"We have defeated them. Now let us dictate peace at their very doors,"
+said Lewis. But Dunmore, amazed at this success of rebel arms, sent
+the flying word, "Go back. Retrace your steps. Go home."
+
+Lewis, astounded, stopped. "Go back now? What does the Governor mean?
+We must go on, to save him if nothing else. He is in the very heart of
+the hostile country." And he pressed on.
+
+Again the messenger brought the word, "Retreat."
+
+"Retreat?" roared Lewis, scarce believing his ears. "We've reached
+this goal with hardship. We've purchased a victory with blood!" There
+was scorn in the old man's voice. "March on!" he said.
+
+But when within three miles of the Governor's camp, Lord Dunmore
+himself left his command and hastened with an Indian chief to the camp
+of Lewis. Dunmore met him almost as an Indian envoy, it seemed to
+Lewis.
+
+"Why have you disobeyed my orders?" thundered the Governor, drawing
+his sword and reddening with rage. "I say go back. Retrace your steps.
+Go home. I will negotiate a peace. There need be no further movement
+of the southern division."
+
+His manner, his tone, that Indian!--the exhausted and overwrought
+borderers snatched their bloody knives and leaped toward the Governor.
+Andrew Lewis held them back. "This is no time for a quarrel. I will
+return." And amazed, enraged, silenced, Andrew Lewis began his retreat
+from victory.
+
+But suspicious murmurings rolled along the line.
+
+"He ordered us there to betray us."
+
+"Why is my lord safe in the enemy's country?"
+
+"Why did the Indians fall upon us while the Governor sat in the
+Shawnee towns?"
+
+"That sword--"
+
+Andrew Lewis seemed not to hear these ebullitions of his men, but his
+front was stern and awful. As one long after said, "The very earth
+seemed to tremble under his tread."
+
+All Virginia rang with their praises, as worn and torn and battered
+with battle, Lewis led his troop into the settlements. Leaving them to
+disperse to their homes with pledge to reassemble at a moment's
+notice, he set forth for Williamsburg where news might be heard of
+great events. On his way he stopped at Ivy Creek near Charlottesville,
+at the house of his kinsman, William Lewis. An infant lay in the
+cradle, born in that very August, while they were marching to battle.
+
+"And what have you named the young soldier?" asked the grim old
+borderer, as he looked upon the sleeping child.
+
+"Meriwether Lewis, Meriwether for his mother's people," answered the
+proud and happy father.
+
+"And will you march with the minute men?"
+
+"I shall be there," said William Lewis.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+_THE CLARK HOME_
+
+
+"What do you see, William?"
+
+A red-headed boy was standing at the door of a farmhouse on the road
+between Fredericksburg and Richmond, in the valley of the
+Rappahannock.
+
+"The soldiers, mother, the soldiers!"
+
+Excitedly the little four-year-old flew down under the mulberry trees
+to greet his tall and handsome brother, George Rogers Clark, returning
+from the Dunmore war.
+
+Busy, sewing ruffles on her husband's shirt and darning his long silk
+stockings, the mother sat, when suddenly she heard the voice of her
+son with his elder brother.
+
+"I tell you, Jonathan, there is a storm brewing. But I cannot take an
+oath of allegiance to the King that my duty to my country may require
+me to disregard. The Governor has been good to me, I admit that. I
+cannot fight him--and I will not fight my own people. Heigh-ho, for
+the Kentucky country."
+
+Dropping her work, Mrs. Clark, Ann Rogers, a descendant of the martyr
+of Smithfield, and heir through generations of "iron in the blood and
+granite in the backbone," looked into the approaching, luminous eyes.
+
+"I hope my son has been a credit to his country?"
+
+"A credit?" exclaimed Jonathan. "Why, mother, Lord Dunmore has offered
+him a commission in the British army!"
+
+"But I cannot take it," rejoined George Rogers, bending to press a
+kiss on the cheek of his brown-eyed little mother. "Lord Dunmore means
+right, but he is misunderstood. And he swears by the King."
+
+"And do we not all swear by the King?" almost wrathfully exclaimed
+John Clark, the father, entering the opposite door at this moment.
+
+"Who has suffered more for the King than we self-same Cavaliers, we
+who have given Virginia her most honourable name--'The Old Dominion'?
+Let the King but recognise us as Britons, entitled to the rights of
+Englishmen, and we will swear by him to the end."
+
+It was a long speech for John Clark, a man of few words and intensely
+loyal, the feudal patriarch of this family, and grandson of a Cavalier
+who came to Virginia after the execution of Charles I. But his soul
+had been stirred to the centre, by the same wrongs that had kindled
+Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson. These were his friends, his
+neighbours, who had the same interests at stake, and the same high
+love of liberty.
+
+"If the King would have us loyal, aye, then, let him be loyal to us,
+his most loyal subjects. Did not Patrick Henry's father drink the
+King's health at the head of his regiment? Did not Thomas Jefferson's
+grandsires sit in the first House of Burgesses in the old church at
+Jamestown, more than a century before the passage of the Stamp Act?
+And who swore better by the King? None of us came over here from
+choice! We came because we loved our King and would not bide his
+enemies."
+
+George Rogers Clark looked approvingly at his father, and yet, he owed
+fealty to Lord Dunmore. Even as a stripling he had been singled out
+for favours.
+
+"I see the storm gathering," he said. "If I choose, it must be with my
+people. But I need not choose,--I will go to Kentucky."
+
+It was the selfsame thought of Daniel Boone.
+
+"But here are the children!"
+
+Nine-year-old Lucy danced to her brother, William still clung to his
+hand, and their bright locks intermingled.
+
+"Three red-headed Clarks," laughed the teasing Jonathan.
+
+More than a century since, the first John Clark settled on the James,
+a bachelor and tobacco planter. But one day Mary Byrd of Westover
+tangled his heart in her auburn curls. In every generation since, that
+red hair had re-appeared.
+
+"A strain of heroic benevolence runs through the red-headed Clarks,"
+said an old dame who knew the family. "They win the world and give it
+away."
+
+But the dark-haired Clarks, they were the moneymakers. Already
+Jonathan, the eldest, had served as Clerk in the Spottsylvania Court
+at Fredericksburg, where he often met Colonel George Washington. Three
+younger brothers, John, Richard, and Edmund, lads from twelve to
+seventeen, listened not less eagerly than Ann, Elizabeth, Lucy, and
+Fanny, the sisters of this heroic family.
+
+But George was the adventurer. When he came home friends, neighbours,
+acquaintances, gathered to listen. The border wars had kindled
+military ardour with deeds to fire a thousand tales of romance and
+fireside narrative. Moreover, George was a good talker. But he seemed
+uncommonly depressed this night,--the choice of life lay before him.
+
+At sixteen George Rogers Clark had set out as a land surveyor, like
+Washington and Boone and Wayne, penetrating and mapping the western
+wilds.
+
+To survey meant to command. Watched by red men over the hills, dogged
+by savages in the brakes, scalped by demons in the wood, the frontier
+surveyor must be ready at any instant to drop chain and compass for
+the rifle and the knife.
+
+Like Wayne and Washington, Clark had drilled boy troops when he and
+Madison were pupils together under the old Scotch dominie, Donald
+Robertson, in Albemarle.
+
+While still in his teens George and a few others, resolute young men,
+crossed the Alleghanies, went over Braddock's route, and examined Fort
+Necessity where Washington had been. They floated down the Monongahela
+to Fort Pitt. In the angle of the rivers, overlooking the flood,
+mouldered the remains of old Fort Du Quesne, blown up by the French
+when captured by the English. The mound, the moat, the angles and
+bastions yet remained, but overgrown with grass, and cattle grazed
+where once an attempt had been made to plant mediæval institutions on
+the sod of North America. As if born for battles, Clark studied the
+ground plans.
+
+"Two log gates swung on hinges here," explained the Colonel from Fort
+Pitt, "one opening on the water and one on the land side with a
+mediæval drawbridge. Every night they hauled up the ponderous bridge,
+leaving only a dim dark pit down deep to the water."
+
+With comprehensive glance George Rogers Clark took in the mechanism of
+intrenchments, noted the convenient interior, with magazine,
+bake-house, and well in the middle.
+
+"So shall I build my forts." Pencil in hand the young surveyor had the
+whole scheme instantly sketched. The surprised Colonel took a second
+look. Seldom before had he met so intelligent a study of
+fortifications.
+
+"Are you an officer?"
+
+"I am Major of Virginia militia under Lord Dunmore."
+
+With a missionary to the Indians, Clark slid down the wild Ohio and
+took up a claim beyond the farthest. Here for a year he lived as did
+Boone, beating his corn on a hominy block and drying his venison
+before his solitary evening fire. Then he journeyed over into the
+Scioto.
+
+So, when the Dunmore war broke out, here was a scout ready at hand for
+the Governor. Major Clark knew every inch of the Braddock route and
+every trail to the Shawnee towns. When a fort was needed, it was the
+skilled hand and fertile brain of George Rogers Clark that planned the
+bastioned stockade that became the nucleus of the future city of
+Wheeling.
+
+Then Dunmore came by. Like a war-horse, Clark scented the battle of
+Point Pleasant afar off.
+
+"And I not there to participate!" he groaned. But Dunmore held him at
+his own side, with Morgan, Boone, and Kenton, picked scouts of the
+border. When back across the Ohio the Mingoes came flying, Clark wild,
+eager, restless, was pacing before Dunmore's camp.
+
+Beaten beyond precedent by the mighty valour of Andrew Lewis,
+Cornstalk and his warriors came pleading for peace.
+
+"Why did you go to war?" asked Dunmore.
+
+"Long, long ago there was a great battle between the red Indians and
+the white ones," said Cornstalk, "and the red Indians won. This nerved
+us to try again against the whites."
+
+But Logan refused to come.
+
+"Go," said Lord Dunmore, to George Rogers Clark and another, "go to
+the camp of the sullen chief and see what he has to say."
+
+They went. The great Mingo gave a vehement talk. They took it down in
+pencil and, rolled in a string of wampum, carried it back to the camp
+of Lord Dunmore.
+
+In the council Clark unrolled and read the message. Like the wail of
+an old Roman it rang in the woods of Ohio.
+
+"I appeal to any white man if ever he entered Logan's cabin and he
+gave him not meat; if he ever came cold and naked and he clothed him
+not. During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained
+idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the
+whites, that my countrymen pointed as they passed and said, 'Logan is
+the friend of the white man.' I had even thought to have lived with
+you but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, last Spring, in
+cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not
+even sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood
+in the veins of any living creature. This drove me to revenge. I have
+sought it; I have killed many; I have fully glutted my vengeance; for
+my country I rejoice at the beams of peace. But do not harbour a
+thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will
+not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for
+Logan? Not one."
+
+One by one, half a dozen of Clark's army comrades had dropped in
+around the hickory flame, while the substance of Logan's tale
+unfolded.
+
+"And was Cresap guilty?"
+
+"No," answered George Rogers Clark, "I perceived he was angry to hear
+it read so before the army and I rallied him. I told him he must be a
+very great man since the Indians shouldered him with everything that
+happened."
+
+Little William had fallen asleep, sitting in the lap of his elder
+brother, but, fixed forever, his earliest memory was of the Dunmore
+war. There was a silence as they looked at the sleeping child. A
+little negro boy crouched on the rug and slumbered, too. His name was
+York.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+_EXIT DUNMORE_
+
+
+On the last day of that same August in which Meriwether Lewis was born
+and Andrew Lewis was leading the Virginia volunteers against the
+Shawnees, Patrick Henry and George Washington set out on horseback
+together for Philadelphia, threading the bridle-paths of uncut
+forests, and fording wide and bridgeless rivers to the Continental
+Congress.
+
+It had been nine years since Patrick Henry, "alone and unadvised," had
+thrilled the popular heart with his famous first resolutions against
+the Stamp Act. From the lobby of the House of Burgesses, Thomas
+Jefferson, a student, looked that morning at the glowing orator and
+said in his heart, "He speaks as Homer wrote." It was an alarm bell, a
+call to resistance. "Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles the First his
+Cromwell, and George the Third"--how the staid, bewigged, beruffled
+old Burgesses rose in horror!--"and George the Third may profit by
+their example."
+
+"Most indecent language," muttered the Burgesses as they hurried out
+of the Capitol, pounding their canes on the flagstone floor. But the
+young men lifted him up, and for a hundred years an aureole has
+blazed around the name of Patrick Henry.
+
+The Congress at Philadelphia adjourned, and the delegates plodded
+their weary way homeward through winter mire. From his Indian war Lord
+Dunmore came back to Williamsburg to watch the awakening of Virginia.
+
+Then came that breathless day when Dunmore seized and carried off the
+colony's gunpowder.
+
+The Virginians promptly demanded its restoration. The minute men flew
+to arms.
+
+"By the living God!" cried Dunmore, "if any insult is offered to me or
+to those who have obeyed my orders, I will declare freedom to the
+slaves and lay the town in ashes."
+
+Patrick Henry called together the horsemen of Hanover and marched upon
+Williamsburg. The terrified Governor sent his wife and daughters on
+board a man-of-war and fortified the palace. And on came Patrick
+Henry. Word flew beyond the remotest Blue Ridge. Five thousand men
+leaped to arms and marched across country to join Patrick Henry. But
+at sunrise on the second day a panting messenger from Dunmore paid him
+for the gunpowder. Patrick Henry, victorious, turned about and marched
+home to Hanover.
+
+Again Lord Dunmore summoned the House of Burgesses. They came, grim
+men in hunting shirts and rifles. Then his Lordship set a trap at the
+door of the old Powder Magazine. Some young men opened it for arms and
+were shot. Before daylight Lord Dunmore evacuated the palace and fled
+from the wrath of the people. On shipboard he sailed up and down for
+weeks, laying waste the shores of the Chesapeake, burning Norfolk and
+cannonading the fleeing inhabitants.
+
+Andrew Lewis hastened down with his minute men. His old Scotch ire was
+up as he ran along the shore. He pointed his brass cannon at Dunmore's
+flagship, touched it off, and Lord Dunmore's best china was shattered
+to pieces.
+
+"Good God, that I should ever come to this!" exclaimed the unhappy
+Governor.
+
+He slipped his cables and sailed away in a raking fire, and with that
+tragic exit all the curtains of the past were torn and through the
+rent the future dimly glimmered.
+
+After Dunmore's flight, every individual of the nobler sort felt that
+the responsibility of the country depended upon him, and straightway
+grew to that stature. Men looked in one another's faces and said, "We
+ourselves are Kings."
+
+Around the great fire little William Clark heard his father and
+brothers discuss these events, and vividly remembered in after years
+the lightning flash before the storm. He had seen his own brothers go
+out to guard Henry from the wrath of Dunmore on his way to the second
+Continental Congress. And now Dunmore had fled, and as by the irony of
+fate, on the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence,
+Patrick Henry became the first American Governor of Virginia, with
+headquarters at the palace.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+_THE WILDERNESS ROAD_
+
+
+Daniel Boone threw back his head and laughed silently.
+
+For a hundred miles in the barrier ridge of the Alleghanies there is
+but a single depression, Cumberland Gap, where the Cumberland river
+breaks through, with just room enough for the stream and a bridle
+path. Through this Gap as through a door Boone passed into the
+beautiful Kentucky, and there, by the dark and rushing water of Dick's
+River, George Rogers Clark and John Floyd were encamped.
+
+The young men leaped to their feet and strode toward the tall, gaunt
+woodsman, who, axe in hand, had been vigorously hewing right and left
+a path for the pioneers.
+
+"They are coming,--Boone's trace must be ready. Can you help?" Boone
+removed his coonskin cap and wiped his perspiring face with a buckskin
+handkerchief. His forehead was high, fine-skinned, and white.
+
+"That is our business,--to settle the country," answered the young
+surveyors, and through the timber, straight as the bird flies over
+rivers and hills, they helped Boone with the Wilderness Road.
+
+It was in April of 1775. Kentucky gleamed with the dazzling dogwood as
+if snows had fallen on the forests. As their axes rang in the primeval
+stillness, another rover stepped out of the sycamore shadows. It was
+Simon Kenton, a fair-haired boy of nineteen, with laughing blue eyes
+that fascinated every beholder.
+
+"Any more of ye?" inquired Boone, peering into the distance behind
+him.
+
+"None. I am alone. I come from my corn-patch on the creek. Are you
+going to build?"
+
+"Yes, when I reach a certain spring, and a bee-tree on the Kentucky
+River."
+
+"Let us see," remarked Floyd. "We may meet Indians. I nominate Major
+Clark generalissimo of the frontier."
+
+"And Floyd surveyor-in-chief," returned Clark.
+
+"An' thee, boy, shall be my chief guard," said Daniel Boone, laying
+his kindly hand on the lad's broad shoulder. "An' I--_am the people_."
+The Boones were Quakers, the father of Daniel was intimate with Penn;
+his uncle James came to America as Penn's private secretary; sometimes
+the old hunter dropped into their speech.
+
+But people were coming. One Richard Henderson, at a treaty in the hill
+towns of the Cherokees, had just paid ten thousand pounds for the
+privilege of settling Kentucky. Boone left before the treaty was
+signed and a kindly old Cherokee chieftain took him by the hand in
+farewell.
+
+"Brother," he said, "we have given you a fine land, but I believe you
+will have much trouble in settling it."
+
+They were at hand. Through the Cumberland Gap, as through a rift in a
+Holland dyke, a rivulet of settlers came trickling down the newly cut
+Wilderness Road.
+
+Under the green old trees a mighty drama was unfolding, a Homeric
+song, the epic of a nation, as they piled up the bullet-proof cabins
+of Boonsboro. This rude fortification could not have withstood the
+smallest battery, but so long as the Indians had no cannon this wooden
+fort was as impregnable as the walls of a castle.
+
+In a few weeks other forts, Harrodsburg and Logansport, dotted the
+canebrakes, and the startled buffalo stampeded for the salt licks.
+
+In September Boone brought out his wife and daughters, the first white
+women that ever trod Kentucky soil.
+
+"Ugh! ugh! ugh!"
+
+A hundred Shawnees from their summer hunt in the southern hills came
+trailing home along the Warrior's Path, the Indian highway north and
+south, from Cumberland Gap to the Scioto.
+
+"Ugh! ugh! ugh!"
+
+They pause and point to the innumerable trackings of men and beasts
+into their beloved hunting grounds. Astonishment expands every
+feature. They creep along and trace the road. They see the
+settlements. It cannot be mistaken, the white man has invaded their
+sacred arcanum.
+
+Amazement gives place to wrath. Every look, every gesture bespeaks the
+red man's resolve.
+
+"We will defend our country to the last; we will give it up only with
+our lives."
+
+Forthwith a runner flies over the hills to Johnson Hall on the Mohawk.
+Sir William is dead, dead endeavouring to unravel the perplexities of
+the Dunmore war, but his son, Sir Guy, meets the complaining Shawnees.
+
+"The Cherokees sold Kentucky? That cannot be. Kentucky belongs to the
+King. My father bought it for him at Fort Stanwix, of the Iroquois.
+The Cherokees have no right to sell Kentucky. Go in and take the
+land." And so, around their campfires, and at the lake forts of the
+British, the Shawnee-Iroquois planned to recover Kentucky.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+_A BARREL OF GUNPOWDER_
+
+
+Scarcely was Jefferson home from signing the Declaration when back
+from Kentucky came little William's tall strong brother, George Rogers
+Clark, elected by those far-away settlers, in June of 1776, to
+represent them in the assembly of Virginia.
+
+Cut by a thousand briars, with ragged clothes and blistered feet,
+Clark looked in at the home in Caroline and hurried on to
+Williamsburg.
+
+"The Assembly adjourned? Then I must to the Governor. Before the
+Assembly meets again I may effect what I wish."
+
+Patrick Henry was lying sick at his country-home in Hanover when the
+young envoy from Kentucky was ushered to his bedside. Pushing his
+reading spectacles up into his brown wig, the Governor listened keenly
+as the young man strode up and down his bed-chamber.
+
+The scintillant brown eyes flashed. "Your cause is good. I will give
+you a letter to the Council."
+
+"Five hundredweight of gunpowder!" The Council lifted their eyebrows
+when Clark brought in his request.
+
+"Virginia is straining every nerve to help Washington; how can she be
+expected to waste gunpowder on Kentucky?"
+
+"Let us move those settlers back to Virginia at the public expense,"
+suggested one, "and so save the sum that it would take to defend them
+in so remote a frontier."
+
+"Move Boone and Kenton and Logan back?" Clark laughed. Too well he
+knew the tenacity of that border germ. "So remote a frontier? It is
+your own back door. The people of Kentucky may be exterminated for the
+want of this gunpowder which I at such hazard have sought for their
+relief. Then what bulwark will you have to shield you from the
+savages? The British are employing every means to engage those Indians
+in war."
+
+Clark knew there was powder at Pittsburg. One hundred and thirty-six
+kegs had just been brought up by Lieutenant William Linn with infinite
+toil from New Orleans, the first cargo ever conveyed by white men up
+the Mississippi and Ohio.
+
+"We will lend you the powder as to friends in distress, but you must
+be answerable for it and pay for its transportation."
+
+Clark shook his head,--"I cannot be answerable, nor can I convey it
+through that great distance swarming with foes."
+
+"We can go no farther," responded the Council, concluding the
+interview. "God knows we would help you if we could, but how do we
+even know that Kentucky will belong to us? The assistance we have
+already offered is a stretch of power."
+
+"Very well," and Clark turned on his heel. "A country that is not
+worth defending is not worth claiming. Since Virginia will not defend
+her children, they must look elsewhere. Kentucky will take care of
+herself."
+
+His words, that manner, impressed the Council. "What will Kentucky
+do?"
+
+To his surprise, the next day Clark was recalled and an order was
+passed by the Virginia Council for five hundred pounds of gunpowder,
+"for the use of said inhabitants of Kentucki," to be delivered to him
+at Pittsburg. Hardly a month old was the Declaration of Independence
+when the new nation reached out to the west.
+
+"Did you get the powder?" was the first greeting of young William
+Clark as his brother re-entered the home in Caroline.
+
+"Yes, and I fancy I shall get something more."
+
+"What is it?" inquired the little diplomat, eager as his brother for
+the success of his embassy.
+
+"Recognition of Kentucky." And he did, for when he started back Major
+Clark bore the word that the Assembly of Virginia had made Kentucky a
+county. With that fell Henderson's proprietary claim and all the land
+was free.
+
+With buoyant heart Clark and Jones, his colleague, hastened down to
+Pittsburg. Seven boatmen were engaged and the precious cargo was
+launched on the Ohio.
+
+But Indians were lurking in every inlet. Scarce were they afloat
+before a canoe darted out behind, then another and another.
+
+With all the tremendous energy of life and duty in their veins, Clark
+and his boatmen struck away and away. For five hundred miles the chase
+went down the wild Ohio. At last, eluding their pursuers, almost
+exhausted, up Limestone Creek they ran, and on Kentucky soil, dumped
+out the cargo and set the boat adrift.
+
+While the Indians chased the empty canoe far down the shore, Clark hid
+the powder amid rocks and trees, and struck out overland for help from
+the settlements. At dead of night he reached Harrod's Station. Kenton
+was there, and with twenty-eight others they set out for the Creek and
+returned, each bearing a keg of gunpowder on his shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+_THE FEUDAL AGE_
+
+
+What a summer for the little forts! Dressed in hunting shirt and
+moccasins, his rifle on his shoulder, his tomahawk in his belt, now
+leading his eager followers on the trail of the red marauders, now
+galloping at the head of his horsemen to the relief of some
+beleaguered station, Clark guarded Kentucky.
+
+No life was safe beyond the walls. Armed sentinels were ever on the
+watchtowers, armed guards were at the gates. And outside, Indians lay
+concealed, watching as only Indians can watch, nights and days, to cut
+off the incautious settler who might step beyond the barricades. By
+instinct the settlers came to know when a foe was near; the very dogs
+told it, the cattle and horses became restless, the jay in the treetop
+and the wren in the thorn-hollow chattered it. Even the night-owl
+hooted it from the boughs of the ghostly old sycamore.
+
+In this, the feudal age of North America, every man became a captain
+and fought his own battles. Like knights of old, each borderer, from
+Ticonderoga to Wheeling and Boonsboro, sharpened his knife, primed his
+flintlock, and started. No martial music or gaudy banner, no drum or
+bugle, heralded the border foray. Silent as the red man the stark
+hunter issued from his wooden fort and slid among the leaves. Silent
+as the panther he stole upon his prey.
+
+But all at once the hill homes of the Cherokees emptied themselves to
+scourge Kentucky. Shawnees of the Scioto, Chippewas of the Lakes,
+Delawares of the Muskingum hovered on her shores.
+
+March, April, May, June, July, August,--the days grew hot and stifling
+to the people cooped up in the close uncomfortable forts. There had
+been no planting, scarce even a knock at the gate to admit some forest
+rover, and still the savages sat before Boonsboro. Clark was walled in
+at Harrodsburg, Logan at Logansport.
+
+Ammunition was failing, provisions were short; now and then there was
+a sally, a battle, a retreat, then the dressing of wounds and the
+burial of the dead.
+
+Every eye was watching Clark, the leader whose genius consisted
+largely in producing confidence. In the height of action he brooded
+over these troubles; they knew he had plans; the powder exploit made
+them ready to rely upon him to any extent. He would meet those
+Indians, somewhere. Men bound with families could not leave,--Clark
+was free. Timid men could not act,--Clark was bold. Narrow men could
+not see,--Clark was prescient. More than any other he had the
+Napoleonic eye. Glancing away to the Lakes and Detroit, the scalp
+market of the west, he reasoned in the secrecy of his own heart:
+
+"These Indians are instigated by the British. Through easily
+influenced red men they hope to annihilate our frontier. Never shall
+we be safe until we can control the British posts."
+
+Unknown to any he had already sent scouts to reconnoitre those very
+posts.
+
+"And what have you learned?" he whispered, when on the darkest night
+of those tempestuous midsummer days they gave the password at the
+gate.
+
+"What have we learned? That the forts are negligently guarded; that
+the French are secretly not hostile; that preparations are on foot for
+an invasion of Kentucky with British, Indians, and artillery."
+
+"I will give them something to do in their own country," was Clark's
+inward comment.
+
+Without a word of his secret intent, Clark buckled on his sword,
+primed his rifle, and set out for Virginia. With regret and fear the
+people saw him depart, and yet with hope. Putting aside their
+detaining hands, "I will surely return," he said.
+
+With almost superhuman daring the leather-armoured knight from the
+beleaguered castle in the wood ran the gauntlet of the sleeping
+savages. All the Wilderness Road was lit with bonfires, and woe to the
+emigrant that passed that way. Cumberland Gap was closed; fleet-winged
+he crossed the very mountain tops, where never foot of man or beast
+had trod before.
+
+Scarce noting the hickories yellow with autumn and the oaks crimson
+with Indian summer, the young man passed through Charlottesville, his
+birthplace, and reached his father's house in Caroline at ten o'clock
+at night.
+
+In his low trundle-bed little William heard that brother's step and
+sprang to unclose the door. Like an apparition George Rogers Clark
+appeared before the family, haggard and worn with the summer's siege.
+All the news of his brothers gone to the war was quickly heard.
+
+"And will you join them?"
+
+"No, my field is Kentucky. To-morrow I must be at Williamsburg."
+
+The old colonial capital was aflame with hope and thanksgiving as
+Clark rode into Duke of Gloucester Street. Burgoyne had surrendered.
+Men were weeping and shouting. In the _mêlée_ he met Jefferson and
+proposed to him a secret expedition. In the exhilaration of the moment
+Jefferson grasped his hand,--"Let us to the Governor."
+
+Crowds of people were walking under the lindens of the Governor's
+Palace. Out of their midst came Dorothea, the wife of Patrick Henry,
+and did the honours of her station as gracefully as, thirty years
+later, Dolly Madison, her niece and namesake, did the honours of the
+White House.
+
+Again Patrick Henry pushed his reading spectacles up into his brown
+wig and scanned the envoy from Kentucky.
+
+"Well, sirrah, did you get the powder?"
+
+"We got the powder and saved Kentucky. But for it she would have been
+wiped out in this summer's siege. All the Indians of the Lakes are
+there. I have a plan."
+
+"Unfold it," said Patrick Henry.
+
+In a few words Clark set forth his scheme of conquest.
+
+"Destroy Detroit, Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and you have quelled the
+Indians. There they are fed, clothed, armed, and urged to prey upon
+us. I have sent spies to reconnoitre, and have received word that
+assures me that their capture is feasible."
+
+The scintillating blue eyes burned with an inward light, emitting
+fire, as Patrick Henry leaned to inquire, "What would you do in case
+of a repulse?"
+
+"Cross the Mississippi and seek protection from the Spaniards,"
+answered the ready chief. With his privy council, Mason, Wythe, and
+Jefferson, Patrick Henry discussed the plan, and at their instance the
+House of Delegates empowered George Rogers Clark "to aid any
+expedition against their western enemies."
+
+"Everything depends upon secrecy," said the Governor as he gave Clark
+his instructions and twelve hundred pounds in Continental paper
+currency. "But you must recruit your men west of the Blue Ridge; we
+can spare none from here."
+
+Kindred spirits came to Clark,--Bowman, Helm, Harrod and their
+friends, tall riflemen with long buckhorn-handled hunting-knives,
+enlisting for the west, but no one guessing their destination.
+
+Despite remonstrances twenty pioneer families on their flat-boats at
+Redstone-Old-Fort joined their small fleet to his. "We, too, are going
+to Kentucky."
+
+Jumping in as the last boat pulled out of Pittsburg, Captain William
+Linn handed Clark a letter. He broke the seal.
+
+"Ye gods, the very stars are for us! The French have joined America!"
+
+With strange exhilaration the little band felt themselves borne down
+the swift-rushing waters to the Falls of the Ohio.
+
+Before them blossomed a virgin world. Clark paused while the boats
+clustered round. "Do you see that high, narrow, rocky island at the
+head of the rapids? It is safe from the Indian. While the troops erect
+a stockade and blockhouse, let the families clear a field and plant
+their corn."
+
+Axes rang. The odour of hawthorn filled the air. Startled birds swept
+over the falls,--eagles, sea gulls, and mammoth cranes turning up
+their snowy wings glittering in the sunlight. On the mainland, deer,
+bear, and buffalo roamed under the sycamores serene as in Eden.
+
+"Halloo-oo!" It was the well-known call of Simon Kenton, paddling down
+to Corn Island with Captain John Montgomery and thirty Kentuckians.
+
+"What news of the winter?"
+
+"Boone and twenty-seven others have been captured by the Indians."
+
+"Boone? We are laying a trap for those very Indians," and then and
+there Major Clark announced the object of the expedition.
+
+Some cheered the wild adventure, some trembled and deserted in the
+night, but one hundred and eighty men embarked with no baggage beyond
+a rifle and a wallet of corn for each.
+
+The snows of the Alleghanies were melting. A million rivulets leaped
+to the blue Ohio. It was the June rise, the river was booming. Poling
+his little flotilla out into the main channel Clark and his borderers
+shot the rapids at the very moment that the sun veiled itself in an
+all but total eclipse at nine o'clock in the morning.
+
+It was a dramatic dash, as on and on he sped down the river,
+bank-full, running like a millrace.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+_KASKASKIA_
+
+
+Double manned, relays of rowers toiled at the oars by night and by
+day.
+
+"Do you see those hunters?"
+
+At the mouth of the Tennessee, almost as if prearranged, two white men
+emerged from the Illinois swamps as Clark shot by. He paused and
+questioned the strangers.
+
+"We are just from Kaskaskia. Rocheblave is alone with neither troops
+nor money. The French believe you Long Knives to be the most fierce,
+cruel, and bloodthirsty savages that ever scalped a foe."
+
+"All the better for our success. Now pilot us."
+
+Governor Rocheblave, watching St. Louis and dreaming of conquest, was
+to be rudely awakened. All along the Mississippi he had posted spies
+and was watching the Spaniard, dreaming not of Kentucky.
+
+Out upon the open, for miles across the treeless prairies, the hostile
+Indians might have seen his little handful of one hundred and eighty
+men, but Clark of twenty-six, like the Corsican of twenty-six, "with
+no provisions, no munitions, no cannon, no shoes, almost without an
+army," was about to change the face of three nations.
+
+Twilight fell as they halted opposite Kaskaskia on the night of July
+4, without a grain of corn left in their wallets.
+
+"Boys, the town must be taken to-night at all hazards."
+
+Softly they crossed the river,--the postern gate was open.
+
+"Brigands!" shouted Governor Rocheblave, leaping from his bed at
+midnight when Kenton tapped him on the shoulder. It was useless to
+struggle; he was bound and secured in the old Jesuit mansion which did
+duty as a fort at Kaskaskia.
+
+"Brigands!" screamed fat Madame Rocheblave in a high falsetto,
+tumbling out of bed in her frilled nightcap and gown. Seizing her
+husband's papers, plump down upon them she sat. "No gentleman would
+ever enter a lady's bed-chamber."
+
+"Right about, face!" laughed Kenton, marching away the Governor.
+"Never let it be said that American soldiers bothered a lady."
+
+In revenge Madame tore up the papers, public archives, causing much
+trouble in future years.
+
+"Sacred name of God!" cried the French habitants, starting from their
+slumbers. From their windows they saw the streets filled with men
+taller than any Indians. "What do they say?"
+
+"Keep in your houses on pain of instant death!"
+
+"Keep close or you will be shot!"
+
+In a moment arose a dreadful shriek of men, women, and children,--"The
+Long Knives! The Long Knives!"
+
+The gay little village became silent as death. Before daylight the
+houses of Kaskaskia were disarmed. The wild Virginians whooped and
+yelled. The timid people quaked and shuddered.
+
+"Grant but our lives and we will be slaves to save our families." It
+was the pleading of Father Gibault, interceding for his people. "Let
+us meet once more in the church for a last farewell. Let not our
+families be separated. Permit us to take food and clothing, the barest
+necessities for present needs."
+
+"Do you take us for savages?" inquired Clark in amaze. "Do you think
+Americans would strip women and children and take the bread out of
+their mouths? My countrymen never make war on the innocent. It was to
+protect our own wives and children that we have penetrated this
+wilderness, to subdue these British posts whence the savages are
+supplied with arms and ammunition to murder us. We do not war against
+Frenchmen. The King of France is our ally. His ships and soldiers
+fight for us. Go, enjoy your religion and worship when you please.
+Retain your property. Dismiss alarm. We are your friends come to
+deliver you from the British."
+
+The people trembled; then shouts arose, and wild weeping. The bells of
+old Kaskaskia rang a joyous peal.
+
+"Your rights shall be respected," continued Colonel Clark, "but you
+must take the oath of allegiance to Congress."
+
+From that hour Father Gibault became an American, and all his people
+followed.
+
+"Let us tell the good news to Cahokia," was their next glad cry. Sixty
+miles to the north lay Cahokia, opposite the old Spanish town of St.
+Louis. The Kaskaskians brought out their stoutest ponies, and on them
+Clark sent off Bowman and thirty horsemen.
+
+"The Big Knives?" Cahokia paled.
+
+"But they come as friends," explained the Kaskaskians.
+
+Without a gun the gates were opened, and the delighted Frenchmen
+joyfully banqueted the Kentuckians.
+
+The Indians were amazed. "The Great Chief of the Long Knives has
+come," the rumour flew. For five hundred miles the chiefs came to see
+the victorious Americans.
+
+"I will not give them presents. I will not court them. Never will I
+seem to fear them. Let them beg for peace." And with martial front
+Clark bore himself as if about to exterminate the entire Indian
+population. The ruse was successful; the Indians flocked to the
+Council of the Great Chief as if drawn by a magnet.
+
+Eagerly they leaned and listened.
+
+"Men and warriors: I am a warrior, not a counsellor."
+
+Holding up before them a green belt and another the colour of blood,
+"Take your choice," he cried, "Peace or War."
+
+So careless that magnificent figure stood, so indifferent to their
+choice, that the hearts of the red men leaped in admiration.
+
+"Peace, Peace, Peace," they cried.
+
+From all directions the Indians flocked; Clark became apprehensive of
+such numbers,--Chippewas, Ottawas, Pottawattamies, Sacs, Foxes,
+Maumees.
+
+"The Big Knives are right," said the chiefs. "The Great King of the
+French has come to life."
+
+Without the firing of a gun or the loss of a life, the great tactician
+subjugated red men and white. Clark had no presents to give,--he awed
+the Indians. He devoted great care to the drilling of his troops, and
+the nations sat by to gaze at the spectacle. The Frenchmen drilled
+proudly with the rest.
+
+While Clark was holding his councils Kenton had gone to Vincennes.
+Three days and three nights he lay reconnoitring. He spoke with the
+people, then by special messenger sent word, "The Governor has gone to
+Detroit. You can take Vincennes."
+
+Clark was ready.
+
+"Do not move against Vincennes," pleaded Father Gibault, "I know my
+people. Let me mediate for you."
+
+Clark accepted Gibault's offer, and the patriot priest hastened away
+on a lean-backed pony to the Wabash. With his people gathered in the
+little log church he told the tale of a new dominion. There under the
+black rafters, kissing the crucifix to the United States, the priest
+absolved them from their oath of allegiance to the British king.
+
+"Amen," said Gibault solemnly, "we are new men. We are Americans."
+
+To the astonishment of the Indians the American flag flew over the
+ramparts of Vincennes.
+
+"What for?" they begged to know.
+
+"Your old father, the King of France, has come to life again. He is
+mad at you for fighting for the English. Make peace with the Long
+Knives, they are friends of the Great King."
+
+The alarmed Indians listened. Word went to all the tribes. From the
+Wabash to the Mississippi, Clark, absolute, ruled the country, a
+military dictator.
+
+But the terms of the three-months militia had expired.
+
+"How many of you can stay with me?" he entreated.
+
+One hundred re-enlisted; the rest were dispatched to the Falls of the
+Ohio under Captain William Linn.
+
+"Tell the people of Corn Island to remove to the mainland and erect a
+stockade fort." Thus was the beginning of Louisville.
+
+Captain John Montgomery and Levi Todd (the grandfather of the wife of
+Abraham Lincoln) were dispatched with reports and Governor Rocheblave
+as a prisoner-of-war to Virginia.
+
+On arrival of the news the Virginia Assembly immediately created the
+county of Illinois, and Patrick Henry appointed John Todd of Kentucky
+its first American Governor.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+_THE SPANISH DONNA_
+
+
+In the year that Penn camped at Philadelphia the French reared their
+first bark huts at Kaskaskia, in the American bottom below the
+Missouri mouth. Here for a hundred years around the patriarchal,
+mud-walled, grass-roofed cabins had gathered children and
+grandchildren, to the fourth and fifth generation. Around the houses
+were spacious piazzas, where the genial, social Frenchmen reproduced
+the feudal age of Europe. Gardens were cultivated in the common
+fields, cattle fed in the common pastures, and lovers walked in the
+long and narrow street. The young men went away to hunt furs; their
+frail bark canoes had been to the distant Platte, and up the Missouri,
+no one knows how far.
+
+Sixty miles north of Kaskaskia lay Cahokia, and opposite Cahokia lay
+St. Louis.
+
+Now and then a rumour of the struggle of the American Revolution came
+to St. Louis, brought by traders over the Detroit trail from Canada.
+But the rebellious colonies seemed very far away.
+
+In the midst of his busy days at Kaskaskia, Colonel Clark was
+surprised by an invitation from the Spanish Governor at St. Louis, to
+dine with him at the Government House.
+
+Father Gibault was well acquainted in St. Louis. He dedicated, in
+1770, the first church of God west of the Mississippi, and often went
+there to marry and baptise the villagers. So, with Father Gibault,
+Colonel Clark went over to visit the Governor.
+
+"L'Americain Colonel Clark, your Excellency."
+
+The long-haired, bare-headed priest stood _chapeau_ in hand before the
+heavy oaken door of the Government House, at St. Louis. Then was shown
+the splendid hospitality innate to the Spanish race.
+
+The Governor of Upper Louisiana, Don Francisco de Leyba, was friendly
+even to excess. He extended his hand to Colonel Clark.
+
+"I feel myself flattered by this visit of de Señor le Colonel, and
+honoured, honoured. De fame of your achievement haf come to my ear and
+awakened in me emotions of de highest admiration. De best in my house
+is at your service; command me to de extent of your wishes, even to de
+horses in my stable, de wines in my basement. My servant shall attend
+you."
+
+Colonel Clark, a man of plain, blunt speech, was abashed by this
+profusion of compliment. His cheeks reddened. "You do me too much
+honour," he stammered.
+
+All his life, the truth, the plain truth, and nothing but the truth,
+had been Clark's code of conversation. Could it be possible that the
+Governor meant all these fine phrases? But every succeeding act and
+word seemed to indicate his sincerity.
+
+"My wife, Madam Marie,--zis ees de great Americain General who haf
+taken de Illinoa, who haf terrified de sauvages, and sent de Briton
+back to Canada. And my leetle children,--dees ees de great Commandante
+who ees de friend of your father.
+
+"And, my sister,--dees ees de young Americain who haf startled de
+world with hees deeds of valour."
+
+If ever Clark was off his guard, it was when he thus met unexpectedly
+the strange and startling beauty of the Donna de Leyba. Each to the
+other seemed suddenly clothed with light, as if they two of all the
+world were standing there alone.
+
+What the rest said and did, Clark never knew, although he replied
+rationally enough to their questions,--in fact, he carried on a long
+conversation with the garrulous Governor and his amiable dark-haired
+wife. But the Donna, the Donna--
+
+Far beyond the appointed hour Clark lingered at her side. She laughed,
+she sang. She could not speak a word of English, Clark could not speak
+Spanish. Nevertheless they fell desperately in love. For the first and
+only time in his life, George Rogers Clark looked at a woman. How they
+made an appointment to meet again no one could say; but they did meet,
+and often.
+
+"The Colonel has a great deal of business in St. Louis," the soldiers
+complained.
+
+"Le great Americain Colonel kiss te Governor's sister," whispered the
+Creoles of St. Louis. How that was discovered nobody knows, unless it
+was that Sancho, the servant, had peeped behind the door.
+
+Clark even began to think he would like to settle in Louisiana. And
+the Governor favoured his project.
+
+"De finest land in de world, Señor, and we can make it worth your
+while. You shall have de whole district of New Madrid. Commandants,
+bah! we are lacking de material. His Majesty, de King of Spain, will
+gladly make you noble."
+
+"And I, for my part," Clark responded, "can testify to all the
+subjects of Spain the high regard and sincere friendship of my
+countrymen toward them. I hope it will soon be manifest that we can be
+of mutual advantage to one another."
+
+Indeed, through De Leyba, Clark even dreamed of a possible Spanish
+alliance for America, like that with France, and De Leyba encouraged
+it.
+
+Boon companion with the Governor over the wine, and with the
+fascinating Donna smiling upon him, Colonel Clark became not
+unbalanced as Mark Antony did,--although once in a ball-room he kissed
+the Donna before all the people.
+
+But there was a terrible strain on Clark's nerves at this time. His
+resources were exhausted, they had long been exhausted, in fact; like
+Napoleon he had "lived on the country." And yet no word came from
+Virginia.
+
+Continental paper was the only money in Clark's military chest. It
+took twenty dollars of this to buy a dollar's worth of coffee at
+Kaskaskia. Even then the Frenchmen hesitated. They had never known any
+money but piastres and peltries; they could not even read the English
+on the ragged scrip of the Revolution.
+
+"We do not make money," said the Creoles, "we use hard silver." But
+Francis Vigo, a Spanish trader of St. Louis, said, "Take the money at
+its full value. It is good. I will take it myself."
+
+In matters of credit and finance the word of Vigo was potential. "Ah,
+yes, now you can haf supplies," said the cheerful Creoles, "M'sieur
+Vigo will take the money, you can haf de meat an' moccasin."
+
+Colonel Vigo, a St. Louis merchant who had large dealings for the
+supply of the Spanish troops, had waited on Colonel Clark at Cahokia
+and voluntarily tendered to him such aid as he could furnish. "I offer
+you my means and influence to advance the cause of liberty."
+
+The offer was gratefully accepted. When the biting winds of winter
+swept over Kaskaskia, "Here," he said, "come to my store and supply
+your necessities." His advances were in goods and silver piastres, for
+which Clark gave scrip or a check on the agent of Virginia at New
+Orleans.
+
+Gabriel Cerré in early youth moved to Kaskaskia, where he became a
+leading merchant and fur trader. "I am bitterly opposed to _les
+Américains_," he said. Then he met Clark; that magician melted him
+into friendship, sympathy, and aid.
+
+"From the hour of my first interview I have been the sworn ally of
+George Rogers Clark!" exclaimed Charles Gratiot, a Swiss trader of
+Cahokia. "My house, my purse, my credit are at his command."
+
+Clark could not be insensible to this profusion of hospitality, which
+extended, not only to himself, but to his whole little army and to the
+cause of his country.
+
+The Frenchmen dug their potatoes, gathered the fruits of their gnarled
+apple-trees, and slew the buffalo and bear around for meat. Winter
+came on apace, and yet the new Governor had not arrived.
+
+Colonel Clark's headquarters at the house of Michel Aubrey, one of the
+wealthiest fur traders of Kaskaskia, became a sort of capitol. In
+front of it his soldiers constantly drilled with the newly enlisted
+Frenchmen. All men came to Clark about their business; the piazzas and
+gardens were seldom empty. In short, the American Colonel suddenly
+found himself the father and adviser of everybody in the village.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+_VINCENNES_
+
+
+"I will dispossess these Americans," said Governor Hamilton at
+Detroit. "I will recover Vincennes. I will punish Kentucky. I will
+subdue all Virginia west of the mountains." And on the seventh of
+October, 1778, he left Detroit with eight hundred men,--regulars,
+volunteers, and picked Indians.
+
+The French habitants of Vincennes were smoking their pipes in their
+rude verandas, when afar they saw the gleam of red coats. Vincennes
+sank without a blow and its people bowed again to the British king.
+
+"I will quarter here for the winter," said Governor Hamilton. Then he
+sent an express to the Spanish Governor at St. Louis with the threat,
+"If any asylum be granted the rebels in your territory, the Spanish
+post will be attacked."
+
+In their scarlet tunics, emblem of Britain, to Chickasaw and Cherokee
+his runners flew. At Mackinac the Lake Indians were to "wipe out the
+rebels of Illinoi'." Far over to the Sioux went presents and messages,
+even to the distant Assiniboine. Thousands of red-handled scalping
+knives were placed in their hands. Emissaries watched Kaskaskia.
+Picked warriors lingered around the Ohio to intercept any boats that
+might venture down with supplies for the little Virginian army.
+
+New Year's dawned for 1779. Danger hovered over Clark at Kaskaskia.
+
+"Not for a whole year have I received a scrape of a pen," he wrote to
+Patrick Henry. Too small was his force to stand a siege, too far away
+to hope for relief. He called his Kentuckians from Cahokia, and day
+and night toiled at the defences of Kaskaskia. How could they
+withstand the onslaught of Hamilton and his artillery?
+
+But hark! There is a knocking at the gate, and Francis Vigo enters.
+Closeted with Clark he unfolds his errand.
+
+"I am just from Vincennes. Listen! Hamilton has sent his Indian hordes
+in every direction. They are guarding the Ohio, watching the
+settlements, stirring up the most distant tribes to sweep the country.
+But he has sent out so many that he is weak. At this moment there are
+not more than eighty soldiers left in garrison, nor more than three
+pieces of cannon and some swivels mounted."
+
+With inspiration born of genius and desperate courage Clark made his
+resolve. "If I don't take Hamilton he'll take me; and, by Heaven! I'll
+take Hamilton!"
+
+But it was midwinter on the bleak prairies of Illinois, where to this
+day the unwary traveller may be frozen stark in the icy chill. Clark's
+men were almost entirely without clothing, ammunition, provisions. Can
+genius surmount destitution? Clark turned to Vigo.
+
+"I have not a blanket, an ounce of bread, nor a pound of powder. Can
+you fit me out in the name of Virginia?"
+
+Francis Vigo, a Sardinian by birth but Republican at heart, answered,
+"I can fit you out. Here is an order for money. Down yonder is a
+swivel and a boatload of powder. I will bid the merchants supply
+whatever you need. They can look to me for payment."
+
+In two days Clark's men were fitted out and ready. Clad in skins, they
+stepped out like trappers.
+
+On the shore lay a new bateau. Vigo's swivel was rolled aboard, and
+some of the guns of Kaskaskia.
+
+"Now, Captain John Rogers," said Colonel Clark to his cousin, "with
+these forty-eight men and these cannon you go down the Mississippi, up
+the Ohio, and enter the Wabash River. Station yourself a few miles
+below Vincennes; suffer nothing to pass, and wait for me."
+
+On the 4th of February the little galley slid out with Rogers and his
+men.
+
+"Now who will go with me?" inquired Clark, turning to his comrades.
+"It will be a desperate service. I must call for volunteers."
+
+Stirred by the daring of the deed, one hundred and thirty young men
+swore to follow him to the death. All the remaining inhabitants were
+detailed to garrison Kaskaskia and Cahokia. The fickle weather-vanes
+of old Kaskaskia veered and whirled, the winds blew hot and cold, then
+came fair weather for the starting.
+
+It was February 5, 1779, when George Rogers Clark set out with his one
+hundred and thirty men to cross the Illinois. Vigo pointed out the
+fur-trader's trail to Vincennes and Detroit. Father Gibault blessed
+them as they marched away. The Creole girls put flags in the hands of
+their sweethearts, and begged them to stand by "le Colonel."
+
+"O Mother of God, sweet Virgin, preserve my beloved," prayed the Donna
+de Leyba in the Government House at St. Louis.
+
+Over all the prairies the snows were melting, the rains were falling,
+the rivers were flooding.
+
+Hamilton sat at Vincennes planning his murders.
+
+"Next year," he exulted, "there will be the greatest number of savages
+on the frontier that has ever been known. The Six Nations have
+received war belts from all their allies."
+
+But Clark and his men were coming in the rain. Eleven days after
+leaving Kaskaskia they heard the morning guns of the fort. Deep and
+deeper grew the creeks and sloughs as they neared the drowned lands of
+the Wabash. Still they waded on, through water three feet deep;
+sometimes they were swimming. Between the two Wabashes the water
+spread, a solid sheet five miles from shore to shore. The men looked
+out, amazed, as on a rolling sea. But Clark, ever ahead, cheering his
+men, grasped a handful of gunpowder, and with a whoop, the well-known
+peal of border war, blackened his face and dashed into the water. The
+men's hearts leaped to meet his daring, and with "death or victory"
+humming in their brains, they plunged in after.
+
+On and on they staggered, buffeting the icy water, stumbling in the
+wake of their undaunted leader. Seated on the shoulders of a tall
+Shenandoah sergeant, little Isham Floyd, the fourteen-year-old drummer
+boy, beat a charge. Deep and deeper grew the tide; waist deep, breast
+high, over their shoulders it played; and above, the leaden sky looked
+down upon this unparalleled feat of human endeavour. Never had the
+world seen such a march.
+
+Five days they passed in the water,--days of chill and whoops and
+songs heroic to cheer their flagging strength. The wallets were empty
+of corn, the men were fainting with famine, when lo! an Indian canoe
+of squaws hove in sight going to Vincennes. They captured the canoe,
+and--most welcome of all things in the world to those famished men--it
+contained a quarter of buffalo and corn and kettles! On a little
+island they built a fire; with their sharp knives prepared the meat,
+and soon the pots were boiling. So exhausted were they that Clark
+would not let them have a full meal at once, but gave cups of broth to
+the weaker ones.
+
+On the sixteenth day Clark cheered his men. "Beyond us lies
+Vincennes. Cross that plain and you shall see it."
+
+On February 22, Washington's birthday, fatigued and weary they slept
+in a sugar camp. "Heard the evening and morning guns of the fort. No
+provisions yet. Lord help us!" is the record of Bowman's journal.
+
+Still without food, the 23d saw them crossing the Horseshoe
+Plain,--four miles of water breast high. Frozen, starved, they
+struggled through, and on a little hill captured a Frenchman hunting
+ducks.
+
+"No one dreams of your coming at this time of year," said the
+duck-hunter. "There are six hundred people in Vincennes, troops,
+Indians, and all. This very day Hamilton completed the walls of his
+fort."
+
+Clark pressed his determined lips. "The situation is all that I can
+ask. It is death or victory." And there in the mud, half frozen,
+chilled to the marrow, starved, Clark penned on his knee a letter:
+
+     "TO THE INHABITANTS OF POST VINCENNES:
+
+     "GENTLEMEN,--Being now within two miles of your village
+     with my army, determined to take your fort this night, and
+     not being willing to surprise you, I take this method to
+     request such as are true citizens to remain still in your
+     houses. Those, if any there be, that are friends of the
+     King, will instantly repair to the fort, join the
+     hair-buyer general, and fight like men. If any such do not
+     go and are found afterwards, they may depend on severe
+     punishment. On the contrary, those who are the friends of
+     liberty may depend on being well treated, and I once more
+     request them to keep out of the streets. Every one I find
+     in arms on my arrival I shall treat as an enemy.
+
+          GEORGE ROGERS CLARK."
+
+"Take this. Tell the people my quarrel is with the British. We shall
+be in Vincennes by the rising of the moon. Prepare dinner."
+
+The messenger flew ahead; upon the captured horses of other
+duck-hunters Clark mounted his officers. It was just at nightfall when
+they entered the lower gate.
+
+"Silence those drunken Indians," roared Hamilton at the sound of
+guns. But the Frenchmen themselves turned their rifles on the fort.
+
+Under the friendly light of the new moon Clark and his men threw up an
+intrenchment, and from behind its shelter in fifteen minutes the
+skilled volleys of the border rifle had silenced two of the cannon.
+
+"Surrender!" was Clark's stentorian summons at daylight.
+
+Hamilton, with the blood of many a borderer on his head,--what had he
+to hope? Hot and hotter rained the bullets.
+
+"Give me three days to consider."
+
+"Not an hour!" was Clark's reply.
+
+"Let me fight with you?" said The Tobacco's son, the principal chief
+on the Wabash.
+
+"No," answered Clark, "you sit back and watch us. Americans do not
+hire Indians to fight their battles."
+
+Amazed, the Indians fell back and waited.
+
+The fort fell, and with it British dominion in the northwest
+territory. Then the galley hove in sight and the flag waved above
+Vincennes.
+
+"A convoy up de _rivière_ on its way with goods, from le Detroit,"
+whispered a Frenchman. Directly Clark dispatched his boatmen to
+capture the flotilla.
+
+"_Sur la feuille ron--don don don_," the _voyageurs_ were singing.
+
+Merrily rowing down the river came the British, when suddenly out from
+a bend swung three boats. "Surrender!"
+
+Amid the wild huzzas of Vincennes the Americans returned, bringing the
+captive convoy with fifty thousand dollars' worth of food, clothing,
+and ammunition, and forty prisoners.
+
+With a heart full of thanksgiving Clark paid and clothed his men out
+of that prize captured on the Wabash.
+
+"Let the British flag float a few days," he said. "I may entertain
+some of the hair-buying General's friends."
+
+Very soon painted red men came striding in with bloody scalps dangling
+at their belts. But as each one entered, red-handed from murder,
+Clark's Long Knives shot him down before the face of the guilty
+Hamilton. Fifty fell before he lowered the British flag. But from that
+day the red men took a second thought before accepting rewards for the
+scalps of white men.
+
+"Now what shall you do with me?" demanded Hamilton.
+
+"You? I shall dispatch you as a prisoner of war to Virginia."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+_THE CITY OF THE STRAIT_
+
+
+Clark was not an hour too soon. Indians were already on the march.
+
+"Hamilton is taken!"
+
+Wabasha, the Sioux, from the Falls of St. Anthony, heard, and stopped
+at Prairie du Chien.
+
+"Hamilton is taken!"
+
+Matchekewis, the gray-haired chief of the Chippewas, coming down from
+Sheboygan, heard the astounding word and fell back to St. Joseph's.
+
+The great Hamilton carried away by the rebels! The Indians were indeed
+cowed. The capture of Hamilton completed Clark's influence. The great
+Red-Coat sent away as a prisoner of war was an object-lesson the
+Indians could not speedily forget.
+
+Out of Hamilton's captured mail, Clark discovered that the French in
+the neighbourhood of Detroit were not well-affected toward the
+British, and were ready to revolt whenever favourable opportunity
+offered.
+
+"Very well, then, Detroit next!"
+
+But Clark had more prisoners than he knew what to do with.
+
+"Here," said he, to the captured Detroiters, "I am anxious to restore
+you to your families. I know you are unwilling instruments in this
+war, but your great King of France has allied himself with the
+Americans. Go home, bear the good news, bid your friends welcome the
+coming of their allies, the Americans. And tell Captain Lernoult I am
+glad to hear that he is constructing new works at Detroit. It will
+save us Americans some expense in building."
+
+The City of the Strait was lit with bonfires.
+
+"We have taken an oath not to fight the Virginians," said the paroled
+Frenchmen.
+
+The people rejoiced when they heard of Hamilton's capture; they hated
+his tyranny, and, certain of Clark's onward progress, prepared a
+welcome reception for "_les Américains_."
+
+"See," said the mistress of a lodging house to Captain Lernoult. "See
+what viands I haf prepared for le Colonel Clark." And the Captain
+answered not a word. Baptiste Drouillard handed him a printed
+proclamation of the French alliance.
+
+Everywhere Detroiters were drinking, "Success to the Thirteen United
+States!"
+
+"Success to Congress and the American arms! I hope the Virginians will
+soon be at Detroit!"
+
+"Now Colonel Butler and his scalping crew will meet their deserts. I
+know the Colonel for a coward and I'll turn hangman for him!"
+
+"Don't buy a farm now. When the Virginians come you can get one for
+nothing."
+
+"See how much leather I am tanning for the Virginians. When they come
+I shall make a great deal of money."
+
+"Town and country kept three days in feasting and diversions," wrote
+Clark to Jefferson, "and we are informed that the merchants and others
+provided many necessaries for us on our arrival." But this the Colonel
+did not learn until long after.
+
+Left alone in command, with only eighty men in the garrison, Lernoult
+could do nothing. Bitterly he wrote to his commander-in-chief, "The
+Canadians are rebels to a man. In building the fort they aid only on
+compulsion."
+
+Even at Montreal the Frenchmen kept saying, "A French fleet will
+certainly arrive and retake the country"; and Haldimand, Governor
+General, was constantly refuting these rumours.
+
+"Now let me help you," again pleaded The Tobacco's son to Clark at
+Vincennes.
+
+"I care not whether you side with me or not," answered the American
+Colonel. "If you keep the peace, very well. If not you shall suffer
+for your mischief."
+
+Such a chief! Awed, the Indians retired to their camps and became
+spectators. To divert Clark, the British officers urged these Indians
+to attack Vincennes.
+
+The Tobacco's son sent back reply, "If you want to fight the Bostons
+at St. Vincent's you must cut your way through them, as we are Big
+Knives, too!" Their fame spread to Superior and the distant Missouri.
+
+"In the vicinity of Chicago the rebels are purchasing horses to mount
+their cavalry."
+
+"The Virginians are building boats to take Michilimackinac."
+
+"They are sending belts to the Chippewas and Ottawas."
+
+"The Virginians are at Milwaukee."
+
+So the rumours flew along the Lakes, terrifying every Briton into
+strengthening his stronghold. And this, for the time, kept them well
+at home.
+
+"Had I but three hundred I could take Detroit," said Clark. Every day
+now came the word from the French of the city, "Come,--come to our
+relief."
+
+"But Vincennes must be garrisoned. My men are too few."
+
+Then a messenger arrived with letters from Thomas Jefferson, now
+Governor of Virginia, with "thanks from the Assembly for the heroic
+service you have rendered," and the promise of troops.
+
+Now for the first time were the soldiery made aware of the gratitude
+of their country. Tumultuous cheers rent the air. The Indians heard,
+and thought it was news of another victory.
+
+"Let us march this day on Detroit," begged the soldiers, few as they
+were. Half the population of Vincennes, and all the Indians, would
+have followed.
+
+"Too many are ill," Clark said to himself. "Bowman is dying, the lands
+are flooded, the rains are falling. An unsustained march might end in
+disaster. For five hundred troops, I would bind myself a slave for
+seven years!"
+
+To the soldiers he explained, "Montgomery is coming with men and
+powder. Let us rendezvous here in June and make a dash at Detroit."
+
+Leaving a garrison in the fort, in answer to imperative call, Clark
+set out with six boatloads of troops and prisoners for a flying trip
+to Kaskaskia.
+
+But every step of the way, day and night, "Detroit must be taken,
+Detroit must be taken," was the dream of the disturbed commander. "I
+cannot rest. Nothing but the fall of Detroit will bring peace to our
+frontiers. In case I am not disappointed, Detroit is already my own."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+_A PRISONER OF WAR_
+
+
+"A prisoner of war? No, indeed, he is a felon, a murderer!" exclaimed
+the Virginians, as weary, wet, and hungry the late Governor of Detroit
+sat on his horse in the rain at the door of the governor's palace at
+Williamsburg, where Jefferson now resided. The mob gathered to
+execrate the "hair-buyer general" and escort him to jail.
+
+There were twenty-seven prisoners, altogether, brought by a band of
+borderers, most of the way on foot.
+
+Every step of the long journey Captain John Rogers and his men had
+guarded the "hair-buyer general" from the imprecations of an outraged
+people.
+
+It was the first news of Vincennes, as the startled cry ran,--
+
+"Governor Hamilton, charged with having incited Indians to scalp,
+torture, and burn, is at the door,--Hamilton, who gave standing
+rewards for scalps but none for prisoners; and Dejean, Chief Justice
+of Detroit, the merciless keeper of its jails, a terror to captives
+with threats of giving them over to savages to be burnt alive;
+Lamothe, a captain of volunteer scalping parties; Major Hay, one of
+Hamilton's chief officers, and others."
+
+"Load them with heavy fetters and immure them in a dungeon," said
+Governor Jefferson. "Too many of our boys are rotting in British
+prison ships." This from Jefferson, so long the humane friend of
+Burgoyne's surrendered troops now quartered at Charlottesville!
+
+The British commanders blustered and protested, but Jefferson firmly
+replied, "I avow my purpose to repay cruelty, hangings, and close
+confinement. It is my duty to treat Hamilton and his officers with
+severity. Iron will be retaliated with iron, prison ships by prison
+ships, and like by like in general."
+
+Washington advised a mitigation of the extreme severity, but
+Jefferson's course had its effect. The British were more merciful
+thereafter.
+
+And with the coming of Hamilton came all the wonderful story of the
+capture of Vincennes. And who can tell it? Who has told it? Historians
+hesitate. Romancers shrink from the task. Not one has surpassed George
+Rogers Clark's own letters, which read like fragments of the gospel of
+liberty.
+
+Before the home fire at Caroline, John Rogers told the tale. A hush
+fell. The mother softly wept as she thought of her scattered boys, one
+in the west, two with Washington tracking the snows of Valley Forge,
+one immured in a prison ship where patriot martyrs groaned their lives
+away.
+
+Little William heard the tale, and his young heart swelled with
+emotion. John Clark listened, then spoke but one sentence.
+
+"If I had as many more sons I would give them all to my country."
+
+All the way from Kentucky Daniel Boone was sent to the Virginia
+legislature. He said to Jefferson: "I doubt these charges against
+Governor Hamilton. Last Spring I was captured by the Shawnees and
+dragged to Detroit. Governor Hamilton took pity on me and offered the
+Indians one hundred dollars for my release. They refused to take it.
+But he gave me a horse, and on that horse I eventually made my
+escape."
+
+"Did that prevent Governor Hamilton from sending an armed force of
+British and Indians to besiege Boonsboro?" inquired Jefferson.
+
+Boone had to admit that it did not. But for that timely escape and
+warning Boonsboro would have fallen.
+
+But Boone in gratitude went to the dungeon and offered what
+consolation he could to the imprisoned Governor.
+
+The fact is, that Daniel Boone carried ever on his breast, wrapped in
+a piece of buckskin, that old commission of Lord Dunmore's. It saved
+him from the Indians; it won Hamilton.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+_TWO WARS AT ONCE_
+
+
+The sunbeams glistened on the naked skin of an Indian runner, as, hair
+flying in the wind, from miles away he came panting to Clark at
+Kaskaskia.
+
+"There is to be an attack on San Loui'. Wabasha, the Sioux, and
+Matchekewis--"
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I hear at Michilimackinac,--Winnebagoe, Sauk, Fox, Menomonie."
+
+Clark laughed and gave the messenger a drink of taffia. But the moment
+the painted savage slid away the Colonel prepared to inform his
+friends at St. Louis.
+
+"Pouf!" laughed the careless commandant, drinking his wine at the
+Government House. "Why need we fear? Are not our relation wit de
+Indian friendly? Never haf been attack on San Luis, never will be. Be
+seat, haf wine, tak' wine, Señor le Colonel."
+
+"Pouf!" echoed the guests at the Governor's table. "Some trader angry
+because he lose de peltry stole in de Spanish country. It never go
+beyond threat."
+
+An attack? The very idea seemed to amuse the Governor in his cups. But
+Father Gibault looked grave. "I, too, have heard such a rumour."
+
+"It may be only a belated report of Hamilton's scheming," replied
+Clark. "Now he is boxed up it may blow over. But in case the English
+attempt to seize the west bank of this river I pledge you all the
+assistance in my power."
+
+"T'anks, t'anks, my good friend, I'll not forget. In de middle of de
+night you get my summon."
+
+But, unknown to them, that very May, Spain declared war against Great
+Britain. And Great Britain coveted the Mississippi.
+
+Madame Marie and the charming Donna had been listeners. Colonel Clark
+handed the maiden a bouquet of wild roses as he came in, but spoke not
+a word. All the year had she been busy, embroidering finery for "le
+Colonel." Such trifles were too dainty for the soldier's life--but he
+wore them next his heart.
+
+While the dinner party overwhelmed the victor with congratulations and
+drank to his health, Clark saw only the Donna, child of the convent,
+an exotic, strangely out of place in this wild frontier.
+
+"I am a soldier," he whispered, "and cannot tarry. My men are at the
+boats, but I shall _watch_ St. Louis."
+
+Her eyes followed him, going away so soon, with Father Gibault and De
+Leyba down to the river. As he looked back a handkerchief fluttered
+from an upper window, and he threw her a kiss.
+
+"I am not clear but the Spaniards would suffer their settlements to
+fall with ours for the sake of having the opportunity of retaking them
+both," muttered Clark as he crossed the river, suspicious of De
+Leyba's inaction.
+
+At Kaskaskia forty recruits under Captain Robert George had arrived
+by way of New Orleans. Then Montgomery, with another forty, came down
+the Ohio.
+
+They must be fed and clothed directly. In the midst of these
+perplexities appeared John Todd, the new Governor.
+
+"Ah, my friend," Clark grasped his hand. "Now I see myself happily rid
+of a piece of trouble I take no delight in. I turn the civil
+government over to you. But our greatest trouble is the lack of
+money."
+
+"Money? Why, here are continental bills in abundance."
+
+"Worth two cents on the dollar. 'Dose British traders,' say the
+habitants, 'dey will not take five huntert to one. Dey will have
+nought but skins.' This has brought our Virginia paper into disrepute.
+They will not even take a coin unless it is stamped with the head of a
+king."
+
+"What have you done?"
+
+"Done? Purchased supplies on my own credit. Several merchants of this
+country have advanced considerable sums and I have given them drafts
+on our Virginian agent in New Orleans. They come back, protested for
+want of funds. Francis Vigo has already loaned me ten thousand dollars
+in silver piastres."
+
+"But Virginia will pay it,--she is bound to pay it. The service must
+not suffer." Thus reassured that his course had been right, Colonel
+Clark continued:
+
+"Four posts must be garrisoned to hold this country,--Kaskaskia,
+Cahokia, Vincennes, and the Falls of the Ohio,--not one has sufficient
+defence. Colonel Montgomery's force is not half what I expected. But
+if I am not deceived in the Kentuckians I shall yet be able to
+complete my designs on Detroit. I only want sufficient men to make me
+appear respectable in passing among the savages."
+
+The cautious French settlers were a trial to Clark. Father Gibault
+tried to persuade them, parting with his own tithes and horses to set
+an example to his parishioners to make equal sacrifices to the
+American cause. Altogether, Father Gibault advanced seven thousand
+eight hundred livres, French money, equal to fifteen hundred and sixty
+dollars,--his little all.
+
+Governor Todd said, "If the people will not spare willingly, you must
+press it."
+
+"I cannot press it," answered Clark. "We must keep the inhabitants
+attached to us by every means in our power. Rather will I sign notes
+right and left on my own responsibility to procure absolute
+necessities to hold Illinois, trusting to Virginia to make it right."
+
+Then after a thoughtful pause,--"I cannot think of the consequences of
+losing possession of the country without resolving to risk every point
+rather than suffer it."
+
+The bad crops of 1779 and the severity of the winter of 1780 made
+distress in Illinois. Nevertheless the cheerful habitants sold their
+harvests to Clark and received in payment his paper on New Orleans.
+
+"You encourage me to attempt Detroit," Clark wrote to Jefferson. "It
+has been twice in my power. When I first arrived in this country, or
+when I was at Vincennes, could I have secured my prisoners and had
+only three hundred men, I should have attempted it, and I since learn
+there could have been no doubt of my success. But they are now
+completing a new fort, too strong I fear for any force that I shall
+ever be able to raise in this country."
+
+Then he hurried back to Vincennes. Thirty only were there of the three
+hundred expected. An Indian army camped ready to march at his call.
+
+"Never depend upon Injuns," remarked Simon Kenton, reappearing after
+an absence of weeks.
+
+"Kenton? Well, where have you been? You look battered."
+
+"Battered I am, but better, the scars are almost gone. Captured by
+Shawnees, made to run the gauntlet twice, then dragged to St. Dusky to
+be burnt at the stake."
+
+"How did you escape?"
+
+"One of your Detroit Frenchmen, Pierre Drouillard, late interpreter
+for your captured Hamilton, told them the officers at Detroit wanted
+to question me about the Big Knife. Ha! Ha! It took a long powwow and
+plenty of wampum, and the promise to bring me back."
+
+"Did he intend to do it?"
+
+"Lord, no! as soon as we were out of sight he told me, 'Never will I
+abandon you to those inhuman wretches,' A trader's wife enabled me to
+escape from Detroit."
+
+"Do you think I can take Detroit?"
+
+"Take it, man? As easy as you took Vincennes. Only the day of surprise
+is past. A cloud of red Injuns watch the approaches. You must have
+troops."
+
+Troops! Troops! None came. None could come. What had happened?
+
+Taking with him one of Hamilton's light brass cannon to fortify the
+Falls of the Ohio, Clark discovered that at the very time of his
+capture, Hamilton had appointed a great council of Indians to meet at
+the mouth of the Tennessee.
+
+"The Cherokees have risen on the Tennessee settlements, and the
+regiments intended for you have turned south."
+
+The sword and belt of Hamilton had done their work. America was
+fighting two wars at once.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+_THE KEY OF THE COUNTRY_
+
+
+"The Falls is the Key of the Country. It shall be my depot of
+supplies. Here will I build a fort. A great city will one day arise on
+this spot." And in honour of the King who had helped America, Clark
+named it Louisville.
+
+Axes, hammers, and saws made music while Clark's busy brain was
+planning parks and squares to make his city the handsomest in America.
+But, ever disturbing this recreation, "Detroit" was in his soul.
+"Public interest requires that I reside here until provision can be
+made for the coming campaign."
+
+"Since Clark's feat the world is running mad for Kentucky," said the
+neighbours in Caroline. Through all that Autumn, emigrants were
+hurrying down to take advantage of the new land laws of Virginia.
+
+"A fleet of flatboats!" shouted the workmen at the Falls. Down with
+others from Pittsburg, when the autumn rains raised the river, came
+Clark's old comrade, John Floyd, and his brothers and his bride, Jane
+Buchanan. One of those brothers was Isham Floyd, the boy drummer of
+Vincennes.
+
+"I, too, shall build a fort," said John Floyd to his friends, "here on
+Bear Grass Creek, close to Louisville."
+
+Still emigrants were on their way, when a most terrific winter set in.
+Stock was frozen, wild beasts and game died. The forests lay deep with
+snow, and rivers were solid with ice.
+
+The cabins of Louisville were crowded, the fort was filled with
+emigrants. Food gave out, corn went up to one hundred and fifty
+dollars a bushel in depreciated continental currency. Even a cap of
+native fur cost five hundred dollars.
+
+The patient people shivered under their buffalo, bear, and elk-skin
+bedquilts, penned in the little huts, living on boiled buffalo beef
+and venison hams, with fried bear or a slice of turkey breast for
+bread, and dancing on Christmas night with pineknot torches bracketed
+on the walls.
+
+"Did you not say the conquerors of Vincennes waded through the drowned
+lands in February?" asked a fair one of her partner at the dance.
+
+"Yes, but that was an open winter. This, thank God, is cold enough to
+deter our enemies from attempting to recover what they have lost."
+
+"But Colonel Clark said the weather was warm?"
+
+"Warm, did you say? Who knows what Clark would have called warm
+weather in February? The water up to their armpits could not have been
+warm at that time of year."
+
+The spring waters broke; a thousand emigrants went down the Ohio to
+Louisville. And carcasses of bear, elk, deer, and lesser game floated
+out of the frozen forests.
+
+During the June rise more than three hundred flatboats arrived at the
+Falls loaded with wagons; for months long trains were departing from
+Louisville with these people bound for the interior. Floyd's fort on
+the Bear Grass became a rendezvous; the little harbour an anchorage
+for watercraft.
+
+"We must establish a claim to the Mississippi," wrote Jefferson to
+Clark. "Go down to the mouth of the Ohio and build a fort on Chickasaw
+Bluff. It will give us a claim to the river."
+
+While Clark was preparing, an express arrived from Kaskaskia,--
+
+"We are threatened with invasion. Fly to our relief."
+
+Without money save land warrants, without clothing save skins,
+depending on their rifles for food, Clark's little flotilla with two
+hundred men set down the Ohio, on the very flood that was bringing the
+emigrants, to clinch the hold on Illinois.
+
+"I have now two thousand warriors on the Lakes. The Wabash Indians
+have promised to amuse Mr. Clark at the Falls." De Peyster, the new
+commandant at Detroit, was writing to General Haldimand at Quebec.
+Even as Clark left, a few daring savages came up and fired on the fort
+at Louisville.
+
+"She is strong enough now to defend herself," said Clark as he pulled
+away.
+
+Colonel Bird, working hard at Detroit, started his Pottawattamies.
+They went but a little way.
+
+"Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! Long Knives coming!" Pell-mell, back they fell, to be
+fitted out all over again.
+
+"These unsteady rogues put me out of all patience!" exclaimed the
+angry Colonel Bird. "They are always cooking or counciling. Indians
+are most happy when most frequently fitted out."
+
+"Such is the dependence on Indians without troops to lead them,"
+sagely remarked De Peyster. "But without them we could not hold the
+country."
+
+"It is distressing," wrote Governor Haldimand, "to reflect that
+notwithstanding the vast treasure lavished upon these people, no
+dependence can be had on them."
+
+"Amazing sum!" he exclaimed when the bills came in. "I observe with
+great concern the astonishing consumption of rum at Detroit. This
+expense cannot be borne."
+
+However, the Pottawattamies sharpened their hatchets and, newly
+outfitted, set out for the rapids of the Ohio.
+
+"Bring them in alive if possible," was the parting admonition of De
+Peyster, warned by the obloquy of Hamilton. Vain remonstrance with
+four hundred and seventy-six dozen scalping knives at Bird's command!
+
+From every unwary emigrant along the Ohio, daily the Delawares and
+Shawnees brought their offerings of scalps to Detroit, and throwing
+them down at the feet of the commander said, "Father, we have done as
+you directed us; we have struck your enemies."
+
+The bounty was paid; the scalps were counted and flung into a cellar
+under the Council House.
+
+And De Peyster, really a good fellow, like André, a _bon vivant_ and
+lover of books and music, went on with his cards, balls, and
+assemblies, little feeling the iron that goes to the making of
+nations.
+
+"Kentuckians very bad people! Ought to be scalped as fast as taken,"
+said the Indians.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+_BEHIND THE CURTAIN_
+
+
+"We must dislodge this American general from his new conquest," said
+the British officers, "or tribe after tribe will be gained over and
+subdued. Thus will be destroyed the only barrier which protects the
+great trading establishments of the Northwest and Hudson's Bay.
+Nothing could then prevent the Americans from gaining the source of
+the Mississippi, gradually extending themselves by the Red River to
+Lake Winnipeg, from whence the descent of Nelson's River to York Fort
+would in time be easy."
+
+Another strong factor in this decision was the dissatisfaction of the
+British traders with the new movement that was deflecting the fur
+trade down the Mississippi. The French families of Cahokia and
+Kaskaskia sent their furs down to New Orleans, greatly to the
+displeasure of their late English rulers, who wanted them to go to
+Canada, by the St. Louis trail to Detroit.
+
+"Why should it not continue over the old Detroit trail to Montreal?"
+they questioned. "Is our fur trade to be cut off by these beggarly
+rebels and Spaniards? It belongs to Canada, Canada shall have it!" So
+all North America was fought over for the fur trade.
+
+"I will use my utmost endeavours to send as many Indians as I can to
+attack the Spanish settlements, early in February," said Pat Sinclair,
+the British commander at Michilimackinac.
+
+"I have taken steps to engage the Sioux under their own Chief,
+Wabasha, a man of uncommon abilities. Wabasha is allowed to be a very
+extraordinary Indian and well attached to His Majesty's interest."
+
+And Wabasha, king of the buffalo plains above the Falls of St.
+Anthony, _was_ an extraordinary Indian. In old days he fought for
+Pontiac, but after De Peyster brought the Sioux, the proudest of the
+tribes, to espouse the English cause, every year Wabasha made a visit
+to his British father at Michilimackinac.
+
+On such a visit as this he came from Prairie du Chien after hearing
+that Hamilton was taken, and was received with songs and cannonading:
+
+           "Hail to great Wabashaw!
+           Cannonier--fire away,
+     Hoist the fort-standard, and beat all the drums;
+           Ottawa and Chippewa,
+           Whoop! for great Wabashaw!
+     He comes--beat drums--the Sioux chief comes.
+
+           "Hail to great Wabashaw!
+           Soldiers your triggers draw,
+     Guard,--wave the colours, and give him the drum!
+           Choctaw and Chickasaw,
+           Whoop for great Wabashaw!
+     Raise the port-cullis!--the King's friend is come."
+
+By such demonstrations and enormous gifts, the Indians were held to
+the British standard.
+
+It was Wabasha and his brothers, Red Wing and Little Crow, who in 1767
+gave a deed to Jonathan Carver of all the land around St. Anthony's
+Falls, on which now stand the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, but
+no government confirmation of the deed has ever been discovered.
+
+"The reduction of St. Louis will be an easy matter, and of the rebels
+at Kaskaskia also," continued Sinclair. "All the traders who will
+secure the posts on the Spanish side of the Mississippi have my
+promise for the exclusive trade of the Missouri."
+
+The Northwest red men were gathering,--Menomonies, Sacs, Foxes,
+Winnebagoes,--at the portage of the Wisconsin and Fox Rivers,
+collecting all the corn and canoes in the country, to set out on the
+tenth of March. Again Sinclair writes, "Seven hundred and fifty men
+set out down the Mississippi the second of May."
+
+Another party assembled at Chicago to come by the Illinois,--Indians,
+British, and traders.
+
+"Captain Hesse will remain at St. Louis," continued Governor Sinclair.
+"Wabasha will attack Ste. Genevieve and the rebels at Kaskaskia. Two
+vessels leave here on the second of June to attend Matchekewis, who
+will return by the Illinois River with prisoners."
+
+Very well De Peyster knew Matchekewis, the puissant chief who
+
+               "At foot-ball sport
+     With arms concealed, surprised the fort,"
+
+at Michilimackinac in Pontiac's war. It was Matchekewis himself who
+kicked the ball over the pickets, and rushing in with his band fell on
+the unprepared ranks of the British garrison. On the reoccupation of
+Mackinac, Matchekewis had been sent to Quebec and imprisoned, but,
+released and dismissed with honours and a buffalo barbecue, now he was
+leading his Chippewas for the King.
+
+All this was part of a wider scheme, devised in London, for the
+subjugation of the Mississippi.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+_THE ATTACK ON ST. LOUIS_
+
+
+Scarce had Clark time to set his men to work on Fort Jefferson, on the
+Chickasaw Bluffs overlooking the Mississippi, before he received two
+other expresses, one from Montgomery, one from the Spanish Governor
+himself,--"Haste, haste to our relief."
+
+Not wishing to alarm his men, Clark picked out a strong escort,--"I
+shall be gone a few days. Finish the fort. Keep a constant guard."
+
+They thought he had gone to Kentucky.
+
+All through the year 1779 the Frenchmen remembered Clark's warning. At
+last, so great became the general apprehension, that the people
+themselves, directed by Madame Rigauche, the school-mistress, erected
+a sort of defence of logs and earth, five or six feet high, and posted
+a cannon in each of the three gates.
+
+"Pouf! Pouf!" laughed the Governor. But he did not interfere.
+
+But so many days elapsed, so little sign of change appeared in the
+accustomed order of things, that the reassured Frenchmen went on as
+usual digging in their fields, racing their horses, and clicking their
+billiard balls. Night after night they played their fiddles and danced
+till dawn on their footworn puncheon floors.
+
+And all the while the Lake Indians of the North were planning and
+counselling. All through the Spring they were gathering at rendezvous,
+paddling down Lake Michigan's shore into the Chicago River, and then
+by portage into the Illinois, where they set up the cry, "On to St.
+Louis!"
+
+So long had been the fear allayed, so much the rumour discredited,
+that when old man Quenelle came back across the river, white with
+excitement, the people listened to his tale as of one deranged.
+
+"What? Do you ask? What?" His teeth chattered. "Ducharme, Ducharme the
+absconder, meet me across te river an' say--'Te Injun comin'!' Fifteen
+huntert down te river of te Illinois!"
+
+Terrified was the old man. Hearers gathered round plying him with
+questions. The incredulous laughed at his incoherence. "What? What?"
+he gasped. "You laugh?" Some believed him. Dismay began to creep over
+the more timid ones.
+
+"What is it?" inquired the burly Governor De Leyba, bustling up.
+"What? That same old yarn to frighten the people? Quenelle is an old
+dotard. Take him to prison." Thus reassured, again the people went on
+with work, games, festivity.
+
+But now the people of Cahokia became excited. Early in March Colonel
+Gratiot sent a boatload of goods for trade to Prairie du Chien. It was
+captured by Indians on the Mississippi. Breathless half-breed runners
+reported the apparition upon the waters,--"All te waves black with
+canoes. A great many sauvages."
+
+"Clark," was the spoken and unspoken thought of all. "Clark, the
+invincible, where is he?"
+
+Some said, "He is camped with his Long Knives in the American Bottom."
+
+"No, he is building a fort at the Chickasaw Bluffs."
+
+Hurriedly the villagers prepared an express for Clark. Charles Gratiot
+was sent, the brainiest man in Cahokia, one who could speak English,
+and, moreover, a great friend of Clark.
+
+On the swiftest canoe Charles Gratiot launched amid the prayers of
+Cahokia. Down he swept on the Mississippi with the precious papers
+calling for succour. Safely he passed a thousand snags, safely reached
+the bluffs of Chickasaw, and saw the fort. Toiling up he gave his
+message.
+
+"Colonel Clark? He is gone. We think he left for Louisville." Without
+delay a messenger was dispatched to follow his supposed direction.
+
+Meanwhile, Clark and his soldiers, joining Montgomery by land, had
+hurried to Cahokia. Immediately he crossed to St. Louis. It was the
+feast of Corpus Christi, May 25. Service in the little log chapel was
+over.
+
+"Come," said the people in holiday attire, "Let us gather strawberries
+on the flowery mead."
+
+From their covert, peeped the Indians. "To-morrow!" they said,
+"to-morrow!"
+
+Out of the picnic throng, with lap full of flowers, the beautiful
+Donna ran to greet her lover.
+
+"So long"--she drew a sigh--"I haf watched and waited!" Love had
+taught her English. Never had the Donna appeared so fair, with shining
+eyes and black hair waving on her snowy shoulders.
+
+With tumultuous heart Colonel Clark bent and kissed her. "Vengeance I
+swear on any Indian that shall ever mar this lovely head!" Then
+crushing her hand with the grip of a giant,--"Wait a little, my dear,
+I must see your brother the Governor."
+
+Outside the maiden waited while Clark entered the Government House.
+
+At last Don Francisco De Leyba was come to his senses: "I fear, but I
+conceal from de people. I sent for Lieutenant Cartabona from de Ste.
+Genevieve. He haf arrived with twenty-five soldier. Will you not
+command of both side de river? I need you. You promised."
+
+De Leyba wore a long scarf of crape for his lately deceased wife.
+Clark had never seen him look so ill; he was worn out and trembling.
+The ruffle at his wrist shook like that of a man with palsy.
+
+Clark took the nervous hand in his own firm grasp.
+
+"Certainly, my friend, I will do everything in my power. What are your
+defences?"
+
+"We haf a stockade, you note it? De cannon at gates? I assure de
+people no danger, de rumour false; I fear dey scarce will believe
+now." Together they went out to review Cartabona's soldiers and the
+works of defence.
+
+"Le Colonel Clark! Le Colonel Clark!" the people cheered as he passed.
+"Now we are safe!"
+
+De Leyba had sent out a hunter to shoot ducks for the Colonel's
+dinner. And while the Governor and Clark were in discussion, the
+hunter met a spy.
+
+"Who commands at Cahokia?" inquired the stranger.
+
+"Colonel Clark; he has arrived with a great force."
+
+"Colonel Clark! Oh, no," answered the spy in amazement, "that cannot
+be! Clark is in Kentucky. We have just killed an express with
+dispatches to him there."
+
+"I don't know about that," answered the hunter, in his turn surprised.
+"Colonel Clark is at this moment in St. Louis, and I have been sent to
+kill some ducks for his dinner."
+
+The stranger disappeared.
+
+Clark was in St. Louis about two hours. "Cartabona is here. I shall be
+ready to answer his slightest signal. Be sure I shall answer." He
+turned to go.
+
+"Going? No, no, Señor Colonel, I cannot permit--" The hands of
+Governor De Leyba shook still more. "I expect you to dine,--haf sent a
+hunter for ducks."
+
+But when did George Rogers Clark ever stop to eat when there was
+fighting on hand? Hastily recrossing the river, he put Cahokia into
+immediate defence.
+
+The next day dawned clear and bright, but the people, wearied with
+all-night dancing, slumbered late. Grandfather Jean Marie Cardinal had
+not danced. He was uncommonly industrious that morning. Hastening away
+in the dewy dawn, he went to planting corn in his slightly plowed
+fields. Gradually others strolled out on the Grand Prairie. It was
+high noon when an Indian down by the spring caught the eye of
+Grandfather Jean Marie Cardinal.
+
+"He must not give the alarm," thought the savage, so on the instant he
+slew and scalped him where he stood.
+
+Then all was tumult. The people in the village heard the sound of
+firearms. Lieutenant Cartabona and his garrison fired a gunshot from
+the tower to warn the scattered villagers in the fields. Erelong they
+came stumbling into the north gate half dead with fright and
+exhaustion.
+
+"The Chippewas! The Chippewas!"
+
+They had crossed the river and murdered the family of François
+Bellhome.
+
+"_Sacre Dieu! le Sauvage! la Tour! la Tour!_" cried the frantic
+habitants, but the tower was occupied by Cartabona and his coward
+soldiers.
+
+Every man rushed to the Place des Armes, powder-horn and bullet-pouch
+in hand.
+
+"To arms! To arms!" was the terrified cry.
+
+"Where is the garrison? Where is the Governor?"
+
+But they came not forth. Cartabona and his men continued to garrison
+the tower. The Governor cowered in the Government House with doors
+shut and barricaded. Women and children hid in the houses, telling
+their beads.
+
+It was about noon when the quick ear of Clark, over in Cahokia, heard
+the cannonading and small arms in St. Louis. He sent an express.
+
+"Here, Murray and Jaynes, go over the river and inquire the cause."
+
+Slipping through the cottonwood trees, the express met an old negro
+woman on a keen run for Cahokia. She screamed, "Run, Boston, run! A
+great many salvages!"
+
+All together ran back, just in time to meet Colonel Clark marching out
+of the east gate. In the thick woods of Cahokia Creek he caught a view
+of the foe. "Boom!" rang his brass six-pounder,--tree-tops and Indians
+fell together.
+
+Amazed at this rear fire the Indians turned in confusion. One
+terrified look,--"It is the Long Knife! We have been deceived. We will
+not fight the Long Knife!" With one wild whoop they scurried to their
+boats. The handful of traders, deserted, raised the siege and retired.
+
+It was the period of the spring rise of the powerful and turbulent
+Mississippi, which, undermining its shores, dumped cottonwood trees
+into the river.
+
+"The whole British army is coming on rafts!" In terror seeing the
+supposed foe advancing, Cartabona's soldiers began firing at the
+white-glancing trees on the midnight waters. On, on came the ghostly
+flotilla.
+
+"Cease firing!" demanded De Leyba emerging from his retreat.
+
+"De cowardly, skulking old Goffner! hide heself! abandon de people!"
+In wrath they tore toward him, sticks and stones flying. The Governor
+fled, and the daft Spaniards, watching the river, spiked the cannon,
+preparing to fly the moment the British landed.
+
+Cahokia trembled all night long. There were noises and howls of
+wolves, but no Indians. Clark himself in the darkness made the rounds
+of his sentinels. Even through the shadows they guessed who walked at
+night.
+
+"Pass, grand round, keep clear of my arms and all's well," was the
+successive cry from post to post in the picket gardens of old Cahokia.
+
+With the first pale streak of dawn the sleepless habitants looked out.
+All was still. The Indians were gone, but over at St. Louis seven men
+were found dead, scalped by the retreating foe. Many more were being
+carried off prisoners, but Clark's pursuing party rescued thirty.
+
+The prisoners, dragged away to the north by their captors, suffered
+hardships until restored at the end of the war, in 1783.
+
+When Clark heard of the incompetence of De Leyba he was furious. On
+his way to the Government House, he saw the lovely Donna at her
+casement. Her hair was dishevelled, her eyes wet with tears. She
+extended her hand. Clark took one step toward her, and then pride
+triumphed.
+
+"Never will I become the father of a race of cowards," and turning on
+his heel he left St. Louis forever.
+
+In one month De Leyba was dead, some said by his own hand. He knew
+that Auguste Chouteau had gone to complain of him at New Orleans,--the
+people believed he had been bribed by Great Britain; he knew that only
+disgrace awaited him, and he succumbed to his many disasters and the
+universal obloquy in which he was held. He was buried in the little
+log chapel, beneath the altar, by the side of his wife, where his tomb
+is pointed out to this day.
+
+And the beautiful Donna De Leyba? She waited and wept but Clark came
+not. Then, taking with her the two little orphan nieces, Rita and
+Perdita, she went down to New Orleans. Here for a time she lingered
+among friends, and at last, giving up all hope, retired to the
+Ursuline convent and became a nun.
+
+Presently Auguste Chouteau returned from New Orleans with the new
+Governor, Don Francisco de Cruzat, who pacified fears and fortified
+the town with half-a-dozen circular stone turrets, twenty feet high,
+connected by a stout stockade of cedar posts pierced with loopholes
+for artillery. On the river bank a stone tower called the Half Moon,
+and west of it a square log tower called the Bastion, still stood
+within the memory of living men.
+
+"Next year a thousand Sioux will be in the field under Wabasha," wrote
+Sinclair to Haldimand, his chief in Canada.
+
+But the Sioux had no more desire to go back to "the high walled house
+of thunder," where the cannon sounded not "Hail to great Wabashaw!"
+
+Their own losses were considerable, for Clark ordered an immediate
+pursuit. Some of the Spaniards, grateful for the succour of the
+Americans, crossed the river and joined Montgomery's troops in his
+chase after the retreating red men.
+
+"The Americans are coming," was the scare-word at Prairie du Chien.
+"Better get up your furs."
+
+With Wabasha's help the traders hastily bundled three hundred packs of
+their best furs into canoes, and setting fire to the remaining sixty
+packs, burned them, together with the fort, while they hurried away to
+Michilimackinac. Matchekewis went by the Lakes. "Two hundred Illinois
+cavalry arrived at Chicago five days after the vessels left," is the
+record of the Haldimand papers.
+
+The watchfulness and energy of Clark alone saved Illinois;
+nevertheless, De Peyster felt satisfied, for he thought that diversion
+kept Clark from Detroit.
+
+After the terror was all over, long in the annals of the fireside, the
+French of St. Louis related the feats of "_l'année du coup_."
+
+"Auguste Chouteau, he led te defence, he and he brother."
+
+"No, Madame Rigauche, te school-meestress, she herself touch te
+cannon."
+
+"Well, at any rate, we hid in te Chouteau garden, behind te stone
+wall."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+_OLD CHILLICOTHE_
+
+
+With a wrench at his hot heart stifled only by wrath and
+determination, Clark strode from St. Louis. At Cahokia French
+deserters were talking to Montgomery.
+
+"A tousand British and Indians on te march to Kentucky with cannon."
+
+"When did they start?" thundered Clark. The Frenchman dodged as if
+shot.
+
+"Dey start same time dis. Colonel Bird to keep Clark busy in Kentucky
+so Sinclair get San Loui' an' brak up te fur trade."
+
+For once in his life Clark showed alarm. "I know the situation of that
+country. I shall attempt to get there before Bird does."
+
+Drawing Montgomery aside, he said, "And you, Colonel, chase these
+retreating Indians. Chase them to Michilimackinac if possible. Destroy
+their towns and crops, distress them, convince them that we will
+retaliate and thus deter them from joining the British again."
+
+Without pausing to breathe after the fatigue of the last few days,
+with a small escort Clark launched a boat and went flying down to
+Chickasaw Bluffs. Disguised as Indians, feathered and painted, he and
+a few others left Fort Jefferson.
+
+Clark's army the year before had carried glowing news of Illinois.
+Already emigration had set in. On the way now he met forty families
+actually starving because they could not kill buffaloes.
+
+A gun?--it was a part of Clark. He used his rifle-barrelled firelock
+as he used his hands, his feet, his eyes, instantly, surely,
+involuntarily. He showed them how to strike the buffalo in a vital
+part, killed fourteen, and hurried on, thirty miles a day, fording
+stream and swamp and tangled forest to save Kentucky.
+
+Kentucky was watching for her deliverer. Into his ear was poured the
+startling tale. With Simon Girty, the renegade, and six hundred
+Indians, down the high waters of the Miami and up the Licking, Bird
+came to Ruddle's station and fired his cannon. Down went the wooden
+palisades like a toy blockhouse before his six-pounders.
+
+"Surrender!" came the summons from Colonel Bird.
+
+"Yes, if we can be prisoners to the British and not to the Indians."
+
+Bird assented. The gates were thrown open. Indians flew like dogs upon
+the helpless people.
+
+"You promised security," cried Captain Ruddle.
+
+"I cannot stop them," said Bird. "I, too, am in their power."
+
+Madly the Indians sacked the station and killed the cattle. Loading
+the household goods upon the backs of the unfortunate owners, they
+drove them forth and gave their cabins to the flames.
+
+The same scenes were enacted at Martin's Station. The Indians were
+wild for more. But Bird would not permit further devastation. He could
+easily have taken every fort in Kentucky, not one could have withstood
+his artillery; but to his honour be it said, he led his forces out.
+
+Loaded with plunder, the wretched captives, four hundred and fifty
+men, women, and children, were driven away to Detroit. Whoever
+faltered was tomahawked.
+
+Clark immediately called on the militia of Kentucky. Hastening to
+Harrodsburg he found the newcomers wild over land entries.
+
+"Land!" they cried, "you can have all you can hold against the
+Indians."
+
+It was a grewsome joke. The Indians would not even let them survey.
+Like a military dictator, Clark closed the land office,--"Nor will it
+be opened again until after this expedition."
+
+Immediately a thousand men enlisted. Logan, Linn, Floyd, Harrod, all
+followed the banner of Clark. Boone and Kenton set on ahead as guides,
+into the land they knew so well.
+
+"Is it not dangerous to invade the Shawnee country?" inquired one.
+
+"I was not born in the woods to be scared by an owl," was Clark's
+sententious reply.
+
+All the provisions they had for twenty-five days was six quarts of
+parched corn each, except what they got in the Indian country.
+
+Canoeing down the Licking, on the first day of August they crossed the
+Ohio. Scarce touching shore they heard the scalp halloo. Some fell.
+Within fifteen minutes Clark had his axes in the forest building a
+blockhouse for his wounded. On that spot now stands Cincinnati.
+
+On pressed Clark in his retaliatory dash,--before the Shawnees even
+suspected, the Kentuckians were at Old Chillicothe. They flew to arms,
+but the Long Knives swooped down with such fury that Simon Girty drew
+off.
+
+"It is folly to fight such madmen."
+
+Chillicothe went down in flames; Piqua followed; fields, gardens, more
+than five hundred acres of corn were razed to the level of the sod.
+
+Piqua was Tecumseh's village; again he learned to dread and hate the
+white man.
+
+"That will keep them at home hunting for a while," remarked Clark,
+turning back to the future Cincinnati.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+_"DETROIT MUST BE TAKEN"_
+
+
+Again George Rogers Clark sped through Cumberland Gap, fair as a
+Tyrolean vale, to Virginia. And dashing along the same highway, down
+the valley of Virginia, came the minute men of the border, in green
+hunting shirts, hard-riders and sharp-shooters of Fincastle.
+
+"Hey and away, and what news?"
+
+The restless mountaineers of the Appalachians, almost as fierce and
+warlike as the Goths and Vandals of an earlier day, answered:
+
+"We have broken the back of Tarleton's army at King's Mountain,
+Cornwallis is facing this way, and cruisers are coming up into the
+Chesapeake."
+
+"Marse Gawge! Marse Gawge!"
+
+This time it was little York, the negro, who, peeping from the slave
+quarters of old York and Rose, detected the stride of George Rogers
+Clark out under the mulberry trees.
+
+The long, low, Virginia farmhouse was wrapped in slumber, an almost
+funeral pall hung over the darkened porch, as John Clark stepped out
+to grasp the hand of his son.
+
+"Three of my boys in British prisons, we looked for nothing less for
+you, George. William alone is left."
+
+"Girls do not count, I suppose," laughed the saucy Lucy, peeping out
+in her night-curls with a candle in her hand. "Over at Bowling Green
+the other day, when all the gallants were smiling on me, one jealous
+girl said, 'I do not see what there is so interesting about Lucy
+Clark. She is not handsome, and she has red hair.' 'Ah,' I replied, 'I
+can tell her. They know I have five brothers all officers in the
+Revolutionary army!'"
+
+"What, Edmund gone, too?" exclaimed George. "He is but a lad!"
+
+"Big enough to don the buff and blue, and shoulder a gun," answered
+the father. "He would go,--left school, led all his mates, and six
+weeks later was taken prisoner along with Jonathan and the whole
+army."
+
+That was the fall of Charleston, in the very May when Clark was saving
+St. Louis.
+
+"We are all at war," spoke up Elizabeth, the elder sister, sadly.
+"Even the boys drill on mimic battlefields; all the girls in Virginia
+are spinning and weaving clothes for the soldiers; Mrs. Washington
+keeps sixteen spinning-wheels busy at Mount Vernon; mother and all the
+ladies have given their jewels to fit out the army. Mrs. Jefferson
+herself led the call for contributions, and Mrs. Lewis of Albemarle
+collected five thousand dollars in Continental currency. Father has
+given up his best horses, and Jefferson impressed his own horses and
+waggons at Monticello to carry supplies to General Gates. All the lads
+in the country are moulding bullets and making gun-powder. We haven't
+a pewter spoon left."
+
+"An' we niggers air raisin' fodder," ventured the ten-year-old York.
+
+York had his part, along with his young master, William. Daily they
+rode together down the Rappahannock, carrying letters to Fielding
+Lewis at Fredericksburg. It was there, at Kenmore House, that they met
+Meriwether Lewis, visiting his uncle and aunt Betty, the sister of
+Washington. "And when she puts on his _chapeau_ and great coat, she
+looks exactly like the General," said William.
+
+"What has become of my captured Governors?" George asked of his
+father.
+
+"I hear that Hamilton was offered a parole on condition that he would
+not use his liberty in any way to speak or influence any one against
+the colonies. He indignantly refused to promise that, and so was
+returned to close captivity. But I think when Boone came up to the
+legislature he used some influence; at any rate Hamilton was paroled
+and went with Hay to England. Rocheblave broke his parole and fled to
+New York."
+
+The five fireplaces of the old Clark home roared a welcome that day
+up the great central chimney, and candles gleamed at evening from
+dormer window to basement when all the neighbours crowded in to hail
+"the Washington of the West."
+
+"Now, Rose, you and Nancy bake the seed cakes and have beat biscuit,"
+said Mrs. Clark to the fat cook in the kitchen. "York has gone after
+the turkeys."
+
+"Events are in desperate straits," said George at bedtime; "I must
+leave at daylight." But earlier yet young William was up to gallop a
+mile beside his brother on the road to Richmond, whither the capital
+had been removed for greater safety.
+
+"Is this the young Virginian that is sending home all the western
+Governors?" exclaimed the people. An ovation followed him all the way.
+
+"What is your plan?" asked Governor Jefferson, after the fiery
+cavalier had been received with distinction by the Virginia Assembly.
+
+"My plan is to ascend the Wabash in early Spring and strike before
+reinforcements can reach Detroit, or escape be made over the breaking
+ice of the Lakes. The rivers open first."
+
+George Rogers Clark, born within three miles of Monticello, had known
+Jefferson all his life, and save Patrick Henry no one better grasped
+his plans. In fact, Jefferson had initiative and was not afraid of
+untried ventures.
+
+"My dear Colonel, I have already written to Washington that we could
+furnish the men, provisions, and every necessary except powder, had we
+the money, for the reduction of Detroit. But there is no money,--not
+even rich men have seen a shilling in a year. Washington to the north
+is begging aid, Gates in the south is pleading for men and arms, and
+not a shilling is in the treasury of Virginia."
+
+"But Detroit must be taken," said Clark with a solemn emphasis.
+"Through my aides I have this discovery: a combination is forming to
+the westward,--a confederacy of British and Indians,--to spread dismay
+to our frontier this coming Spring. We cannot hesitate. The fountain
+head of these irruptions must be cut off, the grand focus of Indian
+hostilities from the Mohawk to the Mississippi."
+
+Even as he spoke, Jefferson, pen in hand, was noting points in another
+letter to Washington.
+
+"We have determined to undertake it," wrote Jefferson, "and commit it
+to Clark's direction. Whether the expense of the enterprise shall be
+defrayed by the Continent or State we leave to be decided hereafter by
+Congress. In the meantime we only ask the loan of such necessaries as,
+being already at Fort Pitt, will save time and expense of
+transportation. I am, therefore, to solicit Your Excellency's order to
+the commandant at Fort Pitt for the articles contained in the annexed
+list."
+
+Clark had the list in hand. "It is our only hope; there is not a
+moment to be lost."
+
+On fleet horses the chain of expresses bore daily news to the camp of
+Washington, but before his answer could return, another express reined
+up at Richmond.
+
+"Benedict Arnold, the traitor, has entered the Capes of Virginia with
+a force of two thousand men."
+
+It was New Year's Eve and Richmond was in a tumult. On New Year's day
+every legislator was moving his family to a place of safety. The very
+winds were blowing Arnold's fleet to Richmond.
+
+Virginia had laid herself bare of soldiers; every man that could be
+spared had been sent south.
+
+And Arnold? With what rage George Rogers Clark saw him destroy the
+very stores that might have taken Detroit,--five brass field-pieces,
+arms in the Capitol loft and in waggons on the road, five tons of
+powder, tools, quartermaster's supplies. Then the very wind that had
+blown Arnold up the river turned and blew him back, and the only blood
+shed was by a handful of militia under George Rogers Clark, who killed
+and wounded thirty of Arnold's men.
+
+"I have an enterprise to propose," said the Governor to Clark on
+return. "I have confidence in your men from the western side of the
+mountains. I want to capture Arnold and hang him. You pick the proper
+characters and engage them to seize this greatest of all traitors. I
+will undertake, if they are successful, that they shall receive five
+thousand guineas reward among them."
+
+"I cannot, Arnold is gone, I must capture Detroit."
+
+More determined than ever, Clark and Jefferson went on planning. "Yes,
+you must capture Detroit and secure Lake Erie. You shall have two
+thousand men, and ammunition and packhorses shall be at the Falls of
+the Ohio, March 15, ready for the early break of the ice."
+
+Washington's consent had come, and orders for artillery. With
+Washington and Jefferson at his back, Clark made indefatigable efforts
+to raise two thousand men to rendezvous March 15.
+
+Up the Blue Ridge his agents went and over to the Holston; he wrote to
+western Pennsylvania; he visited Redstone-Old-Fort, and hurried down
+to Fort Pitt. Fort Pitt itself was in danger.
+
+The Wabash broke and ran untrammelled, but Clark was not ready.
+Cornwallis was destroying Gates at Camden; De Kalb fell, covered with
+wounds; Sumter was cut to pieces by Tarleton. The darkest night had
+come in a drama that has no counterpart, save in the Napoleonic wars
+that shook Europe in the cause of human liberty.
+
+War, war, raged from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. The land was
+covered with forts and blockhouses. Every hamlet had its place of
+refuge. Mills were fortified, and private houses. Every outlying
+settlement was stockaded. Every log house had its pickets and
+portholes. Chains of posts followed the river fords and mountain gaps
+from Ticonderoga to the Mohawk, from the Susquehanna to the Delaware,
+to the Cumberland, to the Tennessee. Anxious sentinels peered from the
+watchtowers of wooden castles. Guns stood on the ramparts. The people
+slept in barracks. Moats and drawbridges, chained gates and palisades,
+guarded the sacred citadels of America.
+
+"And what if England wins?" said one to Washington.
+
+"We can still retire to the Ohio and live in freedom," for, like the
+last recesses of the Swiss Alps, it was thought no nation could
+conquer the Alleghanies.
+
+In desperation and unaware of the Virginian crisis behind him, George
+Rogers Clark embarked four hundred men, all he could get of the
+promised two thousand. Only a line he sent to Jefferson, "I have
+relinquished all hope," but Jefferson at that hour was flying from
+Tarleton, Cornwallis was coming up into Virginia, and Washington with
+his ragged band of veteran Continentals was marching down to Yorktown.
+There was no time to glance beyond the mountains.
+
+All the northwest, in terror of Clark, was watching and fearing. If a
+blow was struck anywhere, "Clark did it." Shawnees and Delawares,
+Wyandots at the north, Choctaws and Chickasaws and Cherokees at the
+south, British and Indians everywhere, were rising against devoted
+Kentucky.
+
+As Clark stepped on his boats at Pittsburg word flew to remotest
+tribes,--
+
+"The Long Knives are coming!"
+
+The red man trembled in his wigwam, Detroit redoubled its
+fortifications, and Clark's forlorn little garrisons in the prairies
+of the west hung on to Illinois.
+
+In those boats Clark bore provisions, ammunition, artillery,
+quartermaster's stores, collected as if from the very earth by his
+undying energy,--everything but men, men! Major William Croghan stood
+with him on the wharf at Pittsburg, burning, longing to go, but honour
+forbade,--he was out on parole from Charleston.
+
+Peeping, spying, gliding, Indians down the Ohio would have attacked
+but for fear of Clark's cannon. The "rear guard of the Continental
+army" little knew the young Virginian, the terror of his name. For
+him, Canada staid at home to guard Detroit when she might have wrested
+Yorktown.
+
+With shouts of thanksgiving Louisville greeted Clark and his four
+hundred; the war had come up to their very doors. Never had the
+Indians so hammered away at the border. Across the entire continent
+the late intermittent cannon shots became a constant volley.
+
+Every family had its lost ones,--"My father, my mother, my wife, my
+child, they slaughtered, burned, tortured,--_I will hunt the Indian
+till I die!_"
+
+Detroit, Niagara, Michilimackinac--the very names meant horror, for
+there let loose, the red bloodhounds of war, the most savage, the most
+awful, with glittering knives, pressed close along the Ohio. The
+buffalo meat for the expedition rotted while Clark struggled,
+anguished in spirit, a lion chained, "Stationed here to repel a few
+predatory savages when I would carry war to the Lakes."
+
+But troops yet behind, "almost naked for want of linen and entirely
+without shoes," were trying to join Clark down the wild Ohio. Joseph
+Brandt cut them off,--Lochry and Shannon and one hundred
+Pennsylvanians,--not one escaped to tell the tale.
+
+Clark never recovered, never forgot the fate of Lochry. "Had I tarried
+but one day I might have saved them!" In the night-time he seemed to
+hear those struggling captives dragged away to Detroit,--"Detroit!
+lost for the want of a few men!" For the first time the over-wrought
+hero gave way to intoxication to drown his grief,--and so had Clark
+then died, "Detroit" might have been found written on his heart.
+
+Despair swept over Westmoreland where Lochry's men were the flower of
+the frontier. Only fourteen or fifteen rifles remained in
+Hannastown,--the Indians swooped and destroyed it utterly.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+_ON THE RAMPARTS_
+
+
+In all his anguish about Detroit, with the energy of desperation Clark
+now set to work making Louisville stronger than ever.
+
+"Boys, we must have defences absolutely impregnable; we know not at
+what moment cannon may be booming at our gates."
+
+A new stronghold was founded, and around it a moat eight feet deep and
+ten feet wide; surrounding the moat itself, was built a breastwork of
+log pens, filled with earth and picketed ten feet high on top of the
+breastwork. An acre was thus enclosed, and in that acre was a spring
+that bubbles still in the streets of Louisville. Within were mounted a
+double six-pounder captured at Vincennes, four cannon, and eight
+swivels, and heaped around were shells, balls, and grapeshot brought
+for the Detroit campaign. With bakehouse and blockhouse, bastion and
+barrack, no enemy ever dared attack Fort Nelson.
+
+"General Clark is too hard on the militia," the soldier boys
+complained, but the hammering and pounding and digging went on until
+Louisville was the strongest point beyond the Alleghanies.
+
+Back and back came the Indians, in battles and forays, and still in
+this troublous time settlers were venturing by flatboat and over the
+Wilderness Road into the Blue Grass country. They seemed to fancy that
+Clark had stilled the West, that here the cannon had ceased to rattle.
+
+Emigrants on packhorses bound for the land of cane and turkeys saw
+bodies of scalped white men every day. Logan and his forest rangers,
+like knights of old, guarded the Wilderness Road. Kenton and his
+scouts patrolled the Ohio, crossing and recrossing on the track of
+marauding savages. Boone watched the Licking; Floyd held the Bear
+Grass.
+
+Fort Nelson was done,--its walls were cannon-proof. Clark's gunboat
+lay on the water-front when a messenger passed the sentinel with a
+letter.
+
+In the little square room that Clark called his headquarters, the
+envoy waited. The young commandant read and bowed his head,--was it a
+moment of irresolution? "Who could have brought this letter?"
+
+"Any Indian would bring it for a pint of rum," answered a well-known
+voice. Pulling off a mask, Connolly stood before him.
+
+It was as if Lord Dunmore had risen from the floor,--Connolly had been
+Lord Dunmore's captain commandant of all the land west of the Blue
+Ridge. What was he saying?
+
+"As much boundary of land on the west bank of the Ohio as you may
+wish, and any title under that of a duke, if you will abandon
+Louisville. I am sent to you by Hamilton."
+
+"What!" gasped Clark. "Shall I become an Arnold and give up my
+country? Never! Go, sir, before my people discover your identity."
+
+Resolved to lock the secret in his own heart, Clark spoke to no one.
+But that same night a similar offer was made to John Floyd on the Bear
+Grass. He mentioned it to Clark.
+
+"We must never tell the men," they agreed; "starving and discouraged
+they might grasp the offer to escape the Indian tomahawk." But years
+after Clark told his sister Lucy, and Floyd told his wife, Jane
+Buchanan,--and from them the tale came down to us.
+
+As if enraged at this refusal, British and Indians rallied for a final
+onslaught.
+
+"The white men are taking the fair Kain-tuck-ee, the land of deer and
+buffalo. If you beat Clark this time you will certainly recover your
+hunting-grounds," said De Peyster at the council fire.
+
+In unprecedented numbers the redmen crossed the Ohio,--station after
+station was invested; then followed the frightful battle of Blue Licks
+where sixty white men fell in ten minutes. Kentucky was shrouded in
+mourning.
+
+Again Clark followed swift with a thousand mounted riflemen.
+
+Among the Indians dividing their spoils and their captives there
+sounded a sharp alarm, "The Long Knives! The Long Knives!"
+
+"A mighty army on its march!"
+
+Barely had the Shawnees time to fly when Clark's famished Kentuckians
+entered Old Chillicothe. Fires were yet burning, corn was on the
+roasting sticks, but the foe was gone.
+
+"The property destroyed was of great amount, and the quantity of
+provisions burned surpassed all idea we had of the Indian stores,"
+Clark said in after years.
+
+This second destruction of their villages and cornfields chilled the
+heart of the Indians. Their power was broken. Never again did a great
+army cross the Ohio.
+
+But standing again on the ruins of Old Chillicothe, "I swear
+vengeance!" cried the young Tecumseh.
+
+And Clark, the Long Knife, mourned in his heart.
+
+"This might have been avoided! this might have been avoided! Never
+shall we have peace on this frontier until Detroit is taken!"
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+_EXIT CORNWALLIS_
+
+
+"The boy cannot escape me!"
+
+Lafayette was all that lay between Cornwallis and the subjugation of
+Virginia. The lithe little Frenchman, only twenty-three years old,
+danced ever on and on before him, fatiguing the redcoats far into the
+heats of June.
+
+The Virginia Legislature adjourned to Charlottesville. In vain
+Cornwallis chased the boy and sent Tarleton on his raid over the
+mountains, "to capture the Governor."
+
+Like a flash he came, the handsome, daring, dashing Colonel Tarleton,
+whose name has been execrated for a hundred years.
+
+Virginia was swept as by a tornado. Never a noise in the night, never
+a wind could whistle by, but "Tarleton's troop is coming!"
+
+"Tarleton's troop!" Little John Randolph, a boy of eight, his mother
+then lying in childbed, was gathered up and hurried away ninety miles
+up the Appomattox.
+
+"Tarleton's troop!" Beside the dead body of her husband sat the mother
+of four-year-old Henry Clay, with her seven small children shuddering
+around her. Standing on a rock in the South Anna River, the great
+preacher had addressed his congregation in impassioned oratory for the
+last time, and now on a bier he lay lifeless, while the gay trooper
+raided the lands of his children.
+
+Even Tarleton was moved by the widow's pallor as he tossed a handful
+of coins on her table. She arose and swept them into the
+fireplace,--"Never will I touch the invaders' gold."
+
+"Tarleton's troop!" Back at Waxhaw, South Carolina, a lad by the name
+of Andrew Jackson bore through life the scars of wounds inflicted by
+Tarleton's men. At that very hour, alone on foot his mother was
+returning from deeds of mercy to the patriots caged in prison pens by
+Tarleton. But the streams were cold, the forests dark; losing her way,
+overworn and weary, sank and died the mother of Andrew Jackson.
+
+"Tarleton's troop!" Jack Jouett at the Cuckoo Tavern at Louisa saw
+white uniforms faced with green, and fluttering plumes, and shining
+helmets riding by.
+
+The fiery Huguenot blood rose in him. Before daylight Jack's
+hard-ridden steed reined up at Monticello.
+
+"Tarleton's troop, three hours behind me! Fly!"
+
+There was panic and scramble,--some of the legislators were at
+Monticello. There was hasty adjournment and flight to Staunton, across
+the Blue Ridge.
+
+Assisting his wife, the slender, graceful Mrs. Jefferson, into a
+carriage, the Governor sent her and the children under the care of
+Jupiter, the coachman, to a neighbouring farmhouse, while he gathered
+up his State papers.
+
+"What next, massa?" Martin, the faithful body-servant, watching his
+master's glance and anticipating every want, followed from room to
+room.
+
+"The plate, Martin," with a wave of the hand Jefferson strode out from
+his beloved Monticello.
+
+With Cæsar's help Martin pulled up the planks of the portico, and the
+last piece of silver went under the floor as a gleaming helmet hove in
+sight. Dropping the plank, imprisoning poor Cæsar, Martin faced the
+intruder.
+
+"Where is your master? Name the spot or I'll fire!"
+
+"Fire away, then," answered the slave. The trooper desisted.
+
+Tarleton and his men took food and drink, but destroyed nothing. The
+fame of Jefferson's kindness to Burgoyne's captured army had reached
+even Tarleton, for in that mansion books and music had been free to
+the imprisoned British officers.
+
+"An' now who be ye, an' whar are ye from?"
+
+An old woman peered from the door of a hut in a gorge of the hills,
+late in the afternoon.
+
+"We are members of the Virginia Legislature fleeing from Tarleton's
+raid."
+
+"Ride on, then, ye cowardly knaves! Here my husband and sons have just
+gone to Charlottesville to fight for ye, an' ye a runnin' awa' wi' all
+yer might. Clar out; ye get naething here."
+
+"But, my good woman, it would never do to let the British capture the
+Legislature."
+
+"If Patterick Hennery had been in Albemarle, the British dragoons
+would naever ha' passed the Rivanna."
+
+"But, my good woman, here is Patrick Henry."
+
+"Patterick Hennery? Patterick Hennery? Well, well, if Patterick
+Hennery is here it must be all right. Coom in, coom in to the best I
+have."
+
+But Daniel Boone and three or four others were captured, and carried
+away to Cornwallis to be released soon after on parole.
+
+"Tarleton's troop!" cried little Meriwether Lewis, seven years old.
+
+Sweeping down the Rivanna came the desperado to the home of Colonel
+Nicholas Lewis, away in the Continental army.
+
+"What a paradise!" exclaimed Tarleton, raising his hands.
+
+"Why, then, do you interrupt it?" inquired Mrs. Lewis, alone at home
+with her small children and slaves.
+
+The trooper slept that night in his horseman's cloak on the kitchen
+floor. At daylight Mrs. Lewis was awakened by a clatter in her
+henyard. Ducks, chickens, turkeys, the troopers were wringing their
+necks. One decrepit old drake only escaped by skurrying under the
+barn.
+
+Bowing low till his plume swept the horse's mane, Tarleton galloped
+away.
+
+The wrath of Aunt Molly! "Here, Pompey, you just catch that drake.
+Ride as fast as you can, and present it to Colonel Tarleton with my
+compliments."
+
+On flying steed, drake squawking and flouncing on his back, the darkey
+flew after the troopers.
+
+"Well, Pompey, did you overtake Colonel Tarleton?" was Aunt Molly's
+wrathful inquiry.
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"He put de drake in his wallet, and say he much obleeged!"
+
+Little Meriwether, sitting on the gate-post, laughed at his aunt's
+discomfiture.
+
+The roll of a drum broke the stillness of Sabbath in the Blue Ridge.
+
+"Tarleton's troop!" By the bed of her sick husband sat a Spartan
+mother at Staunton. Her sons were in the army at the north, but three
+young lads, thirteen, fifteen, and seventeen were there.
+
+Placing their father's old firelock in their hands, "Go forth, my
+children," she said, "repel the foot of the invader or see my face no
+more."
+
+But Tarleton did not force the mountain pass,--the boys went on down
+to join Lafayette.
+
+From farm and forest, children and grandsires hurried to Lafayette.
+The proud earl retired to the sea and stopped to rest at the little
+peninsula of Yorktown, waiting for reinforcements.
+
+Down suddenly from the north came Washington with his tattered
+Continentals and Rochambeau's gay Frenchmen, and the French fleet
+sailed into the Chesapeake. Cornwallis was bottled up at Yorktown.
+
+The boy, Lafayette, had simply put the stopper in the bottle and
+waited.
+
+Seventy cannon rolled in on Yorktown. George Rogers Clark, all the
+West, was appealing to Washington, but the great chief unmoved kept
+his eye on Lord Cornwallis.
+
+On the 19th of October, 1781, the aristocratic marquis, who had
+commenced his career as aide-de-camp to a king, surrendered to the
+rebels of America.
+
+"'Wallis has surrendered! surrendered! surrendered!"
+
+Meriwether Lewis and William Clark flung up their caps with other boys
+and shouted with the best of them, "'Wallis has surrendered!"
+
+After the surrender of Cornwallis, Washington and Lafayette and the
+officers of the French and American armies went to Fredericksburg to
+pay their respects to Mary, the mother of Washington. The entire
+surrounding country was watching in gala attire, and among them the
+old cavalier, John Clark of Caroline.
+
+On his white horse Washington passed the mulberry trees. Quick as a
+flash little William turned,--"Why, father, he does look like my
+brother George! Is that why people call our George the 'Washington of
+the West'?"
+
+A provisional treaty was signed at Paris, November 30, 1782, a few
+days after the return of George Rogers Clark from that last
+Chillicothe raid. Slowly, by pack-horse and flatboat, the news reached
+Kentucky.
+
+The last of the British army sailed away. Washington made his immortal
+farewell, and went back to his farm, arriving on Christmas Eve.
+Bonfires and rockets, speeches, thanksgiving and turkey, ended the
+year 1782.
+
+But with his return from the last scene at Yorktown, the father of
+Meriwether Lewis lay down and died, a martyr of the Revolution.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+_THE OLD VIRGINIA HOME_
+
+
+Back over Boone's trace, the Wilderness Road he had travelled so many
+times, went General George Rogers Clark sometime in the early Spring
+of 1783, past the thrifty fields of Fincastle and the Shenandoah
+Germans, with their fat cattle and huge red barns. Every year the
+stout Pennsylvanians were building farther and farther up. Year by
+year the fields increased, and rosy girls stacked the hay in defiance
+of all Virginian customs across the Ridge.
+
+But the man who a thousand miles to the west held Illinois by the
+prowess of his arm and the terror of his name, sprang not with the
+buoyant step of six years before when he had gone to Virginia after
+the gunpowder. His thoughts were at Kaskaskia, Vincennes, Louisville,
+where his unsustained garrisons were suffering for food and clothing.
+
+"Peace, peace, peace!" he muttered. "'Tis but a mockery. Must Kentucky
+lie still and be scalped?"
+
+Still the savages raided the border, not in numbers, but in squads,
+persistent and elusive. Isham Floyd, the boy drummer of Vincennes, had
+been captured by the savages and three days tortured in the woods, and
+burnt at the stake.
+
+"My boy-brother in the hands of those monsters?" exclaimed the
+great-hearted John Floyd of the Bear Grass. A word roused the country,
+the savages were dispersed, but poor Isham was dead. And beside him
+lay his last tormentor, the son of an Indian chief, shot by the
+avenging rifle of John Floyd.
+
+Riding home with a heavy heart on the 12th of April, a ball struck
+Colonel Floyd, passed through his arm, and entered his breast. Behind
+the trees they caught a glimpse of the smoking rifle of Big Foot, that
+chief whose son was slain. Leaping from his own horse to that of his
+brother, Charles Floyd sustained the drooping form until they reached
+the Bear Grass.
+
+"Charles," whispered the dying man, "had I been riding Pompey this
+would not have happened. Pompey pricks his ears and almost speaks if a
+foe is near."
+
+At the feet of Jane Buchanan her brave young husband was laid, his
+black locks already damp with the dew of death.
+
+"Papa! Papa!" Little two-year-old George Rogers Clark Floyd screamed
+with terror. Ten days later the stricken wife, Jane Buchanan, gave
+birth to another son, whom they named in honour of his heroic father.
+
+With such a grief upon him, General George Rogers Clark wended his
+lonesome way through the Cumberland Gap to Virginia. Now in the
+night-time he heard young Isham cry. Not a heart in Kentucky but
+bewailed the fate of the drummer boy. And John Floyd, his loss was a
+public calamity.
+
+"John Floyd, John Floyd," murmured Clark on his lonely way, "the
+encourager of my earliest adventures, truest heart of the West!"
+
+Lochry's men haunted him while he slept. "Had I not written they would
+not have come!"
+
+His debts, dishonoured, weighed like a pall, and deep, deep, down in
+his heart he knew at last how much he loved that girl in the convent
+at New Orleans. At times an almost ungovernable yearning came over him
+to go down and force the gates of her voluntary prison-house.
+
+In May he was at Richmond. A new Governor sat in the chair of
+Jefferson and Patrick Henry. To him Clark addressed an appeal for the
+money that was his due.
+
+But Virginia, bankrupt, impoverished, prostrate, answered only,--"We
+have given you land warrants, what more can you ask?"
+
+With heavy heart Clark travelled again the road to Caroline.
+
+There was joy in the old Virginia home, and sorrow. Once more the
+family were reunited. First came Colonel Jonathan, with his courtly
+and elegant army comrade Major William Croghan, an Irish gentleman,
+nephew of Sir William Johnson, late Governor of New York, and of the
+famous George Croghan, Sir William's Indian Deputy in the West.
+
+In fact young Croghan crossed the ocean with Sir William as his
+private secretary, on the high road to preferment in the British army.
+But he looked on the struggling colonists, and mused,--
+
+"Their cause is just! I will raise a regiment for Washington."
+
+While all his relatives fought for the King, he alone froze and
+starved at Valley Forge, and in that frightful winter of 1780 marched
+with Jonathan Clark's regiment to the relief of Charleston. And
+Charleston fell.
+
+"Restore your loyalty to Great Britain and I will set you free," said
+Major General Prevost, another one of Croghan's uncles.
+
+"I cannot," replied the young rebel. "I have linked my fate with the
+colonies."
+
+Nevertheless General Prevost released him and his Colonel, Jonathan
+Clark, on parole. Lieutenant Edmund was held a year longer.
+
+Directly to the home in Caroline, Colonel Jonathan brought his Irish
+Major. And there he met--Lucy.
+
+Then, with the exchange of prisoners, Edmund came, damaged it is true,
+but whole, and John, John from the prison ships, ruined.
+
+At sight of the emaciated face of her once handsome boy, the mother
+turned away and wept. Five long years in the prison ship had done its
+work. Five years, where every day at dawn the dead were brought out in
+cartloads. Stifled in crowded holds and poisoned with loathsome food,
+in one prison ship alone in eighteen months eleven thousand died and
+were buried on the Brooklyn shore. And then came the General, George
+Rogers, and Captain Richard, from the garrison of Kaskaskia where he
+had helped to hold the Illinois.
+
+In tattered regimentals and worn old shirts they came,--the army of
+the Revolution was disbanded without a dollar.
+
+"And I, worse than without a dollar," said General George Rogers. "My
+private property has been sacrificed to pay public debts."
+
+But from what old treasure stores did those girls bring garments,
+homespun and new and woolly and warm, prepared against this day of
+reunion? The soldiers were children again around their father's
+hearth, with mother's socks upon their feet and sister's arms around
+their necks.
+
+Jonathan, famous for his songs, broke forth in a favourite refrain
+from Robin Hood:--
+
+     "And mony ane sings o' grass, o' grass,
+         And mony ane sings o' corn,
+     And mony ane sings o' Robin Hood
+         Kens little where he was born.
+
+     "It wasna in the ha', the ha',
+         Nor in the painted bower,
+     But it was in the gude greenwood
+         Amang the lily flower."
+
+"And you call us lily flowers?" cried Fanny, the beauty and the pet.
+"The lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin; and
+here have we been spinning for weeks and weeks to dress you boys
+again."
+
+"And what has William been doing?"
+
+"Learning to follow in the footsteps of my brothers," answered the lad
+of thirteen. "Another year and I, too, could have gone as a drummer
+boy."
+
+"Thank God, you'll never have to," ejaculated the General solemnly.
+
+The old house rang with merriment as it had not in years. The negroes,
+York and old York and Rose his wife, Jane and Julia and Cupid and
+Harry, and Nancy the cook, were jubilantly preparing a feast for
+welcome.
+
+Other guests were there,--Colonel Anderson, aide-de-camp of Lafayette,
+who was to wed Elizabeth, the sister next older than William; and
+Charles Mynn Thruston, son of the "Fighting Parson," and Dennis
+Fitzhugh, daft lovers of the romping Fanny.
+
+Since before the Revolution Jonathan had been engaged to Sarah Hite,
+the daughter of Joist Hite, first settler of the Shenandoah.
+Thousands of acres had her father and hundreds of indentured white
+servants. Joist Hite's claim overlay that of Lord Fairfax; they fought
+each other in the courts for fifty years. Should Hite win, Sarah would
+be the greatest heiress in Virginia.
+
+From the sight of happy courtship George Rogers turned and ever and
+anon talked with his parents, "solemn as the judgment," said Fanny.
+
+A few blissful days and the time for scattering came. Again the old
+broad-porticoed farmhouse was filled with farewells,--negro slaves
+held horses saddled.
+
+"But we shall meet in Kentucky," said old John Clark the Cavalier.
+
+George Rogers bade them good-bye, waved a last kiss back, whipped up
+his horse, and entered the forest.
+
+In October John died. A vast concourse gathered under the mulberry
+trees where the young Lieutenant lay wrapped in the flag of his
+country, a victim of the prison ship. Great was the indignation of
+friends as they laid him away.
+
+And now preparations were rapidly carried forward for removal to
+Kentucky.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+_DOWN THE OHIO_
+
+
+There was truce on the border. The wondering redmen heard that the
+great King had withdrawn across the Big Water and that the Long Knives
+were victors in the country.
+
+With wondering minds Shawnee and Delaware, Wyandot and Miami,
+discussed around their council fires the changed situation. Very great
+had the redcoats appeared in the eyes of the savages, with their
+dazzling uniforms, and long, bright, flashing swords. But how terrible
+were the Virginians of the Big Knives!
+
+The continental armies had been dispersed, but now from their old
+war-ravaged homes of the Atlantic shore they looked to the new lands
+beyond the Alleghanies. Congress would pay them in these lands, and so
+the scarred veterans of a hundred battles launched on the emigrant
+trail.
+
+In the Clark home there was busy preparation. Out of attic and cellar
+old cedar chests were brought and packed with the precious linen,
+fruit of many a day at the loom. Silver and pewter and mahogany
+bureaus, high-post bedsteads and carved mirrors, were carefully piled
+in the waggons as John Clark, cavalier, turned his face from tidewater
+Virginia.
+
+Neighbours called in to bid them farewell. Mrs. Clark made a last
+prayer at the grave of her son, the victim of the prison ship.
+
+"William, have you brought the mulberry cuttings?" called the motherly
+Lucy.
+
+"William, have you the catalpa seeds?" cried Fanny.
+
+Leaving the old home with Jonathan to be sold, the train started
+out,--horses, cattle, slaves, York riding proudly at the side of his
+young master William, old York and Rose, Nancy, Jane, Julia, Cupid and
+Harry and their children, a patriarchal caravan like that of Abraham
+facing an earlier west two thousand years before.
+
+Before and behind were other caravans. All Virginia seemed on the move,
+some by Rockfish Gap and Staunton, up the great valley of Virginia to
+the Wilderness Road, on packhorses; others in waggons, like the
+Clarks, following the Braddock route down to Redstone-Old-Fort on the
+Monongahela, where boats must be built.
+
+And here at Redstone was George Rogers Clark, come up to meet them
+from the Falls. In short order, under his direction, boatbuilders were
+busy. York and old York took a hand, and William, in a first
+experience that was yet to find play in the far Idaho.
+
+The teasing Fanny looked out from her piquant sun-bonnet. Lucy, more
+sedate, was accompanied by her betrothed, Major Croghan.
+
+"My uncle, George Croghan, has lately died in New York and left me his
+heir. I shall locate in Louisville," was the Major's explanation to
+his friend's inquiry.
+
+"And what is the news from Virginia?"
+
+"Your old friend Patrick Henry is Governor again. Jonathan visited him
+last week," was William's reply.
+
+"And Jonathan's wife, Sarah Hite, bids fair to secure her fortune,"
+added Fanny. "You see, when old Lord Fairfax heard of Cornwallis's
+surrender he gave up. 'Put me to bed, Jo,' he said, 'it is time for me
+to die,' and die he did. Now his lands are in the courts."
+
+"Mrs. Jefferson, who was ill, died as a result of the excitement of
+the flight from Tarleton," said Lucy. "To get away from his sorrow,
+Mr. Jefferson has accepted the appointment of minister to France to
+succeed Dr. Franklin, and has taken Martha and Maria with him. They
+will go to school in Paris."
+
+George Rogers Clark was a silent man. He spoke no word of his recent
+trip to Philadelphia, in which Dr. Franklin had grasped his hand and
+said, "Young man, you have given an empire to the Republic."
+
+"General Washington has just returned from a horseback journey down
+into this country," added Major Croghan. "He has lands on the Ohio."
+
+"And have _you_ no word of yourself or of Kentucky?"
+
+General Clark handed his father a notification from the Assembly of
+Virginia. He read it aloud.
+
+"The conclusion of the war, and the distressed situation of the State
+with respect to its finances, call on us to adopt the most prudent
+economy. You will, therefore, consider yourself out of command."
+
+"And you are no longer in the army?"
+
+"No, nor even on a footing with the Continentals. I was simply a
+soldier of the Virginia militia, and, as such, have no claim even for
+the half pay allotted to all Continental officers."
+
+"But Virginia has ceded her western territories to Congress with the
+distinct stipulation that expenses incurred in subduing any British
+posts therein, or in acquiring any part of the territory, shall be
+reimbursed by the United States."
+
+"Is there any hope there? What has Congress? An empty treasury. And
+who is to pay the bills incurred in the Illinois conquest? Shall I, a
+private individual?"
+
+"That would be impossible," commented the father.
+
+"But I am not disheartened," continued George Rogers. "When the
+Indians are quiet, my men hope to build a city on the land granted us
+opposite the Falls. And here is something from Jefferson, written
+before he left for Europe."
+
+William stood attentive while the letter was read.
+
+          "ANNAPOLIS, December 4, 1783.
+
+     DEAR SIR,--I find they have subscribed a very large sum of
+     money in England for exploring the country from the
+     Mississippi to California. They pretend it is only to
+     promote knowledge. I am afraid they have thought of
+     colonising into that quarter. Some of us have been talking
+     here in a feeble way of making an attempt to search that
+     country, but I doubt whether we have enough of that kind of
+     spirit to raise the money. How would you like to lead such
+     a party? Though I am afraid our prospect is not worth the
+     question.
+
+          Your friend and humble servant,
+          THOMAS JEFFERSON."
+
+"Does he want you to lead an exploring party to the Pacific Ocean?"
+inquired William with intense interest.
+
+"That is the substance of it. And I should want you to accompany me."
+
+Little did either then dream that William Clark would lead that party,
+with another.
+
+The boats were ready. Surmounted by the Stars and Stripes of the "old
+thirteen" they started on their journey. Suddenly the Monongahela
+closed with ice and locked them at Pittsburg, where flurries of snow
+set the sleigh-bells ringing.
+
+Through deep drifts, under the guns of Fort Pitt, files of
+Philadelphia traders were buying up skins and tallow, to carry back
+over the mountains in their packsaddles that had come out loaded with
+salt and gunpowder. Squaws were exchanging peltries for the white
+man's tea and sugar. A great concourse of emigrants was blocked for
+the winter. Every cabin was crowded.
+
+After great exertions George had secured quarters quite unlike the
+roomy old Virginian home.
+
+"I must be gone to make peace with those Indians who have been acting
+with the British, and take steps toward securing titles beyond the
+Ohio."
+
+Accompanied by two other commissioners, General Clark set out for Fort
+McIntosh. It was January before the Indians gathered with Pierre
+Drouillard, interpreter now for the United States.
+
+"By the treaty of peace with England this land belongs to the Thirteen
+Fires," was the basis of argument. "You have been allies of England,
+and now by the law of nations the land is ours."
+
+"No! No!" fiercely cried Buckongahelas.
+
+"But we will divide with you. You are to release your white captives,
+and give up a part of your Ohio lands. The rest you can keep. Detroit
+and Michilimackinac belong to the Thirteen Fires." Then boundaries
+were drawn.
+
+"No! No!" cried Buckongahelas. Clark heeded not.
+
+After deliberation the chiefs signed,--Wyandot, Ottawa, Chippewa,--all
+but Buckongahelas. "I am a friend of Great Britain!" roared the
+Delaware King. Then to the surprise of all, suddenly striding past the
+other commissioners, the swarthy chief took the hand of General Clark.
+"I thank the Great Spirit for having this day brought together two
+such warriors as Buckongahelas and the Long Knife." Clark smiled and
+returned the compliment.
+
+"Will the gorge break?" every frontiersman was asking when George
+returned to Pittsburg.
+
+Piled back for seventy miles the Alleghany was a range of ice, heaped
+floe on floe. Where the muddy Monongahela blends with the crystal
+Alleghany the boats lay locked with a hundred others, awaiting the
+deluge.
+
+Suddenly the melting snows of the Alleghanies burst; the ice
+loosened, tearing and cutting the branches of trees overhanging the
+river; and slowly, with the ice, moved the great fleet of flatboats.
+
+Ever narrower and deeper and swifter, the Ohio leaped with tremendous
+rush down its confined channel. The trees on the uninhabited shores,
+never yet cut away, held the embankment firm, and racing down on the
+perilous flood came the Clarks to the Falls of the Ohio, in March of
+1785.
+
+Fascinated by the rush of waves, fourteen-year-old William poled like
+a man. Could he dream what destruction lay in their course? "_L'année
+des grandes eaux_," 1785, is famous in the annals of the West as the
+year of great waters. The floods came down and drowned out old Ste.
+Genevieve and drove the inhabitants back to the higher terrace on
+which that village stands to-day. Above, the whole American Bottom was
+a swift running sea, Kaskaskia and Cahokia were submerged by the
+simultaneous melting of the snows, and nothing but its high bold shore
+of limestone rock saved St. Louis itself. Paddling around in his boat,
+Auguste Chouteau ate breakfast on the roofs of Ste. Genevieve.
+
+At Louisville barely could boats be pulled in to the Bear Grass.
+Below, waves foamed and whirled among the rocks, that to-day have been
+smoothed by the hand of man into a shallow channel.
+
+Guided by skilful hands, many a trader's boat that year took the chute
+of the Falls like an arrow; over the ledges that dammed the water
+back, down, down they slid out of sight into that unknown West, where
+William knew not that his brother had paved the way to Louisiana.
+
+"Have you found us a tract?" inquired the anxious mother.
+
+"Land, mother? I own a dukedom, my soldiers and I, one hundred and
+fifty thousand acres, on the Indian side of the river. We have
+incorporated a town there, Clarksville they call it. It will be a
+great city,--but Louisville is safer at present."
+
+That Spring they lived at Fort Nelson, with watchmen on the ramparts.
+
+"But we saw no Indians in coming down!"
+
+"True enough, the flood was a surprise so early in the year. Wait a
+little, and you will hear more of this terrifying river-route, where
+in low water it takes seven weeks to run from Redstone to the Bear
+Grass. Then the murderous clutches of the Indians have free play among
+the helpless emigrants. Let us be thankful for what you escaped."
+
+Almost while they were speaking a band of Indians glided out of the
+woods not far away, snatched a boy from a fence, and shot his father
+in the field.
+
+"Don't kill me, just take me prisoner," said little Tommy, looking up
+into the warrior's face.
+
+At that instant an elder brother's rifle felled the Indian, and the
+boy was saved to become the father of Abraham Lincoln.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+_MULBERRY HILL_
+
+
+On a beautiful eminence three miles south of Louisville, John Clark
+built his pioneer Kentucky home. Louisville itself consisted of but a
+few log cabins around a fortification built by George Rogers Clark.
+
+This family home, so far from the centre, was stockaded by itself, a
+double log house, two and a half stories high, with hall through the
+middle.
+
+Every night a negro stood sentinel, there were portholes in the
+pickets, and Indians hid in the canebrakes. Once while the young
+ladies were out walking an Indian shot a little negro girl and they
+carried her back wounded, behind the pickets at Mulberry Hill.
+
+The floor of the long dining-room was of wood, hard as a bone, and
+over the seven-foot mantel stag-horns and swords of the Revolution
+were lit by the light of the cavernous fireplace.
+
+Rigid economy and untiring industry had been the rule at the old Clark
+home in Caroline, and not less was it here. There were no pianos, but
+until midnight the hum of the wheel made music.
+
+Enchanted the young people listened to tale and song and hum of wheel,
+while down the great chimney top calmly smiled the pensive stars.
+
+Little thought they of bare walls, low rafters, or small windows.
+After the boys hauled in the logs on a hand-sled, and built up a great
+flame, the whole world seemed illuminated. The pewter basins shone
+like mirrors, and while their fingers flew in the light of the fire,
+stories were told of Kaskaskia, Vincennes, St. Louis. But the Donna?
+Clark never spoke of her. It was a hidden grief that made him ever
+lonely. When he saw the lovelight all around him and sometimes left
+the room, the mother wondered why sudden silence came upon the group.
+
+At Mulberry Hill Lucy was married to Major Croghan, who, on a farm
+five miles out, built Locust Grove, an English mansion of the olden
+style, in its day the handsomest in Louisville. And Fanny? She was the
+belle of Kentucky. In powdered wig and ruffles many a grave Virginian
+tripped with her the minuet and contra dances of the Revolution.
+
+More and more young William became enamoured of the Indian dress, and
+went about gaily singing the songs of Robin Hood and hacking the meat
+with his hunting knife.
+
+Out over the game-trails of Kentucky, like the beaten streets of
+Fredericksburg, the only city he ever knew, young William went with
+the Boones, Kenton, and his own famous brother, George Rogers Clark,
+in peltry cap and buckskin hunting-shirt girded with a leathern belt.
+
+Led by them, with what eagerness he shot his first buffalo, deep in
+the woods of Kentucky. Not much longer could bears, deer, and buffalo
+retreat to the cane. With the coming of the Clarks an emigration set
+in that was to last for a hundred years.
+
+Even amusements partook of sportive adventure. Now it was the hunter's
+horn summoning the neighbours to a bear chase in the adjoining hills.
+William surpassed the Indian himself in imitating the bark of the
+wolf, the hoot of the owl, the whistle of the whippoorwill.
+
+Daniel Boone came often to Mulberry Hill in leggings and moccasins,
+ever hunting, hunting, hunting beaver, bear and coon, wolves and
+wild-cats, deer and foxes, and going back to trade their skins in
+Maryland for frontier furniture, knives and buttons, scissors, nails,
+and tea.
+
+Upon his shot-pouch strap Boone fastened his moccasin awl with a
+buckhorn handle made out of an old clasp-knife, and carried along with
+him a roll of buckskin to mend his mocassins. While the grizzled
+hunter stitched deftly at his moccasins, William and York sat by,
+engaged in the same pastime, for wherever William went, York was his
+shadow.
+
+"Since poor Richard's uncertain fate I can never trust the boy alone,"
+said his mother. "York, it is your business to guard your young
+master." And he did, to the ends of the earth.
+
+When "Uncle Daniel," rolled in a blanket, threw himself down on a bed
+of leaves and slept with his feet to the fire to prevent rheumatism,
+York and William lay down too, sleeping by turns and listening for
+Indians.
+
+At daylight, loosely belting their fringed hunting shirts into wallets
+for carrying bread, a chunk of jerked beef, or tow for the gun, with
+tomahawk on the right side and scalping knife on the left, each in a
+leathern case, again they set off under the reddening forest.
+
+Skilled in the lore of woodcraft, watchful of clouds and stars and
+sun, an intimate student of insect life and own brother to the wily
+beaver, bear, and buffalo, William Clark was becoming a scientist.
+
+Returning from the chase with the same sort of game that graced the
+Saxon board before the Norman conquest, he sat down to hear the talk
+of statesmen. For when Clark's commission was revoked, Kentucky,
+unprotected, called a convention to form a State.
+
+Affairs that in European lands are left to kings and their ministers,
+were discussed in the firelight of every cabin. Public safety demanded
+action. Exposed on three sides to savage inroads, with their Virginia
+capital hundreds of miles beyond forest, mountains, and rivers, no
+wonder Kentucky pleaded for statehood.
+
+In a despotic country the people sleep. Here every nerve was awake.
+Discussion, discussion, discussion, made every fireside a school of
+politics; even boys in buckskin considered the nation's welfare.
+
+Before he was seventeen William Clark was made an ensign and proudly
+donned the eagle and blue ribbon of the Cincinnati, a society of the
+soldiers of the Revolution of which Washington himself was president.
+Educated in the backwoods and by the cabin firelight, young William
+was already developing the striking bearing and bold unwavering
+character of his brother.
+
+"What can have become of Richard?" Every day the mother heart glanced
+down the long avenue of catalpas that were growing in front of
+Mulberry Hill.
+
+Of the whole family, the gentle affectionate Richard was an especial
+favourite. He was coming from Kaskaskia to see his mother, but never
+arrived. One day his horse and saddlebags were found on the banks of
+the Wabash. Was he killed by the Indians, or was he drowned? No one
+ever knew.
+
+Again George Rogers Clark was out making treaties with the Indians to
+close up the Revolution, but British emissaries had been whispering in
+their ears, "Make the Ohio the boundary."
+
+At last, after long delays, a few of the tribes came in to the council
+at the mouth of the Great Miami, some in friendship, some like the
+Shawnees, rudely suggestive of treachery.
+
+"The war is over," explained General Clark as chairman; "we desire to
+live in peace with our red brethren. If such be the will of the
+Shawnees, let some of their wise men speak."
+
+There was silence as they whiffed at the council pipes. Then a tall
+chief arose and glanced at the handful of whites and at his own three
+hundred along the walls of the council house.
+
+"We come here to offer you two pieces of wampum. You know what they
+mean. Choose." Dropping the beaded emblems upon the table the savage
+turned to his seat by the wall.
+
+Pale, calm as a statue, but with flashing eye, Clark tangled his
+slender cane into the belts and--flung them at the chiefs.
+
+"Ugh!"
+
+Every Indian was up with knife unsheathed, every white stood with hand
+on his sword. Into their very teeth the Long Knife had flung back the
+challenge, "Peace, or War."
+
+Like hounds in leash they strained, ready to leap, when the lordly
+Long Knife raised his arm and grinding the wampum beneath his heel
+thundered,--
+
+"_Dogs, you may go!_"
+
+One moment they wavered, then broke and fled tumultuously from the
+council house.
+
+All night they debated in the woods near the fort. In the morning,
+"Let me sign," said Buckongahelas.
+
+Smiling, Clark guided the hand of the boastful Delaware, and all the
+rest signed with him.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+_MISSISSIPPI TROUBLES_
+
+
+For the first time in their stormy history, the front and rear gates
+of the Kentucky forts lay back on their enormous wooden hinges, and
+all day long men and teams passed in and out with waggon loads of
+grain from the harvest fields. So hushed and still was the air, it
+seemed the old Indian days were gone for ever. At night the animals
+came wandering in from the woods, making their customary way to the
+night pens. Fields of corn waved undisturbed around the forts.
+
+But the truce was brief. Already the Cherokees were slaughtering on
+the Wilderness Road, and beyond the Ohio, Shawnee and Delaware, wild
+at the sight of the white man's cabin, rekindled the fires around the
+stake.
+
+Thousands of emigrants were coming over the mountains from Carolina,
+and down the Ohio from Pittsburg social boats lashed together rode in
+company, bark canoes, pirogues, flatboats, keelboats, scows, barges,
+bateaux and brigades of bateaux, sweeping down with resistless
+English, Scotch, Irish, Germans, Huguenots, armed for the battle of
+the races.
+
+Still the powerful fur traders of Quebec and Montreal hung on to
+Detroit and Mackinac, still De Peyster opposed giving up the
+peninsulas of Michigan.
+
+"Pen the young republic east of the Alleghanies," said France, Spain,
+England, when the Peace Treaty was under consideration. But Clark's
+conquest compelled them to grant the Illinois.
+
+Before the ink was dry on the documents, Kentucky was trading down the
+great river of De Soto.
+
+"The West must trade over the mountains," said the merchants of
+Philadelphia and Baltimore.
+
+"The West will follow its rivers," answered Kentucky.
+
+"Spain is Mistress of the Mississippi," said the Spanish King to John
+Jay, the American minister at Madrid.
+
+In vain flatboatmen with wheat and corn said, "We are from Kentucky."
+
+"What Kaintucke?" brayed the commandant at Natchez. "I know no
+Kaintucke. Spain own both side de river. I am ordered to seize all
+foreign vessel on de way to New Orleong."
+
+Without the Spaniard the trip was sufficiently hazardous. Indians
+watched the shores. Pirates infested the bayous. Head winds made the
+frail craft unmanageable,--snags leered up like monsters to pierce and
+swallow. But every new settler enlarged the fields, and out of the
+virgin soil the log granaries were bursting.
+
+"Carry away our grain, bring us merchandise," was the cry of expanding
+Kentucky.
+
+But to escape the Indian was to fall into the hands of the Spaniard,
+and the Spaniard was little more than a legalised pirate.
+
+Even the goods of the Frenchmen were seized with the warning, "Try it
+again and we'll send you to Brazil."
+
+The Frenchmen resented this infringement on their immemorial right.
+Since the days of the daring and courageous Bienville who founded New
+Orleans, no man had said them nay. A tremendous hatred of the Spaniard
+grew up in the hearts of the Frenchmen.
+
+In the midst of these confiscations there was distress and anarchy in
+the Illinois. The infant republic had not had time to stretch out
+there the strong arm of law. Floods and continental money had ruined
+the confiding Frenchmen; the garrisons were in destitution; they were
+writing to Clark:--
+
+"Our credit is become so weak among the French that one dollar's worth
+of provisions cannot be had without prompt payment, were it to save
+the whole country."
+
+"And why has our British Father made no provision for us," bewailed
+the Indians, "who at his beck and call have made such deadly enemies
+of the Long Knives? Our lands have been ravaged by fire and sword, and
+now we are left at their mercy."
+
+"Let us drive the red rascals out," cried the infuriated settlers.
+
+"No," said Washington, who understood and pitied the red men. "Forgive
+the past. Dispossess them gradually by purchase as the extension of
+settlement demands the occupation of their lands."
+
+But five thousand impoverished Indians in the Ohio country kept thirty
+thousand settlers in hot water all the time. No lock on a barn door
+could save the horses, no precaution save the outlying emigrant from
+scalping or capture. Red banditti haunted the streams and forests,
+dragging away their screaming victims like ogres of mediæval tragedy.
+
+Clark grew sick and aged over it. "No commission, no money, no right
+to do anything for my suffering country!"
+
+"Your brother, the General, is very ill," said old John Clark, coming
+out of the sick chamber at Mulberry Hill. In days to come there were
+generals and generals in the Clark family, but George Rogers was
+always "the General."
+
+Into ten years the youthful commander had compressed the exposure of a
+lifetime. Mental anguish and days in the icy Wabash told now on his
+robust frame, and inflammatory rheumatism set in from which he never
+recovered.
+
+"The Americans are your enemies," emissaries from Detroit were
+whispering at Vincennes. "The Government has forsaken you. They take
+your property, they pay nothing."
+
+"We have nothing to do with the United States," said the French
+citizens, weary of a Congress that heeded them not. "We consider
+ourselves British subjects and shall obey no other power."
+
+Even Clark's old friend, The Tobacco's Son, had gone back to his
+British father, and as always with Indians, dug up the red tomahawk.
+
+A committee of American citizens at Vincennes sent a flying express to
+Clark.
+
+"This place that once trembled at your victorious arms, and these
+savages overawed by your superior power, is now entirely anarchical
+and we shudder at the daily expectation of horrid murder. We beg you
+will write us by the earliest opportunity. Knowing you to be a friend
+of the distressed we look to you for assistance."
+
+Such a call could not be ignored. Kentucky was aroused and summoned
+her favourite General to the head of her army. From a sick bed he
+arose to lead a thousand undisciplined men, and with him went his
+brother William.
+
+The sultry sun scorched, the waters were low, provisions did not
+arrive until nine days after the soldiers, and then were spoiled.
+Fatigued, hungry, three hundred revolted and left; nevertheless, the
+Indians had fled and Vincennes was recovered.
+
+Just then up the Wabash came a Spaniard with a boatload of valuable
+goods. Clark promptly confiscated the cargo, and out of them paid his
+destitute troops.
+
+"It is not alone retaliation," said Clark, "It is a warning. If Spain
+will not let us trade down the river, she shall not trade up."
+
+Kentucky applauded. They even talked of sending Clark against the
+Spaniards and of breaking away from a government that refused to aid
+them.
+
+"General Clark seized Spanish goods?" Virginia was alarmed and
+promptly repudiated the seizure. "We are not ready to fight Spain."
+
+Clark's friends were disturbed. "You will be hung."
+
+Clark laughed. "I will flee to the Indians first."
+
+"We have as much to fear from the turbulence of our backwoodsmen,"
+said Washington, "as from the hostility of the Spaniards."
+
+But at this very time, unknown to Washington, the Spaniards were
+arming the savages of the south, to exterminate these reckless
+ambitious frontiersmen.
+
+Louisiana feared these unruly neighbours. Intriguers from New Orleans
+were whispering, "Break with the Atlantic States and league yourself
+with Spain."
+
+Then came the rumour, "Jay proposes to shut up the Mississippi for
+twenty-five years!"
+
+Never country was in such a tumult.
+
+"We are sold! We are vassals of Spain!" cried the men of the West.
+"What? Close the Mississippi for twenty-five years as a price of
+commercial advantage on the Atlantic coast? Twenty-five years when our
+grain is rotting? Twenty-five years must we be cut off when the
+Wilderness Road is thronged with packtrains, when the Ohio is black
+with flatboats? Where do they think we are going to pen our people?
+Where do they think we are going to ship our produce? Better put
+twenty thousand men in the field at once and protect our own
+interests."
+
+The bond was brittle; how easily might it be broken!
+
+Even Spain laughed at the weakness of a Union that could not command
+Kentucky to give up its river. And Kentucky looked to Clark. "We must
+conquer Spain or unite with her. We must have the Mississippi. Will
+you march with us on New Orleans?"
+
+Then, happily, Virginia spoke out for the West. "We must aid them.
+The free navigation of the Mississippi is the gift of nature to the
+United States."
+
+The very next day Madison announced in the Virginia Assembly, "I shall
+move the election of delegates to a Constitutional Convention." The
+stability of the Union seemed pivoted upon an open river to the Gulf.
+
+Veterans of the Revolution and of the Continental Congress met to
+frame a constitution in 1787. After weeks of deliberation with closed
+doors, the immortal Congress adjourned. The Constitution was second
+only to the Declaration of Independence. Without kings or princes a
+free people had erected a Continental Republic.
+
+The Constitution was adopted, and all the way into Kentucky wilds were
+heard the roaring of cannon and ringing of bells that proclaimed the
+Father of his Country the first President of the United States.
+
+"We must cement the East and the West," said Washington. But that West
+was drifting away--with its Mississippi.
+
+About this time young Daniel Boone said, "Father, I am going west."
+
+Just eighteen, one year older than William Clark, in the summer of
+1787, he concluded to strike out for the Mississippi.
+
+"Well, Dannie boy, thee take the compass," said his father.
+
+It was the old guide, as large as a saucer, that Lord Dunmore gave
+Boone when he sent him out to call in the surveyors from the Falls of
+the Ohio thirteen years before.
+
+Mounted on his pony, with a wallet of corn and a rifle on his back,
+Boone rode straight on westward thirty days without meeting a single
+human being. Pausing on the river bank opposite St. Louis he hallooed
+for an hour before any one heard him.
+
+"Dat some person on de oder shore," presently said old René
+Kiercereaux, the chorister at the village church.
+
+A canoe was sent over and brought back Boone. As if a man had dropped
+from the moon, French, Spanish, and Indian traders gathered. He spoke
+not a word of French, but Auguste Chouteau's slave Petrie could talk
+English.
+
+"Son of Boone, de great hunter? Come to my house!"
+
+"Come to _my_ house!"
+
+The hospitable Creoles strove with one another for the honour of
+entertaining the son of Daniel Boone. For twelve years he spent his
+summers in St. Louis and his winters in western Missouri, hunting and
+trapping.
+
+"The best beaver country on earth," he wrote to his father. "You had
+better come out."
+
+"Eef your father, ze great Colonel Boone, will remove to Louisiana,"
+said Señor Zenon Trudeau, the Lieutenant-Governor, "eef he will become
+a citizen of Spain, de King will appreciate de act and reward him
+handsomely."
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+_ST. CLAIR_
+
+
+"Kentucky! Kentucky! I hear nothing else," exclaimed the Fighting
+Parson of the Revolution, who had thrown aside his prayer-book and
+gown to follow the armies of Washington. "If this western exodus
+continues Virginia bids fair to be depopulated." Even Jack Jouett, who
+had ridden to warn Jefferson of Tarleton's raid, had gone to become an
+honoured member of Kentucky's first legislature.
+
+"Father, let me go."
+
+Charles Mynn Thruston, the son of the Fighting Parson, had long
+desired to follow Fanny Clark, but his father held him back. Smiling
+now at the ardour of his son, he said, "You may go, my boy. I am
+thinking of the western country myself."
+
+Preparations were immediately made, business affairs settled, and a
+farewell dinner brought friends to historic Mount Zion, the famous
+Shenandoah seat of the Fighting Parson.
+
+"A strangah desiahs to know, sah, if he can get dinnah, sah,"
+announced black Sambo.
+
+"Certainly, certainly." Parson Thruston was the soul of hospitality.
+"Bring him at once to the table, Sambo."
+
+The stranger seated himself and ate in silence.
+
+"I perceive," remarked the Parson after the courses had been removed,
+"I perceive that you are a traveller. May I inquire whence you come?"
+
+Every ear was intent. "From Kentucky, sir," answered the stranger.
+
+"Ah, that is fortunate. I am about to leave for that country myself,"
+exclaimed young Thruston, "and shall be glad to hear such news as you
+may have to communicate."
+
+The stranger smiled and pondered. "The only interesting incident that
+I recall before my departure from Louisville, was the marriage of the
+Kentucky belle, Miss Fanny Clark, to Dr. O'Fallon."
+
+As if struck by a bolt from heaven, Charles Mynn Thruston fell
+unconscious to the floor.
+
+Dr. O'Fallon was a young Irish gentleman of talent and learning. An
+intimate friend of the Governor of South Carolina, just before the
+Revolution he had come to visit America, but espousing the cause of
+the colonists, the Governor promptly clapped him into prison.
+
+"Imprisoned O'Fallon!" The people of Charleston arose, liberated him,
+and drove the Governor to the British fleet in the harbour.
+
+Dr. O'Fallon enlisted as a private soldier. But surgeons were
+needed,--he soon proved himself one of skill unexcelled in America.
+General Washington himself ordered him north, and made him
+Surgeon-General in his own army. Here he remained until the close of
+the war, and was thanked by Congress for his services.
+
+And now he had visited Kentucky to assist in securing the navigation
+of the Mississippi, and met--Fanny. With the charming Fanny as his
+wife, Dr. O'Fallon rode many a mile in the woods, the first great
+doctor of Louisville.
+
+Other emigrants were bringing other romances, and other tragedies.
+"Ohio! Ohio! We hear nothing but Ohio!" said the people of New
+England.
+
+One rainy April morning the "Mayflower," a flatboat with a second
+Plymouth colony, turned into the Muskingum and founded a settlement.
+
+"Marie, Marie Antoinette,--did she not use her influence in behalf of
+Franklin's mission to secure the acknowledgment of American
+independence? Let us name our settlement Marietta."
+
+So were founded the cities of the French king and queen, Louisville
+and Marietta. A few months later, Kentuckians went over and started
+Cincinnati on the site of George Rogers Clark's old block-house.
+
+Into the Ohio, people came suddenly and in swarms, "institutional
+Englishmen," bearing their household gods and shaping a state.
+
+"These men come wearing hats," said the Indians. Frenchmen wore
+handkerchiefs and never tarried.
+
+Surveyors came.
+
+Squatting around their fires, with astonishment and fear the Indians
+watched "the white man's devil," squinting over his compass and making
+marks in his books. Wherever the magical instrument turned all the
+best lands were bound with chains fast to the white man.
+
+The Indians foresaw their approaching destruction and hung nightly
+along the river shore, in the thick brush under the sycamores,
+stealing horses and sinking boats. With tomahawk in hand, a leader
+among them was young Tecumseh.
+
+"The Ohio shall be the boundary. No white man shall plant corn in
+Ohio!" cried the Indian.
+
+"Keep the Ohio for a fur preserve," whispered Detroit at his back.
+
+While wedding bells were ringing at Mulberry Hill, Marietta was
+suffering. The gardens were destroyed by Indian marauders, the game
+was driven off, and great was the privation within the walled town.
+
+That was the winter when Governor St. Clair came with his beautiful
+daughter Louisa, the fleetest rider in the chase, the swiftest skater
+on the ice, and, like all pioneer girls, so skilled with the rifle
+that she could bring down the bird on the wing, the squirrel from the
+tree.
+
+Creeping out over the crusty February snow, every family in the
+settlement had its kettle in the sugar orchard boiling down the maple
+sap. Corn-meal and sap boiled down together formed for many the daily
+food.
+
+But with all the bravado of their hearts, men and women passed
+sleepless vigils while the sentinel stood all night long in the lonely
+watchtower of the middle blockhouse. At any moment might arise the
+cry, "The Indians! The Indians are at the gates!" and with the long
+roll of the drum beating alarm every gun was ready at a porthole and
+every white face straining through the dark.
+
+When screaming wild geese steering their northern flight gave token of
+returning spring, when the partridge drummed in the wood and the
+turkey gobbled, when the red bird made vocal the forest and the
+hawthorn and dogwood flung out their perfume, then too came the Indian
+from his winter lair.
+
+"Ah," sighed many a mother, "I prefer the days of gloom and tempest,
+for then the red man hugs his winter fire."
+
+Always among the first in pursuit of marauding Indians, William Clark
+as a cadet had already crossed the Ohio with General Scott, "a youth
+of solid and promising parts and as brave as Cæsar," said Dr.
+O'Fallon.
+
+Joseph Brant, Thayendanegea, presented a memorial to Congress
+insisting upon the Ohio as the Indian boundary. His son came down to
+Marietta.
+
+"Ah, yes," was the whispered rumour at Marietta, "young Brant, the
+educated son of the famous Mohawk leader, aspires to the hand of
+Louisa St. Clair." But the Revolutionary General spurned his
+daughter's dusky suitor.
+
+The next day after New Year's, 1791, the Indians swept down on
+Marietta with the fiendish threat, "Before the trees put forth their
+leaves again no white man's cabin shall smoke beyond the Ohio."
+
+"Capture St. Clair alive," bade the irate Mohawk chieftain. "Shoot his
+horse under him but do not kill him." Did he hope yet to win consent
+to his marriage with Louisa?
+
+The next heard of St. Clair was when the last shattered remnant of his
+prostrate army fell back on Cincinnati, a defeat darker, more
+annihilating, more ominous than Braddock's.
+
+"My God," exclaimed Washington, "it's all over! St. Clair's
+defeated--routed; the officers are nearly all killed, the men by
+wholesale; the rout is complete--too shocking to think of--and a
+surprise into the bargain."
+
+No wonder Secretary Lear stood appalled as the great man poured forth
+his wrath in the house at Philadelphia.
+
+Fifteen hundred went out from Cincinnati,--five hundred came back. A
+thousand scalps had Thayendanegea.
+
+The news came to Mulberry Hill like a thunderbolt. Kentucky, even
+Pittsburg, looked for an immediate savage inundation,--for was not all
+that misty West full of warriors? The old fear leaped anew. Like an
+irresistible billow they might roll over the unprotected frontier.
+
+From his bed of sickness General Clark started up. "Ah, Detroit!
+Detroit! Hadst thou been taken my countrymen need not have been so
+slaughtered."
+
+At Marietta, up in the woods and on the side hills, glittered
+multitudes of fires, the camps of savages. Hunger added its pangs to
+fear. The beleaguered citizens sent all the money they could raise by
+two young men to buy salt, meat, and flour at Redstone-Old-Fort on the
+Monongahela. Suddenly the river closed with ice; in destitution
+Marietta waited.
+
+"They have run off with the money," said some.
+
+"They have been killed by Indians," said others. But again, as
+suddenly, the ice broke, and early in March the young men joyfully
+moored their precious Kentucky ark at the upper gate of the garrison
+at Marietta.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+_THE SWORD OF "MAD ANTHONY" WAYNE_
+
+
+"Another defeat will ruin the reputation of the government," said
+Washington, as he sent out "Mad Anthony" Wayne, the uproarious Quaker
+general, with ruffles, queue, and cocked hat, the stormer of Stony
+Point in the Revolution.
+
+In vain Wayne sent commissioners to treat with the Indians. Elated
+with recent victories, "The Ohio shall be the boundary," was the
+defiant answer.
+
+An Indian captured and brought to Wayne said of the British: "All
+their speeches to us are red, red as blood. All the wampum and
+feathers are painted red. Our war-pipes and hatchets are red. Even the
+tobacco is red for war."
+
+"My mind and heart are upon that river," said Cornplanter, an Indian
+chief, pointing to the Ohio. "May that water ever continue to be the
+boundary between the Americans and the Indians."
+
+Commissioned by Washington First Lieutenant of the Fourth Sub-Legion,
+on the first of September, 1792, William Clark crossed the Ohio and
+spent the winter at Legionville where Wayne was collecting and
+drilling his army.
+
+"I will have no six months men," said Wayne. "Two years will it take
+to organise, drill, and harden them before we think of taking the
+field."
+
+"We are certain to be scalped," whispered timorous ones, remembering
+St. Clair's slaughter. Hundreds deserted. The very word Indian
+inspired terror.
+
+But horse, foot, and artillery, he drilled them, the tremblers took
+courage, and the government, at last awakened, stood firmly behind
+with money and supplies.
+
+"Remember, Stony Point was stormed with unloaded muskets. See! You
+must know the use of the broadsword and of the bayonet, a weapon
+before which the savages cannot stand."
+
+At work went "Mad Anthony" teaching his men to load and fire upon the
+run, to leap to the charge with loud halloos, anticipating all
+possible conditions.
+
+"Charge in open order. Each man rely on himself, and expect a personal
+encounter with the enemy." The men caught his spirit. Wayne's Legion
+became a great military school.
+
+Now he was drilling superb Kentucky cavalry, as perfectly matched as
+the armies of Europe, sorrel and bay, chestnut and gray, bush-whacking
+and charging, leaping ravines and broken timber, outdoing the Indians
+themselves in their desperate riding.
+
+And with all this drill, Wayne was erecting and garrisoning forts. In
+the fall of 1793, Lieutenant Clark was dispatched to Vincennes.
+
+"It appears that all active and laborious commands fall on me," he
+wrote to his brother Jonathan, in Virginia. "Not only labour, but I
+like to have starved,--was frozen up in the Wabash twenty days without
+provisions. In this agreeable situation had once more to depend on my
+rifle."
+
+After several skirmishes with Indians, Lieutenant Clark returned to
+Fort Washington (Cincinnati) in May, to be immediately dispatched with
+twenty-one dragoons and sixty cavalry to escort seven hundred
+packhorses laden with provisions and clothing to Greenville, a log
+fort eighty miles north of Cincinnati.
+
+The Shawnees were watching. Upon this rich prize fell an ambuscade of
+sixty Indians. Eight men were killed, the train began to retreat, when
+Clark came dashing up from the rear, put the assailants to flight, and
+saved the day. For this he was thanked by General Wayne.
+
+Washington, Jefferson, the whole country impatiently watched for news
+of Wayne on the Ohio.
+
+Drill, drill, drill,--keeping out a cloud of scouts that no peering
+Indian might discover his preparations, Wayne exercised daily now with
+rifle, sabre, and bayonet until no grizzly frontiersman surpassed his
+men at the target, no fox-hunter could leap more wildly, no swordsman
+more surely swing the sharp steel home. At the sight young
+Tennesseeans and Kentuckians, Virginians of the border and
+Pennsylvanians of lifetime battle, were eager for the fray.
+
+About midsummer, 1794, Wayne moved out with his Legion, twenty-six
+hundred strong, and halted at Fort Greenville for sixteen hundred
+Kentucky cavalry. Brigades of choppers were opening roads here and
+there to deceive.
+
+"This General that never sleeps is cutting in every direction,"
+whispered the watchful Shawnees. "He is the Black Snake."
+
+For a last time Wayne offered peace. His messengers were wantonly
+murdered.
+
+The issue at Fallen Timbers lasted forty minutes,--the greatest Indian
+battle in forty years of battle. Two thousand Indians crouching in the
+brush looked to see the Americans dismount and tie their horses as
+they did in St. Clair's battle,--but no, bending low on their horses
+with gleaming sabres and fixed bayonets, on like a whirlwind came
+thundering the American cavalry.
+
+"What was it that defeated us? It was the Big Wind, the Tornado," said
+the Indians.
+
+Matchekewis was there from Sheboygan with his warriors, the Black
+Partridge from Illinois, and Buckongahelas. The Shawnees had their
+fill of fighting that day; Tecumseh fell back at the wild onset,
+retreating inch by inch.
+
+William Clark led to the charge a column of Kentuckians and drove the
+enemy two miles. But why enumerate in this irresistible legion, where
+all were heroes on that 20th of August, 1794.
+
+Wayne's victory ended the Revolution. Ninety days after, Lord St.
+Helens gave up Ohio in his treaty with Jay, and England bound herself
+to deliver the northwestern posts that her fur traders had hung on to
+so vainly.
+
+Niagara, Michilimackinac, Detroit, keys to the Lakes, _entrepôts_ to
+all the fur trade of the Northwest, were lost to Britain for ever. It
+was hardest to give up Detroit,--it broke up their route and added
+many a weight to the weary packer's back when the fur trade had to
+take a more northern outlet along the Ottawa.
+
+It was ten o'clock in the morning of July 11, 1796, when the
+Detroiters peering through their glasses espied two vessels. "The
+Yankees are coming!"
+
+A thrill went through the garrison, and even through the flag that
+fluttered above. The last act in the war of independence was at hand.
+
+The four gates of Detroit opened to be closed no more, as the
+drawbridge fell over the moat and the Americans marched into the
+northern stronghold. It was Lernoult's old fort built so strenuously
+in that icy winter of 1779-80, when "Clark is coming" was the
+watchword of the north. Scarce a picket in the stockade had been
+changed since that trying time. Blockhouse, bastion, and battery could
+so easily have been taken, that even at this day we cannot suppress a
+regret that Clark had not a chance at Detroit!
+
+Barefooted Frenchmen, dark-eyed French girls, and Indians, Indians
+everywhere, came in to witness the transfer of Detroit. At noon, July
+11, 1796, the English flag was lowered and the Stars and Stripes went
+up where Clark would fain have hung them seventeen years before.
+
+And the old cellar of the council house! Like a tomb was its
+revelation, for there, mouldered with the must of years, lay two
+thousand scalps, long tresses of women, children's golden curls, and
+the wiry locks of men, thrown into that official cellar in those awful
+days that now were ended.
+
+The merry Frenchmen on their pipestem farms,--for every inhabitant
+owned his pathway down to the river,--the merry Frenchmen went on
+grinding their corn by their old Dutch windmills, went on pressing
+their cider in their gnarled old apple orchards. They could not change
+the situation if they would, and they would not if they could. The
+lazy windmills of Detroit swung round and round as if it had been ever
+thus. Still the Indians slid in and out and still the British traders
+lingered, loath to give up the fur trade of the Lakes.
+
+The next year after Wayne's victory the last buffalo in Ohio was
+killed, and in 1796 the first American cabins were built at Cleveland
+and Chillicothe. For the first time the Ohio, the great highway, was
+safe. Passenger boats no longer had bullet-proof cabins, no longer
+trailed cannon on their gunwales. In that year twenty thousand
+emigrants passed down the Ohio. Astonished and helpless the red men
+saw the tide. By 1800 there were more whites in the Mississippi valley
+than there were Indians in all North America.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+_THE SPANIARD_
+
+
+Early in April of 1793 a company of French merchants sat at a dinner
+in New Orleans. Before them magnolias bloomed in the plaza. Out in the
+harbour their vessels were flying the Spanish flag.
+
+"Spain has declared war against France. A French frigate is sailing
+for the Gulf."
+
+Like a bomb the announcement burst in their midst.
+
+The fine and handsome face of Charles De Pauw was lit with
+determination. He had come over with Lafayette, and had invested a
+fortune in the new world.
+
+"My ships are in danger. I will haul down the Spanish colours and
+float the American flag. Long enough have the Frenchmen of Missouri
+and Illinois endured the Spanish yoke. Long enough have our cargoes
+been confiscated and our trade ruined by unnecessary and tyrannical
+restrictions."
+
+"But America will not help us."
+
+"The Kentuckians will," answered De Pauw. "Already they are begging
+George Rogers Clark to march on New Orleans."
+
+A huzza rang round the table. "We shall be here to help him."
+
+"Every settlement that borders the Mississippi will join with us.
+Spain rules to Pittsburg, dictates prices, opens and closes markets.
+Will Americans endure that? From New Orleans to British America, Spain
+stretches an invisible cordon, 'thus far and no farther.' All beyond
+is the private park of Don Carlos IV."
+
+"What will Congress do?"
+
+"Congress?" echoed another. "What does it matter to those people
+beyond the Alleghanies? They are very far away. Europe is not so
+remote. Our interests lie with Mississippi and the sea."
+
+"But that would dismember the Union."
+
+"Will it dismember the Union for the Louisianians to break their
+fetter from Spain and thereby give us a market clear of duty? The
+Kentuckians, equally with us, are irritated at the Spanish Government.
+We have a right to strike Spain."
+
+Charles De Pauw renamed his schooner the "Maria" and sailed out of the
+Gulf under the Stars and Stripes. On the way to New York he met the
+frigate returning that brought the French minister, Charles Genet, to
+Charleston.
+
+Acres of flatboats lay freighted on the dimpling Ohio. Corn, wheat,
+oats, rye,--the worn-out tobacco lands of Virginia knew nothing like
+it. But the Spaniard stood at the gate and locked up the river.
+
+"A King?" Americans laughed at the fancy. "A King to check or hinder
+us in our rights? Who shall refuse us? Are we not Americans?"
+
+"The Mississippi is ours," cried Kentucky. "By the law of nature, by
+the authority of numbers, by the right of necessity. If Congress will
+not give it to us, we must take it ourselves."
+
+And now France--
+
+George Rogers Clark was profoundly moved by the French crusade for
+liberty. "We owe it to France to help her. Was not France our friend
+in the time of trouble?"
+
+Then he wrote to the French minister, tendering his services to France
+in her arduous struggle:
+
+     "I would begin with St. Louis, a rich, large, and populous
+     town, and by placing two or three frigates within the
+     Mississippi's mouth (to guard against Spanish succours) I
+     would engage to subdue New Orleans, and the rest of
+     Louisiana. If farther aided I would capture Pensacola; and
+     if Santa Fé and the rest of New Mexico were objects--I know
+     their strength and every avenue leading to them, for
+     conquest.--All the routes as well as the defenceless
+     situation of those places are perfectly known to me and I
+     possess draughts of all their defences, and estimates of
+     the greatest force which could oppose me. If France will be
+     hearty and secret in this business my success borders on
+     certainty.--The route from St. Louis to Santa Fé is easy,
+     and the places not very distant.... To save Congress from a
+     rupture with Spain on our account, we must first expatriate
+     ourselves and become French citizens. This is our
+     intention."
+
+On its errand of good or ill the letter sped to the French minister to
+the United States, and lo! that minister was Genet, just landed at
+Charleston.
+
+Genet had come from Revolutionary France, at this moment fighting all
+Europe, so frightfully had upblazed the tiny spark of liberty borne
+back by the soldiers of Rochambeau.
+
+André Michaux was instructed to hasten to the Falls of the Ohio with
+this message to George Rogers Clark:
+
+"The French minister has filled out this blank commission from his
+Government making you a Marshal of France, Major General and
+Commander-in-Chief of the French Legion on the Mississippi."
+
+Thus had Genet answered the letter.
+
+New Orleans was watching. "The Americans are threatening us with an
+army assembling on the Ohio," wrote Carondelet in alarm to Spain.
+
+"Ill-disposed and fanatical citizens in this Capital," he added,
+"restless and turbulent men infatuated with Liberty and Equality, are
+increased with every vessel that comes from the ports of France."
+
+He begged Spain to send him troops from Cuba. He begged the Captain
+General of Cuba to send him troops from Havana.
+
+Gayoso put his fort at Vicksburg in defence and Carondelet sent up a
+division of galleys to New Madrid and St. Louis.
+
+But Carondelet, the Governor of Louisiana, had his hands full.
+Frenchmen of his own city were signing papers to strike a blow for
+France. He would build defences,--they opposed and complained of his
+measures. Merchants and others whose business suffered by the
+uncertainties of commerce took no responsibility as the domineering
+little Baron endeavoured to fortify New Orleans with palisaded wall,
+towers, and a moat seven feet deep and forty feet wide.
+
+"It may happen that the enemy will try to surprise the plaza on a dark
+night," said the Baron.
+
+All the artillery was mounted. Haughty Spanish cavaliers with swords
+and helmets paced the parapets of the grim pentagonal bastions.
+Watchmen with spears and lanterns guarded the gates below. The city
+was in terror of assault. At every rise of the river Carondelet looked
+for a filibustering army out of the north. By every ship runners were
+sent to Spain.
+
+News of the intended raid penetrated even the Ursuline Convent. Sister
+Infelice paled when she heard it, gave a little gasp, and fainted.
+
+"Clearly she fears, the gentle sister fears these northern
+barbarians," remarked the Mother Superior. "Take her to her chamber."
+
+And St. Louis,--not since 1780 had she been so alarmed. The Governor
+constructed a square redoubt flanked by bastions, dug a shallow moat,
+and raised a fort on the hill. Seventeen grenadiers with drawn sabres
+stood at the drawbridge.
+
+"Immediately on the approach of the enemy, retreat to New Madrid," was
+the order of this puissant Governor.
+
+George Rogers Clark, who had planned and executed the conquest of
+Illinois, burned now for the conquest of Louisiana. And the West
+looked to him; she despised and defied the Spaniard as she despised
+and defied the Indian. They blocked the way, they must depart.
+
+Clark's old veteran officers Christy, Logan, Montgomery, sent word
+they would serve under his command. The French squadron at
+Philadelphia was to set sail for the Gulf.
+
+Major Fulton and Michaux, Clark's right-hand men, travelled all over
+the West enlisting men, provisions, and money. De Pauw engaged to
+furnish four hundred barrels of flour and a thousand-weight of bacon,
+and to send brass cannon over the mountains. In December Clark's men
+were already cutting timber to build boats on the Bear Grass. Five
+thousand men were to start in the Spring, provided Congress did not
+oppose and Genet could raise a million dollars.
+
+In despair Carondelet wrote home, saying that if the project planned
+was carried into effect, he would have no other alternative but to
+surrender.
+
+"Having no reinforcements to hope for from Havana, I have no further
+hope than in the faults the enemy may commit and in accidents which
+may perhaps favour us."
+
+Carondelet gave up. In March he wrote again, "The commandant at Post
+Vincennes has offered cannon for the use of the expedition."
+
+Early in January Clark was writing to De Pauw, "Have your stores at
+the Falls by the 20th of February, as in all probability we shall
+descend the river at that time."
+
+Montgomery reported, "arms and ammunition, five hundred bushels of
+corn and ten thousand pounds of pork, also twenty thousand weight of
+buffalo beef, eleven hundred weight of bear meat, seventy-four pair
+venison hams, and some beef tongues."
+
+With two hundred men Montgomery lay at the mouth of the Ohio ready to
+cross over. Not ninety Spaniards of regular troops were there to
+defend St. Louis, and two hundred militia, and the Governor had only
+too much reason to fear that St. Louis would open her gates and join
+the invader. All that was lacking was money. Hundreds of Kentuckians
+waited the signal to take down their guns and march on New Orleans.
+
+But the ministers of Spain and of Great Britain had not been quiet.
+They both warned Washington. Could he hold the lawless West? It was a
+problem for statesmen.
+
+Jefferson wrote to Governor Shelby of Kentucky to restrain the
+expedition.
+
+"I have grave doubts," Governor Shelby answered, "whether there is any
+legal authority to restrain or to punish them. For, if it is lawful
+for any one citizen of the state to leave it, it is equally so for any
+number of them to do it. It is also lawful for them to carry any
+quantity of provisions, arms, and ammunition.--I shall also feel but
+little inclination to take an active part in punishing or retaining
+any of my fellow citizens for a supposed intention only, to gratify
+the fears of the ministers of a prince who openly withholds from us an
+invaluable right, and who secretly instigates against us a most savage
+and cruel enemy."
+
+Washington promptly issued a proclamation of neutrality and requested
+the recall of Genet. From the new Minister of France Clark received
+formal notice that the conquest of Louisiana was abandoned. But Spain
+had had her fright. She at once opened the river, and the mass of
+collected produce found its way unimpeded to the sea.
+
+In June Congress passed a law for ever forbidding such expeditions.
+
+"I have learned that the Spaniards have built a fort at Chickasaw
+Bluff, on this side of the river," said General Wayne, one night in
+September, 1795, summoning William Clark to his headquarters. "I
+desire you to go down to the commanding officer on the west side and
+inquire his intentions."
+
+Why, of all that army, had Wayne chosen the young lieutenant of the
+Fourth Sub-Legion for this errand? Was it because he bore the name of
+Clark? Very well; both knew why Spain had advanced to the Chickasaw
+Bluff.
+
+As Washington went forty years before to inquire of the French, "Why
+are you building forts on the Ohio?" so now William Clark, on board
+the galiot, "La Vigilante," dropped down to New Madrid and asked the
+Spaniard, "Why are you building forts on the Mississippi?"
+
+Down came Charles De Hault De Lassus, the Commandant himself. "I
+assure you we have been very far from attempting to usurp the
+territory of a nation with whom we desire to remain in friendship,"
+protested the courtly Commandant with a wave of his sword and a
+flutter of his plume. "But the threats of the French republicans
+living in the United States,"--he paused for a reply.
+
+"Calm yourself," replied Lieutenant Clark. "Read here the pacific
+intentions of my country."
+
+None better than William Clark understood the virtues of conciliation
+and persuasion. "I assure you that the United States is disposed to
+preserve peace with all the powers of Europe, and with Spain
+especially."
+
+With mutual expressions of esteem and cordial parting salvos,
+Lieutenant Clark left his Spanish friends with a mollified feeling
+toward "those turbulent Americans."
+
+Nevertheless George Rogers Clark had opened the river, to be closed
+again at peril.
+
+Among the soldiers at Wayne's camp that winter was Lieutenant
+Meriwether Lewis, "just from the Whiskey Rebellion," he said. Between
+him and William Clark, now Captain Clark, there sprang up the most
+intimate friendship.
+
+"The nature of the Insurrection?" remarked Lewis in his camp talks with
+Clark. "Why, the Pennsylvania mountaineers about Redstone-Old-Fort
+refused to pay the whiskey tax, stripped, tarred, and feathered the
+collectors! 'The people must be taught obedience,' said General
+Washington, and, after all peaceable means failed, he marched fifteen
+thousand militia into the district. The thought that Washington was
+coming at the head of troops made them reconsider. They sent
+deputations to make terms about the time of Wayne's battle. We built
+log huts and forted for the winter on the Monongahela about fifteen
+miles above Pittsburg."
+
+"And so the Spaniards have come to terms?" queried Lewis as Clark
+still remained silent.
+
+"Yes, they have opened the river."
+
+"I came near being in the midst of that," continued Lewis. "Michaux
+came to Charlottesville. I was eighteen, just out of school and eager
+for adventure. Michaux was to explore the West. Mr. Jefferson had a
+plan for sending two people across the Rocky Mountains. I begged to
+go, and probably should, had not Michaux been recalled when the new
+French minister came in."
+
+"Rest assured," replied Clark solemnly, "no exploration of the West
+can ever be made while Spain holds Louisiana."
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+_THE BROTHERS_
+
+
+"My claim is as just as the book we swear by."
+
+The hero of the heroic age of the Middle West was discussing his debts
+for the conquest of Illinois. "I have given the United States half the
+territory they possess, and for them to suffer me to remain in poverty
+in consequence of it will not redound to their honour. I engaged in
+the Revolution with all the ardour that youth could possess. My zeal
+and ambition rose with my success, determined to save those countries
+which had been the seat of my toil, at the hazard of my life and
+fortune.
+
+"At the most gloomy period of the war when a ration could not be
+purchased on public credit, I risked my own credit, gave my bonds,
+mortgaged my lands for supplies, paid strict attention to every
+department, flattered the friendly and confused the hostile tribes of
+Indians, by my emissaries baffled my internal enemies (the most
+dangerous of all to public interest), and carried my point.
+
+"Thus at the end of the war I had the pleasure of seeing my country
+secure, but with the loss of my manual activity. Demands of very great
+amount were not paid, others with depreciated paper. Now suits are
+commenced against me, for those sums in specie. My military and other
+lands, earned by my services, are appropriated for the payment of
+these debts, and demands yet are remaining, to a considerable amount
+more than the remains of a shattered fortune will pay.
+
+"This is truly my situation. I see no other recourse remaining but to
+make application to my country for redress."
+
+Brooding over his troubles, George Rogers Clark had built himself a
+little cabin at the Point of Rock, overlooking the Falls of the Ohio,
+and gone into a self-chosen St. Helena. The waves dashed and roared
+below and the mist arose, as he looked out on Corn Island, scene of
+his earliest exploit.
+
+A library of handsome books was the principal ornament the house
+contained. Reading, hunting, fishing, he passed his days, while the
+old negro servants attended to the kitchen and the garden.
+
+"I have come," answered his brother William, "I have retired from the
+army, to devote myself to you. Now what can be done?"
+
+"Done? Look at these bills. Gratiot's is paid, thank God, or he would
+have been a ruined man. Monroe helped him through with that. And
+Menard's? That is shelved at Richmond for fifty years." General Clark
+turned the leaves of his note-book.
+
+"And Vigo? But for him I could never have surprised Vincennes. He was
+the best friend I had, and the best still, except you, William."
+
+A singular affection bound these two brothers. It seemed almost as if
+William took up the life of George Rogers where it was broken off, and
+carried it on to a glorious conclusion.
+
+"Virginia acknowledges Vigo's debt, certifies that it has never been
+paid but she has ceded those lands to the Government. Who then shall
+pay it but Congress? The debt was necessary and lawful in contracting
+for supplies for the conquest of Illinois. Could I have done with
+less? God knows we went with parched corn only in our wallets and
+depended on our rifles for the rest. Tell him to keep the draft,
+Virginia will pay it, or Congress, some time or other, with interest."
+
+Again, at William's persuasion, the General came home to Mulberry
+Hill. An expert horseman, everybody in Louisville knew Captain Clark,
+who, wrapped in his cloak, came spurring home night after night on his
+blooded bay, with York at his side, darkness nor swollen fords nor
+wildly beating storms stopping his journey as he came bearing news to
+his brother.
+
+"I have ridden for brother George in the course of this year upwards
+of three thousand miles," wrote the Captain to his brother Edmund, in
+December, 1797, "continually in the saddle, attempting to save him,
+and have been serviceable to him in several instances. I have but a
+few days returned from Vincennes attending a suit for twenty-four
+thousand dollars against him."
+
+These long journeys included tours to St. Louis, Vincennes, Kaskaskia,
+among the General's old debtors, proving that the articles for which
+he was sued were for his troops, powder and military stores.
+
+"The General is very ill again," said father Clark, walking up and
+down the entry before the chamber door. The old man's severe
+countenance always relaxed when he spoke of "the General." Of all his
+children, George Rogers was the one least expected to fall into
+dissipation, but now in rheumatic distress, old before his time,
+George Rogers sometimes drank.
+
+"Cover him, shield him, let not the world witness my brother's
+weakness," William would say at such times, affectionately detaining
+him at Mulberry Hill.
+
+Glancing into the dining-room, the white-haired cavalier noticed Fanny
+and her children and others sitting around the table. Preoccupied, the
+old man approached, and leaning over a chair delivered an impressive
+grace.
+
+"Now, my children, you can eat your dinner. Do not wait for me," and
+again he took up his walk in the entry outside the chamber door. A
+smile wreathed the faces of all; there was no dinner; they were simply
+visiting near the table.
+
+With children and grandchildren around him, the house at Mulberry Hill
+was always full. At Christmas or Thanksgiving, when Lucy came with her
+boys from Locust Grove, "Well, my children," father Clark would say,
+"if I thought we would live, mother and I, five years longer, I would
+build a new house."
+
+But the day before Christmas, 1798, the silky white hair of Ann Rogers
+Clark was brushed back for the last time, in the home that her taste
+had beautified with the groves and flowers of Mulberry Hill.
+
+More and more frequently the old cavalier retired to his rustic arbour
+in the garden.
+
+"I must hunt up father, he will take cold," William would say; and
+there on a moonlight night, on his knees in prayer, the old man would
+be found, among the cedars and honeysuckles of Mulberry Hill.
+
+"Why do you dislike old John Clark," some one asked of a neighbour
+when the venerable man lay on his death-bed.
+
+"What? I dislike old John Clark? I revere and venerate him. His piety
+and virtues may have been a reproach, but I reverence and honour old
+John Clark."
+
+By will the property was divided, and the home at Mulberry Hill went
+to William.
+
+"In case Jonathan comes to Kentucky he may be willing to buy the
+place," said William. "If he does I shall take the cash to pay off
+these creditors of yours."
+
+"Will you do that?" exclaimed George Rogers Clark gratefully. "I can
+make it good to you when these lands of mine come into value."
+
+"Never mind that, brother, never mind that. The honour of the family
+demands it. And those poor Frenchmen are ruined."
+
+"Indians are at the Falls!"
+
+Startled, even now the citizens of Louisville were ready to fly out
+with shotguns in memory of old animosities.
+
+Nothing chills the kindlier impulses like an Indian war. Children
+age, young men frost and wrinkle, women turn into maniacs. Every log
+hut had its bedridden invalid victim of successive frights and nervous
+prostration. Only the stout and sturdy few survived in after days to
+tell of those fierce times when George Rogers Clark was the hope and
+safety of the border. To these, the Indian was a serpent in the path,
+a panther to be hunted.
+
+"Hist! go slow. 'Tis the Delaware chiefs come down to visit George
+Rogers Clark," said Simon Kenton.
+
+In these days of peace, remembering still their old terror of the Long
+Knife, a deputation of chiefs had come to visit Clark. In paint and
+blankets, with lank locks flapping in the breeze, they strode up the
+catalpa avenue, sniffing the odours of Mulberry Hill. General Clark
+looked from the window. Buckongahelas led the train, with Pierre
+Drouillard, the interpreter.
+
+Drouillard had become, for a time, a resident of Kentucky. Simon
+Kenton, hearing that the preserver of his life had fallen into
+misfortune since the surrender of Detroit, sent for him, gave him a
+piece of his farm, and built him a cabin. George Drouillard, a son,
+named for George III., was becoming a famous hunter on the
+Mississippi.
+
+"We have come," said Buckongahelas, "to touch the Long Knife."
+
+Before Clark realised what they were doing, the Indians had snipped
+off the tail of his blue military coat with their hunting knives.
+
+"This talisman will make us great warriors," said Buckongahelas,
+carefully depositing a fragment in his bosom.
+
+Clark laughed, but from that time the Delaware King and his braves
+were frequent visitors to the Long Knife, who longed to live in the
+past, forgetting misfortune.
+
+But George Rogers Clark was not alone in financial disaster. St. Clair
+had expended a fortune in the cause of his country and at last,
+accompanied by his devoted daughter, retired to an old age of penury.
+
+Boone, too, had his troubles. Never having satisfied the requirements
+of law concerning his claim, he was left landless in the Kentucky he
+had pioneered for civilisation. Late one November day in 1798 he was
+seen wending his way through the streets of Cincinnati, with Rebecca
+and all his worldly possessions mounted on packhorses.
+
+"Where are you going?" queried an old-time acquaintance.
+
+"Too much crowded, too many people. I am going west where there is
+more elbow room."
+
+"Ze celebrated Colonel Boone ees come to live een Louisiana," said the
+Spanish officers of St. Louis. The Stars and Stripes and the yellow
+flag of Spain were hung out side by side, and the garrison came down
+out of the stone fort on the hill to parade in honour of Daniel Boone.
+
+No such attentions had ever been paid to Daniel Boone at home. He
+dined with the Governor at Government House and was presented with a
+thousand arpents of land, to be located wherever he pleased, "in the
+district of the Femme Osage."
+
+Beside a spring on a creek flowing into the Missouri Boone built his
+pioneer cabin, beyond the farthest border settlement.
+
+"Bring a hundred more American families and we will give you ten
+thousand arpents of land," said the Governor.
+
+Back to his old Kentucky stamping ground went Boone, and successfully
+piloted out a settlement of neighbours and comrades. Directly, Colonel
+Daniel Boone was made Commandant of the Femme Osage District. His word
+became law in the settlement, and here he held his court under a
+spreading elm that stands to-day, the Judgment Tree of Daniel Boone.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+_THE MAID OF FINCASTLE_
+
+
+In the autumn days as the century was closing, William Clark set out
+for Virginia, as his brother had done in other years. Kentucky was
+filled with old forts, neglected bastions, moats, and blockhouses,
+their origin forgotten. Already the builders had passed on westward.
+
+The Boone trace was lined now with settlements, a beaten bridle-path
+thronged with emigrant trains kicking up the dust. Through the
+frowning portals of Cumberland Gap, Captain Clark and his man York
+galloped into Virginia.
+
+From the southern border of Virginia to the Potomac passes the old
+highway, between the Alleghanies and the Blue Ridge. Cantering
+thoughtfully along under the broad-leaved locusts and laurels, a
+melody like the laugh of wood-nymphs rippled from the forest.
+
+"Why don't he go?" cried a musical feminine voice. "Oh, Harriet,
+Harriet!" With more laughter came a rustling of green leaves. Parting
+the forest curtain to discover the source of this unusual commotion,
+Captain Clark descried two girls seated on a small pony, switching
+with all their slender energy.
+
+"His feet are set. He will not move, Judy."
+
+Leaping at once from his saddle, the Captain bowed low to the maidens
+in distress. "Can I be of any assistance?"
+
+The sudden apparition of a handsome soldier in tri-cornered hat and
+long silk hose quite took their breath away.
+
+"Thank you, sir knight," answered the blonde with a flush of
+bewitching colour. "Firefly, my pony, seems to object to carrying two,
+but we cannot walk across that ford. My cousin and I have on our satin
+slippers."
+
+The Captain laughed, and taking the horse's bridle easily led them
+beyond the mountain rill that dashed across their pathway.
+
+"And will you not come to my father's house?" inquired the maiden. "It
+is here among the trees."
+
+Clark looked,--the roof and gables of a comfortable Virginian mansion
+shone amid the greenery. "I fear not. I must reach Colonel Hancock's
+to-night."
+
+"This is Colonel Hancock's," the girls replied with a smothered laugh.
+
+At a signal, York lifted the five-barred gate and all passed in to the
+long green avenue.
+
+"The brother of my old friend, General George Rogers Clark!" exclaimed
+Colonel Hancock. "Glad to see you, glad to see you. Many a time has he
+stopped on this road."
+
+The Hancocks were among the founders of Virginia. With John Smith the
+first one came over "in search of Forrest for his building of Ships,"
+and was "massacred by ye salvages at Thorp's House, Berkeley Hundred."
+
+General Hancock, the father of the present Colonel, equipped a
+regiment for his son at the breaking out of the Revolution. On
+Pulaski's staff, the young Colonel received the body of the
+illustrious Pole as he fell at the siege of Savannah.
+
+From his Sea Island plantations and the sound of war in South
+Carolina, General Hancock, old and in gout, set out for Virginia. But
+Pulaski had fallen and his son was a prisoner under Cornwallis.
+Attended only by his daughter Mary and a faithful slave, the General
+died on the way and was buried by Uncle Primus on the top of King's
+Mountain some weeks before the famous battle.
+
+Released on parole and finding his fortune depleted, Colonel George
+Hancock read Blackstone and the Virginia laws, took out a license,
+married, and settled at Fincastle. Here his children were born, of
+whom Judy was the youngest daughter. Later, by the death of that
+heroic sister Mary, a niece had come into the family, Harriet
+Kennerly. These were the girls that Captain Clark had encountered in
+his morning ride among the mountains of Fincastle.
+
+"Your brother, the General, and I journeyed together to Philadelphia,
+when he was Commissioner of Indian affairs. Is he well and enjoying
+the fruits of his valour?" continued the Colonel.
+
+"My brother is disabled, the result of exposure in his campaigns. He
+will never recover. I am now visiting Virginia in behalf of his
+accounts with the Assembly,--they have never been adjusted. He even
+thought you, his old friend, might be able to lend assistance, either
+in Virginia or in Congress."
+
+"I am honoured by the request. You may depend upon me."
+
+Colonel George Hancock had been a member of the Fourth Congress in
+Washington's administration, and with a four-horse family coach
+travelled to and from Philadelphia attending the sessions.
+
+Here the little Judy's earliest recollections had been of the
+beautiful Dolly Todd who was about to wed Mr. Madison. Jefferson was
+Secretary of State then, and his daughters, Maria and Martha, came
+often to visit Judy's older sisters, Mary and Caroline.
+
+Judy's hair was a fluff of gold then; shading to brown, it was a fluff
+of gold still, that Granny Molly found hard to keep within bounds.
+Harriet, her cousin, of dark and splendid beauty, a year or two older,
+was ever the inseparable companion of Judy Hancock.
+
+"Just fixing up the place again," explained Colonel Hancock. "It has
+suffered from my absence at Philadelphia. A tedious journey, a tedious
+journey from Fincastle."
+
+But to the children that journey had been a liberal education. The
+long bell-trains of packhorses, the rumbling Conestogas, the bateaux
+and barges, the great rivers and dense forests, the lofty mountains
+and wide farmlands, the towns and villages, Philadelphia itself, were
+indelibly fixed in their memory and their fancy.
+
+Several times in the course of the next few years, William Clark had
+occasion to visit Virginia in behalf of his brother, and each time
+more and more he noted the budding graces of the maids of Fincastle.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+_THE PRESIDENT'S SECRETARY_
+
+
+The funeral bells of Washington tolled in 1800. President Washington
+was dead. Napoleon was first Consul of France. The old social systems
+of Europe were tottering. The new social system of America was
+building. The experiment of self-government had triumphed, and out of
+the storm-tossed seas still grandly rode the Constitution. Out of the
+birth of parties and political excitement, Thomas Jefferson came to
+the Presidency.
+
+The stately mansion of Monticello was ablaze with light. Candles lit
+up every window. Not only Monticello, but all Charlottesville was
+illuminated, with torches, bonfires, tar-barrels. Friends gathered
+with congratulations and greeting.
+
+As Washington had turned with regret from the banks of the Potomac to
+fill the first presidency, and as Patrick Henry, the gifted, chafed in
+Congressional halls, so now Jefferson with equal regret left the
+shades of Monticello.
+
+"No pageant shall give the lie to my democratic principles," he said,
+as in plain citizen clothes with a few of his friends he repaired to
+the Capital and took the oath of office. And by his side, with
+luminous eyes and powdered hair, sat Aaron Burr, the Vice-President.
+
+Jefferson, in the simplicity of his past, had penned everything for
+himself. Now he began to feel the need of a secretary. There were many
+applicants, but the President's eye turned toward the lad who nine
+years before had begged to go with Michaux to the West.
+
+"The appointment to the Presidency of the United States has rendered
+it necessary for me to have a private secretary," he wrote to
+Meriwether Lewis. "Your knowledge of the western country, of the army
+and of all its interests, has rendered it desirable that you should
+be engaged in that office. In point of profit it has little to offer,
+the salary being only five hundred dollars, but it would make you know
+and be known to characters of influence in the affairs of our
+country."
+
+Meriwether was down on the Ohio. In two weeks his reply came back from
+Pittsburg. "I most cordially acquiesce, and with pleasure accept the
+office, nor were further motives necessary to induce my compliance
+than that you, sir, should conceive that in the discharge of the
+duties, I could be serviceable to my country as well as useful to
+yourself."
+
+As soon as he could wind up his affairs, Captain Lewis, one of the
+handsomest men in the army, appeared in queue and cocked hat, silk
+stockings and knee buckles, at the President's house in wide and windy
+Washington to take up his duties as private secretary.
+
+From his earliest recollection, Meriwether Lewis had known Thomas
+Jefferson, as Governor in the days of Tarleton's raid, and as a
+private farmer and neighbour at Monticello. After Meriwether's mother
+married Captain Marks and moved to Georgia, Jefferson went to France,
+and his uncle, Colonel Nicholas Lewis, looked after the finances of
+the great estate at Monticello.
+
+Under the guardianship of that uncle, Meriwether attended the school
+of Parson Maury, the same school where Jefferson had been fitted for
+college.
+
+He remembered, too, that day when Jefferson came back from France and
+all the slaves at Monticello rushed out and drew the carriage up by
+hand, crowding around, kissing his hands and feet, blubbering,
+laughing, crying. How the slaves fell back to admire the young ladies
+that had left as mere children! Martha, a stately girl of seventeen,
+and little Maria, in her eleventh year, a dazzling vision of beauty.
+Ahead of everybody ran the gay and sunny Jack Eppes to escort his
+little sweetheart.
+
+Both daughters were married now, and with families of their own, so
+more than ever Jefferson depended on Meriwether Lewis. They occupied
+the same chamber and lived in a degree of intimacy that perhaps has
+subsisted between no other president and his private secretary.
+
+With his favourite Chickasaw horses, Arcturus and Wildair, the
+President rode two hours every day, Meriwether often with him,
+directing the workmen on the new Capitol, unfinished still amid stone
+and masonry tools.
+
+Washington himself chose the site, within an amphitheatre of hills
+overlooking the lordly Potomac where he camped as a youth on
+Braddock's expedition. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, riding ever to
+and from Mount Vernon, Monticello, and Montpelier, discussed the plans
+and set the architects to work. Now it fell to Jefferson to carry on
+what Washington had so well begun.
+
+Thomas Jefferson was a social man, and loved a throng about him. The
+vast and vacant halls of the White House would have been dreary but
+for the retinue of guests. Eleven servants had been brought from
+Monticello, and half-a-dozen from Paris,--Petit, the butler, M.
+Julien, the cook, a French _chef_, Noel, the kitchen boy, and Joseph
+Rapin, the steward. Every morning Rapin went to the Georgetown market,
+and Meriwether Lewis gave him his orders.
+
+"For I need you, Meriwether, not only for the public, but as well for
+the private concerns of the household," said the President
+affectionately. "And I depend on you to assist in entertaining."
+
+"At the head of the table, please," said the President, handing in
+Mrs. Madison. "I shall have to request you to act as mistress of the
+White House."
+
+In his own youth Jefferson had cherished an affection for Dolly
+Madison's mother, the beautiful Mary Coles, so it became not difficult
+to place her daughter in the seat of honour.
+
+There were old-style Virginia dinners, with the art of Paris, for ever
+after his foreign experience Jefferson insisted on training his own
+servants in the French fashion. At four they dined, and sat and talked
+till night, Congressmen, foreigners, and all sorts of people, with the
+ever-present cabinet.
+
+James Madison, Secretary of State, was a small man, easy, dignified,
+and fond of conversation, with pale student face like a young
+theologian just out of the cloister. Dolly herself powdered his hair,
+tied up his queue, and fastened his stock; very likely, too,
+prescribed his elegant knee breeches and buckles and black silk
+stockings, swans' down buff vest, long coat, and lace ruffles. "A very
+tasty old-school gentleman," said the guests of the White House.
+
+Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, born and bred a scholar,
+was younger than either Madison or Jefferson, well read, with a
+slightly Genevan accent, and a prominent nose that marked him a man of
+affairs.
+
+But everything revolved about Jefferson, in the village of Washington
+and in the country at large. Next to General Washington he filled the
+largest space in public esteem.
+
+Slim, tall, and bony, in blue coat faced with yellow, green velveteen
+breeches, red plush waist-coat and elaborate shirt frill, long
+stockings and slippers with silver buckles,--just so had he been ever
+since his Parisian days, picturesquely brilliant in dress and speech,
+talking, talking, ever genially at the White House.
+
+Before the "Mayflower" brought the first Puritans to New England the
+Jeffersons had settled in Virginia. The President's mother was a
+Randolph of patrician blood. A hundred servants attended in Isham
+Randolph's, her father's house. Peter Jefferson, his father, was a
+democrat of democrats, a man of the people. Perhaps Thomas had felt
+the sting of Randolph pride that a daughter had married a homely
+rawboned Jefferson, but all the man in him rose up for that Jefferson
+from whom he was sprung. Thomas Jefferson, the son, was just such a
+thin homely rawboned youth as his father had been. Middle age brought
+him good looks, old age made him venerable, an object of adoration to
+a people.
+
+Always up before sunrise, he routed out Meriwether. There were
+messages to send, or letters to write, or orders for Rapin before the
+round disk of day reddened the Potomac.
+
+No woman ever brushed his gray neglected hair tied so loosely in a
+club behind; it was Jeffersonian to have it neglected and tumbled all
+over his head. Everybody went to the White House for instruction,
+entertainment; and Jefferson--was Jefferson.
+
+Of course he had his enemies, even there. Twice a month Colonel Burr,
+the Vice-President, the great anti-Virginian, dined at the White
+House. Attractive in person, distinguished in manner, all looked upon
+Colonel Burr as next in the line of Presidential succession. He came
+riding back and forth between Washington and his New York residence at
+Richmond Hill, and with him the lovely Theodosia, the intimate friend
+of Dolly Madison and Mrs. Gallatin.
+
+Lewis understood some of the bitter and deadly political controversies
+that were smothered now under the ever genial conversation of the
+President, for Jefferson, the great apostle of popular sovereignty,
+could no more conceal his principles than he could conceal his
+personality. Everything he discussed,--science, politics, philosophy,
+art, music. None there were more widely read, none more travelled than
+the President.
+
+But he dearly loved politics. Greater, perhaps, was Jefferson in
+theory than in execution. His eye would light with genius, as he
+propounded his views.
+
+"Science, did you say? The main object of all science is the freedom
+and happiness of man, and these are the sole objects of all legitimate
+government. Why, Washington himself hardly believed that so liberal a
+government as this could succeed, but he was resolved to give the
+experiment a trial. And now, our people are throwing aside the
+monarchical and taking up the republican form, with as much ease as
+would have attended their throwing off an old and putting on a new
+suit of clothes. I am persuaded that no Constitution was ever before
+so well calculated as ours for extensive empire."
+
+To Jefferson it had fallen to overthrow church establishment and
+entail and primogeniture in Virginia, innovations that were followed
+by all the rest of the States.
+
+"At least," pleaded an opponent, "if the eldest may no longer inherit
+all the lands and all the slaves of his father, let him take a double
+share."
+
+"No," said Jefferson, "not until he can eat a double allowance of
+food and do a double allowance of work. Instead of an aristocracy of
+wealth, I would make an opening for an aristocracy of virtue and
+talent."
+
+"But see to what Mr. Jefferson and his levelling system has brought
+us," cried even John Randolph of Roanoke, as one after another of the
+estates of thousands of acres slid into the hands of the people.
+
+He prohibited the importation of slaves, and, if he could have done
+it, would have abolished slavery itself before it became the despair
+of a people.
+
+"Franklin a great orator? Why, no, he never spoke in Congress more
+than five minutes at a time, and then he related some anecdote which
+applied to the subject before the House. I have heard all the
+celebrated orators of the National Assembly of France, but there was
+not one equal to Patrick Henry."
+
+And then, confidentially, sometimes he told a tale of the Declaration
+of Independence. "I shall never cease to be grateful to John Adams,
+the colossus of that debate. While the discussion was going on,
+fatherly old Ben Franklin, seventy years old, leaning on his cane, sat
+by my side, and comforted me with his jokes whenever the criticisms
+were unusually bitter. The Congress held its meetings near a livery
+stable. The members wore short breeches and thin silk stockings, and
+with handkerchief in hand they were diligently employed in lashing the
+flies from their legs. So very vexatious was the annoyance, and to so
+great impatience did it arouse the sufferers, that they were only too
+glad to sign the Declaration and fly from the scene."
+
+Two visits every year Jefferson made to his little principality of two
+hundred inhabitants at Monticello, a short one early in the Spring and
+a longer one in the latter part of Summer, when he always took his
+daughter Martha and family from Edge Hill with him, for it would not
+seem home without Martha to superintend.
+
+Here Jefferson had organised his slaves into a great industrial
+school, had his own carpenters, cabinet-makers, shoe-makers, tailors,
+weavers, had a nail forge and made nails for his own and neighbouring
+estates,--his black mechanics were the best in Virginia. Even the
+family coach was made at Monticello, and the painting and the masonry
+of the mansion were all executed by slaves on the place.
+
+On the Rivanna Jefferson had a mill, where his wheat was manufactured
+into flour and sent down to Richmond on bateaux to be sold for a good
+price, and cotton brought home to be made into cloth on the
+plantation. No wonder, when the master was gone, so extensive an
+industrial plant ceased to be remunerative.
+
+Jefferson was always sending home shrubbery and trees from
+Washington,--he knew every green thing on every spot of his farm; and
+Bacon, the manager, seldom failed to send the cart back laden with
+fruit from Monticello for the White House.
+
+While the President at Monticello was giving orders to Goliah, the
+gardener, to Jupiter, the hostler, to Bacon and all the head men of
+the shops, Lewis would gallop home to visit his mother at Locust Hill
+just out of Charlottesville.
+
+Before the Revolution, Meriwether's father, William Lewis, had
+received from George III. a patent for three thousand acres of choice
+Ivy Creek land in Albemarle, commanding an uninterrupted view of the
+Blue Ridge for one hundred and fifty miles. Here Meriwether was born,
+and Reuben and Jane.
+
+"If Captain John Marks courts you I advise you to marry him," said
+Colonel William Lewis to his wife, on his death-bed after the
+surrender of Cornwallis. In a few years she did marry Captain Marks,
+and in Georgia were born Meriwether's half brother and sister, John
+and Mary Marks.
+
+Another spot almost as dear to Meriwether Lewis was the plantation of
+his uncle Nicholas Lewis, "The Farm," adjoining Monticello. It was
+here he saw Hamilton borne by, a prisoner of war, on the way to
+Williamsburg, and here it was that Tarleton made his raid and stole
+the ducks from Aunt Molly's chicken yard.
+
+A strict disciplinarian, rather severe in her methods, and very
+industrious was Aunt Molly, "Captain Molly" they called her. "Even
+Colonel 'Nick,' although he can whip the British, stands in wholesome
+awe of Captain Molly, his superior in the home guards," said the
+gossiping neighbours of Charlottesville.
+
+As a boy on this place, Meriwether visited the negro cabins, followed
+the overseer, or darted on inquiry bent through stables, coach-house,
+hen-house, smoke-house, dove cote, and milk-room, the ever-attending
+lesser satellites of every mansion-house of old Virginia.
+
+"Bless your heart, my boy," was Aunt Molly's habitual greeting, "to be
+a good boy is the surest way to be a great man."
+
+A tender heart had Aunt Molly, doctress of half the countryside, who
+came to her for remedies and advice. Her home was ever open to
+charity. As friends she nursed and cared for Burgoyne's men, the
+Saratoga prisoners.
+
+"Bury me under the tulip tree on top of the hill overlooking the
+Rivanna," begged one of the sick British officers. True to her word,
+Aunt Molly had him laid under the tulip tree. Many generations of
+Lewises and Meriwethers lie now on that hill overlooking the red
+Rivanna, but the first grave ever made there was that of the British
+prisoner so kindly cared for by Meriwether Lewis's Aunt Molly.
+
+"Meriwether and Lewis are old and honoured names in Virginia. I really
+believe the boy will be a credit to the family," said Aunt Molly when
+the President's secretary reined up on Wildair at the gate. The
+Captain's light hair rippled into a graceful queue tied with a ribbon,
+and his laughing blue eyes flashed as Maria Wood ran out to greet her
+old playfellow. Aunt Molly was Maria's grandmother.
+
+"Very grand is my cousin Meriwether now," began the mischievous Maria.
+"Long past are those days when as a Virginia ranger he prided himself
+on rifle shirts faced with fringe, wild-cat's paws for epaulettes, and
+leathern belts heavy as a horse's surcingle." Lifting her hands in
+mock admiration Maria smiled entrancingly, "Indeed, gay as Jefferson
+himself is our sublime dandy, in blue coat, red velvet waistcoat,
+buff knee breeches, and brilliant buckles!" and Meriwether answered
+with a kiss.
+
+Maria Wood was, perhaps, the dearest of Meriwether's friends, although
+rumour said he had been engaged to Milly Maury, the daughter of the
+learned Parson. But how could that be when Milly married while
+Meriwether was away soldiering on the Ohio? At any rate, now he rode
+with Maria Wood, danced with her, and took her out to see his mother
+at Locust Hill.
+
+The whole family relied on Meriwether at Locust Hill. While only a boy
+he took charge of the farm, and of his own motion built a carriage and
+drove to Georgia after his mother and the children upon the death of
+Captain Marks.
+
+Back through the Cherokee-haunted woods they came, with other
+travellers journeying the Georgia route. One night campfires were
+blazing for the evening meal, when "Whoop!" came the hostile message
+and a discharge of arms.
+
+"Indians! Indians!"
+
+All was confusion. Paralysed mothers hugged their infants and children
+screamed, when a boy in the crowd threw a bucket of water on the fire
+extinguishing the light. In a moment all was still, as the men rushed
+to arms repelling the attack. That boy was Meriwether Lewis.
+
+"No brother like mine," said little Mary Marks. "Every noble trait is
+his,--he is a father to us children, a counsellor to our mother, and
+more anxious about our education than even for his own!"
+
+Charles de St. Memin, a French artist, was in Washington, engraving on
+copper.
+
+"May I have your portrait as a typical handsome American?" he said to
+the President's secretary.
+
+Meriwether laughed and gave him a sitting. The same hand that had so
+lately limned Paul Revere, Theodosia Burr, and the last profile of
+Washington himself, sketched the typical youth of 1801. Lewis sent the
+drawing to his mother, the head done in fired chalk and crayon, with
+that curious pink background so peculiar to the St. Memin pictures.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+_THE PRESIDENT TALKS WITH MERIWETHER_
+
+
+Hours by themselves Jefferson sat talking to Lewis. With face sunny,
+lit with enthusiasm, he spoke rapidly, even brilliantly, a dreamer, a
+seer, a prophet, believing in the future of America.
+
+"I have never given it up, Meriwether. Before the peace treaty was
+signed, after the Revolution, I was scheming for a western
+exploration. We discussed it at Annapolis; I even went so far as to
+write to George Rogers Clark on the subject. Then Congress sent me to
+France.
+
+"In France a frequent guest at my table was John Ledyard, of
+Connecticut. He had accompanied Captain Cook on his voyage to the
+Pacific Ocean, and now panted for some new enterprise. He had
+endeavoured to engage the merchants of Boston in the Northwest fur
+trade, but the times were too unsettled. 'Why, Mr. Jefferson,' he was
+wont to say, 'that northwest land belongs to us. I felt I breathed the
+air of home the day we touched at Nootka Sound. The very Indians are
+just like ours. And furs,--that coast is rich in beaver, bear, and
+otter. Depend upon it,' he used to say, 'untold fortunes lie untouched
+at the back of the United States.'"
+
+"I then proposed to him to go by land to Kamtchatka, cross in some
+Russian vessel to Nootka Sound, fall down into the latitude of the
+Missouri, and penetrate to and through that to the United States.
+Ledyard eagerly seized the idea. I obtained him a permit from the
+Empress Catherine, and he set out; went to St. Petersburg, crossed the
+Russian possessions to within two hundred miles of Kamtchatka. Here he
+was arrested by order of the Empress, who by this time had changed her
+mind, and forbidden his proceeding. He was put in a close carriage,
+and conveyed day and night, without ever stopping, till they reached
+Poland; where he was set down and left to himself. The fatigue of this
+journey broke down his constitution, and when he returned to me at
+Paris his bodily strength was much impaired. His mind, however,
+remained firm and he set out for Egypt to find the sources of the
+Nile, but died suddenly at Cairo. Thus failed the first attempt to
+explore the western part of our northern continent.
+
+"Imagine my interest, later, to learn that after reading of Captain
+Cook's voyages the Boston merchants had taken up Ledyard's idea and in
+1787 sent two little ships, the 'Columbia Rediviva' and the 'Lady
+Washington' into the Pacific Ocean.
+
+"Barely was I back and seated in Washington's cabinet as Secretary of
+State, before those Boston merchants begged my intercession with the
+Court of Spain, for one Don Blas Gonzalez, Governor of Juan Fernandez.
+Passing near that island, one of the ships was damaged by a storm, her
+rudder broken, her masts disabled, and herself separated from her
+companion. She put into the island to refit, and at the same time to
+wood and water. Don Blas Gonzalez, after examining her, and finding
+she had nothing on board but provisions and charts, and that her
+distress was real, permitted her to stay a few days, to refit and take
+in fresh supplies of wood and water. For this act of common
+hospitality, he was immediately deprived of his government, unheard,
+by superior order, and placed under disgrace. Nor was I ever able to
+obtain a hearing at the Court of Spain, and the reinstatement of this
+benevolent Governor.
+
+"The little ships went on, however, and on May 11, 1792, Captain
+Robert Gray, a tar of the Revolution, discovered the great river of
+the west and named it for his gallant ship, the 'Columbia.'
+
+"In that very year, 1792, not yet having news of this discovery, I
+proposed to the American Philosophical Society that we should set on
+foot a subscription to engage some competent person to explore that
+region, by ascending the Missouri and crossing the Stony Mountains,
+and descending the nearest river to the Pacific. The sum of five
+thousand dollars was raised for that purpose, and André Michaux, a
+French botanist, was engaged as scientist, but when about to start he
+was sent by the French minister on political business to Kentucky."
+
+Meriwether Lewis laughed. "I remember. I was then at Charlottesville
+on the recruiting service, and warmly solicited you to obtain for me
+the appointment to execute that adventure. But Mr. André Michaux
+offering his services, they were accepted."
+
+Both were silent for a time. Michaux had gone on his journey as far as
+Kentucky, become the confidential agent between Genet and George
+Rogers Clark for the French expedition, and been recalled by request
+of Washington.
+
+"Meriwether," continued the President, "I see now some chance of
+accomplishing that northwest expedition. The act establishing trading
+posts among the Indians is about to expire. My plan is to induce the
+Indians to abandon hunting and become agriculturists. As this may
+deprive our traders of a source of profit, I would direct their
+attention to the fur trade of the Missouri. In a few weeks I shall
+make a confidential communication to Congress requesting an
+appropriation for the exploration of the northwest. We shall undertake
+it as a literary and commercial pursuit."
+
+"And, sir, may I lead that exploration?"
+
+"You certainly shall," answered the President. "How much money do you
+think it would take?"
+
+Secretary Lewis spent the next few days in making an estimate.
+
+"Mathematical instruments, arms and accoutrements, camp equipage,
+medicine and packing, means for transportation, Indian presents,
+provisions, pay for hunters, guides, interpreters, and contingencies,--
+twenty-five hundred dollars will cover it all, I think."
+
+Then followed that secret message of January 18, 1803, dictated by
+Jefferson, penned by Lewis, in which the President requested an
+appropriation of twenty-five hundred dollars, "for the purpose of
+extending the external commerce of the United States."
+
+Congress granted the request, and busy days of preparation followed.
+
+The cabinet were in the secret, and the ladies, particularly Mrs.
+Madison and Mrs. Gallatin, were most interested and sympathetic,
+providing everything that could possibly be needed in such a perilous
+journey, fearing that Lewis might never return from that distant land
+of savages. The President's daughters, Mrs. Randolph and Mrs. Eppes,
+were there, handsome, accomplished, delicate women, who rode about in
+silk pelisses purchasing at the shops the necessaries for
+"housewives," pins, needles, darning yarn, and the thousand and one
+little items that women always give to soldier boys.
+
+Dolly Madison, in mulberry-coloured satin, a tulle kerchief on her
+neck and dainty cap on her head, stitched, stitched; and in the
+streets, almost impassable for mud, she and Martha, the President's
+daughter, were often mistaken for each other as they went to and fro
+guided by Dolly's cousin, Edward Coles, a youth destined to win renown
+himself one day, as the "anti-slavery governor" of Illinois.
+
+In his green knee pants and red waistcoat, long stockings and
+slippers, the genial President looked in on the busy ladies at the
+White House, but his anxiety was on matters of far more moment than
+the stitchery of the cabinet ladies.
+
+Alexander Mackenzie's journal of his wonderful transcontinental
+journey in 1793 was just out, the book of the day. It thrilled
+Lewis,--he devoured it.
+
+Before starting on his tour Alexander Mackenzie went to London and
+studied mathematics and astronomy. "It is my own dream," exclaimed
+Lewis, as the President came upon him with the volumes in hand. "But
+the scientific features, to take observations, to be sure of my
+botany, to map longitude--"
+
+"That must come by study," said Jefferson. "I would have you go to
+Philadelphia to prosecute your studies in the sciences. I think you
+had better go at once to Dr. Barton,--I will write to him to-day."
+
+And again in the letter to Dr. Barton, Meriwether's hand penned the
+prosecution of his fortune.
+
+"I must ask the favour of you to prepare for him a note of those lines
+of botany, zoölogy, or of Indian history which you think most worthy
+of study or observation. He will be with you in Philadelphia in two or
+three weeks and will wait on you and receive thankfully on paper any
+communications you may make to him."
+
+Jefferson had ever been a father to Meriwether Lewis, had himself
+watched and taught him. And Lewis in his soul revered the great man's
+learning, as never before he regretted the wasted hours at Parson
+Maury's when often he left his books to go hunting on Peter's Mount.
+But proudly lifting his head from these meditations:
+
+"I am a born woodsman, Mr. Jefferson. You know that."
+
+"Know it!" Jefferson laughed. "Does not the fame of your youthful
+achievements linger yet around the woods of Monticello? I have not
+forgotten, Meriwether, that when you were not more than eight years
+old you were accustomed to go out into the forest at night alone in
+the depth of winter with your dogs and gun to hunt the raccoon and
+opossum. Nor have I forgotten when the Cherokees attacked your camp in
+Georgia." The young man flushed.
+
+"Your mother has often told it. It was when you were bringing them
+home to Albemarle. How old were you then? About eighteen? The Indians
+whooped and you put out the fire, the only cool head among them. A boy
+that could do that can as a man lead a great exploration like this.
+
+"Nor need you fret about your lack of science,--the very study of
+Latin you did with Parson Maury fits you to prepare for me those
+Indian vocabularies. I am fortunate to have one so trained. Latin
+gives an insight into the structure of all languages. For years, now,
+I have been collecting and studying the Indian tongues. Fortune now
+permits you to become my most valued coadjutor."
+
+And so Lewis noted in his book of memorandum, "Vocabularies of Indian
+languages."
+
+"You ought to have a companion, a military man like George Rogers
+Clark. I have always wished to bring him forward in Indian affairs; no
+man better understands the savage."
+
+"But Clark has a brother," quickly spoke Lewis, "a brave fellow,
+absolutely unflinching in the face of danger. If I could have my
+choice, Captain William Clark should be my companion and the sharer of
+my command."
+
+Two years Lewis had been Jefferson's private secretary, when,
+appointed to this work, he went to Philadelphia to study natural
+science and make astronomical observations for the geography of the
+route. This youth, who had inherited a fortune and every inducement to
+a life of ease, now spent three months in severest toil, under the
+instruction of able professors, learning scientific terms and
+calculating latitude and longitude.
+
+Early in June he was back at Washington. Already the President had
+secured letters of passport from the British, French, and Spanish
+ministers, for this expedition through foreign territory.
+
+"The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri River, and such
+principal streams of it, as, by its course and communication with the
+waters of the Pacific Ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado,
+or any other river, may offer the most direct and practicable
+water-communication across the continent, for the purpose of
+commerce."
+
+Far into the June night Jefferson discussed his instructions, and
+signed the historic document.
+
+"I have no doubt you will use every possible exertion to get off, as
+the delay of a month now may lose a year in the end."
+
+Lewis felt the pressure; he was packing his instruments, writing to
+military posts for men to be ready when he came down the river, and
+hurrying up orders at Harper's Ferry, when a strange and startling
+event occurred, beyond the vision of dreamers.
+
+
+
+
+Book II
+
+_INTO THE WEST_
+
+
+
+
+Book II
+
+_INTO THE WEST_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+_THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE_
+
+
+"Spain, knowing she cannot hold Louisiana, has ceded it to France!"
+The winds of ocean bore the message to America.
+
+"Napoleon? Is he to control us also?"
+
+Never so vast a shadow overawed the world. Afar they had read of his
+battles, had dreaded his name. Instantly colossal Napoleon loomed
+across the prairies of the West.
+
+Napoleon had fifty-four ships and fifty thousand troops, the flower of
+his army, sailing to re-establish slavery in Hayti. But a step and he
+would be at the Mississippi. He was sending Laussat, a French prefect,
+to take over New Orleans and wait for the army.
+
+"Shall we submit? And is this to be the end of all our fought-for
+liberty, that Napoleon should rule America?"
+
+The fear of France was now as great as had been the admiration.
+
+Gaily the flatboats were floating down, laden with flour and bacon,
+hams and tobacco, seeking egress to Cuba and Atlantic seaports, when
+suddenly, in October, 1802, the Spanish Intendant at New Orleans
+closed the Mississippi. Crowding back, for twenty thousand miles
+inland, were the products of the Autumn.
+
+The western country blazed; only by strenuous effort could Congress
+keep a backwoods army from marching on New Orleans. A powerful
+minority at Washington contended for instant seizure.
+
+Pittsburg, with shore lined with shipping, roared all the way to the
+gulf, "No grain can be sold down the river on account of those
+piratical Spaniards!"
+
+Appeal after appeal went up to Jefferson, "Let us sweep them into the
+sea!"
+
+What hope with a foreign nation at our gates? Spain might be got rid
+of, but France--Monroe was dispatched to France to interview Napoleon.
+
+"The French must not have New Orleans," was the lightning thought of
+Jefferson. "No one but ourselves must own our own front door."
+
+And Jefferson penned a letter to Livingstone, the American minister at
+Paris:
+
+     "There is on the globe but one single spot, the possessor
+     of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New
+     Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our
+     territory must pass to market. France placing herself in
+     that door assumes to us the attitude of defiance. Spain
+     might have retained it quietly for years. Not so France.
+     The impetuosity of her temper, the energy and restlessness
+     of her character, render it impossible that France and the
+     United States can continue friends when they meet in so
+     irritating a position. The day that France takes possession
+     of New Orleans--from that moment we must marry ourselves to
+     the British fleet and nation."
+
+As Jefferson placed that letter in the hands of Monroe he added:
+
+"In Europe nothing but Europe is seen. But this little event, of
+France's possessing herself of Louisiana,--this speck which now
+appears an invisible point on the horizon,--is the embryo of a
+tornado.
+
+"I must secure the port of New Orleans and the mastery of the
+navigation of the Mississippi.
+
+"We must have peace. The use of the Mississippi is indispensable. We
+must purchase New Orleans."
+
+"You are aware of the sensibility of our Western citizens," Madison
+was writing to Madrid. "To them the Mississippi is everything. It is
+the Hudson, the Delaware, the Potomac, and all the navigable rivers of
+the Atlantic States, formed into one."
+
+But Napoleon's soldiers were dying at San Domingo, the men with whom
+he would have colonised Louisiana. At that moment the flint and steel
+of France and England struck, and the spark meant--war. England stood
+ready to seize the mouth of the Mississippi.
+
+After the solemnities of Easter Sunday at St. Cloud, April 10, 1803,
+Napoleon summoned two of his ministers.
+
+"I _know_ the full value of Louisiana!" he began with vehement
+passion, walking up and down the marble parlour. "A few lines of
+treaty have restored it to me, and I have scarcely recovered it when I
+must expect to lose it. But if it escapes from me," the First Consul
+shook his finger menacingly, "it shall one day cost dearer to those
+who oblige me to strip myself of it, than to those to whom I wish to
+deliver it. The English have successively taken from France, Canada,
+Cape Breton, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the richest portions of
+Asia. They _shall not have_ the Mississippi which they covet. They
+have twenty ships of war in the Gulf of Mexico, they sail over those
+seas as sovereigns. The conquest of Louisiana would be easy. I have
+not a moment to lose in putting it out of their reach. I know not
+whether they are not already there. I think of ceding it to the United
+States. They only ask one town of me in Louisiana but I already
+consider the colony as entirely lost, and it appears to me that in the
+hands of this growing power it will be more useful to the policy and
+even to the commerce of France, than if I should attempt to keep it."
+
+He turned to Barbé-Marbois, who had served as Secretary of the French
+Legation at Philadelphia during the whole war of the American
+Revolution.
+
+"We should not hesitate to make a sacrifice of that which is about
+slipping from us," said Barbé-Marbois. "War with England is
+inevitable; shall we be able to defend Louisiana? Can we restore
+fortifications that are in ruins? If, Citizen Consul, you, who have by
+one of the first acts of your government made sufficiently apparent
+your intention of giving this country to France, now abandon the idea
+of keeping it, there is no person that will not admit that you yield
+to necessity."
+
+Far into the night they talked, so late that the ministers slept at
+St. Cloud.
+
+At daybreak Napoleon summoned Barbé-Marbois. "Read me the dispatches
+from London."
+
+"Sire," returned the Secretary, looking over the papers, "naval and
+military preparations of every kind are making with extraordinary
+rapidity."
+
+Napoleon leaped to his feet and strode again the marble floor.
+
+"Irresolution and deliberation are no longer in season. I _renounce_
+Louisiana. It is not only New Orleans that I will cede, but the whole
+colony without reservation. I _know_ the price of what I abandon. I
+renounce it with regret. To attempt to retain it would be folly. I
+direct you to negotiate this affair with the United States. Do not
+even await the arrival of Mr. Monroe; have an interview this very day
+with Mr. Livingstone; but I require a great deal of money for this
+war, and I would not like to commence it with new contributions. I
+want fifty millions, and for less than that sum I will not treat.
+To-morrow you shall have your full powers."
+
+The minister waited.
+
+"Mr. Monroe is on the point of arriving," continued Napoleon. "Neither
+this minister, nor his colleague, is prepared for a decision which
+goes infinitely beyond anything they are about to ask of us. Begin by
+making them overtures, without any subterfuge. Acquaint me, hour by
+hour, of your progress."
+
+"What will you pay for all Louisiana?" bluntly asked Barbé-Marbois
+that day of the astonished Livingstone.
+
+"_All Louisiana!_ New Orleans is all I ask for," answered Livingstone.
+So long had Talleyrand trifled and deceived, the American found
+himself distrustful of these French diplomatists.
+
+"But I offer the province," said Barbé-Marbois.
+
+Surprised, doubtful, Livingstone listened. "I have not the necessary
+powers."
+
+The next day Monroe arrived.
+
+"There must be haste or the English will be at New Orleans," said
+Barbé-Marbois. "How much will you pay for the whole province?"
+
+"The English? Fifteen millions," answered the Americans.
+
+"Incorporate Louisiana as soon as possible into your Union," said
+Napoleon, "give to its inhabitants the same rights, privileges, and
+immunities as to other citizens of the United States.
+
+"And let them know that we separate ourselves from them with regret;
+let them retain for us sentiments of affection; and may their common
+origin, descent, language, and customs perpetuate the friendship."
+
+The papers were drawn up and signed in French and in English.
+
+"We have lived long, but this is the noblest work of our lives!"
+exclaimed Livingstone, as he and Barbé-Marbois and Monroe arose and
+shook hands across the document.
+
+"This accession of territory strengthens for ever the power of the
+United States," said Napoleon, coming in to look at the treaty. And as
+he affixed that signature, "NAPOLEON," he smiled,--"I have just given
+to England a maritime rival, that sooner or later will humble her
+pride."
+
+And on that day the Mississippi was opened, to be closed by a foreign
+power no more for ever.
+
+But no sooner had Napoleon parted with Louisiana than he began to
+repent. "Hasten," the ministers warned Jefferson, "the slightest delay
+may lose us the country."
+
+The word reached America.
+
+"Jefferson--bought New Orleans? bought the Mississippi? bought the
+entire boundless West?"
+
+Men gasped, then cheered. Tumultuous excitement swept the land. On
+July 3, 1803, an infant Republic hugging the Atlantic, on July 4, a
+world power grasping the Pacific!
+
+"A bargain!" cried the Republicans.
+
+"Unconstitutional!" answered the Federalists.
+
+"The East will become depopulated."
+
+"Fifteen millions! Fifteen millions for that wilderness! Why, that
+would be tons of money! Waggon loads of silver five miles long. We
+have not so much coin in the whole country!"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+_THE KNIGHT OF THE WHITE HOUSE_
+
+
+And Meriwether Lewis was ready to start. The night before the Fourth
+of July he wrote his mother:
+
+     "The day after to-morrow I shall set out for the western
+     country. I had calculated on the pleasure of visiting you,
+     but circumstances have rendered it impossible. My absence
+     will probably be equal to fifteen or eighteen months. The
+     nature of this expedition is by no means dangerous. My
+     route will be altogether through tribes of Indians friendly
+     to the United States, therefore I consider the chances of
+     life just as much in my favour as I should conceive them
+     were I to remain at home. The charge of this expedition is
+     honourable to myself, as it is important to my country. For
+     its fatigues I feel myself perfectly prepared, nor do I
+     doubt my health and strength of constitution to bear me
+     through it. I go with the most perfect pre-conviction in my
+     own mind of returning safe, and hope therefore that you
+     will not suffer yourself to indulge any anxiety for my
+     safety,--I will write again on my arrival at Pittsburg.
+     Adieu, and believe me your affectionate son,
+
+          MERIWETHER LEWIS."
+
+The Jefferson girls had returned to their homes. Dolly Madison and
+Mrs. Gallatin supervised the needle department, having made
+"housewives" enough to fit out a regiment. Joseph Rapin, the steward,
+helped Lewis pack his belongings, Secretary Gallatin contributed a map
+of Vancouver's sketch of the Columbia mouth, and Madison rendered his
+parting benediction.
+
+Out of the iron gate in the high rock wall in front of the White House
+Meriwether went,--fit emblem of the young Republic, slim and lithe,
+immaculate in new uniform and three-cornered _chapeau_, his sunny
+thick-braided queue falling over the high-collared coat,--to meet the
+Potomac packet for Harper's Ferry. All around were uncut forests, save
+the little clearing of Washington, and up the umbrageous hills
+stretched an endless ocean of tree-tops.
+
+The wind blew up the Potomac, fluttering the President's gray locks.
+"If a superior force should be arrayed against your passage, return,
+Meriwether," was the anxious parting word. "To your own discretion
+must be left the degree of danger you may risk."
+
+But Meriwether had no fears.
+
+"Should you reach the Pacific Ocean,--endeavour to learn if there be
+any port within your reach frequented by sea-vessels of any nation,
+and to send two of your trusted people back by sea, with a copy of
+your notes. Should you be of opinion that the return of your party by
+the way they went will be dangerous, then ship the whole, and return
+by way of Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope. As you will be without
+money, clothes or provisions, I give you this open letter of credit
+authorising you to draw on the Executive of the United States or any
+of its officers in any part of the world. Our consuls at Batavia in
+Java, at the Isles of France and Bourbon, and at the Cape of Good Hope
+will be able to supply you necessities by drafts on us."
+
+For where in the world the Missouri led, no man then knew!
+
+"I have sometimes thought of sending a ship around to you," said
+Jefferson, "but the Spaniards would be certain to gobble it, and we
+are in trouble enough with them already over this Louisiana Purchase."
+
+Too well Lewis knew the delicacy of the situation. Spain was on fire
+over the treachery of Napoleon. "France has no right to alienate
+Louisiana!" was the cry from Madrid. But what could she do? Nothing
+but fume, delay, threaten,--Napoleon was master.
+
+"Under present circumstances," continued the President, "I consider
+futile all effort to get a ship to your succour on those shores. Spain
+would be only too glad to strike a blow. But there must be trade,
+there is trade,--all through Adams's administration the Russians were
+complaining of Yankee skippers on that northwest coast.
+
+"Russia has aided us, I may call the Emperor my personal friend." With
+pardonable pride the President thought of the bust of Alexander over
+his study door at Monticello. "Though Catherine did send poor Ledyard
+back, Alexander has proved himself true, and in case any Russian ship
+touches those shores you are safe, or English, or American. This
+letter of credit will carry you through.
+
+"And above all, express my philanthropic regard for the Indians.
+Humanity enjoins us to teach them agriculture and the domestic arts."
+
+And after Lewis was fairly started, the President sent on as a great
+secret, "I have received word from Paris that Mr. Broughton, one of
+the companions of Captain Vancouver, went up Columbia River one
+hundred miles in December, 1792. He stopped at a point he named
+Vancouver. Here the river Columbia is still a quarter of a mile wide.
+From this point Mt. Hood is seen twenty leagues distant, which is
+probably a dependency of the Stony Mountains. Accept my affectionate
+salutations."
+
+On the Fourth of July the same hand that drew up the Declaration of
+Independence had drawn for Meriwether Lewis a Letter of Credit,
+authorising him to purchase anything he needed on the credit of the
+United States in any part of the world. Was Jefferson thinking of
+those days when George Rogers Clark gave drafts on New Orleans for the
+conquest of Illinois? This again was another venture into a dark
+unwritten West.
+
+The next day Lewis "shot all his guns" at Harper's Ferry, examined
+extra locks, knives, tomahawks, accoutrements that had been
+manufactured at his special direction. The waggoner from Philadelphia
+came jolting by with Indian presents, astronomical apparatus, and
+tents on the way to Pittsburg.
+
+Pittsburg? A cloud of smoke hung even then over the embryotic city.
+Two thousand miles inland, it already had a flourishing ship-yard.
+Several large vessels lay on the stocks and builders were hammering
+day and night.
+
+"The 'Louisiana,' three hundred tons, is waiting for the next rise of
+the river," said a strapping tar. "In May a fleet of schooners went
+out to the Caribbees. You are too late for this summer's freshet."
+
+     "Come, gentlemen, gentlemen all,
+       Ginral Sincleer shall remem-ber-ed be,
+     For he lost thirteen hundred me-en all
+       In the Western Tari-to-ree."
+
+Captain Lewis took a second look at the singer,--it was George Shannon
+standing on the dock.
+
+"Why, Captain Lewis! Where are you going?"
+
+George was an old friend of Meriwether's, and yet but a lad of
+seventeen. His father, one of those "ragged Continentals" that marched
+on Yorktown, had emigrated to the far Ohio.
+
+Jane Shannon was a typical pioneer mother. She spun, wove, knit, made
+leggings of skins, and caps and moccasins, but through multitudinous
+duties found time to teach her children. "To prepare them for
+college," she said, "that is my dream. I'd live on hoe-cake for ever
+to give them a chance." Every one of her six boys inherited that
+mother's spirit, every one attained distinction.
+
+At fourteen George was sent to his mother's relatives on the
+Monongahela to school. Here he met Lewis, forted in that winter camp.
+The gallant Virginian captured the boy's fancy,--he became his model,
+his ideal.
+
+"And can you go?" asked Captain Lewis.
+
+"Go? I will accompany you to the end of the world, Captain Lewis,"
+answered George Shannon. "There is no time for mails,--I know I have
+my parent's consent. And the pay, that will take me to college!"
+Shannon enlisted on the spot, and was Lewis's greatest comfort in
+those trying days at Pittsburg.
+
+The boat-builders were drunkards. "I spent most of my time with the
+workmen," wrote Lewis to the President, "but neither threats nor
+persuasion were sufficient to procure the completion before the 31st
+of August." Loading the boat the instant it was done, they set out at
+four o'clock in the morning, with John Collins of Maryland, and George
+Gibson, Hugh McNeal, John Potts, and Peter Wiser, of Pennsylvania,
+recruits that had been ordered from Carlisle. Peter Wiser is believed
+to have been a descendant of that famous Conrad Weiser who gave his
+life to pacifying the Indian.
+
+By this time the water was low. "On board my boat opposite Marietta,
+Sept. 13," Lewis writes,--"horses or oxen--I find the most efficient
+sailors in the present state of navigation," dragging the bateaux over
+shallows of drift and sandbars.
+
+And yet that same Spring, when the water was high, Marietta had sent
+out the schooners "Dorcas and Sally," and the "Mary Avery," one
+hundred and thirty tons, with cheers and firing of cannon. When Lewis
+passed, a three-mast brig of two hundred and fifty tons and a smaller
+one of ninety tons were on the point of being finished to launch the
+following Spring, with produce for Philadelphia.
+
+George Shannon was a handsome boy, already full grown but with the
+beardless pink and white of youth. His cap would not fit down over his
+curls, but lifted like his own hopes. Nothing would start the boats at
+daylight like his jolly, rollicking
+
+     "Blow, ye winds of morning,
+     Blow, blow, blow,"
+
+rolling across the tints of sunrise. His cheeks glowed, his blue eyes
+shone to meet the wishes of his captain.
+
+Past the fairy isle of Blennerhassett with its stately mansion
+half-hid behind avenues of Lombardy poplar and tasteful shrubbery,
+Captain Lewis came on down to Fort Washington, Cincinnati, where brigs
+had lately taken on cargoes and sailed to the West Indies.
+
+Bones? Of course Lewis wanted to look at bones and send some to the
+learned President. Dr. Goforth of Cincinnati was sinking a pit at the
+Big Bone Lick for remains of the mammoth, and might not mammoths be
+stalking abroad in all that great land of the West? Mystery,
+mystery,--the very air was filled with mystery.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+_RECRUITING FOR OREGON_
+
+
+"Now that I have accepted President Jefferson's proposal to be
+associated with Captain Lewis in this expedition, it will oblige me to
+accept brother Jonathan's offer of ten thousand dollars cash for
+Mulberry Hill," William Clark was saying at Louisville. "That will
+help out brother George on his military debts, satisfy his claimants,
+and save him from ruin."
+
+At the time of sale the old home was occupied by General Clark and
+William Clark, and their sister Fanny and her children. The departure
+of William for the Pacific broke up and dispersed the happy family.
+
+The General went back to the Point of Rock, fifty feet above the
+dashing Ohio. That water was the lowest ever known now, men could walk
+across on the rocks. Three or four locust trees shaded the cabin, now
+painted white, and an orchard of peach and cherry blossomed below.
+Negro Ben and his wife Venus, and Carson and Cupid, lived back of the
+house and cultivated a few acres of grain and garden.
+
+All of Clark's old soldiers remained loyal and visited the Point of
+Rock, and every year an encampment of braves, Indian chiefs whom he
+had subdued, came for advice and to partake of his hospitality.
+
+Grand and lonely, prematurely aged at fifty-one when he should have
+been in his prime, General Clark sat overlooking the Falls when
+Captain Lewis pulled his bateaux into the Bear Grass.
+
+Captain Clark and nine young men of Kentucky were waiting for the
+boat,--William Bratton, a blacksmith, formerly of Virginia, and John
+Shields, gunsmith, the Tubal Cain of the expedition, John Coalter, who
+had been a ranger with Kenton, the famous Shields brothers, Reuben and
+James, William Warner and Joseph Whitehouse, all experts with the
+rifle, Charles Floyd, son of that Charles Floyd that rode with his
+brother from the death-stroke of Big Foot, and Nathaniel Pryor, his
+cousin.
+
+Twenty years had passed since that fatal April morning when John Floyd
+was laid a corpse at the feet of Jane Buchanan. That posthumous child,
+ushered so sadly into the world, John Floyd the younger, now a
+handsome youth, was eager to go with his cousins--but an unexpected
+illness held him back--to become a member of Congress and Governor of
+Virginia.
+
+And York, of course York. Had he not from childhood obeyed John
+Clark's command, "Look after your young master"? With highest elation
+York assisted in the preparation, furbished up his gun, and prepared
+to "slay dem buffaloes."
+
+"An interpreter is my problem now," said Captain Lewis, "a man
+familiar with Indians, trustworthy, and skilled in tongues."
+
+"I think my brother will know the man,--he has had wide experience in
+that line," said William; and so down to the Point of Rock the
+Captains betook themselves to visit George Rogers Clark.
+
+"Dignity sat still upon his countenance and the commanding look of
+Washington," wrote a chronicler of that day.
+
+"An interpreter?" mused General Clark. Then turning to his brother,
+"Do you remember Pierre Drouillard, the Frenchman that saved Kenton?
+He was a man of tact and influence with the Indians, and, although he
+wore the red coat, a man of humanity. He interpreted for me at Fort
+McIntosh and at the Great Miami. He comes with Buckongahelas."
+
+William Clark remembered.
+
+"That old Frenchman has a son, George, chip of the old block, brought
+up with the Indians and educated at a mission. He is your man,--at St.
+Louis, I think."
+
+"Always demand of the Indians what you want, William, that is the
+secret. Never let them think you fear them. Great things have been
+effected by a few men well conducted. Who knows what fortune may do
+for you?" It was the self-same saying with which twenty-four years
+before he had started to Vincennes. "Here are letters to some of my
+old friends at St. Louis and Kaskaskia," added the General.
+
+All the negroes were out to weep over York, whom they feared to see no
+more,--old York and Rose, Nancy and Julia, Jane, Cupid and Harry, from
+the scattered home at Mulberry Hill.
+
+General Jonathan Clark and Major Croghan were there, the richest men
+in Kentucky, and General Jonathan's daughters who stitched their
+samplers now at Mulberry Hill; and Lucy, from Locust Grove, the image
+of William, "with face almost too strong for a woman," some said. All
+the city knew her, a miracle of benevolence and duty, and by her side
+the little son, George Croghan, destined to hand on the renown of his
+fathers.
+
+William Clark's last word was for Fanny, a widow with children. "It is
+my desire that she should stay with Lucy at Locust Grove until my
+return," said the paternal brother, kissing her pale cheek.
+
+"And I want Johnny with me at the Point of Rock," added the lonely
+General, who, if he loved any one, it was little John O'Fallon, the
+son of his sister Fanny.
+
+"Bring on your plunder!"
+
+The Kentuckians could be recognised by their call as they helped the
+bateaux over the rapids and launched them below. George Rogers Clark
+stood on the Point of Rock, waving a last farewell, watching them down
+the river.
+
+While Captain Clark went on down the Ohio, and engaged a few men at
+Fort Massac, Captain Lewis followed the old Vincennes "trace" to
+Kaskaskia.
+
+In that very September, Sergeant John Ordway, in Russell Bissell's
+company, was writing home to New Hampshire:
+
+"Kaskaskia is a very old town of about two hundred houses and ruins of
+many more. We lie on the hill in sight of the town, and have built a
+garrison here.--If Betty Crosby will wait for my return I may perhaps
+join hands with her yet. We have a company of troops from Portsmouth,
+New Hampshire, here."
+
+Captain Lewis came up to the garrison. Out of twenty volunteers only
+three possessed the requisite qualifications. But Sergeant Ordway was
+one, Robert Frazer of Vermont, another, and Thomas P. Howard, of
+Massachusetts, the third.
+
+Oppressed and anxious in mind over the difficulty of finding suitable
+men, Captain Lewis was one morning riding along when into the high
+road there ran out a short, strong, compact, broad-chested and
+heavy-limbed man, lean, sprightly, and quick of motion, in the dress
+of a soldier. His lively eye instantly caught that of Captain Lewis.
+Perceiving that the soldier was evidently bent on seeing him, Lewis
+checked his horse and paused.
+
+With military salute the man began: "Me name is Patrick Gass, sorr,
+and I want to go with you to the Stony Mountings, but my Commander,
+sorr, here at the barracks, will not consint. He siz, siz he, 'You are
+too good a carpenter, Pat, and I need you here.'"
+
+His build, his manner, and the fact that Pat was a soldier and a
+carpenter, was enough. Men must be had, and here was a droll one, the
+predestined wit of the expedition.
+
+"I knew you, sorr, when I saw your horse ferninst the trees. I
+recognised a gintleman and an officer. I saw you whin I met Gineral
+Washington at Carlisle out with throops to suppriss the Whiskey
+Rebillion. I met Gineral Washington that day, and I sid, siz I,
+'Gineral, I'm a pathriot mesilf and I'll niver risist me gover'm'nt,
+but I love ould Bourbon too well to inlist agin the whiskey byes.'"
+
+"And have you never served in the field?" roared Lewis, almost
+impatient.
+
+"Ah, yis; whin Adams was Prisident, I threw down me jackplane and
+inlisted under Gineral Alexander Hamilton, but there was no war, so
+thin I inlisted under Major Cass."
+
+Patrick glanced back and saw his Captain. "Hist ye! shoulder-sthraps
+are comin'!"
+
+Lewis laughed. "Go and get ready, Patrick; I'll settle with your
+Captain." And Patrick, bent on a new "inlistment" and new adventures,
+hied him away to pack his belongings. For days in dreams he was
+already navigating the Missouri, already he saw the blue Pacific. As
+he told the boys afterward, "And I, siz I to mesilf, 'Patrick, let us
+to the Pecific!' Me Captain objicted, but I found out where Captain
+Lewis was sthopping and sthole away and inlisted annyhow."
+
+Captain Lewis had made no mistake. Patrick Gass, cheerful, ever brave,
+was a typical frontiersman. His had been a life of constant roving.
+Starting from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, when he was five years old,
+the family crossed the Alleghanies on packhorses. On the first horse
+was the mother, with the baby and all the table furniture and cooking
+utensils; on another were packed the provisions, the plough-irons and
+farming utensils; the third was rigged with a packsaddle and two large
+cradles of hickory withes. In the centre of these sat little Pat on
+one side and his sister on the other, well laced in with bed-clothes
+so that only their heads stuck out.
+
+Along the edges of precipices they went,--if a horse stumbled he would
+have thrown them hundreds of feet below. On these horses they forded
+mountain streams, swollen with melting snows and spring rains. Daily
+were hairbreadth escapes, the horses falling, or carried down with the
+current and the family barely snatched from drowning.
+
+The journey was made in April when the nights were cold and the mother
+could not sleep. There was so much to do for the children. As the
+tireless father kept guard under the glow of the campfire, little
+Patrick's unfailing good-night was, "Hist, child! the Injuns will come
+and take you to Detroit!"
+
+There were several of these moves in his childhood. Here and there he
+caught glimpses of well-housed, well-fed hirelings of the British army
+watching like eagles the land of the patriot army. At last they turned
+up at what is now Wellsburg in West Virginia. While yet a boy Gass was
+apprenticed to a carpenter and worked on a house for a man by the name
+of Buchanan, while around him played "little Jimmy," the
+president-to-be. "Little Jimmy was like his mother," said Gass.
+
+In December Lewis and Clark dropped down before the white-washed walls
+and gray stone parapets of the old French town of St. Louis. With
+fierce consequential air a Spanish soldier flourished his sword
+indicating the place to land.
+
+"We will spend the winter at Charette, the farthest point of
+settlement." That was the town of Daniel Boone.
+
+But the Governor, Don Carlos De Hault De Lassus, barred the way.
+
+"By the general policy of my government I am obliged to prevent
+strangers from passing through Spanish territory until I have received
+official notice of its transfer."
+
+Nothing could be done but to go into winter camp opposite the mouth of
+the Missouri, just outside of his jurisdiction, and discipline the
+men, making ready for an early spring start.
+
+Beyond the big river was foreign land. Did the Spaniard still hope to
+stay?
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+_THE FEUD IS ENDED_
+
+
+Hark! Is that the boom of distant cannon? The American troops are
+falling into line outside the walls of New Orleans on this 20th day of
+December, 1803. The tri-colour of France floats on the flagstaff; the
+sky shines irradiant, like the "suns of Napoleon."
+
+It is high noon; another salute shakes the city. "Ho, warder, lower
+the drawbridge!"
+
+With chain-pulleys rattling down goes the bridge, never to be lifted
+again. The fortress bell strikes its last peal under the flag of
+France, or Spain. With thundering tread American dragoons file under
+the portcullis of the Tchoupitoulas gate, followed by cannoneers and
+infantry in coonskin caps and leathern hunting shirts.
+
+Curiously these sons of the forest look upon the old world forts and
+donjons of masonry. The moat is filled with stagnant water. The
+ramparts of New Orleans are filled with soldiers from Havre and
+Madrid. The windows and balconies are filled with beautiful women
+weeping, weeping to see the barbarians.
+
+Laussat was looking for Napoleon's soldiers, not a sale. Pale as death
+he hands over the keys. Slowly the tri-coloured flag of France at the
+summit of the flagstaff in the plaza descends. Slowly the
+star-spangled banner uplifts; half-way the two linger in one another's
+folds.
+
+As the flags embrace, another boom, and answering guns reply from ship
+and fort and battery around the crescent of New Orleans. The flags are
+parting,--it is a thrilling moment; up, up, steadily mounts the emblem
+of America and bursts on the breeze.
+
+The band breaks into "Hail, Columbia," amid the roar of artillery and
+shouting of backwoodsmen. The map of France in the new world has
+become the map of the United States.
+
+"The flag! the flag!" Veterans of the French army receive the
+descending tri-colour, and followed by a procession of uncovered heads
+bear it with funereal tread to Laussat.
+
+"We have wished to give to France a last proof of the affection which
+we will always retain for her," with trembling lip speaks the
+flag-bearer. "Into your hands we deposit this symbol of the tie which
+has again transiently connected us with her."
+
+And Laussat with answering tears replies, "May the prosperity of
+Louisiana be eternal."
+
+But of all in New Orleans on this historic day, none fear, none
+tremble like Sister Infelice, in the cloister of the Ursulines. She
+seems to hear the very sabres beat on the convent wall. When a tropic
+hurricane sweeps up the gulf at night she falls on the cold stone
+floor and covers her head, as if the very lightning might reveal that
+form she loved so well, the great Virginia colonel. To Infelice he was
+ever young, ever the heroic saviour of St. Louis. That time could have
+changed him had never occurred to her,--he was a type of immortal
+youth.
+
+Infelice never speaks of these things, not even to her father
+confessor; it is something too deep, too sacred, a last touch of the
+world hid closer even than her heart. And yet she believes he is
+coming,--that is the cause of all this tumult and cannonading. Her
+hero, her warrior wants _her_, and none can stay him.
+
+And when the cession is fairly over and he comes not, the
+disappointment prostrates her utterly. "He cares, he cares no more!
+The Virginians? Did you say the Virginians had come?"
+
+From that bed of delirium the Mother Superior of the Ursuline house
+sent for the Mayor.
+
+"I beg to be allowed to retire with my sisterhood to some point under
+the protection of His Catholic Majesty of Spain."
+
+"Going!" exclaimed Monsieur le Mayor of New Orleans. "For why? You
+shall not be disturbed, you shall have full protection."
+
+"Do you stand for France, revolution and infidelity?" gasped the aged
+mother, denouncing the Mayor.
+
+The people pled, the Mayor went down on his knees. "Do not abandon our
+schools and our children!" But the Mother Superior was firm.
+
+Twenty-two years had the Donna De Leyba been a nun. The old official
+records are lost, but out of twenty-five nuns in the establishment we
+know the sixteen of Spain went away.
+
+All New Orleans gathered to see them depart. When the gun sounded on
+Whitsunday Eve, sixteen women in black came forth, heavily veiled. The
+convent gardens were thronged with pupils, slaves knelt by the
+wayside, the Mayor and populace followed until they embarked on the
+ship and sailed to Havana.
+
+The old Ursuline convent of New Orleans is now the archbishop's
+palace. Sister Infelice is gone, but near some old cloister of Cuba we
+know her ashes must now be reposing. Henceforth the gates were open.
+The wall decayed, the moat was filled, and over it to-day winds the
+handsomest boulevard in America.
+
+The flatboatmen came home with romantic tales of the land of the
+palmetto and orange, luxuries unknown in the rigorous north. The tide
+of emigration so long held in check burst its bounds and deluged
+Louisiana.
+
+Among other Americans that settled at New Orleans was the Fighting
+Parson. His son Charles Mynn Thruston had married Fanny.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+_THE CESSION OF ST. LOUIS_
+
+
+"Glass we must have, and quicksilver. Wife, let me have the mirror."
+
+The Madame threw up her hands. "The precious pier glass my dead mother
+brought over from France? What shall we have left?"
+
+"But Rosalie, this is an emergency for the government. The men must
+have thermometers, and barometers, and I have no glass."
+
+"The President will pay for the glass, Madame; he would consider it
+the highest use to which it could be put," said Captain Lewis.
+
+"And you shall have a better one by the next ship that sails around
+from France."
+
+So as usual to everything the Doctor wished, the good woman consented.
+None had more unbounded faith in Dr. Saugrain's gift of miracles than
+his own wife.
+
+The huge glass, that had reflected Parisian scenes for a generation
+before coming to the wilds of America, was now lifted from its gilt
+frame and every particle of quicksilver carefully scraped from the
+back. Then the pier plate was shattered and the fragments gathered,
+bit by bit, into the Doctor's mysterious crucible, making the country
+people watch and wonder.
+
+So long had Meriwether Lewis been with Jefferson, that he had imbibed
+the same eager desire to know, to understand. When he met with Doctor
+Saugrain it was like a union of kindred spirits. Saugrain, the pupil,
+friend, and disciple of the great Franklin, was often with the
+American scientist when he experimented with his kites, and drew down
+lightning to charge his Leyden jars. Three times Dr. Saugrain came to
+America, twice as guest of Dr. Franklin, before he settled down as
+physician to the Spanish garrison at St. Louis in 1800. With him he
+brought all his scientific lore, the latest of the most advanced city
+in the world. When all the world depended on flint and steel, Paris
+and Dr. Saugrain made matches. He made matches for Lewis and Clark
+that were struck on the Columbia a generation before Boston or London
+made use of the secret.
+
+Bitterly the cheerful, sprightly little Royalist in curls lamented the
+French Revolution. "Oh, the guillotine! the guillotine! My own uncle,
+Dr. Guillotine, invented that instrument to save pain, not to waste
+life. But when he saw his own friends led up to the knife, distressed
+at its abuse he died in despair!"
+
+Sufficient reason had Dr. Saugrain to be loyal to Louis XVI. For more
+than two hundred years his people had been librarians, book-binders,
+and printers for the King. Litterateurs and authors were the Saugrains
+for six continuous generations, and out of their scientific and
+historical publications came the bent of Dr. Antoine François Saugrain
+of St. Louis. But when the Bastile was stormed, Saugrain left France
+for ever. An _emigré_, a royalist, with others of the King's friends
+he came to the land that honoured Louis XVI.
+
+Between the Rue de l'Église and the Rue des Granges, at the extreme
+southwestern limit of the old village of St. Louis, stood Dr.
+Saugrain's modest residence of cement with a six-foot stone wall
+around it and extensive gardens. In his "arboretum" Dr. Saugrain was
+making a collection of the most attractive native trees he found
+around St. Louis, and some there, imported from Paris, cast their
+green shadows on the swans of his swimming pond, an old French fancy
+for his park.
+
+In this happy home with its great library, Captain Lewis became a
+welcome guest in that winter of 1803-4 while waiting for the cession.
+Under the Doctor he pursued his scientific studies, medicine, surgery,
+electricity, for not even Dr. Barton in Philadelphia could surpass the
+bright little Frenchman so strangely transplanted here in this
+uttermost border.
+
+The Doctor's taper fingers were always stained with acids and sulphur;
+busy ever with blowpipe and crucible, he fashioned tubes, filled in
+quicksilver, graduated cases, and handed out barometers and
+thermometers that amazed the frontier.
+
+"Great Medicine!" cried the Indians when he gave them a shock of
+electricity. How Dr. Saugrain loved to turn his battery and electrify
+the door-knobs when those bothersome Indians tried to enter! Or,
+"Here, White Hair, is a shilling. You can have it if you will take it
+out." The Osage chieftain plunges his arm into a crock of electrified
+water to dash off howling with affright.
+
+With intense interest Captain Lewis stood by while the
+chemist-physician dipped sulphur-tipped splints of wood into
+phosphorus, and lo! his little matches glowed like Lucifer's own. "You
+can make the sticks yourself," he said. "I will seal the phosphorus in
+these small tin boxes for safety."
+
+"And have you any kine-pox? You must surely carry kine-pox, for I hear
+those Omahas have died like cattle in a plague."
+
+"President Jefferson particularly directed me to carry some kine-pox
+virus," replied Captain Lewis, "but really, what he gave me seems to
+have lost its virtue. I wrote him so from Cincinnati, but fear it
+will be too late to supply the deficiency."
+
+Out of his medicine chest in the corner, the little Doctor brought the
+tiny vials. "Sent me from Paris. Carry it, explain it to the Indians,
+use it whenever you can,--it will save the life of hundreds." And
+other medicines, simple remedies, the good savant prescribed, making
+up a chest that became invaluable in after days.
+
+Other friends were Gratiot and the Chouteaus, Auguste and Pierre. It
+was Auguste that had planned the fortifications of St. Louis, towers
+and bastions, palisades, demilunes, scarps, counter-scarps, and sally
+ports, only finished in part when the city was handed over.
+
+Long since had Carondelet offered rewards to the traders of St. Louis
+to penetrate to the Pacific. Already the Chouteau boats had reached
+the Mandan towns, but freely they gave every information to the
+American Captain.
+
+"I send you herewith enclosed," wrote Lewis to the President, "some
+slips of the Osage plum and apple. Mr. Charles Gratiot, a gentleman of
+this place, has promised that he would with pleasure attend to the
+orders of yourself, or any of my acquaintances who may think proper to
+write him on the subject. I obtained the cuttings now sent you from
+the gardens of Mr. Peter Chouteau, who resided the greater portion of
+his time for many years with the Osage nation.
+
+"The Osage might with a little attention be made to form an ornamental
+and useful hedge. The fruit is a large oval plum, of a pale yellow
+colour and exquisite flavour. An opinion prevails among the Osages
+that the fruit is poisonous, though they acknowledge they have never
+tasted it."
+
+The leaders of all the French colonies on the Mississippi were
+gentlemen of education and talent. They saw what the cession meant,
+and hailed it with welcome. But the masses, peaceable, illiterate,
+with little property and less enterprise, contented, unambitious, saw
+not the future of that great valley where their fathers had camped in
+the days of La Salle. Frank, open, joyous, unsuspecting, wrapped in
+the pleasures of the passing hour, they cared little for wealth and
+less for government provided they were not worried with its cares.
+Their children, their fruits and flowers, the dance--happy always were
+the Creole habitants provided only they heard the fiddle string.
+Retaining all the suavity of his race, the roughest hunter could grace
+a ballroom with the carriage and manners of a gentleman.
+
+Meanwhile Captain Clark was drilling the men at camp after the fashion
+of Wayne. Other soldiers had been engaged at Fort Massac and
+elsewhere,--Silas Goodrich, Richard Windsor, Hugh Hall, Alexander
+Willard, and John B. Thompson, a surveyor of Vincennes.
+
+Never had St. Louis such days! Hurry, hurry and bustle in the staid
+and quiet town that had never before known any greater excitement than
+a church festival or a wedding,--never, that is, since those days of
+war when George Rogers Clark saved and when he threatened.
+
+But now Lewis and Clark made a deep impression on the villagers of the
+power and dignity of the United States Government. Out of their
+purchases every merchant hoped to make a fortune; the eager Frenchmen
+displayed their wares,--coffee, gunpowder, and blankets, tea at prices
+fabulous in deerskin currency and sugar two dollars a pound.
+
+But Lewis already had made up his outfit,--richly laced coats, medals
+and flags from Jefferson himself, knives, tomahawks, and ornaments for
+chiefs, barrels of beads, paints and looking-glasses, bright-coloured
+three-point Mackinaw blankets, a vision to dazzle a child or an
+Indian, who is also a child.
+
+George Drouillard was found, the skilled hunter. There was a trace of
+Indian in Drouillard; his French fathers and grandfathers had trapped
+along the streams of Ohio and Canada since before the days of Pontiac,
+in fact, with Cadillac they had helped to build Detroit.
+
+Every part of America was represented in that first exploring
+expedition,--Lewis, the kinsman of Washington, and Clark from the
+tidewater cavaliers of old Virginia, foremost of the fighting stock
+that won Kentucky and Illinois, Puritan Yankees from New England,
+Quaker Pennsylvanians from Carlisle, descendants of landholders in the
+days of Penn, French interpreters and adventurers whose barkentines
+had flashed along our inland lakes and streams for a hundred years,
+and finally, York, the negro, forerunner of his people.
+
+Cruzatte and Labiche, canoemen, were of old Kaskaskia. Pierre Cruzatte
+was near-sighted and one-eyed, but what of that? A trusted trader of
+the Chouteaus, he had camped with the Omahas, and knew their tongue
+and their country. Could such a prize be foregone for any defect of
+eyesight?
+
+Accustomed to roving with their long rifles and well-filled bullet
+pouches, nowhere in the world could more suitable heroes have been
+found for this Homeric journey.
+
+News of the sale had reached St. Louis while Captain Lewis was
+struggling with those builders at Pittsburg.
+
+"_Sacre! Diable!_" exclaimed the French. Some loved France, some clung
+to Spain, some shook their heads. "De country? We never discuss its
+affaires. Dat ees de business of de Commandante."
+
+The winter of 1803-4 was very severe. In November the ice began
+running and no one could cross until February. Then Captain Amos
+Stoddard, at Kaskaskia with his troops, sent a letter to Don Carlos De
+Hault De Lassus by a sergeant going on business to Captain Lewis.
+
+On top of the hill a double stockade of logs set vertically, the space
+between filled with dirt, a two-story log building with small windows
+and a round stone tower with a pointed cap of stone,--that was the
+fort where the Spanish soldiers waited.
+
+Down below, inhabitants in blue blanket capotes and blue kerchiefs on
+their heads, now and then in red toque or a red scarf to tie up their
+trousers, wandered in the three narrow lanes that were the streets of
+St. Louis, waiting. Before them flowed the yellow-stained,
+eddy-spotted Mississippi, behind waved a sea of prairie grass
+uninterrupted by farm or village to the Rockies.
+
+Spring blossomed. Thickets of wild plum, cherry, wild crab-apples,
+covered the prairie. Vanilla-scented locust blooms were shaking
+honey-dew on the wide verandas of the old St. Louis houses, when early
+in the morning of May 9, American troops crossed the river from
+Cahokia, and Clark's men from the camp formed in line with fife and
+drum, and colours flying. At their head Major Amos Stoddard of Boston
+and Captain Meriwether Lewis of Virginia led up to the Government
+House.
+
+Black Hawk was there to see his Spanish Father. He looked out.
+
+"Here comes your American Father," said the Commandant De Lassus.
+
+"I do not want _two_ Fathers!" responded Black Hawk.
+
+Dubiously shaking his head as the Americans approached, Black Hawk and
+his retinue flapped their blankets out of one door as Stoddard and
+Captain Lewis entered the other.
+
+Away to his boats Black Hawk sped, pulling for dear life up stream to
+his village at Rock Island. And with him went Singing Bird, the bride
+of Black Hawk.
+
+"Strange people have taken St. Louis," said the Hawk to his Sacs. "We
+shall never see our Spanish Father again."
+
+A flotilla of Frenchmen came up from Kaskaskia,--Menard, Edgar,
+Francis Vigo, and their friends. Villagers left their work in the
+fields; all St. Louis flocked to La Place d'Armes in front of the
+Government House to see the transfer.
+
+In splendid, showy uniforms, every officer of the Spanish garrison
+stood at arms, intently watching the parade winding up the limestone
+footway from the boats below.
+
+With its public archives and the property of a vast demesne, Don
+Carlos De Hault De Lassus handed over to Major Stoddard the keys of
+the Government House in behalf of France. A salvo of cannonry shook
+St. Louis.
+
+"People of Upper Louisiana," began De Lassus in a choked and broken
+voice, "_by order of the King_, I am now about to surrender this post
+and its dependencies. The flag which has protected you during nearly
+thirty-six years will no longer be seen. The oath you took now ceases
+to bind. Your faithfulness and courage in upholding it will be
+remembered for ever. From the bottom of my heart I wish you all
+prosperity."
+
+De Lassus, Stoddard, Lewis, Clark, and the soldiers filed up the
+yellow path, past the log church, to the fort on the hill. The Spanish
+flag was lowered; De Lassus wept as he took the fallen banner in his
+hand, but as the Lilies of France flashed in the sun the Creoles burst
+into tumultuous cheers. Not for forty years had they seen that flag,
+the emblem of their native land. Cannon roared, swords waved, and
+shouts were heard, but not in combat.
+
+The gates were thrown open; out came the Spanish troops with knapsacks
+on their backs, ready to sail away to New Orleans. The old brass
+cannon and munitions of war were transported down the hill, while the
+American soldiers in sombre uniforms filed into the dingy old fort of
+Spain.
+
+Major Stoddard sent for the French flag to be taken down at sunset.
+
+"No, no, let it fly! Let it fly all night!" begged the Creoles, and a
+guard of honour went up to watch the flickering emblem of their
+country's brief possession.
+
+All night long that French flag kissed the sky, all night the guard of
+honour watched, and the little log church of St. Louis was filled with
+worshippers. All the romance of Brittany and Normandy rose to memory.
+René Kiercereau the singer led in ballads of La Belle France, and the
+glories of fields where their fathers fought were rehearsed with
+swelling hearts. Not the real France but an ideal was in their hearts,
+the tradition of Louis XIV.
+
+That was the last day of France in North America. As the beloved
+banner sank the drums gave a long funeral roll, but when, instead, the
+red, white, and blue burst on the breeze, the fifes struck into lively
+music and the drums rained a cataract.
+
+"Three cheers for the American flag!" cried Charles Gratiot in the
+spirit of the Swiss republic, but there were no cheers. The Creoles
+were weeping. Sobs, lamentations arose, but the grief was mostly from
+old Frenchmen and their wives who so long had prayed that the Fleur de
+Lis might wave above San Loui'. Their sons and daughters, truly, as
+Lucien Bonaparte had warned Napoleon, "went to bed good Frenchmen, to
+awake and find themselves Americans."
+
+The huge iron cock in the belfry of the old log church spun round and
+round, as if it knew not which way the wind was blowing. In three days
+three flags over St. Louis! No wonder the iron cock lost its head and
+spun and spun like any fickle weather vane.
+
+In the same square with the Government House stood one of the Chouteau
+mansions. Auguste Chouteau had been there from the beginning, when as
+a fearless youth with Laclede he had penetrated to the site of the
+future San Loui' in 1764. He was a diplomat who met Indians and made
+alliances. He had seen the territory pass under Spain's flag, and in
+spite of that had made it more and more a place of Gallic refuge for
+his scattered countrymen. He had welcomed Saugrain, Cerré, Gratiot, in
+fact,--he and his brother Pierre remembered the day when there was no
+San Loui'.
+
+A band of Osage chiefs had come in to see their great Spanish father.
+With wondering eyes they watched the cession, and were handed over to
+Captain Lewis to deal with in behalf of the United States. A French
+messenger was sent ahead with a letter to the tribe.
+
+"The Americans taken San Loui'?"
+
+Manuel Lisa, the Spaniard, was disgusted,--it broke up his monopoly of
+the Osage trade. "We will not haf the Americans!"
+
+The Osages burnt the letter.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+_SERGEANT ORDWAY WRITES A LETTER_
+
+
+The winter of 1802-3 had been uncommonly severe. Unknown to George
+Shannon, that winter his father hunting in the dense woods of Ohio
+lost his way in a snow-storm and was frozen to death. Unaware of the
+tragedy at home, unaware also of his own inherited facility for
+getting lost, the boy set out up the winding staircase of the wild
+Missouri.
+
+An older brother, John, nineteen years of age, became the stay of that
+widowed mother with her seven small children, the least a baby, Wilson
+Shannon, twice the future Governor of Ohio and once the Governor of
+Kansas.
+
+With a pad on his knee every soldier boy wrote home from the camp on
+River Dubois opposite the mouth of the Missouri. Down through the
+years Sergeant Ordway's letter has come to us.
+
+          "CAMP RIVER DUBOIS, April the 8th, 1804.
+
+     "HONOURED PARENTS,--I now embrace this opportunity of
+     writeing to you once more to let you know where I am and
+     where I am going. I am well thank God and in high Spirits.
+     I am now on an expedition to the westward, with Capt. Lewis
+     and Capt. Clark, who are appointed by the President of the
+     United States to go on an Expedition through the interior
+     parts of North America. We are to ascend the Missouri River
+     with a boat as far as it is navigable and then to go by
+     land to the western ocean, if nothing prevents. This party
+     consists of twenty-five picked men of the armey and country
+     likewise and I am so happy as to be one of them picked from
+     the armey and I and all the party are if we live to return
+     to receive our discharge whenever we return again to the
+     United States if we choose it. This place is on the
+     Mississippi River opposite to the mouth of the Missouri
+     River and we are to start in ten days up the Missouri
+     River, this has been our winterquarters. We expect to be
+     gone 18 months or two years, we are to receive a great
+     reward for this expedition when we return. I am to receive
+     15 dollars a month and at least 400 ackers of first rate
+     land and if we make great discoveries as we expect the
+     United States has promised to make us great rewards, more
+     than we are promised, for fear of accidents I wish to
+     inform you that [personal matters].
+
+     I have received no letters since Betseys yet but will write
+     next winter if I have a chance.
+
+          "Yours, etc.,
+          "JOHN ORDWAY, _Segt._
+
+     "TO STEPHEN ORDWAY,
+     Dumbarton, N.H."
+
+
+
+
+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:
+
+     "A frigate went a-sailing,
+       _Mon joli coeur de rose_,
+     Far o'er the seas away,
+       _Joli coeur d'un rosier,
+       Joli coeur d'un rosier_."
+
+And hill and hollow echoed,
+
+     "_Mon joli coeur de rose_"
+
+"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.
+
+     "Blow, ye winds of morning,
+     Blow, blow, blow--"
+
+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
+
+     "Blow, ye winds of morning,
+     Blow, blow, blow,"
+
+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."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+_THE BRITISH FUR TRADERS_
+
+
+The movements of Lewis and Clark were watched by the Northwest
+Company, who already had planned a house at the Mandans. Jefferson was
+not an hour too soon.
+
+"Yes," said Larocque, "I will pass the winter there and watch those
+Americans."
+
+In the midst of the frightful cold, twenty-two degrees below zero, on
+December 16, 1804, Larocque and Mackenzie came over again from Fort
+Assiniboine and with them came Alexander Henry.
+
+"Strangers are among us," said the Indians, "Big Knives from below.
+Had they been kind they would have loaded their Great Boat with goods.
+As it is they prefer throwing away their ammunition to sparing a shot
+to the poor Mandans. There are only two sensible men among them, the
+worker of iron and the mender of guns."
+
+"Amazing long pickets," remarked Larocque, as they came in sight of
+the new stockade of Fort Mandan.
+
+The triangular fort, two sides formed of houses and the front of
+pickets, presented a formidable appearance in the wild.
+
+"Cannon-ball proof," remarked Larocque, taking a good squint at the
+high round bastion in the corner between the houses, defending two
+sides of the fort. On the top was a sentry all night, and below a
+sentry walked all day within the fort.
+
+"Well guarded against surprise," remarked Alexander Henry, as he
+tapped at the gate with the ramrod of his gun.
+
+As the party knocked at the gates of Fort Mandan, in their winter
+coats of leather lined with flannel, edged with fur, and
+double-breasted, the lively eye of Patrick Gass peeped out.
+
+"Some more av thim Britishers to ascertain our motives fur visitin'
+this countery, and to gain infurmation with rispict to th' change o'
+gov'm't," was the shrewd guess of Pat.
+
+The hospitable Captains were more than glad to entertain visitors.
+They were there to cultivate international amity.
+
+In their hearts Lewis and Clark never dreamed what a commotion that
+friendly letter to Chaboillez had stirred up. It had gone far and
+awakened many. Immediately upon its receipt Chaboillez sent out a
+runner.
+
+"Lewis and Clark with one hundred and eighty soldiers have arrived at
+the Mandan village," so the story flew. "On their arrival they hoisted
+the American flag and informed the natives that their object was not
+to trade, but merely to explore the country; and that as soon as
+navigation shall open they design to continue their route across the
+Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. They have made the natives a few small
+presents and repaired their guns and axes free. They have behaved
+honourably toward my people, who are there to trade with the natives."
+
+Such a message as this was enough to bring Alexander Henry down to
+investigate. The cottonwood fires at Fort Mandan roared up the
+chimneys with unwonted splendour that winter night. The thermometer
+suddenly fell to forty-five degrees below zero; but warm and
+comfortable beside the blaze they talked, American and British, in
+this border of the nations.
+
+Charles Mackenzie had been a clerk of the Northwest Company for a
+year. Of the same rank as himself was Larocque, and both were popular
+with the redmen. In fact, Mackenzie, a Scot from the Highlands, was
+already married to an Indian girl, and Larocque was a Frenchman. That
+was enough. No nation fraternized with the redmen as the Frenchmen
+did.
+
+Alexander Henry, fur trader among the American Indians and one of the
+famous Northwesters, bore a great name in the north. There were two
+Alexander Henrys; the younger was a nephew of the other, and he it
+was that had now come to visit Lewis and Clark. He knew more of the
+country than, perhaps, any other man in the northwest. In fact, his
+uncle, the elder Henry, was at Michilimackinac in the days of Pontiac,
+and had penetrated to the Saskatchewan before ever there was a
+Northwest Company.
+
+Henry, Jr., wintered on the Red River the very year that Alexander
+Mackenzie crossed the continent,--1793. As a _bourgeois_ of the
+Northwesters, with a fleet of canoes and twenty-one men he had led the
+Red River brigade of 1800 up into the Winnipeg country.
+
+The scarlet belts, breeches of smoked buckskin, and blue cloth
+leggings of Alexander Henry's old _coureur des bois_ were known for
+hundreds of miles.
+
+Yes, he knew the Sioux. Their pillaging bands sometimes plundered his
+traders. "They are not to be trusted," he declared in positive tone.
+
+"A very sensible, intelligent man," said Lewis and Clark to themselves
+as the great Northwester talked of the country and the tribes.
+
+But time seemed pressing. Questions of cold or of comfort weighed not
+with these dauntless Northwesters when the interests of their company
+were at stake. They had come on horseback. To return that way was out
+of the question; and so sleds were fitted up with Jussaume's Eskimo
+dogs, the "Huskies" of the fur traders.
+
+"They seem happy to see us," remarked Mackenzie from under his
+muffler, as they rode away. "They treat us with civility and kindness,
+but Captain Lewis cannot make himself agreeable. He speaks fluently,
+even learnedly, but to me his inveterate prejudice against the British
+stains all his eloquence."
+
+"Captain Clark is more cordial," rejoined Larocque. "He seems to
+dislike giving offence unnecessarily. Do you recall his thoughtfulness
+in sending for our horses when we feared they might be stolen? He let
+his men guard them with his own."
+
+With the thermometer thirty-two degrees below zero, the dogsleds flew
+swift across the snow, bearing news not alone to Assiniboine, but to
+Fort William on the northern shore of Lake Superior where the
+Northwesters had built their trading centre.
+
+Fort William, built in 1803 and named in honour of William
+McGillivray, was the great distributing point, where "the lords of the
+lakes and the forests" came to hold their rendezvous. In front rolled
+Superior, the great Canadian Sea. Schooners, laden with merchandise,
+peltries, and provisions, plied between Fort William and Sault Ste.
+Marie.
+
+One of the honoured names of the Northwest Company was Philip de
+Rocheblave. Captured by George Rogers Clark at Kaskaskia, sent to
+Virginia and there let out on parole, he broke faith and fled to New
+York, to turn up at Montreal in the winter of 1783-4 along with
+McTavish, McGillivray, the Frobishers and Frasers, founders of the
+Northwest Fur Company. Pierre de Rocheblave had now succeeded to his
+uncle's honours. Would he be apt to let the United States get ahead of
+him? And by means of a _Clark_ at that?
+
+"I must go down to the American fort to get my compass put in order,"
+said Larocque again, in January. "The glass is broken and the needle
+does not point due north."
+
+He found Captain Clark sketching charts of the country, Lewis making
+vocabularies; Jussaume and Charboneau, the Frenchmen, interpreting and
+disputing on the meaning of words.
+
+"They write down our words," whispered the suspicious Indians. "What
+wicked design have they on our country?"
+
+Captain Lewis spent a whole day fixing Larocque's compass.
+
+"I hardly get a skin when the Hudson's Bay trader is with me," said
+Larocque. "He is known by all the Indians, and understands and talks
+their language. I must get Charboneau." And the two went away
+together.
+
+"Of what use are beaver?" inquired the Indians. "Do you make gunpowder
+of them? Do they preserve you from sickness? Do they serve you beyond
+the grave?"
+
+Alexander Henry went to Fort William.
+
+"A new rival has arisen," said the Northwest traders at their hurried
+conference. "We must anticipate these United States explorers and
+traders. They may advance northward and establish a claim to ownership
+by prior right of discovery or occupation. We must build a chain of
+posts and hold the country."
+
+"But whom can we send on such a monumental enterprise?"
+
+There seemed but one man,--Simon Fraser.
+
+Simon Fraser was the son of a Scottish Tory who had been captured by
+the Americans at Burgoyne's surrender and had died in prison. His
+wife, with Simon a babe in arms, removed to Canada, to rear her son
+beneath the banner of her King. At sixteen, young Fraser became a
+clerk of the Northwest Company and a _bourgeois_. But the Frasers were
+great-brained people; young Simon was soon promoted; and now at the
+age of twenty-nine he was put in charge of the greatest enterprise
+since the incomparable feat of Alexander Mackenzie.
+
+"You, Simon Fraser, are to establish trading-posts in the unknown
+territory, and in this way take possession for Great Britain."
+
+Over at Sault Ste. Marie a young doctor by the name of John McLoughlin
+would gladly have accompanied his uncle Simon on that perilous
+undertaking. But his day was to come later. Both of their names are
+now linked with the Old Oregon.
+
+Young men of the two most progressive modern nations were to be pitted
+in this race for Empire,--Lewis and Clark, and Simon Fraser.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+_FAREWELL TO FORT MANDAN_
+
+
+On the first day of March preparations began on the building of new
+boats. The old ones were pried out of the ice, and the whole party was
+busy making elk-skin ropes and pirogues, in burning coal, and in
+making battle-axes to trade for corn. Ducks began to pass up the
+river; swans and wild geese were flying north.
+
+Old Chief Le Borgne of the Minnetarees, a giant in stature, a brute at
+heart, had held aloof all winter in his tepee.
+
+"Foolish people! Stay at home!" he cried.
+
+But strange rumours crept within the walls of the sulky Cyclops.
+Overcome at last by curiosity Le Borgne came down to the fort.
+
+"Some foolish young men of my nation tell me there is a man among you
+who is black. Is that true?"
+
+"It is," answered Clark. "York, come here."
+
+With his one fierce eye, Le Borgne examined York closely. He wet his
+finger and rubbed the skin to see if the black would come off. Not
+until the negro uncovered his head and showed his woolly hair could
+the chief be persuaded that York was not a painted white man.
+
+Convinced against his will, and amazed, Le Borgne arose with a snort,
+his black hair flying over his brawny shoulders, and stalked out. As
+he passed along, the Indians shrank back. Over the hill came the wail
+of a demented mother. Many a fair Indian girl had left her scalp at
+the door of this Indian Blue-Beard because she preferred some other
+lover.
+
+The ice was already honeycombed. Larocque came over for a farewell.
+
+"McTavish is dead," he said.
+
+Lewis and Clark scarcely comprehended the full import of that
+announcement.
+
+At the foot of the mountain in Montreal the great Northwester was
+building a palace, fit abode for "the lord of the lakes and the
+forest," when the summons came in 1804. Up the rivers and lakes the
+word was carried into the uttermost wilds,--"McTavish is dead." Thus
+it came to Lewis and Clark, this last news from the outer world.
+
+The meeting at Fort William had been held without him,--McTavish was
+dead.
+
+He was the head and front of the Northwest Company. Under the King,
+Simon McTavish ruled Canada, ruled half of British America, making
+Hudson's Bay tremble on her northern sea.
+
+The quick wit of the American born of Irish parents belonged to
+Patrick Gass. While others were struggling toward an idea, Pat had
+already seized it. Brave, observant, of good sense, and hating the
+British, he kept an eye on Larocque.
+
+"Do not trust that Frinchman."
+
+Larocque had a stock of goods to trade. He lingered around Fort
+Mandan, and offered to go over the mountains with Lewis and Clark, but
+they politely declined. Already Larocque knew of the order at Fort
+William. His own brother-in-law, Quesnel, was to be the companion of
+Fraser's voyage, and was to leave, like Fraser, his name on the rivers
+of British Columbia.
+
+Then there was trouble with Charboneau. He became independent and
+impudent and demanded higher wages. Somebody was tampering with
+Charboneau. Suddenly flaming with new raiment, gay vests, and yards of
+blue and scarlet cloth, he announced:
+
+"I weel not work. I weel not stand guard. I eenterpreteur,--do as I
+pleese, return wheen I pleese."
+
+"We can dispense with your services," coolly answered the Captains.
+Charboneau stepped back, surprised.
+
+Ignoring his presence, preparations were hurried on. The boats, the
+troublesome, cracking, warping cottonwood boats, were hauled to the
+fort and pitched and calked and tinned, until at last they were ready
+to try the water. No one spoke to the Frenchman, no one noticed him as
+he lingered expectantly by.
+
+All the Indian goods were brought out and hung in the open air. Even
+at the busiest moments, with every man on the jump, no one asked
+Charboneau to help. Finding he was about to lose his position, the
+Frenchman came to Captain Lewis, apologised, and was restored to
+service. In a trice Charboneau was back at the skillets, dishing up
+the dinner.
+
+The occupants of Fort Mandan had been snow-bound five months when ice
+began running in the river. All day long now the busy Indians were
+catching buffalo floating by on the high water. The foolish animals,
+trying to cross the thin ice, broke through. Others floated away on
+big cakes that were certain, sooner or later, to launch them into
+eternity.
+
+The patient, devoted women, too, were in evidence. Slipping out of
+their leather smocks, they plunged naked into the icy current to
+secure the floating driftwood for fuel. Across the snow long lines of
+squaws came dragging home the drift.
+
+The hammers of Shields and Bratton rang merrily at the anvils. Boxes
+were made and hooped and ironed, to go down in the big bateau that was
+too unwieldy to carry further.
+
+In those stout boxes were horns of the mountain ram, unknown as yet to
+science, horns of elk and deer, rare skins, robes and Indian dresses;
+bow, arrows, and a shield for the President, on which Old Black Cat
+had spent months of patient carving; samples of the red Arikara corn;
+sixty-seven specimens of earths, salts, and minerals, and sixty
+specimens of plants, all carefully labelled; seeds, insects, the
+skeleton of the big fish from the hilltop, stuffed antelopes and
+Lewis's pelican, a live prairie dog in a wicker cage, a live prairie
+hen and four magpies. A new geography was there, a map of the Missouri
+extending out to the mystic mountains, drawn from Indian description,
+to be presented by Jefferson to Congress.
+
+In these boxes, too, went letters. There was one of several thousand
+words from Lewis to his mother. Captain Clark's first and best letter
+was to his brother at the Point of Rock; with it he enclosed a map
+and sketches of Indians. Another was to Major Croghan at Locust
+Grove, with seeds of several kinds of grapes for his sister Lucy.
+
+With the bateau went also the famous Mandan report of Lewis to
+Jefferson, and Clark's letter to his soldier friend, William Henry
+Harrison, then Governor of the Indian Territory at Vincennes. Other
+missives went to Ohio, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts,
+Pennsylvania,--wherever a man had a mother at the hearthstone waiting
+to hear of her distant boy. Saddest of all was the news to Mill Creek,
+the home of Sergeant Floyd. Part of Clark's journal was transmitted by
+letter to the President and part was enclosed in a separate tin box,
+"to multiply the chances of saving something."
+
+The Mandan treasures, with dispatches and presents from the Indians,
+went down by water to the Gulf and thence by sea to Washington.
+
+"I have little doubt but they will be fired on by the Sioux," says
+Lewis in his letter, "but they have pledged themselves to us that they
+will not yield while there is one of them living."
+
+At five o'clock on Sunday afternoon, April 7, 1805, the barge left
+Fort Mandan for St. Louis with ten men. With it went also Brave Raven
+of the Arikaras, to visit his Great Father, the President.
+
+At the same moment that the barge left the fort, six small canoes and
+the two pirogues shot up river, carrying thirty-one men and Sacajawea
+with her child.
+
+"This little fleet, although not quite so respectable as those of
+Columbus or Captain Cook, is still viewed by us with as much pleasure
+as those famed adventurers ever beheld theirs," said Lewis, "and I
+dare say with quite as much anxiety for their safety and preservation.
+We are now about to penetrate a country at least two thousand miles in
+width, on which the foot of civilised man has never trodden.
+
+"Entertaining as I do the most confident hope of succeeding in a
+voyage which has formed a darling project of mine for ten years, I can
+but esteem this moment of our departure as among the happiest of my
+life."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+_TOWARD THE SUNSET_
+
+
+The Spring days were squally and chill. The air was sharp, and the
+water froze on the oars as the little party rowed along. Now and then
+a flurry of snow whitened the April green. Sometimes the sails were
+spread, and the boats scurried before the wind. Often, however, the
+sails proved too large, and over the boats lurched, wetting the
+baggage and powder.
+
+Most of the powder had been sealed in leaden canisters. When the
+powder was emptied the canister itself was melted into bullets. That
+was a nightly task,--the moulding of bullets.
+
+"Hio! hio!" The hunters ahead picked a camping spot, beside a spring
+or by a clump of trees. In short order brass kettles were swung across
+the gipsy poles. Twisting a bunch of buffalo grass into a nest, in a
+moment Dr. Saugrain's magical matches had kindled a roaring flame.
+
+Swinging axes made music where axes had never swung before. Baby
+Touissant rolled his big eyes and kicked and crowed in his mother's
+lap, while Charboneau, head cook, stuffed his trapper's sausage with
+strips of tenderloin and hung it in links around the blaze.
+
+Stacks of buffalo meat lay near by, where they had been piled by the
+industrious hunters. Odours of boiling meat issued from the kettles.
+Juicy brown ribs snapped and crackled over the flames.
+
+Captain Lewis, accustomed to the _cuisine_ of Jefferson at the White
+House, laughed.
+
+"How did you dress this sausage so quick, Charboneau? Two bobs and a
+flirt in the dirty Missouri?"
+
+Sometimes Lewis himself turned cook, and made a suet dumpling for
+every man. More frequently he was off to the hills with Clark, taking
+a look at the country.
+
+Nor was Sacajawea idle. With her baby on her back, she opened the
+nests of prairie mice, and brought home artichokes. Sometimes she
+brought sprouts of wild onion for the broth, or the _pomme
+blanche_,--the peppery Indian turnip. York, too, at his master's
+direction often gathered cresses and greens for the dinner. But York
+was becoming a hunter. As well as the best, he "slew dem buffaloes."
+
+Lewis had bought Charboneau's big family tent. Under its leather
+shelter slept the Captains, with Drouillard and Charboneau and his
+little family.
+
+Around the twilight fires the men wrote their journals,--Lewis, Clark,
+Pryor, Ordway, Gass, Fraser, all busy with their stub quill pens and
+inkhorns, recording the day's adventure.
+
+They were not scholars, any of them, but men of action, pioneers and
+explorers, heralds of the nation. In their strenuous boyhood they had
+defended the frontier. Men at sixteen, they took up a man's
+employment. Lewis, more favoured, prolonged his schooldays until the
+age of eighteen, then broke away to march with armies.
+
+At last these first civilised sounds that ever broke the silence
+primeval were hushed. Rolled up like cocoons in their mackinaw
+blankets, the men were soon snoring in rows with feet to the fires,
+while a solitary sergeant peered into the lonely night. The high
+Dakota wind roared among the cottonwoods. Mother Nature, too, kept
+guard, lighting her distant beacons in the blue above the soldier
+boys.
+
+In a land of wolves, no wolves molested, though they yelped and barked
+in the prairie grass. On all sides lay deserted camps of Assiniboine
+Sioux. Once the expedition crossed the trail of a war party only
+twenty-four hours old. A dog left behind came to the camp of the
+explorers and became the pet of Captain Lewis.
+
+"Kip so quiet lak' one leetle mouse," whispered Cruzatte, cautioning
+silence.
+
+No one cared to meet the Assiniboine Sioux, the "_Gens des Grands
+Diables_." Once the smoke of their campfires clouded the north; but
+the boats sped on undiscovered.
+
+"The river reminds me of the Ohio at this time of year," said Clark.
+
+"The drumming of that sharp-tailed grouse is like that of the
+pheasants of old Virginia," responded Lewis.
+
+"And the croaking of the frogs exactly resimbles that of frogs in th'
+Yaunited States," added Patrick Gass.
+
+For days they noted veins of coal burning along the river banks,
+kindled perhaps by Indian fires. Alkali dust began to rise, blown into
+clouds, and sifting into their tight double-cased watches until the
+wheels refused to move more than a few minutes at a time.
+
+Toward the last of April Lewis went ahead to the mouth of the
+Rochejaune, the Yellow Rock, or Yellowstone River, passing through
+herds of elk, antelope, and buffalo, so tame they would scarce move
+out of his way. Beautiful dun deer snorted and pawed the leaves, then
+half trusting, half timorous, slipped into the thicket. No one but
+Sacajawea had ever before been over this road.
+
+In May they reached the land where even the beaver were gentle, for
+they had never been hunted. No white man, so far as they knew, had
+ever trodden these wilds. They had not heard of the gallant Sieur
+Verendrye, two of whose intrepid sons reached the "Shining Mountains"
+on New Year's Day, 1743. Washington was a boy then; George Rogers
+Clark was not born.
+
+But the Snakes and the Sioux were at war, fierce battles were raging,
+and they were forced to turn back. The noble Verendrye spent all his
+fortune, and forty thousand livres besides, in trying to find the
+River of the West.
+
+Then Jonathan Carver of Connecticut set out about the time Boone went
+to Kentucky. At the Falls of St. Anthony, he, too, heard of the
+Shining Mountains.
+
+"The four most capital rivers of North America take their rise about
+the centre of this continent," said Carver. "The River Bourbon, which
+empties into Hudson's Bay; the Waters of St. Lawrence; the
+Mississippi; and the River Oregon, or the River of the West, that
+falls into the Pacific Ocean at the Straits of Anian."
+
+What little bird whispered "Oregon" in Carver's ear? No such word is
+known in any Indian tongue. Had some Spanish sailor told of a shore
+"like his own green Arragon"?
+
+And now Lewis and Clark are on the sunset path. Will _they_ find the
+Shining Mountains and the River of the West?
+
+At the first large branch beyond the Yellowstone, Captain Lewis went
+on shore with Drouillard the hunter. Out of a copse suddenly appeared
+two grizzlies.
+
+Lewis remembered well the awe and absolute terror with which the
+Mandans had described this king of Western beasts. Never did they go
+out to meet him without war-paint and all the solemn rites of battle.
+As with the cave bear of ancient song and saga, no weapon of theirs
+was adequate to meet this dreaded monster. In parties of six or eight
+they went, with bows and arrows, or, in recent years, the bad guns of
+the trader.
+
+With these things in mind, Lewis and the hunter faced the bears. Each
+fired, and each wounded his beast. One of the bears ran away; the
+other turned and pursued Captain Lewis, but a lucky third shot from
+Drouillard laid him low.
+
+And what a brute was he! Only a cub and yet larger than any bear of
+the Atlantic States, the grizzly, known now to be identical with the
+awful cave bear of prehistoric time. No wonder the Indian that slew
+him was a brave and in the line of chieftainship! No wonder the claws
+became a badge of honour! No man, no foe so fierce to meet as one
+enraged and famished grizzly. His skin was a king's robe, his tusk an
+emblem of unflinching valour.
+
+A wind from the east now filled the sails and blew them west! west!
+More and more tame grew the elk and buffalo, until the men were
+obliged to drive them out of their way with sticks and stones.
+
+Before them unrolled the great wild garden of Eden. Abounding
+everywhere were meadows,--beaver meadows and clover meadows, wild rice
+and rye and timothy, and buffalo grazing on a thousand hills. Prairie
+fowl scurried in the under-brush, beautiful white geese gazed calmly
+at them, ducks quacked around ponds and streams alive with trout.
+
+Wild gardens were radiant with roses and honeysuckles, morning-glories
+and wild hops. Whole fields of lilies perfumed the sunrise,
+strawberries carpeted the uplands, and tangles of blackberries and
+raspberries interwove a verdant wall along the buffalo trails, the
+highways of the wilderness.
+
+Mountain sheep sported on the cliffs, the wild cat purred in her
+forest lair. The yellow cougar, the mountain lion, growled and slunk
+away. The coyote, the Indian dog, snapped and snarled. But man, man
+was not there. For four months no Indian appeared through all the
+Great Lone Land of the Tay-a-be-shock-up, the country of the
+mountains.
+
+William Bratton, who had been walking along the shore, presently came
+running to the boats with cries of terror.
+
+"Take me on board, quick!"
+
+It was some moments before Bratton could speak.
+
+"A bear! a bear!" he gasped at last.
+
+A mile and a half back Bratton had wounded a grizzly that turned and
+chased him. Captain Lewis and seven men immediately started. For a
+mile they tracked the trail of blood to a hole where the enraged
+animal was frantically tearing up the earth with teeth and claws. Two
+shots through the skull finished the grizzly, whose fleece and skin
+made a load which two men could scarcely carry back to camp.
+
+"More bear-butter to fry me sassage," remarked unsentimental
+Charboneau.
+
+But now had begun in earnest the days of wild adventure. One evening
+after another grizzly battle, the men came triumphantly into camp to
+find disaster there. Charboneau had been steersman that night, and
+Cruzatte was at the bow. A sudden squall struck the foremost pirogue,
+Charboneau let go the tiller, the wind bellied the sail, and over they
+turned.
+
+"De rudder! de rudder!" shouted Cruzatte.
+
+Charboneau, the most timid waterman in the party, clinging to the
+gunwales, heard only his own voice in the wind, crying aloud to
+heaven, "_Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_"
+
+"De rudder!" roared Cruzatte. "Seize de rudder instanter and do de
+duty, or I _shoot_ you!"
+
+Fear of Cruzatte's gun overcame fear of drowning. Charboneau, pallid
+and trembling, reached for the flying rope. Half a minute the boat lay
+on the wave, then turned up full of water.
+
+At last, holding the brace of the square sail, Charboneau pulled the
+boat round, while all hands fell to bailing out the water. But all the
+papers, medicine, and instruments were wet.
+
+Cruzatte alone was calm, and Sacajawea, who, with her baby and herself
+to save, still managed to catch and preserve most of the light
+articles that were floating overboard.
+
+Captain Lewis, watching the disaster from afar, had almost leaped into
+the water to save his precious papers, but was restrained by the
+reflection that by such rashness he might forfeit his life.
+
+Two days were lost in unpacking and drying the stores.
+
+At midnight a buffalo ran into the sleeping camp.
+
+"Hey! hey! hey!" shouted the guard, firing on the run and waving his
+arms. But the distracted beast, plunging close to the heads of the
+sleeping men, headed directly toward the leather tent.
+
+Suddenly up before his nose danced the little Indian dog, and the
+buffalo was turned back into the night just as the whole camp jumped
+to arms in expectation of an attack of the Sioux.
+
+"Fire! Fire!" was the next alarm.
+
+In the high wind of the night one of the fires had communicated itself
+to a dead cottonwood overhanging the camp. Fanned by the gale the
+flames shot up the trunk, and burning limbs and twigs flew in a shower
+upon the leather tent.
+
+"Fire! fire! fire!" again came the quick, sharp cry.
+
+Every man rolled out of his mackinaw. The occupants of the lodge were
+soon aroused. Strong hands had scarcely removed the lodge and
+quenched the burning leather before the tree itself fell directly over
+the spot where a moment before the Captains were sleeping soundly.
+
+And so that stream was named the Burnt Lodge Creek.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+_THE SHINING MOUNTAINS_
+
+
+Ascending the highest summit of the hills on the north side of the
+river, on Sunday, the 26th of May, Captain Lewis first caught a
+distant view of "the Rock mountains--the object of all our hopes, and
+the reward of all our ambition."
+
+"When I viewed--I felt a secret pleasure,--but when I reflected on the
+difficulties which this snowy barrier would most probably throw in my
+way to the Pacific, and the sufferings and hardships of myself and
+party in them, it in some measure counterbalanced the joy."
+
+Bold and bolder grew the river shores. The current now became too
+rapid for oars, too deep for poles. Nothing but the tow-line could
+draw the boats against the swift flow of the mountain torrent.
+Struggling along shore with the rope on their shoulders, the men lost
+their moccasins in the clinging clay and went barefoot. Sometimes
+knee-deep, they waded, sometimes waist-deep, shoulders-deep, in the
+icy water, or rising on higher benches walked on flinty rocks that cut
+their naked feet.
+
+Leaping out of the mountains, came down a laughing sparkling river,
+the clearest they had yet seen. Its valley seemed a paradise of ash
+and willow, honeysuckles and wild roses. Standing on its bank Clark
+mused, "I know but one other spot so beautiful. I will name this river
+for my little mountain maid of Fincastle, the Judith."
+
+Could he then foresee that Judith would become his wife, or that the
+verdant Judith Basin would be the last retreat of the buffalo?
+
+Big horned mountain sheep were sporting on the cliffs, beaver built
+their dams along its shores, and up the Judith Gap the buffalo had his
+mountain home. The Indian, too, had left there the scattered embers of
+a hundred fires.
+
+Lewis picked up a moccasin.
+
+"Here, Sacajawea, does this belong to your people?"
+
+The Bird Woman shook her head. "No Shoshone." She pointed to the north
+where the terrible Blackfeet came swooping down to shoot and scalp. It
+was time to hasten on.
+
+Valley succeeded valley for miles on miles, and between valleys arose
+hills of sandstone, worn by suns and storms into temples of desolated
+magnificence; ruins of columns and towers, pedestals and capitals,
+parapets of statuary, sculptured alcoves and mysterious galleries.
+Sheer up from the river's side they lifted their heads like old
+Venetian palaces abandoned to the bats.
+
+June 3 the river forked.
+
+"Which is the true Missouri?"
+
+"De nort'ern branch. See it boil and roll?" said Cruzatte. "See de
+colour? Dat de true Meessouri. De ot'er ees but one leetle stream from
+de mountain."
+
+But the Captains remembered the advice of the Minnetarees.
+
+"The Ah-mateah-za becomes clear, and has a navigable current into the
+mountains."
+
+Parties were sent up both branches to reconnoitre. Lewis and Clark
+ascended the high ground in the fork and looked toward the sunset.
+Innumerable herds of buffalo, elk, and antelope were browsing as far
+as the eye could reach, until the rivers were lost in the plain.
+
+Back came the canoes undecided. Then the Captains set out. Clark took
+the crystal pebbly southern route. Lewis went up the turbid northern
+branch fifty-nine miles.
+
+"This leads too far north, almost to the Saskatchewan," he concluded,
+and turned back. In the summer sunshine robins sang, turtle doves,
+linnets, the brown thrush, the goldfinch, and the wren, filled the
+air with melody.
+
+"I will call it Maria's River, for my beautiful and amiable cousin,
+Maria Wood of Charlottesville," thought Lewis, with a memory of other
+Junes in old Virginia.
+
+When Lewis drew up at camp, Clark was already there, anxious for his
+safety. The main party, occupied in dressing skins and resting their
+lame and swollen feet, looked eagerly for the decision. To their
+surprise both Captains agreed on the southern route.
+
+"But Cruzatte," exclaimed the men, "he thinks the north stream is the
+true river, and Cruzatte is an experienced waterman. We may be lost in
+the mountains far from the Columbia."
+
+"True. Everything depends on a right decision. Captain Clark, if you
+will stay here and direct the deposit of whatever we can spare, I will
+go ahead until I know absolutely."
+
+At dawn Lewis set out with Drouillard, Gibson, Goodrich, and Joe
+Fields.
+
+Under Captain Clark's direction, Bratton, the blacksmith, set up his
+forge at the mouth of Maria's River and Shields mended all the broken
+guns. The rest dug a _cache_, a kettle-shaped cellar, on a dry spot
+safe from water. The floor was covered with dry sticks and a robe.
+Then in went the blacksmith's heavy tools, canisters of powder, bags
+of flour and baggage,--whatever could be spared. On top was thrown
+another robe, and then the earth packed in tight and the sod refitted
+so that no eye could detect the spot.
+
+The red pirogue was drawn up into the middle of a small island at the
+mouth of Maria's River and secured in a copse.
+
+"Boys, I am very ill," said Captain Lewis, when they camped for dinner
+on the first day out. Attacked with violent pains and a high fever,
+unable to proceed, he lay under some willow boughs.
+
+No medicine had been brought. Drouillard was much concerned. "I well
+remember," he said, "when a flux was epidemic at Chillicothe among de
+white settlers, my fader, Pierre Drouillard, administer on de sick
+wit' great success."
+
+"What did he use?"
+
+"A tea of de choke-cherry."
+
+"Prepare me some," said the rapidly sinking Captain.
+
+With deft fingers Drouillard stripped off the leaves of a choke-cherry
+bough, and cut up the twigs. Black and bitter, the tea was brought to
+Lewis at sunset. He drank a pint, and another pint an hour afterward.
+By ten o'clock the pain was gone, a gentle perspiration ensued, the
+fever abated, and by morning he was able to proceed.
+
+The next day, June 12, the mountains loomed as never before, rising
+range on range until the distant peaks commingled with the clouds.
+Twenty-four hours later Lewis heard the roaring of a cataract, seven
+miles away, and saw its spray, a column of cloud lifted by the
+southwest wind. Like Hiawatha he had--
+
+     "Journeyed westward, westward,
+     Left the fleetest deer behind him,
+     Left the antelope and bison,
+     Passed the mountains of the Prairie,
+     Passed the land of Crows and Foxes,
+     Passed the dwellings of the Blackfeet,
+     Came unto the Rocky Mountains,
+     To the kingdom of the West-Wind."
+
+Hastening on with impatient step he came upon the stupendous
+waterfall, one of the glories of our continent, that hidden here in
+the wilderness had for ages leaped adown the rocky way. Overwhelmed
+with the spectacle Lewis sat down "to gaze and wonder and adore." "Oh,
+for the pencil of Salvator Rosa or the pen of Thompson, that I might
+give to the world some idea of this magnificent object, which from the
+commencement of time has been concealed from the view of civilised
+man."
+
+Joe Fields was immediately dispatched to notify Clark of the discovery
+of the Falls. Lewis and the other men went on up ten miles, gazing at
+cataract after cataract where the mighty Missouri bent and paused, and
+gathering its full volume leaped from rock to rock, sometimes wild
+and irregularly sublime, again smooth and elegant as a painter's
+dream.
+
+Lewis, impatient to see and know, hurried on past the rest until night
+overtook him alone near the head of the series of cataracts. On the
+high plain along the bank a thousand buffalo were feeding on the short
+curly grass. Lewis shot one for supper, and leaning upon his unloaded
+rifle watched to see it fall.
+
+A slight rustle attracted his attention. He turned. A bear was
+stealing upon him, not twenty steps away. There was no time for
+reloading, flight alone remained. Not a bush, not a tree, not a rock
+was near, nothing but the water. With a wild bound Lewis cleared the
+intervening space and leaped into the river. Turning, he presented his
+_espontoon_. The bear, already at the bank, was about to spring, but
+that defiant _espontoon_ in his face filled him with terror. He turned
+and ran, looking back now and then as if fearing pursuit, and
+disappeared.
+
+Clambering out of the water, Lewis started for camp, when, sixty paces
+in front of him, a strange animal crouched as if to spring. Lewis
+fired and a mountain lion fled. Within three hundred yards of the
+spot, three enraged buffalo bulls left the herd, and shaking their
+shaggy manes, ran pawing and bellowing, full speed upon him. Eluding
+the bulls, Lewis hurried to camp. Worn out, he fell asleep, only to
+awaken and find a huge rattlesnake coiled around the tree above his
+head! Such was earth primeval!
+
+The Great Falls of the Missouri was the rendezvous for all wild life
+in the country. Thousands of impatient buffaloes pushed each other
+along the steep rocky paths to the water. Hundreds went over the
+cataract to feed the bears and wolves below.
+
+Captain Clark soon arrived with the main body and went into camp at a
+sulphur spring, a favourite resort of buffaloes.
+
+"This is precisely like Bowyer's sulphur spring of Virginia,--it will
+be good for Sacajawea," said Lewis, bringing her a cup of the
+transparent water that tumbled in a cascade into the Missouri.
+
+Sacajawea was sick, very sick, delirious at times as she lay on her
+couch of skins. The journey had been difficult. The hungry little baby
+was a great burden, and Sacajawea was only sixteen, younger even than
+Shannon, the boy of the party.
+
+Clark directed his negro servant, York, to be her constant attendant.
+Charboneau was cautioned on no account to leave her. Several other
+semi-invalids guarded the tent to keep the buffaloes away. Every day,
+and twice a day, the Captains came to see her and prescribe as best
+they could.
+
+Now came the tedious days of portaging the boats and baggage around
+the Falls. A cottonwood tree, nearly two feet in diameter, was sawed
+into wheels. The white pirogue was hidden in a copse and its mast was
+taken for an axletree.
+
+Opposite the spot where the waggons were made was an island full of
+bears of enormous size. Their growling and stealthy movements went on
+day and night. All night the watchful little dog kept up incessant
+barking. The men, disturbed in their slumbers, lay half-awake with
+their arms in hand, while the guard patrolled with an eye on the
+island. Bolder and bolder grew the bears. One night they came to the
+very edge of the camp and ran off with the meat hung out for
+breakfast.
+
+At last the rude waggons were done. The canoes were mounted and filled
+with baggage. Slowly they creaked away, tugged and pushed and pulled
+up hills that were rocky and rough with hummocks where the buffaloes
+trod. Prickly-pears, like little scythes, cut and lacerated, even
+through double-soled moccasins. At every halt, over-wearied and worn
+out by night watching, the toilers dropped to the ground and fell
+asleep instantly.
+
+A whole month was spent in making the carriages and transporting the
+baggage the eighteen miles around the Falls. In another _cache_ at the
+sulphur spring, they buried Lewis's writing desk, specimens of plants
+and minerals, provisions, the grindstone brought from Harper's Ferry,
+books and a map of the Missouri River. The blunderbuss was hid under
+rocks at the foot of the Falls.
+
+Sacajawea, recovered from her illness, began to look for familiar
+landmarks. One day Clark took her, together with Charboneau and York,
+to look at the Falls. He had surveyed and measured the Black Eagle,
+Crooked Rainbow, and Great Falls. "Come," he said, "Charboneau, bring
+Sacajawea. Let us go up and look at the Black Eagle." High above the
+cataract the bird had built its nest in the top of a cottonwood tree.
+
+A dark cloud was rising. Under a shelving rock they took refuge in a
+ravine, Captain Clark still figuring at his notes.
+
+A few drops of rain fell,--in an instant a torrent, a cloud-burst,
+rolled down the ravine.
+
+Clark saw it coming. Snatching his gun and shot-pouch, he pushed
+Sacajawea and the baby up the cliff, while Charboneau above was
+pulling her by the hand. Up to Clark's waist the water came. Fifteen
+feet it rose behind him as he climbed to safety.
+
+Compass and umbrella were lost in the scramble. Charboneau had left
+his gun, tomahawk, and shot-pouch. Sacajawea had just snatched her
+baby before its cradle went into the flood. After the storm they came
+down into the plain, to find York in affright lest they had been swept
+into the river.
+
+On account of the great heat, the men at the waggons had laid aside
+their leather hunting shirts, when down upon their bare backs came a
+shower of huge hailstones. Bruised, battered, and bleeding as from a
+battle, they straggled into camp. Kind-hearted Lewis set to work with
+linens and medicine, bandaging up their wounds.
+
+The next morning Captain Clark sent two men to look for the articles
+lost at the Falls. They found the ravine filled with rock, but
+happily, half-hid in mud and sand, the precious compass was recovered.
+
+Within view of the camp that day Clark estimated not less than ten
+thousand buffalo. And beyond, rimmed on the far horizon, ran the white
+line of the mountain crest that is to-day the western boundary of
+Montana.
+
+The 4th of July dawned, the second since they had left the States. In
+the hills they heard strange booming, as of a distant cannonade. It
+almost seemed as if the Rocky Mountains were reverberating back the
+joyous guns of Baltimore and Boston. The men listened in amaze.
+
+"What can it be?"
+
+"Een de mountain," answered Cruzatte. "De vein of silver burst. De
+Pawnee and de Rickara hear eet een de Black Hill."
+
+"Ah, yes, the Minnetarees talked of a noise in the mountains. We
+thought it was superstition."
+
+Again through long silence came the great cannonade. Unconsciously
+Lewis and Clark trod on closed treasure houses, future mines of
+unwashed tons of gold and silver. Had they brought back gold then what
+might have been the effect upon the restless, heaving East? But, no,
+the land must wait and grow. Other wars must be fought with the
+Englishman and the Indian, armies of trappers must decimate the bears
+and wolves, and easier methods of transportation must aid in opening
+up the great Montana-land.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+_A WOMAN PILOT_
+
+
+Monday, July 15, 1805, the boats were launched above the Great Falls
+of the Missouri. Clark followed by land along an old Indian trail,
+worn deep by the lodge-poles of ages.
+
+Little did he realise that nuggets lay scattered all over that land,
+where yet the gold hunters should dot the hills with shafts and
+mounds; that near here a beautiful city, named for Helen of Troy,
+should arise to become a golden capital.
+
+"My people! My people!" Sacajawea excitedly pointed to deserted
+wickiups and traces of fires. She read their story at a glance.
+
+"It was winter. They were hungry. There were no buffalo. See!" She
+pointed to the pines stripped of bark and the tender inner wood, the
+last resort of famishing Shoshones.
+
+With flags hoisted to notify the Indians that they were friends, the
+canoes passed within the Gates of the Mountains, where the mighty
+Missouri breaks through the Belt Range of western Montana. Nothing in
+Alleghany lands compares with this tremendous water-gap. Through the
+dark cavern the river ran narrow and rapid and clear. Down through
+tributary canyons on either side came rifts of light, odours of pine,
+and the roar of waterfalls.
+
+With unmoved countenance Sacajawea looked upon the weird overhanging
+grayish granite walls through which she had been hurried in terror by
+her Minnetaree captors, five years ago.
+
+"We are coming to a country where the river has three forks," said
+Sacajawea.
+
+Exhilaration seized the men, as they sent the boats up the heavy
+current that rolled well-deep below. That night they camped in a
+canyon that is to-day a pleasure resort for the people of Helena.
+
+Again following the Indian trail, on the 25th of July Clark arrived at
+the three forks of the Missouri, near the present site of Gallatin.
+From the forks of the far eastern rivers where Pittsburg rises, they
+had come to the forks of the great river of the West.
+
+For days the swift current had required the utmost exertion. The men
+complained of fatigue and excessive heat.
+
+"You push a tolerable good pole," said the Kentuckians, when Lewis
+took a hand.
+
+Captain Clark was worn out. With the thermometer at ninety, for days
+he had pushed ahead, determined to find the Shoshones.
+
+"Let us rest a day or two," said Captain Lewis. "Here, boys, build a
+bower for Captain Clark. I'll take a tramp myself in a few days to
+find these yellow gentlemen if possible."
+
+Camping at the three forks, every man became a leather dresser and
+tailor, fixing up his buckskin clothes. Leggings and moccasins had
+been sliced to pieces by the prickly pear.
+
+"What a spot for a trading post!" the Captains agreed.
+
+"Look," said Lewis, "see the rushes in the bottom, high as a man's
+breast and thick as wheat. This will be much in favour of an
+establishment here,--the cane is one of the best winter pastures for
+cows and horses."
+
+From the heights at the three forks, Lewis and Clark looked out upon
+valleys of perennial green. Birds of beautiful plumage and thrilling
+song appeared on every hand. Beaver, otter, muskrat, sported in this
+trapper's paradise. Buffalo-clover, sunflowers and wild rye,
+buffalo-peas and buffalo-beans blossomed everywhere.
+
+All the Indian trails in the country seemed to converge at this point.
+Here passed the deadly Blackfoot on his raids against the Shoshones,
+the Bannocks, and the Crows. Here stole back and forth the timid
+Shoshone to his annual hunt on the Yellowstone and the Snake River
+plains. Hither from time immemorial had the Flatheads and Nez Percés
+resorted for their supplies of robes and meat. Even from the far
+Saskatchewan came the Piegans and Gros Ventres to this favoured and
+disputed spot.
+
+The Blackfeet claimed the three forks of the Missouri, no tribe dwelt
+there permanently. The roads were deep, like trenches, worn by the
+trailing lodgepoles of many tribes upon this common hunting ground.
+
+The naming of the rivers,--that was an epic by itself.
+
+The gay Cabinet ladies who had fitted him out at Washington flitted
+through the mind of Meriwether Lewis,--Maria Jefferson, companion of
+his earliest recollection, Dolly Madison, whose interest never failed
+in his adventures, Mrs. Gallatin, the queenly dark-haired wife of the
+scholarly Secretary of the Treasury. With what pleasure had they
+gathered at the White House to fashion "housewives," full of pins and
+needles and skeins of thread, for these wanderers of the West. Not a
+man in the party but bore some souvenir of their thoughtful
+handiwork.
+
+Clark's earliest memory was of Jefferson, the friend of his father, of
+his older brothers, and then of himself. "Jimmy" Madison and George
+Rogers Clark had been schoolmates in the "old field school" of Donald
+Robertson.
+
+So then and there the Captains agreed that three great statesmen and
+their wives should be commemorated here by the Madison, the Jefferson,
+and the Gallatin forks of the Missouri.
+
+"On this very spot my people camped five years ago. Here were their
+tents," said Sacajawea, pointing out the embers of blackened fires.
+"The Minnetarees peered over the hills. We ran up this fork and hid in
+the thick woods."
+
+The boats were reloaded and the party began to ascend the Jefferson on
+July 30, to its head in the Bitter Root Mountains. At noon they camped
+for dinner.
+
+"And here was I captured!" cried Sacajawea. "I was made a prisoner. We
+were too few to fight the Minnetarees. They pursued us. Our men
+mounted their horses and fled to the mountains. The women and children
+hid. I ran. I was crossing this river. They caught me and carried me
+away."
+
+What a realistic glimpse of daily terror! Fighting, hunting,
+wandering, famishing, in the land of anarchy. Formerly the Shoshones
+were Indians of the plains. Now they had been driven by their enemies
+into almost inaccessible fastnesses.
+
+"The Beaver Head! The Beaver Head!"
+
+Sacajawea pointed to a steep, rocky cliff shaped like a beaver's head,
+one hundred and fifty feet above the water, an Indian landmark from
+time immemorial.
+
+"This is not far from the summer retreat of my countrymen. We shall
+meet them soon, on a river beyond the mountains running to the west."
+
+"We must meet those Indians," said Lewis, "it is our only hope for
+horses to cross the mountains."
+
+Lewis and Clark camped August 7, 1805, at Beaverhead Rock. There,
+fifty-seven years later, chased by bears, robbed by Indians,
+unsheltered, unshod, and almost starving, the gold hunter stumbled
+upon the auriferous bed of an ancient river that made Montana. Gold
+was discovered at Alder Gulch in 1863, ten miles south of Beaverhead
+Rock, and the next year mining began in the streets of the present
+city of Helena. The pick and the shovel in the miner's hand became the
+lamp and the ring in the grasp of Aladdin.
+
+The next morning after passing Beaverhead Rock, Captain Lewis and
+three of the men slung their knapsacks over their shoulders and set
+out for the mountains, determined not to return until they met some
+nation of Indians.
+
+Two days later, August 11, Lewis with his spyglass espied a lone
+horseman on the hills. The wild-eyed Shoshone, accustomed to scan the
+horizon, saw him also.
+
+"He is of a different nation from any we have met," remarked Lewis,
+watching intently through his glass. "He has a bow and a quiver of
+arrows, and an elegant horse without a saddle."
+
+Like a lookout on the hills, the Indian stood and waited.
+
+"He is undoubtedly a Shoshone. Much of our success depends on the
+friendly offices of that nation."
+
+Slowly Lewis advanced. Slowly the Indian came forward, until, within a
+mile of each other the Indian suddenly stopped. Captain Lewis also
+stopped, and drawing a three-point blanket from his knapsack held it
+by the corners above his head, and unfolding brought it to the ground
+as in the act of spreading. Three times he repeated the Indian signal
+of hospitality--"Come and sit on the robe with me."
+
+Still the Indian kept his position, viewing with an air of suspicion
+the hunters with Lewis.
+
+"_Tabba bone, tabba bone_," said Lewis, stripping up the sleeve of his
+shirt to show the colour of his skin,--"white man, white man," a term
+learned of Sacajawea.
+
+Paralysed the Indian looked, then fled like a frightened deer. No
+calls could bring him back.
+
+He said to his people, "I have seen men with faces pale as ashes, who
+are makers of thunder and lightning."
+
+"He is a dreamer!" exclaimed the incredulous Shoshones. "He makes up
+tales. He must show us these white men or be put to death," and
+trembling he started back with a body of warriors.
+
+Lewis, disappointed at the flight of the Shoshone, pressed on.
+Narrower and narrower grew the river.
+
+"Thank God, I have lived to bestride the Missouri!" exclaimed Hugh
+McNeil, planting a foot on either side of the mountain rivulet.
+
+Two miles farther up they drank from the ice-cold spring at the
+river's source, and stood on the summit of the Great Divide. A little
+creek flowed down the ridge toward the west. Stooping, they drank,--of
+the waters of the Columbia, and slept that night in Idaho. The next
+morning, following a well-worn Indian trail, Lewis came upon two women
+and a child. One fled, the other, an old dame encumbered by the child,
+sat down and bowed her head as if expecting instant death.
+
+Captain Lewis advanced, lifted her, loaded her with gifts.
+
+"_Tabba bone, tabba bone._" Stripping up his sleeve he showed to the
+amazed woman the first white skin she had ever seen.
+
+"Call your companion," motioned Lewis toward the fleeing woman.
+
+The old dame raised her voice. As fast as she ran away the young woman
+came running back, almost out of breath. She, too, was loaded with
+trinkets, and the cheeks of all were painted with vermilion, the
+Shoshone emblem of peace.
+
+Without fear now she led him toward sixty mounted warriors, who were
+advancing at a gallop as to battle.
+
+"_Tabba bone! tabba bone!_" explained the women, introducing the
+stranger and exhibiting their gifts.
+
+"_Ah hi e! Ah hi e!_"--"I am much pleased! I am much pleased!"
+exclaimed the warriors, leaping from their horses and embracing Lewis
+with great cordiality.
+
+Lewis drew forth his imposing calumet of red pipestone and lighted it.
+This was a sign language of all tribes.
+
+Putting off their moccasins as if to say, "May I walk the forest
+barefoot forever if I break this pledge of friendship," they sat down
+and smoked.
+
+The chief, too, brought out a pipe, of the dense transparent green
+stone of the Bannock Mountains, highly polished. Another led him to a
+lodge and presented a piece of salmon,--then Lewis no longer doubted
+that he was on waters flowing to the Pacific.
+
+Slowly, Clark, ill with chills and fever, had been coming forward,
+urging the canoes up the difficult and narrowing stream.
+
+Sacajawea, the little Bird-woman, could not wait. In her anxiety she
+begged to walk ahead along shore, and with her husband went dancing up
+the rivulet of her childhood. She flew ahead. She turned, pirouetting
+lightly on her beaded moccasins, waving her arms and kissing her
+fingers. Her long hair flew in the wind and her beaded necklace
+sparkled.
+
+Yes, there were the Indians, and Lewis among them, dressed like an
+Indian too. The white men had given everything they had to the
+Indians, even their cocked hats and red feathers, and taken Indian
+clothes in exchange, robes of the mountain sheep and goat.
+
+An Indian girl leaned to look at Sacajawea. They flew into each
+other's arms. They had been children together, had been captured in
+the same battle, had shared the same captivity. One had escaped to her
+own people; the other had been sold as a slave in the Land of the
+Dakotahs. As girls will, with arms around each other they wandered off
+and talked and talked of the wonderful fortune that had come to
+Sacajawea, the wife of a white man.
+
+A council was immediately called. The Shoshones spread white robes and
+hung wampum shells of pearl in the hair of the white men.
+
+"Sacajawea. Bring her hither," called Lewis.
+
+Tripping lightly into the willow lodge, Sacajawea was beginning to
+interpret, when lifting her eyes to the chief, she recognised her own
+brother, Cameahwait. She ran to his side, threw her blanket over his
+head, and wept upon his bosom.
+
+Sacajawea, too, was a Princess, come home now to her Mountain Kingdom.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+_IDAHO_
+
+
+"We are going through your country to the far ocean," said Captain
+Lewis. "We are making a trail for the traders who will bring you
+guns."
+
+"This delights me," answered Cameahwait, with his fierce eyes, and his
+lank jaws grown meagre for want of food. "We are driven into the
+mountains, when if we had guns we could meet our enemies in the
+plains."
+
+All the Shoshone talk was of war, war, war. Their great terror was the
+roving Indians of the Saskatchewan, who, with guns from the British
+traders, came down like wolves on the fold. Only flight and wonderful
+skill with the bow and arrow saved the Shoshones from destruction.
+
+Horses were their wealth. "Most of them would make a figure on the
+south side of James River," said Lewis, "in the land of fine horses. I
+saw several with Spanish brands upon them."
+
+Brother to the Comanche, the Shoshone rode his horse over rocks and
+ravines, up declivitous ways and almost impossible passes. Every
+warrior had one or two tied to a stake near his willow hut, night and
+day, ready for action.
+
+"My horse is my friend. He knows my voice. He hears me speak. He warns
+me of the enemy." Little children played with them, squaws fed them,
+braves painted them and decorated their manes and tails with
+eagle-plumes, insignia of the Rocky Mountain Indian. Such horses were
+a boon to Lewis and Clark, for they were tractable, sure-footed,
+inured to the saddle and the pack.
+
+A Shoshone found a tomahawk that Lewis had lost in the grass, and
+returned it,--now a tomahawk was worth a hundred dollars to a
+Shoshone. They had no knives or hatchets,--all their wood was split
+with a wedge of elkhorn and a mallet of stone. They started their
+fires by twirling two dry sticks together.
+
+Through all the valleys the Shoshones sent for their best horses, to
+trade for knives and tomahawks. Delighted they watched the fall of
+deer before the guns of white men. The age of stone had met the age of
+steel.
+
+How to get over the mountains was the daily consultation. Cameahwait
+pointed out an old man that knew the rivers. Clark engaged him for a
+guide:
+
+"You shall be called Toby. Be ready to-morrow morning."
+
+Proud of his new name, old Toby packed up his moccasins.
+
+The Indians drew maps: "Seven days over sheer mountains. No game, no
+fish, nothing but roots."
+
+Captain Clark set out to reconnoitre the Salmon River route.
+
+"A river of high rocks," said Cameahwait, "all a river of foam. No man
+or horse can cross. No man can walk along the shore. We never travel
+that way." Nevertheless Clark went on.
+
+For seventy miles, "through mountains almost inaccessible, and
+subsisting on berries the greater part of the route," as Clark
+afterward told his brother, they pushed their way, then--"troubles
+just begun," remarked old Toby.
+
+Checking their horses on the edge of a precipice, Clark and his
+companions looked down on the foaming Snake, roaring and fretting and
+lashing the walls of its inky canyon a hundred feet below, savage,
+tremendous, frightful.
+
+As Cameahwait had said, the way was utterly impracticable.
+
+"I name this great branch of the Columbia for my comrade, Captain
+Lewis," said Clark.
+
+Back from the Snake River, Clark found Lewis buying horses. The
+Shoshone women were mending the men's moccasins. The explorers were
+making pack-saddles of rawhide. For boards they broke up boxes and
+used the handles of their oars.
+
+"I have ever held this expedition in equal estimation with my own
+existence," said Lewis, urging on the preparations. "If Indians can
+pass these mountains, we can."
+
+Haunched around the fires, the forlorn Indians looked and listened and
+shook their unkempt heads.
+
+"Me know better route," said the friendly old Shoshone guide. "To the
+north, another great water to the Columbia."
+
+"No! no! no!" shouted all the Shoshones. "No trail that way."
+
+But Clark believed the faithful old Toby. Evidently the Shoshones
+wished to detain them all winter.
+
+Unseen by the Indians, at night a _cache_ was dug at the head of the
+Jefferson, for the last of the heavy luggage, leaving out only Indian
+gifts and absolute necessities to carry on the pack-horses. The canoes
+were filled with rocks and sunk to the bottom of the river.
+
+August 30, the expedition was ready. Before setting out the violins
+were brought and the men danced, to the great diversion of the
+Indians. Then, when they turned their faces to the Bitter Root, with
+the old guide and his four sons, the Shoshones set out east for their
+annual hunt on the Missouri.
+
+From May to September the Shoshones lived on salmon that came up the
+mountain streams. Now that the salmon were gone, necessity compelled
+them forth. With swift dashes down the Missouri they were wont to kill
+and dry what buffalo they could, and retreat to consume it in their
+mountain fastnesses. The whites had surprised them in their very
+citadel--led by Sacajawea.
+
+Along the difficult Bitter Root Mountains Lewis and Clark journeyed,
+meeting now and then Indian women digging yamp and pounding sunflower
+seeds into meal. Food grew scarce and scarcer, now and then a deer, a
+grouse, or a belated salmon stranded in some mountain pool. Sometimes
+they had but a bit of parched corn in their wallets, like the
+Immortals that marched to the conquest of Illinois.
+
+But those snowy peaks that from a distance seemed so vast,--that like
+the Alps defied approach to any but a Hannibal or a Napoleon--now, as
+if to meet their conquerors, bent low in many a grassy glade.
+
+In a pocket of the mountains now called Ross Hole, they came upon a
+camp of Flatheads, with five hundred horses, on their way to the
+Missouri for the Fall hunt of buffalo.
+
+Unknown to them the Flatheads had been watching from the timber and
+had reported: "Strangers. Two chiefs riding ahead, looking at the
+country. One warrior painted black. The rest leading packhorses. Keep
+quiet. Wait. They are coming."
+
+York's feet had become lame and he was riding with the Captains.
+
+When the white men came in view the Flatheads looked on their faces.
+They were shocked at the whiteness. Compassion was in every Indian
+heart.
+
+"These men have no blankets. They have been robbed. See how cold their
+cheeks are. They are chilled. Bring robes. Build fires."
+
+All the Indians ran for their beautiful white robes, and wrapped them
+around the shoulders of the white men. Before the blazing fires the
+white men's cheeks grew red. Perspiration burst from every pore. The
+robes slipped off, but the solicitous red men kept putting them back
+and stirring up the fire.
+
+Then the Captains, touched to the heart, spoke to the kind-hearted
+Flatheads of a great people toward the rising sun, strong and brave
+and rich.
+
+"Have they wigwams and much buffalo?" inquired the Flatheads.
+
+"Yes. We have been sent by the Great Father, the President, to bring
+these presents to his children the Flatheads."
+
+The childlike Flatheads were much impressed. Never did they forget the
+visit of those first white men. Traditions enough to fill a book have
+been handed down, and to this day they boast, "the Flathead never
+killed a white man."
+
+The whites listened in amaze to the low guttural clucking of the
+Flatheads, resembling that of a chicken or parrot. Voice there was
+none, only a soft crooning to their gentle chatter, interpreted by
+Sacajawea and the old Shoshone guide.
+
+The women crowded around Sacajawea and untied her baby from its
+elkskin cradle. They fed it and gave it little garments. That baby was
+an open sesame touching the hearts of all. Sacajawea, riding on her
+horse to the Columbia, found friends with every tribe. Others might
+pay; she, never. The Indian mother-heart opened to Sacajawea. Her very
+presence was an assurance of pacific intention.
+
+The women brought food, roots, and berries. To a late hour the white
+men continued smoking and conversing with the chiefs, when more robes
+were brought, and the weary ones slept with their feet to the fire.
+
+"Those hongry Injin dorgs ate up me moccasins lasht noight,"
+complained Pat in the morning. "But they're the whoitest Injins I iver
+saw."
+
+More horses were brought and the lame ones exchanged, so now with
+forty horses and three colts the Captains and their devoted followers
+struggled on, "Over the warst road I iver saw," said Pat. "Faith! 'tis
+warse nor the Alleghanies where I rid whin a bye."
+
+One horse loaded with a desk and small trunk rolled down a steep
+declivity until it was stopped by a tree. The desk was broken. That
+night they camped at the snow line and more snow began to fall. Wet,
+cold, hungry, they killed a colt for supper and slept under the stars.
+
+The horses were failing. Some had to be abandoned. One rolled down a
+mountain into a creek at the bottom. Some strayed or lost their packs,
+and the worn-out men, ever on the jump, came toiling through the
+brush, bearing on their own backs the unwieldy pack-saddles. Up here
+in the Bitter Root Mountains, the last of Dr. Saugrain's thermometers
+was broken, which accounts for the fact that from this point on they
+kept no record of temperature.
+
+September 9 the expedition journeyed down the main Bitter Root valley,
+named Clark's River, and crossing it came to a large creek and camped
+a day to rest their horses.
+
+"Traveller's Rist, is it?" said Pat. "Me fa-a-ther's inn at Wellsburg
+was the fir-r-st 'Traveller's Rist' in all Wistern Varginny," and
+Traveller's Rest it remained until some later explorer renamed it the
+Lolo fork of the Bitter Root River.
+
+Here the boys mended their garments torn and tattered in the
+mountains, and the hunters went out for game. They returned with three
+Flatheads.
+
+"Ay! Ay!" clucked the gentle Flatheads, "the river goes to the great
+lake. Our relations were there and bought handkerchiefs like these of
+an old white man that lives by himself."
+
+Lame and weary, straight across Idaho they struggled, over seams and
+streaks of precious metal that they saw not, the gold of Ophir
+concealed in the rocky chambers of the Idaho Alps,--struggled into the
+Lolo trail used by the Indians for ages before any whites ever came
+into the country.
+
+Over the Lolo trail went the Nez Percés to battle and to hunt buffalo
+in the Montana country. Down over this trail once came a war party and
+captured Wat-ku-ese, a Nez Percé girl, and carried her away to the
+distant land of white men,--_so-yap-po_, "the crowned ones," she
+called them, because they wore hats.
+
+Still ever Wat-ku-ese dreamed of her Nez Percé home and one day
+escaped with her infant on her back. Along the way white traders were
+kind to her. On and on, footsore and weary she journeyed alone. In the
+Flathead country her baby died and was buried there. One day some Nez
+Percés came down over the Lolo trail bringing home Wat-ku-ese, weak,
+sick, dying.
+
+She was with her people at their camas ground, Weippe, when Lewis and
+Clark came down over the Lolo trail.
+
+"Let us kill them," whispered the frightened Nez Percés.
+
+Wat-ku-ese lay dying in her tent when she heard it. "White men, did
+you say? No, no, do not harm them. They are the crowned ones who were
+so good to me. Do not be afraid of them. Go near to them."
+
+Cautiously the Nez Percés approached. The explorers shook their hands.
+This was to the Indians a new form of greeting.
+
+Everywhere Indian women were digging the camas root, round like an
+onion, and little heaps lay piled here and there. They paused in their
+work to watch the strangers. Some screamed and ran and hid. Little
+girls hid their baby brothers in the brush. Others brought food.
+
+So starved and famished were the men that they ate inordinately of the
+sweet camas and the kouse, the biscuit root. The sudden change to a
+warmer climate and laxative roots resulted in sickness, when the
+expedition might have been easily attacked but for those words of
+Wat-ku-ese, who now lay dead in her tent.
+
+To this day the Nez Percés rehearse the story of Wat-ku-ese. It was
+the beginning of a lifelong friendship with the whites, broken only
+when Chief Joseph fled over the Lolo trail. But even Chief Joseph
+found he must give up the vast areas over which he was wont to roam,
+and come under the laws of civilised life.
+
+As fast as their weakness permitted councils were held, when the
+Captains told the Nez Percés of the Great Father at Washington, who
+had sent them to visit his children.
+
+Twisted Hair, the Nez Percé Tewat, a great medicine man, dreamer and
+wizard and wise one, drew on a white elkskin a chart of the rivers.
+Admiring redmen put their hands over their mouths in amazement.
+
+No one but Twisted Hair could do such things. He was a learned Indian,
+knew all the trails, even to the Falls of the Columbia.
+
+"White men," said he, "live at the Tim-tim [falls]."
+
+Thus into Idaho had penetrated the story of Ko-na-pe, the wrecked
+Spaniard, who with his son Soto had set out up the great river to find
+white people and tarried there until he died. Seven years later
+Astor's people met Soto, an old man dark as his Indian mother, but
+still the Indians called him white. Twenty years later Soto's daughter
+was still living on the Columbia in the days of the Hudson's Bay
+Company.
+
+To save time and trouble, canoes were burnt out of logs. Leaving their
+horses with the Nez Percés, on October 4 the explorers were glad to
+get into their boats with their baggage and float down the clear
+Kooskooske, into the yellow-green Snake, and on into the blue
+Columbia.
+
+At the confluence of the rivers medals were given and councils held on
+the present site of Lewiston. Day by day through wild, romantic scenes
+where white man's foot had never trod, the exultant young men were
+gliding to the sea.
+
+Ahead of the boats on horseback galloped We-ark-koompt, an Indian
+express. Word flew. The tribes were watching. At the dinner camp,
+October 16, five Indians came up the river on foot in great haste,
+took a look and started back, running as fast as they could.
+
+That night Lewis and Clark were met at the Columbia by a procession of
+two hundred Indians with drums, singing, "Ke-hai, ke-hai," the
+redmen's signal of friendship.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+_DOWN THE COLUMBIA_
+
+
+The arrival at the Columbia was followed by days of councils, with
+gifts and speeches and smoking. Two Nez Percé chiefs, Twisted Hair the
+Tewat and Tetoh, introduced the explorers from tribe to tribe, bearing
+on and on the good words of Wat-ku-ese: "They are crowned ones. Do not
+be afraid. Go near to them."
+
+All the Indian world seemed camped on the Columbia. Everywhere and
+everywhere were "inconceivable multitudes of salmon." They could be
+seen twenty feet deep in the water, they lay on the surface, and
+floated ashore. Hundreds of Indians were splitting and spreading them
+on scaffolds to dry. The inhabitants ate salmon, slept on salmon,
+burnt dried salmon to cook salmon.
+
+With a coal a Yakima chief drew on a robe a map of the river so
+valuable that Clark afterwards transferred it to paper. That map on
+the robe was carried home to Jefferson and hung up by him in
+Monticello. Every trail was marked by moccasin tracks, every village
+by a cluster of teepees.
+
+In the "high countrey" of the Walla Walla they caught sight of "the
+Mt. Hood of Vancouver," and were eager to reach it.
+
+"Tarry with us," begged Yellept, the Walla Walla chief.
+
+"When we return," replied the eager men. Then Clark climbed a cliff
+two hundred feet above the water and spied St. Helens. Very well Clark
+remembered Lord St. Helens from whom this peak was named. The very
+name to him was linked with those old days when "Detroit must be
+taken," for Lord St. Helens and John Jay drew up the treaty that
+evacuated Detroit.
+
+Captain Clark and a few of the men still continued in advance walking
+along the shore.
+
+Near the beautiful Umatilla a white crane rose over the Columbia.
+Clark fired. A village of Indians heard the report and marvelled at
+the sudden descent of the bird. As with outspread, fluttering wings it
+touched the ground the white men came into view.
+
+One moment of transfixed horror, and the Indians fled. Captain Clark
+promptly followed, opened the mat doors of their huts and entered.
+With bowed heads, weeping and wringing their hands, a crowd of men,
+women, and children awaited the blow of death.
+
+Lifting their chins, Clark smiled upon them and offered gifts.
+Evidently they had not met the Indian express.
+
+"All tribes know the peace-pipe," he remarked, and drawing forth his
+pipestone calumet lit it, as was his wont, with a sunglass.
+
+As the fire kindled from the rays through the open roof, again the
+people shrieked. In vain Drouillard tried to pacify them. Not one
+would touch the pipe lit by the sun. Clark went out and sat on a rock
+and smoked until the boats arrived.
+
+"Do not be afraid. Go to them," began the Nez Percé chiefs.
+
+"They are not men," hurriedly whispered the frightened Indians. "We
+saw them fall from heaven with great thunder. They bring fire from the
+sky."
+
+Not until Sacajawea landed with her baby was tranquillity restored.
+
+"No squaw travels with a war party," that must be admitted, and soon
+they were smoking with great unanimity.
+
+"Tim-m-m-m;--tim-m-m-m!" hummed the Indians at the Falls, at Celilo,
+poetically imitating the sound of falling waters.
+
+There was salmon at the Falls of the Columbia, stacks of salmon dried,
+pounded, packed in baskets, salmon heaped in bales, stored in huts and
+cached in cellars in the sand. Making a portage around the Falls, the
+boats slid down.
+
+"De rapide! de rapide! before we spik some prayer we come on de beeg
+rock!" screamed Cruzatte, the bowman.
+
+Apparently a black wall stretched across the river, but as they
+neared, a rift appeared where the mighty channel of the Columbia
+narrows to forty-five yards at the Dalles. Crowds of Indians gathered
+as Clark and Cruzatte stopped to examine the pass.
+
+"By good steering!" said Cruzatte. Shaping up his canoe, it darted
+through the hissing and curling waters like a racehorse.
+
+Close behind, the other boats shot the boiling caldron, to the great
+astonishment of Indian villagers watching from above.
+
+At the Warm Springs Reservation there are Indians yet who remember the
+old dip-net fishing days and the stories of "Billy Chinook," who then
+saw York, the black man. "I was a boy of twelve. When the black man
+turned and looked at us, we children fled behind the rocks."
+
+Here at the Dalles were wooden houses, the first that Lewis and Clark
+had seen since leaving the Illinois country, with roofs, doors, and
+gables like frontier cabins,--and still more stacks of salmon. "Ten
+thousand pounds," said Clark, "dried, baled, and bound for traffic
+down the river."
+
+The ancient Indian village of Wishram stands on that spot still, with
+the same strong smell of salmon. The houses are much the same, and
+among their treasures may be found a coin of 1801, bartered, no doubt,
+by Lewis and Clark for a bale of salmon.
+
+On sped the boats, through mighty mountains, past ancient burial
+places of the savage dead, to the wild-rushing Cascades. Past these
+Cascades, five miles of continuous rapids, white with sheets of foam.
+"We mak' portage," said Cruzatte, his bow grating on the narrow shelf
+of shore.
+
+On either side, rocky palisades, "green-mossed and dripping," reached
+the skies. Tiny waterfalls, leaping from the clouds, fell in rainbow
+mist a thousand feet below. "Mt. Hood stood white and vast."
+
+Below the Cascades great numbers of hair-seals slept on the rocks.
+Swarms of swans, geese, ducks, cranes, storks, white gulls,
+cormorants, plover swept screaming by. The hills were green, the soft
+west wind was warm with rain.
+
+                   "What a wild delight
+     Of space! of room! What a sense of seas!"
+
+They had come into a new world,--the valley of the lower Columbia, the
+home of the Chinook wind.
+
+At Hood River alarmed Indians, dressed in skins of the mountain goat,
+the Oregon mazama, peered after the passing white men. At every house,
+and among mouldering remains of ancient tombs, lay scattered
+innumerable images of wood and stone or of burnt clay, household gods
+of the Columbian Indian.
+
+Flat and flatter grew the heads. Up in the Bitter Root, women alone
+wore this badge of distinction. Here, every infant lay strapped like a
+mummy with a padded board across its forehead.
+
+A new sort of boats now glided alongside the flotilla, great sea
+canoes manned with Chinook paddles. They were long and light, tapering
+at the ends, wide in the middle and lifting stern and prow into beaks
+like a Roman galley. And every canoe was laden with salmon, going down
+river to trade for beads and wapato.
+
+Traces of white men began to appear,--blue and scarlet blankets, brass
+tea-kettles, and beads. One Indian, with a round hat and a
+sailor-jacket, wore his hair in a queue in imitation of the "Bostons."
+
+"I trade with Mr. Haley," said one in good English, showing the bow of
+iron and other goods that Mr. Haley had given him. "And this is his
+squaw in the canoe."
+
+More and more fertile and delightful grew the country, shaded by thick
+groves of tall timber and watered by streams, fair as lay unpeopled
+Kentucky thirty years before. Scarce could Clark repress the
+recollection of the tales his brother brought home of that first trip
+to Boonsboro in 1775.
+
+Nothing surprised them more than the tropic luxuriance of vegetation.
+The moist Japan wind nurtured the trees to mammoths, six, eight, and
+ten feet through. Shrubbery like the hazel grew to be trees. The maple
+spread its leaves like palm fans; dogwood of magnolian beauty, wild
+cherry, crab-apple, interlaced with Oregon grape, blackberries, wild
+roses, vines of every sort and description, and ferns, ferns, ferns
+filled the canyons like the jungles of Orinoco.
+
+On November 4, nearly opposite the present Vancouver, they landed at a
+village on the left side of the river where a fleet of over fifty
+canoes was drawn up on shore, gathering wapato.
+
+"Wapato? Wapato?" An Indian treated them to the queen root of the
+Columbia, round and white, about the size of a small Irish potato.
+This, baked, was the bread of the Chinook Indian.
+
+"In two days," said Indians in sailor jackets and trousers, shirts,
+and hats, "in two days, two ships, white people in them."
+
+"Village there," said an Indian in a magnificent canoe, pointing
+beyond some islands at the mouth of the Willamette. He was finely
+dressed and wore a round hat.
+
+Yes, it might be, villages, villages everywhere, but ships--ships
+below! They had no time for villages now. Long into the darkness of
+night the boats sped on, on, past dim forests bending to the wave,
+past shadowy heights receding into sunset, past campfires on the hills
+where naked Indians walked between them and the light.
+
+At a late hour they camped. November rains were setting in, the night
+was noisy with wild fowl coming up the Columbia to escape the storms
+of ocean. Trumpeter swans blew their shrill clarions, and whistling
+swans, geese, and other birds in flights of hundreds swept past in
+noisy serenade, dropping from their wings the spray of the sea.
+
+None slept. Toward morning the rain began.
+
+In a wet morning and a rushing wind they bent to the oar, past St.
+Helens, past Mt. Coffin, past Cathlamet where Queen Sally in scant
+garments watched from a rock and told the tale in after years.
+
+"We had been watching for days," she said. "News had come by Indian
+post of the strangers from the east. They came in the afternoon and
+were met by our canoes and brought to the village." "There," Clark
+says in his journals, "we dined on November 26."
+
+But Lewis and Clark were tired of Indians by this time, and moreover,
+ships were waiting below! It was a moment of intense excitement. Even
+at Cathlamet they heard the surge of ocean rolling on the rocks forty
+miles away. Before night the fog lifted and they beheld "the
+ocean!--that ocean, the object of all our labours, the reward of all
+our anxieties. Ocean in view! O! the joy."
+
+Struggling with their unwieldy canoes the landsmen grew seasick in
+the rising swells of the up-river tide. For miles they could not find
+a place to camp, so wild and rocky were the shores.
+
+At last, exhausted, they threw their mats on the beautiful pebbly
+beach and slept in the rain.
+
+Everything was wet, soaked through, bedding, stores, clothing. And all
+the salt was spoiled. There was nothing to eat but raw dried salmon,
+wet with sea water, and many of the men began to be ill from exposure
+and improper food.
+
+"'T is the divil's own weather," said Pat, coming in from a
+reconnoitre with his wet hunting shirt glued fast to his skin. Pat
+could see the "waves loike small mountains rolling out in the ocean,"
+but just now he, like all the rest, preferred a dry corner by a
+chimney fire.
+
+     "Une Grande Piqnique!" exclaimed Cruzatte.
+         "Lak' tonder de ocean roar!
+       Blow lak' not'ing I never see,
+         Blow lak' le diable makin' grande tour!
+       Hear de win' on de beeg pine tree!"
+
+And all were hungry. Even Clark, who claimed to be indifferent as to
+what he ate, caught himself pondering on bread and buns. With the
+peculiar half laugh of the squaw, Sacajawea brought a morsel that she
+had saved for the child all the way from the Mandan towns, but now it
+was wet and beginning to sour. Clark took it and remarked in his
+journal, "This bread I ate with great satisfaction, it being the only
+mouthful I had tasted for several months."
+
+Chinook Indians pilfered around the camp. "If any one of your nation
+steals anything from us, I will have you shot," said Captain
+Clark,--"which they understand very well," he remarked to the camp as
+the troublers slunk away. A sentinel stood on constant watch.
+
+Captain Lewis and eleven of the men went around the bay and found
+where white people had been camped all summer, but naught remained
+save the cold white beach and the Indians camping there. The ships had
+sailed.
+
+Down there near the Chinook town, facing the ocean, Captain Lewis
+branded a tree with his name and the date, and a few days later
+Captain Clark says, "I marked my name on a large pine tree immediately
+on the isthmus, at Clatsop."
+
+It was two hundred years since Captain John Smith sailed up the
+Chickahominy in Virginia in search of the South Sea. At last, far
+beyond the Chickahominy, Lewis and Clark sailed up the Missouri and
+down the Columbia in search of the same South Sea. And here at the
+mouth of the Oregon they found it, stretching away to China.
+
+Balboa, Magellan, Cortez, Mackenzie,--Lewis and Clark had joined the
+immortals.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+_FORT CLATSOP BY THE SEA_
+
+
+December had now arrived, and southwest storms broke upon the coast
+with tremendous force. Off Cape Disappointment, the surges dashed to
+the height of the masthead of a ship, with most terrific roaring. A
+winter encampment could no longer be delayed.
+
+"Deer, elk, good skin, good meat," said the Chinook Indians, in
+pantomime, pointing across the bay to the south.
+
+Accordingly, thither the eggshell boats were guided, across the
+tempestuous Columbia, to the little river Netul, now the Lewis and
+Clark, ten miles from the ocean.
+
+Beside a spring branch, in a thick grove of lofty firs about two
+hundred yards from the water, the leather tent was set up and big
+fires built, while all hands fell to clearing a space for the winter
+cabins.
+
+In four days the logs were rolled up, Boonsboro fashion, into shelters
+for the winter. "The foinest puncheons I iver saw," said Patrick Gass,
+head carpenter, as he set to splitting boards out of the surrounding
+firs.
+
+By Christmas seven cabins were covered and the floors laid. The chinks
+were filled with clay, and fir-log fires were set roaring in the
+capacious chimneys that filled an entire end of each cabin. On
+Christmas day they moved in, wet blankets and all, with rounds of
+firearms and Christmas salutes.
+
+The leather tent, soaked for days, fell to pieces. The heavy canisters
+of powder, every one of which had been under the water in many a
+recent capsize, were consigned in safety to the powder-house.
+
+On New Year's Eve the palisades were done, and the gates were closed
+at sunset.
+
+The first winter-home of civilised people on the Columbia has an
+abiding charm, not unlike that of Plymouth or Jamestown.
+
+Back through the mists of one hundred years we see gangs of elk,
+chased by hunters through cranberry bogs, "that shook for the space of
+half an acre."
+
+Their soundless footfalls were lost in beds of brown pine needles and
+cushions of moss. The firing of guns reverberated through the dim
+gloom like a piece of ordnance.
+
+It was from such a trip as this that the hunters returned on the 16th
+of December, reporting elk. All hands set to work carrying up the meat
+from the loaded boats, skinning and cutting and hanging it up in small
+pieces in the meathouse, to be smoked by a slow bark fire. But in
+spite of every precaution, the meat began to spoil.
+
+"We must have salt," said Captain Lewis.
+
+In a few days, five men were dispatched with five kettles to build a
+cairn for the manufacture of salt from seawater.
+
+Already Clark had examined the coast with this in view, and the
+salt-makers' camp was established near Tillamook Head, about fifteen
+miles southwest of the fort where the old cairn stands to this day.
+Here the men built "a neat, close camp, convenient to wood, salt
+water and the fresh waters of the Clatsop River, within a hundred
+paces of the ocean," and kept the kettles boiling day and night.
+
+On that trip to the coast, while the cabins were building, Captain
+Clark visited the Clatsops, and purchased some rude household
+furniture, cranberries, mats, and the skin of a panther, seven feet
+from tip to tip, to cover their puncheon floor.
+
+Other utensils were easily fashioned. Seated on puncheon stools,
+before the log-fire of the winter night, the men carved cedar cups,
+spoons, plates, and dreamed of homes across the continent.
+
+In just such a little log cabin as this, Shannon saw his mother in
+Ohio woods; Patrick Gass pictured his father, with his pipe, at
+Wellsburg, West Virginia; Sergeant Ordway crossed again the familiar
+threshold at Hebron, New Hampshire. Clark recalled Mulberry Hill, and
+Lewis,--his mind was fixed on Charlottesville, or the walls expanded
+into Monticello and the White House.
+
+"Mak' some pleasurement now," begged the Frenchmen, "w'en Bonhomme
+Cruzatte tune up hees fidelle for de dance."
+
+Tales were told and plans were made. Toward midnight these Sinbads of
+the forest fell asleep, on their beds of fir boughs, lulled by the
+brook, the whispering of the pines, and the falling of the winter
+rain.
+
+This was not like winter rain in eastern climates, but soft and warm
+as April. The grass grew green, Spring flowers opened in December. The
+moist Japan wind gives Oregon the temperature of England.
+
+"I most sincerely regret the loss of my thermometer," said Lewis. "I
+am confident this climate is much milder than the same latitude on the
+Atlantic. I never experienced so warm a winter."
+
+But about the last of January there came a snow at Clatsop, four
+inches thick, and icicles hung from the houses during the day.
+
+"A real touch of winter," said Lewis. "The breath is perceptible in
+our room by the fire." Like all Oregon snow it disappeared in a
+week--and then it was Spring.
+
+In the centre of the officer's cabin, a fir stump, sawed off smooth and
+flat for a table, was covered with maps and papers. Books were written
+in that winter of 1805-6, voluminous records of Oregon plants and
+trees, birds, beasts, and fishes. They had named rivers and measured
+mountains, and after wandering more than Homer's heroes, the explorers
+were ready now to carry a new geography to the States. And here, as
+everywhere, Lewis was busy with his vocabularies, learning the Chinook
+jargon.
+
+As never before, all the men became scientists. Even Captain Clark's
+black man took an interest and reported some fabulous finds.
+
+The houses were dry and comfortable, and within, they had a plentiful
+supply of elk and salt, "excellent, white, and fine, but not so strong
+as the rock salt, or that made in Kentucky."
+
+Meal time was always interesting. Very often the Captains caught
+themselves asking: "Charboneau, when will dinner be ready?"
+
+All day the firelight flickered on Sacajawea's hair, as she sat making
+moccasins, crooning a song in her soft Indian monotone. This was,
+perhaps, the happiest winter Sacajawea ever knew, with baby Touissant
+toddling around her on the puncheon floor, pulling her shawl around
+his chubby face, or tumbling over his own cradle. The modest Shoshone
+princess never dreamed how the presence of her child and herself gave
+a touch of domesticity to that Oregon winter.
+
+Now and then Indian women came to see Sacajawea, sitting all day
+without a word, watching her every motion.
+
+Sometimes Sacajawea helped Charboneau, with his spits, turning slowly
+before the fire, or with his elk's tongues or sausage or beaver's
+tails. Sometimes she made trapper's butter, boiling up the marrow of
+the shank bones with a sprinkle of salt.
+
+In the short days darkness came on at four o'clock, and the last of
+the candles were soon exhausted. Then the moulds were brought and
+candles were made of elk tallow, until a heap, shining and white, were
+ready for the winter evenings.
+
+"We have had trouble enough with those thieving Chinooks," said
+Captain Lewis. "Without a special permit, they are to be excluded from
+the fort."
+
+The Indians heard it. Did a knock resound at the gate, "No Chinook!"
+was the quick accompaniment.
+
+"Who, then?" demanded the sentinel, gun in hand.
+
+"Clatsop," answered Coboway's people entering with roots and
+cranberries.
+
+Or, "Cathlamets," answered an up-river tribe with rush bags of wapato
+on their backs. Roots of the edible thistle--white and crisp as a
+carrot, sweet as sugar, the roasted root of the fern, resembling the
+dough of wheat, and roots of licorice, varied the monotonous fare.
+
+These supplies were very welcome, but the purchase money, that was the
+problem.
+
+President Jefferson had given to Captain Lewis an unlimited letter of
+credit on the United States, but such a letter would not buy from
+these Indians even a bushel of wapato.
+
+The Cathlamets would trade for fishhooks. The Clatsops preferred
+beads, knives, or an old file.
+
+No wonder they valued an old file: the finest work of their beautiful
+canoes was often done with a chisel fashioned from an old file. Lewis
+and Clark had frequent occasion to admire their skill in managing
+these little boats, often out-riding the waves in the most tumultuous
+seas.
+
+Ashore, these canoe-Indians waddled and rolled like tipsy sailors.
+Afloat, straight and trim as horse-Indians of the prairie, each deft
+Chinook glided to his seat along the unrocking boats, and striking up
+the paddlers' "Ho-ha-ho-ha-ho-ha-" went rowing all their lives, until
+their arms grew long and strong, their legs shrunk short and crooked,
+and their heads became abnormally intelligent.
+
+Nor were these coast Indians lacking in courage,--they sometimes
+ventured into the sea in their wonderful canoes, and harpooned the
+great whale and towed him in.
+
+When it came to prices for their beautiful skins of sea-otter, almost
+nothing would do. Clark offered a watch, a handkerchief, an American
+dollar, and a bunch of red beads for a single skin.
+
+"No! No!" in stentorian tone--"_Tyee ka-mo-suck,--chief beads_,"--the
+most common sort of large blue glass beads, the precious money of that
+country. Chiefs hung them on their bosoms, squaws bound them on their
+ankles, pretty maidens hung them in their hair. But Lewis and Clark
+had only a few and must reserve them for most pressing necessity.
+
+Since that May morning when Captain Robert Gray discovered the
+Columbia River, fourteen years before, the Chinook Indians had learned
+the value of furs. Once they handed over their skins, and took without
+a murmur what the Boston skippers chose to give. Now, a hundred ships
+upon that shore had taught them craft.
+
+One of old King Comcomly's people had a robe of sea-otter, "the fur of
+which was the most beautiful we had ever seen." In vain Lewis offered
+everything he had, nothing would purchase the treasured cloak but the
+belt of blue beads worn by Sacajawea.
+
+On every hand among these coast tribes were blankets, sailor-clothes,
+guns,--old Revolutionary muskets mended for this trade,--powder and
+ball, the powder in little japanned tin flasks in which the traders
+sold it.
+
+In what Clark calls "a guggling kind of language spoken mostly through
+the throat," with much pantomime and some English, conversation was
+carried on.
+
+"Who are these traders?" asked Captain Lewis.
+
+Old Comcomly, King of the Chinooks, on the north side, and Tyee
+Coboway, Chief of the Clatsops, on the south bank of the Columbia,
+tried to remember, and counted on their fingers,--
+
+"Haley, three masts, stays some time," "Tallamon not a trader,"
+"Callalamet has a wooden leg," "Davidson, no trader, hunts elk,"
+"Skelley, long time ago, only one eye."
+
+And then there were "Youens, Swipton, Mackey, Washington, Mesship,
+Jackson, Balch," all traders with three-masted ships whose names are
+not identified by any Atlantic list.
+
+The one translated Washington by Lewis and Clark may have been
+Ockington of the _Belle Savage_, 1801, or Tawnington, both of whom are
+known to have been on the coast in those years.
+
+In fact, no complete record was ever kept of the ships that swarmed
+around the Horn and up the Pacific, in those infant years of our
+republic, 1787 to 1820. While Europe clustered around the theatre of
+Napoleonic wars, every harbour of New England had its fur ships and
+whalers out, flying the Stars and Stripes around the world.
+
+"What do they say?" inquired Lewis, still pressing investigation.
+Proud of their acquirements, every Chinook and Clatsop in the nation
+could recall some word or phrase.
+
+"Musket, powder, shot, knife, file, heave the lead, damned rascal!"
+
+No wonder Lewis and Clark laughed, these mother words on the savage
+tongue were like voices out of the very deep, calling from the ships.
+
+"One hyas tyee ship--great chief ship--Moore, four masts, three cows
+on board."
+
+"Which way did he go?"
+
+The Indians pantomimed along the northwest coast.
+
+"From which," says Lewis, "I infer there must be settlements in that
+direction."
+
+The great desire, almost necessity, now, seemed to be to wait until
+some ship appeared upon the shore from which to replenish their almost
+exhausted stores.
+
+Whenever the boats went in and out of Meriwether Bay they passed the
+Memeloose Illahee, the dead country of the Clatsops. Before 1800, as
+near as Lewis and Clark could ascertain, several hundred of the
+Clatsops died suddenly of a disease that appeared to be smallpox, the
+same undoubtedly that cut down Black Bird and his Omahas, rolling on
+west and north where the Hudson's Bay traders traced it to the borders
+of the Arctic.
+
+In Haley's Bay one hundred canoes in one place bespoke the decimation
+of the Chinooks, all slumbering now in that almost priceless carved
+coffin, the Chinook canoe, with gifts around them and feet to the
+sunset, ready to drift on an unknown voyage.
+
+There was a time when Indian campfires stretched from Walla Walla to
+the sea, when fortifications were erected, and when Indian flint
+factories supplied the weapons of countless warriors. But they are
+gone. The first settlers found sloughs and bayous lined with burial
+canoes, until the dead were more than the living. No Indians knew
+whose bones they were, "those old, old, old people." Red children and
+white tumbled them out of the cedar coffins and carried away the dead
+men's treasures.
+
+"There was mourning along the rivers. A quietness came over the land."
+Stone hammers, flint chips, and arrows lie under the forests, and
+embers of fires two centuries old.
+
+The native tribes were disappearing before the white man came, and the
+destruction of property with the dead kept the survivors always
+impoverished.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+_A WHALE ASHORE_
+
+
+"A whale! a whale ashore!"
+
+When Chief Coboway brought word there was great excitement at Fort
+Clatsop. Everybody wanted to see the whale, but few could go. Captain
+Clark appointed twelve men to be ready at daylight.
+
+Sacajawea, in the privacy of her own room that Sunday evening, spoke
+to Charboneau. Now Charboneau wanted her to stay and attend to the
+"l'Apalois"--roasting meats on a stick,--and knowing that the child
+would have to be looked after, slipped over to the Captains,
+discussing by the fire.
+
+"Sacajawea t'ink she want to see de whale. She ought not go."
+
+"Very well," answered the Captains, scarce heeding. "She better stay
+at the fort. It would be a hard jaunt for a woman to go over Tillamook
+Head."
+
+Charboneau went back. "De Captinne say you cannot go!"
+
+This was a staggering blow to Sacajawea, but her woman's determination
+had become aroused and she took the rostrum, so to speak. Leaving the
+baby Touissant with his father, she in turn slipped over to the
+Captains.
+
+Sacajawea was a born linguist. "Captinne, you remember w'en we reach
+de rivers and you knew not which to follow? I show de country an'
+point de stream. Again w'en my husband could not spik, I spik for you.
+
+"Now, Captinne, I travel great way to see de Beeg Water. I climb de
+mountain an' help de boat on de rapide. An' now dis monstous fish haf
+come"--Sacajawea could scarce restrain her tears. Sacajawea was only a
+woman, and a brave little woman at that.
+
+Captain Lewis was moved. "Sacajawea, you are one of those who are born
+not to die. Of course you can go. Go and be getting ready, and," he
+added, "if Charboneau wants to go too, he will have to carry the
+baby!"
+
+They breakfasted by candle-light. Everybody was ready next morning,
+but Sacajawea was ahead of them all. Charboneau looked at her out of
+the corner of his eye, but said nothing. More than once the Captains
+had reminded him of his duty.
+
+The sun rose clear and cloudless on a land of springtime, and yet it
+was only January. Robins sang around the stockade, bluebirds whizzed
+by, silver in the sunlight. Two canoes proceeded down the Netul into
+Meriwether Bay, on the way to the Clatsop town.
+
+After a day's adventure, they camped near a herd of elk in the
+beautiful moonlight. At noon, next day, they reached the salt-makers.
+Here Jo Fields, Bratton, and Gibson had their brass kettles under a
+rock arch, boiling and boiling seawater into a gallon of salt a day.
+
+Hiring Twiltch, a young Indian, for guide, they climbed Tillamook
+Head, about thirty miles south of Cape Disappointment. Upon this
+promontory, Clark's Point of View, they paused before the boisterous
+Pacific, breaking with fury and flinging its waves above the Rock of
+Tillamook.
+
+On one side the blue Columbia widened into bays studded with Chinook
+and Clatsop villages; on the other stretched rich prairies, enlivened
+by beautiful streams and lakes at the foot of the hills. Behind, in
+serried rank, the Douglas spruce--"the tree of Turner's dreams," the
+king of conifers,--stood monarch of the hills. Two hundred, three
+hundred feet in air they towered, a hundred feet without a limb, so
+dense that not a ray of sun could reach the ground beneath.
+
+Sacajawea, save Pocahontas the most travelled Indian Princess in our
+history, spoke not a word, but looked with calm and shining eye upon
+the fruition of her hopes. Now she could go back to the Mandan towns
+and speak of things that Madame Jussaume had never seen, and of the
+Big Water beyond the Shining Mountains.
+
+Down the steep and ragged rocks that overhung the sea, they clambered
+to a Tillamook village, where lay the great whale, stranded on the
+shore. Nothing was left but a skeleton, for from every Indian village
+within travelling distance, men and women were working like bees upon
+the huge carcass. Then home they went, trailing over the mountains,
+every squaw with a load of whale blubber on her back, to be for many a
+month the dainty of an Indian lodge.
+
+These Indian lodges or houses were a source of great interest to Lewis
+and Clark. Sunk four feet into the ground and rising well above, like
+an out-door cellar, they were covered with ridgepoles and low sloping
+roofs. The sides were boarded with puncheons of cedar, laboriously
+split with elkhorn wedges and stone hammers.
+
+A door in the gable admitted to this half-underground home by means of
+a ladder. Around the inner walls, beds of mats were raised on
+scaffolds two or three feet high, and under the beds were deposited
+winter stores of dried berries, roots, nuts, and fish.
+
+In the centre of each house a fireplace, six or eight feet long, was
+sunk in the floor, and surrounded by a cedar fender and mats for the
+family to sit on. The walls, lined with mats and cedar bark, formed a
+very effective shelter.
+
+Did some poor stranded mariner teach the savage this semi-civilised
+architecture, or was it evolved by his own genius? However this may
+be, these houses were found from Yaquina Bay to Yakutat.
+
+In such a house as this Captain Clark visited Coboway, chief of the
+Clatsops, in his village on the sunny side of a hill. As soon as he
+entered, clean mats were spread. Coboway's wife, Tse-salks, a
+Tillamook Princess, brought berries and roots and fish on neat
+platters of rushes. Syrup of sallal berries was served in bowls of
+horn and meat in wooden trenchers.
+
+Naturally, Sacajawea was interested in domestic utensils, wooden
+bowls, spoons of horn, skewers and spits for roasting meat, and
+beautifully woven water-tight baskets.
+
+Every squaw habitually carried a knife, fastened to the thumb by a
+loop of twine, to be hid under the robe when visitors came. These
+knives, bought of the traders, were invaluable to the Indian mother.
+With it she dug roots, cut wood, meat, or fish, split rushes for her
+flag mats and baskets, and fashioned skins for dresses and moccasins.
+Ever busy they were, the most patient, devoted women in the world.
+
+Sacajawea, with her beautiful dress and a husband who sometimes
+carried the baby, was a new sort of mortal on this Pacific coast.
+
+While they were conversing, a flock of ducks lit on the water. Clark
+took his rifle and shot the head off one. The astonished Indians
+brought the bird and marvelled. Their own poor flintlocks, loaded with
+bits of gravel when shot failed, often would not go off in cold
+weather, but here was "very great medicine." They examined the duck,
+the musket, and the small bullets, a hundred to the pound.
+
+"Kloshe musquet! wake! kum-tux musquet! A very good musquet! No! do
+not understand this kind of musquet!"
+
+Thus early is it a historical fact that the Chinook jargon was already
+established on the Pacific coast. This jargon, a polyglot of traders'
+tongues, like the old Lingua Franca of the Mediterranean, is used by
+the coast Indians to this day from the Columbia River to Point Barrow
+on the Arctic. And for its birth we may thank the Boston traders.
+
+Chinooks, Clatsops, Tillamooks faced that stormy beach and lived on
+winter stores of roots, berries, fish, and dried meat. Their beautiful
+elastic bows of white cedar were seldom adequate to kill the great
+elk, so when the rush bags under the beds were empty, they watched for
+fish thrown up by the waves.
+
+"Sturgeon is very good," said a Clatsop in English, peering and prying
+along the hollows of the beach. But the great whale, Ecola, that was a
+godsend to the poor people. Upon it now they might live until the
+salmon came, flooding the country with plenty.
+
+Old Chief Coboway of the Clatsops watched those shores for sixty
+years. He did not tell this story to Lewis and Clark, but he told it
+to his children, and so it belongs here.
+
+"An old woman came crying to the Clatsop village: 'Something on the
+shore! Behold, it is no whale! Two spruce trees stand upright on it.
+Ropes are tied to those spruce trees. Behold bears came out of it!'
+Then all the people ran. Behold the bears had built a fire of
+driftwood on the shore. They were popping corn. They held copper
+kettles in their hands. They had lids. The bears pointed inland and
+asked for water. Then two people took the kettles and ran inland. They
+hid. Some climbed up into the thing. They went down into the ship. It
+was full of boxes. They found brass buttons in a string half a fathom
+long. They went out. They set fire. The ship burned. It burned like
+fat. Then the Clatsops gathered the iron, the copper, and the brass.
+Then were the Clatsops rich."
+
+One of these men was Ko-na-pe. He and his companion were held as
+slaves. Ko-na-pe was a worker in iron and could fashion knives and
+hatchets. From that time the Clatsops had knives. He was too great to
+be held as a slave, so the Clatsops gave him and his friend their
+liberty. They built a cabin at a place now known as New Astoria, but
+the Indians called it "Ko-na-pe," and it was known by that name long
+after the country was settled by the whites.
+
+February had now arrived. For weeks every man not a hunter stood over
+the kettles with his deer-skin sleeves rolled up, working away at
+elkskins, rubbing, dipping, and wringing. Then again they went back
+into the suds for another rubbing and working, and then the beautiful
+skin, hung up to smoke and dry, came out soft and pliable.
+
+Shields, the skilful, cut out the garments with a butcher knife, and
+all set to work with awls for needles and deer sinews for thread.
+
+For weeks this leather-dressing and sewing had been going on, some
+using the handy little "housewives" given by Dolly Madison and the
+ladies of the White House, until Captain Lewis records, "the men are
+better fitted with clothing and moccasins than they have been since
+starting on this voyage."
+
+Captain Lewis and Captain Clark had each a large coat finished of the
+skin of the "tiger cat," of which it "took seven robes to make a
+coat."
+
+With beads and old razors, Captain Lewis bought high-crowned Chinook
+hats, of white cedar-bark and bear-grass, woven European fashion by
+the nimble fingers of the Clatsop girls, fine as Leghorn and
+water-tight.
+
+Patrick Gass counted up the moccasins and found three hundred and
+fifty-eight pairs, besides a good stock of dressed elkskins for tents
+and bedding. "And I compute 131 elk and 20 deer shot in this
+neighbourhood during the winter," he added.
+
+But now the elk were going to the mountains, game was practically
+unobtainable. Now and then Drouillard snared a fine fat beaver or an
+otter in his traps; sometimes the Indians came over with sturgeon,
+fresh anchovies, or a bag of wapato, but even this supply was
+precarious and uncertain.
+
+February 11, Captain Clark completed a map of the country, including
+rivers and mountains from Fort Mandan to Clatsop, dotting in
+cross-cuts for the home journey, the feat of a born geographer.
+
+February 21 the saltmakers returned, with twelve gallons of salt
+sealed up to last to the _cache_ on the Jefferson.
+
+While Shields refitted the guns, others opened and examined the
+precious powder. Thirty-five canisters remained, and yet, banged as
+they had been over many a mountain pass, and sunk in many a stream,
+all but five were found intact as when they were sealed at Pittsburg.
+Three were bruised and cracked, one had been pierced by a nail, one
+had not been properly sealed, but by care the men could dry them out
+and save the whole.
+
+The greatest necessity now was a boat. A long, slim Chinook canoe made
+out of a single tree of fir or cedar was beyond price. Preliminary
+dickers were tried with Chinooks and Clatsops. Finally Drouillard went
+up to Cathlamet.
+
+Of all the trinkets that Drouillard could muster, nothing short of
+Captain Lewis's laced uniform coat could induce Queen Sally's people
+to part with a treasured canoe. And here it was. Misfortune had become
+a joke.
+
+"Well, now, the United States owes me a coat," laughed Lewis, as he
+found his last civilised garment gone to the savages.
+
+"Six blue robes, one of scarlet, five made out of the old United
+States' flag that had floated over many a council, a few old clothes,
+Clark's uniform coat and hat and a few little trinkets that might be
+tied in a couple of handkerchiefs," this was the reserve fund to carry
+them two thousand miles to St. Louis.
+
+But each stout-hearted explorer had his gun and plenty of powder--that
+was wealth.
+
+"Now, in case we never reach the United States," said Lewis, "what
+then?"
+
+"We must leave a Memorial," answered Clark. And so the Captains
+prepared this document:
+
+     _"The object of this list is, that through the medium of
+     some civilised person, who may see the same, it may be made
+     known to the world, that the party consisting of the
+     persons whose names are hereunto annexed, and who were sent
+     out by the Government of the United States to explore the
+     interior of the continent of North America, did penetrate
+     the same by the way of the Missouri and Columbia rivers, to
+     the discharge of the latter into the Pacific ocean, where
+     they arrived on the 14th day of November, 1805, and
+     departed the 23d day of March, 1806, on their return to the
+     United States by the same route by which they had come
+     out."_
+
+To this document every man signed his name, and copies were given to
+the various chiefs. One was posted at Fort Clatsop to be given to any
+trader that might arrive in the river, and thus, in case of their
+death, some account of their exploration might be saved to the world.
+On the back of some of the papers Clark sketched the route.
+
+At last only one day's food remained. Necessity compelled removal. In
+vain their eyes were strained toward the sea. Never were Lewis and
+Clark destined to see a summer day on the Columbia, when sails of
+ships flapped listlessly against the masts, and vessels heaved
+reluctantly on the sluggish waters, rolling in long swells on Clatsop
+beach.
+
+On Sunday, March 23, 1806, the boats were loaded and all was ready.
+Chief Coboway came over at noon to bid them good bye.
+
+In gratitude for many favours during the past winter, Lewis and Clark
+presented their houses and furniture to the kind-hearted old chief.
+
+Chief Coboway made Fort Clatsop his winter home during the remainder
+of his life. Years passed. The stockade fell down, young trees grew up
+through the cabins, but the spring is there still, gushing forth its
+waters, cool as in the adventurous days of one hundred years ago.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+_A RACE FOR EMPIRE_
+
+
+In this very December of 1805 while Lewis and Clark were struggling
+with the storms of ocean at the mouth of the Columbia, a thousand
+miles to the north of them the indefatigable and indomitable Simon
+Fraser was also building a fort, among the lochs and bens of New
+Caledonia, the British Columbia of to-day.
+
+On the very day that Lewis and Clark left Fort Mandan, Simon Fraser
+and his men had faced toward the Rockies. While Lewis and Clark were
+exploring the Missouri, Fraser and his voyageurs were pulling for dear
+life up the Saskatchewan and over to Athabasca. On the very day that
+Lewis and Clark moved into Fort Clatsop, Simon Fraser, at the Rocky
+Mountain Portage, had men busily gathering stones "to get a chimney
+built for his bedroom." The icy northern winter came down, but in
+January mortar was made to plaster his trading fort, the Rocky
+Mountain Portage at the Peace River Pass.
+
+All that Arctic winter he traded with the natives, killed deer and
+moose, and made pemmican for an expedition still farther to the west.
+
+All through the stormy, icy April, building his boats and pounding his
+pemmican, Fraser stamped and stormed and swore because the snows
+refused to melt--because the rivers yet were blocked with ice.
+
+The boats were at the door, the bales of goods were tied, when the ice
+began to break in May.
+
+The moment the river was clear all hands were roused at daybreak.
+Simon Fraser turned the Rocky Mountain Portage over to McGillivray,
+who had arrived on snow shoes, and pressed on west, discovering McLeod
+Lake and building Fort McLeod upon its shores. Then he portaged over
+to the Fraser, which he believed to be the Columbia, and going up the
+Stuart branch built Fort St. James on Stuart Lake. During the winter
+and summer, after Lewis and Clark reached home, he built Fort Fraser
+on Fraser Lake, and Fort George upon the Fraser River, still thinking
+it was the Columbia.
+
+"Now will I reach the mouth of this Columbia," said Fraser in the
+Spring of 1808, launching his boat, the _Perseverance_, upon the
+wildest water of the North.
+
+"You cannot pass," said the Indians, and they waved and whirled their
+arms to indicate the mad tumultuous swirling of the waters.
+
+"Whatever the obstacle," said Simon Fraser, "I shall follow this river
+to the end," and down he went for days and days through turbulent
+gulfs and whirlpools, past rocks and rapids and eddies, under
+frowning, overhanging precipices in the high water of May.
+
+The Indians spoke of white people.
+
+"It must be Lewis and Clark," groaned Fraser, redoubling his effort to
+win another empire for his king.
+
+Daily, hourly, risking their lives, at every step in the Mountains the
+Indians said, "You can go no further."
+
+But the sturdy Scotchmen gripped their oars and set their teeth,
+turning, doubling, twisting, shooting past rocky points that menaced
+death, portaging, lifting canoes by sheer grit and resolution up
+almost impassable rockways, over cliffs almost without a foothold and
+down into the wave again. So ran the Northwesters down the wild river
+to the sea, and camped near the present site of New Westminster. And
+lo! it was _not_ the Columbia.
+
+Back came Simon Fraser to Fort William on Lake Superior to report what
+he had done, and they crowned his brow with the name of his own great
+river, the Fraser.
+
+Travellers look down the frowning Fraser gorge to-day, and little
+realise why Simon Fraser made that daring journey.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+_"A SHIP! A SHIP!"_
+
+
+While Lewis and Clark were making preparations to leave Fort Clatsop,
+all unknown to them a ship was trying to cross the bar into the
+Columbia River. And what a tale had she to tell,--of hunger, misery,
+despair, and death at Sitka.
+
+Since 1787 the Boston ships had been trading along these shores. In
+that year 1792, when Captain Robert Gray discovered the Columbia
+River, there were already twenty-one American ships in the Pacific
+northwest.
+
+In May, 1799, the Boston brig _Caroline_, Captain Cleveland, was
+buying furs in Sitka Sound, when coasting along over from the north
+came the greatest of all the Russians, Alexander von Baranof, with two
+ships and a fleet of bidarkas.
+
+"What now will you have?" demanded the Sitka chief, as the expedition
+entered the basin of Sitka Sound.
+
+"A place to build a fort and establish a settlement for trade,"
+answered Baranof.
+
+"A Boston ship is anchored below and buying many skins," answered the
+chief. But presents were distributed, a trade was made, and Russian
+axes began felling the virgin forest on the sides of Verstova.
+
+The next day Captain Cleveland visited Baranof at his fort building.
+
+"Savages!" echoed Captain Cleveland to Baranof's comment on the
+natives. "I should say so. I have but ten men before the mast, but on
+account of the fierce character of these Indians I have placed a
+screen of hides around the ship, that they may not see the deck nor
+know how few men I have. Two pieces of cannon are in position and a
+pair of blunderbusses on the taffrail."
+
+But the land was rich in furs. It was this that brought Baranof over
+from Kadiak.
+
+In three years Sitka was a strong fort, but in June, 1802, in the
+absence of Baranof, it was attacked one day by a thousand Indians
+armed with muskets bought of the Boston traders.
+
+In a few hours the fort, a new ship in the harbour, warehouses, cattle
+sheds, and a bathhouse were burnt to ashes. The poor dumb cattle were
+stuck full of lances.
+
+A terrible massacre accompanied the burning. To escape suffocation the
+Russians leaped from the flaming windows only to be caught on the
+uplifted lances of the savage Sitkas. Some escaped to the woods, when
+an English vessel providentially appeared and carried the few
+remaining survivors to Kadiak.
+
+That autumn two new ships arrived from Russia with hunters, labourers,
+provisions, and news of Baranof's promotion by the czar.
+
+Tears coursed down the great man's weather-beaten cheeks. "I am a
+nobleman; but Sitka is lost! I do not care to live; I will go and
+either die or restore the possessions of my august benefactor."
+
+Then back came Baranof to Sitka on his errand of vengeance, with three
+hundred bidarkas and six small Russian ships, to be almost wrecked in
+Sitka Sound. Here he was joined by the _Neva_ just out from Kronstadt,
+the first to carry the Russian flag around the world.
+
+Upon the hill where Sitka stands to-day, the Indians had built a fort
+of logs piled around with tangled brush. On this the Russians opened
+fire. But no reply came. With one hundred and fifty men and several
+guns, Baranof landed in the dense woods to take the fort by storm.
+Then burst the sheeted flame. Ten Russians were killed and twenty-six
+wounded. But for the fleet, Baranof's career would have ended on that
+day.
+
+But in time ships with cannon were more than a match for savages armed
+with Boston muskets. Far into the night a savage chant was wafted into
+the air--the Alaskans had surrendered. At daylight all was still. No
+sound came from the shore, and when the Russians visited the Indian
+hill, the fort was filled with slaughtered bodies of infant children,
+slain by their own parents who felt themselves unable to carry them
+and escape. The Indian fort was immediately burned to the ground and
+on its site arose the Russian stronghold of Sitka Castle.
+
+That new fort at Sitka was just finished and mounted with cannon the
+summer that Lewis and Clark came down the Columbia. Kitchen gardens
+were under cultivation and live stock thriving.
+
+At Sitka that same autumn the _Elizaveta_ arrived, with the Russian
+Imperial Inspector of Alaska on board, the Baron von Rezanof,
+"Chamberlain of the Russian Court and Commander of all America," he
+called himself.
+
+"What is this I hear of those Bostonians?" inquired the great Baron,
+unrolling long portraits of the Imperial family to be hung in Sitka
+Castle. "Those Bostonians, are they undermining our trade in furs with
+China?"
+
+"Ah, yes," answered Count Baranof, "the American republic is greatly
+in need of Chinese goods, Chinese teas and silks, which formerly had
+to be purchased in coin. But since these shores have been discovered
+with their abundance of furs, they are no longer obliged to take coin
+with them, but load their vessels with products of their own country."
+
+"All too numerous have become these Boston skippers on this northwest
+coast," continued Von Rezanof in a decisive tone. "Frequent complaints
+have been made to the American President that his people are selling
+firearms to our Indians, but all to no purpose. It is an outrage. We
+are justified in using force. I recommend an armed brig to patrol
+these waters."
+
+Food supplies were low at Sitka that winter. No ship came. The
+_Elizaveta_ dispatched to Kadiak for supplies returned no more. No
+flour, no fish, not even seal blubber for the garrisons, could be
+caught or purchased. They were eating crows and eagles and devil-fish.
+Just then, when a hundred cannon were loaded to sweep the Yankee
+skippers from the sea, a little Rhode Island ship came sailing into
+Sitka harbour.
+
+"Shall we expel these American traders from the North Pacific?"
+demanded Von Rezanof.
+
+"For the love of God, no!" cried Baranof. "That little ship is our
+saviour!"
+
+Into the starving garrison the Yankee Captain De Wolf brought bread
+and beef, and raised the famine siege of Sitka Castle. Baranof bought
+the little ship, the _Juno_, with all her cargo, for eight thousand
+dollars in furs and drafts on St. Petersburg. In addition Rezanof gave
+De Wolf a sloop, the _Ermak_, to carry his men and furs to the
+Hawaiian Islands.
+
+"God grant that they may not have paid dear for their rashness in
+trusting their lives to such a craft!" exclaimed Von Rezanof, as the
+gallant Yankee Captain spread sail and disappeared from Sitka harbour.
+
+The _Juno_, a staunch, copper-bottomed fast vessel of two hundred six
+tons, built at Bristol, Rhode Island, in 1799, was now fitted out for
+the Russian trade and dispatched to Kadiak.
+
+The storms that Lewis and Clark heard booming on the Oregon coast that
+winter, devastated Alaskan shores as well. When the breakers came
+thundering up the rocks and the winds shook Sitka Castle, Count
+Baranof in his stronghold could not sleep for thinking, "Oh, the
+ships!--the ships out on this stormy deep, laden with what I need so
+much!"
+
+The little _Juno_ returned from Kadiak with dried fish and oil, and
+news of disaster: "The _Elizaveta_ has been wrecked in a heavy gale.
+Six large bidarkas laden with furs on the way to you went down. Two
+hundred hunters have perished at sea. Our settlement at Yakutat has
+been destroyed by an Indian massacre."
+
+"My God! My God!" Baranof cried, "how can we repair all these
+disasters!"
+
+But ever and ever the gray sea boomed upon the shore where the
+wretched inmates of Sitka Castle were dying. The relief from the
+_Juno_ was only temporary. By February not a pound of bread a day
+dared they distribute to the men.
+
+Long since Rezanof had declared they must have an agricultural
+settlement. Now he fixed his eye on the Columbia River. Sitting there
+in the dreary castle he was writing to the czar, little dreaming that
+in a hundred years his very inmost thought would be read in America.
+
+Starvation at Sitka was imminent,--it was impossible to delay longer.
+Into the stormy sea Rezanof himself set the _Juno's_ sail on his way
+to the Columbia.
+
+While Lewis and Clark were writing out the muster roll to nail to the
+wall at Fort Clatsop for any passing ship, Rezanof was striving to
+cross the Columbia bar. None could see beyond the mists. Contrary
+winds blew, it rained, it hailed.
+
+Rezanof sighted the Columbia March 14, 1806, but the current drove him
+back. Again on the 20th he tried to enter, and on the 21st, but the
+stormy river, like a thing of life, beat him back and beat him back,
+until the Russian gave it up, and four days later ran into the harbour
+of San Francisco.
+
+In June he returned with wheat, oats, pease, beans, flour, tallow, and
+salt to the famished traders at Sitka.
+
+But notwithstanding all these troubles, in 1805-6 Baranof dispatched
+to St. Petersburg furs valued at more than five hundred thousand
+roubles.
+
+More and more the Boston traders came back to Alaskan waters. Baranof
+often found it easier to buy supplies from Boston than from Okhotsk.
+
+"Furnish me with Aleutian hunters and bidarkas and I will hunt on
+shares for you," proposed a Boston Captain.
+
+"Agreed," said Baranof, and for years fleets of bidarkas under Boston
+Captains hunted and trapped and traded for sea otter southward along
+Pacific shores.
+
+"These Boston smugglers and robbers!" muttered the Spaniards of
+California. "Where do they hide themselves all winter? We know they
+are on our shores but never a glimpse can we get of their fleet."
+Meanwhile the Boston traders on the coasts of California raked in the
+skins and furs, and sailing around by Hawaii reached Sitka in time for
+Spring sealing in the north.
+
+Some hints of this reached the Russian Directory at St. Petersburg,
+but no one dared to interfere with Baranof.
+
+Shipload after shipload of furs he sent home that sold for fabulous
+sums in the markets of Russia. The czar himself took shares and the
+Imperial navy guarded the Russias of North America.
+
+All honour to Baranof, Viking of Sitka, and builder of ships! For
+forty years he ruled the Northwest, the greatest man in the North
+Pacific. His name was known on the coast of Mexico, even to Brazil and
+Havana. The Boston merchants consulted him in making up their cargoes.
+In 1810 he went into partnership with John Jacob Astor to exchange
+supplies for furs.
+
+Above all disaster he rose, though ship after ship was lost. But it
+must be admitted the Russians were not such seamen as the gallant
+Boston skippers.
+
+Never again will this land see more hardy sailors than the American
+tars that travelled the seas at the close of our Revolution. Our
+little Yankee brigs were creeping down and down the coast and around
+the Horn, until every village had its skippers in the far Pacific.
+Some went for furs and some for whales, and all for bold adventure.
+
+In July, 1806, the _Lydia_, having just rescued two American sailors
+from the savages at Vancouver Island, came into the Columbia River for
+a load of spars, the beginning of a mighty commerce. Here they heard
+of Lewis and Clark, and ten miles up, faithful old Chief Coboway gave
+Captain Hill the muster roll left at Fort Clatsop. This, sent by way
+of China, reached the United States in 1807, to find the great
+explorers safe at home.
+
+With the death of Baranof in 1819 ended the vast plan of Russia to
+make the northern half of the Pacific its own. Baranof was small and
+wrinkled and bald, but his eye had life. He would have made a czar
+like Peter the Great. To him and him alone was due the Russia of
+America, that for seven million dollars was sold to us in 1870, an
+empire in itself.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+_BACK TO CIVILISATION_
+
+
+The canoes were loaded, and at one o'clock in the afternoon of Sunday,
+the 23d day of March, 1806, Lewis and Clark took final leave of Fort
+Clatsop.
+
+Back past Cathlamet they came, where Queen Sally still watched by her
+totem posts; past Oak Point on Fanny's Island, named by Clark, where
+two Springs later a Boston ship made the first white settlement in
+Oregon. Slowly the little flotilla paddled up, past Coffin Rock,
+immemorial deposit of Indian dead, past snowy St. Helens, a landmark
+at sea for the ship that would enter the harbour.
+
+Flowers were everywhere, the hillsides aglow with red flowering
+currants that made March as gay as the roses of June. The grass was
+high, and the robins were singing.
+
+At sunset, March 30, they camped on a beautiful prairie, the future
+site of historic Vancouver. Before them the Columbia was a shimmer of
+silver. Behind, rose the dim, dark Oregon forest. The sharp cry of the
+sea-gull rang over the waters, and the dusky pelican and the splendid
+brown albatross were sailing back to the sea.
+
+Herds of elk and deer roamed on the uplands and in woody green islands
+below, where flocks of ducks, geese, and swans were digging up the
+lily-like wapato with their bills.
+
+With laboured breath, still bending to the oar, on the first of April
+they encountered a throng of Indians crowding down from above, gaunt,
+hollow-eyed, almost starved, greedily tarrying to pick up the bones
+and refuse meat thrown from the camp of the whites.
+
+"_Katah mesika chaco?_" inquired Captain Lewis.
+
+"_Halo muck-a-muck_," answered the forlorn Indians. "Dried fish all
+gone. No deer. No elk. No antelope to the Nez Percé country."
+Hundreds were coming down for food at Wapato. "_Elip salmon chaco._"
+
+"Until the salmon come!" That had been the cry of the Clatsops. The
+Chinooks were practising incantations to bring the longed-for salmon.
+The Cathlamets were spreading their nets. The Wahkiakums kept their
+boats afloat. Even the Multnomahs were wistfully waiting. And now here
+came plunging down all the upper country for wapato,--"Until the
+salmon come."
+
+"And pray, when will that be?"
+
+"Not until the next full moon,"--at least the second of May, and in
+May the Americans had hoped to cross the mountains. All the camp
+deliberated,--and still the Cascade Indians came flocking down into
+the lower valley.
+
+"We must remain here until we can collect meat enough to last us to
+the Nez Percé nation," said the Captains, and so, running the gauntlet
+of starvation, it happened that Lewis and Clark camped for ten days
+near the base of Mt. Hood at the river Sandy. In order to collect as
+much meat as possible a dozen hunters were sent out; the rest were
+employed in cutting and hanging the meat to dry.
+
+Two young Indians came into the camp at the Sandy.
+
+"_Kah mesika Illahee?_--Where is your country?" was asked them, in the
+Chinook jargon caught at Clatsop.
+
+"At the Falls of a great river that flows into the Columbia from the
+south."
+
+"From the south? We saw no such river."
+
+With a coal on a mat one of the Indians drew it. The Captains looked.
+
+"Ah! behind those islands!" It was where the Multnomah chieftain in
+his war canoe had said, "Village there!" on their downward journey to
+the sea. Clark gave one of the men a burning glass to conduct him to
+the spot, and set out with seven men in a canoe.
+
+Along the south side of the Columbia, back they paddled to the
+mysterious inlet hidden behind that emerald curtain. And along with
+them paddled canoe-loads of men, women, and children in search of
+food.
+
+Clark now perceived that what they had called "Imagecanoe Island"
+consisted of three islands, the one in the middle concealing the
+opening between the other two.
+
+Here great numbers of canoes were drawn up. Lifting their long, slim
+boats to their backs, the Indian women crossed inland to the sloughs
+and ponds, where, frightening up the ducks, they plunged to the breast
+into the icy cold water. There they stood for hours, loosening wapato
+with their feet. The bulbs, rising to the surface, were picked up and
+tossed into the boats to feed the hungry children.
+
+Clark entered an Indian house to buy wapato.
+
+"Not, not!" with sullen look they shook their heads. No gift of his
+could buy the precious wapato.
+
+Deliberately then the captain took out one of Dr. Saugrain's
+phosphorus matches and tossed it in the fire. Instantly it spit and
+flamed.
+
+"_Me-sah-chie! Me-sah-chie!_"--the Indians shrieked, and piled the
+cherished wapato at his feet. The screaming children fled behind the
+beds and hid behind the men. An old man began to speak with great
+vehemence, imploring his god for protection.
+
+The match burned out and quiet was restored. Clark paid for the
+wapato, smoked, and went on, behind the islands.
+
+As if lifting a veil the boat swept around the willows and the Indian
+waved his hand.
+
+"Multnomah!"
+
+Before them, vast and deep, a river rolled its smooth volume
+into the Columbia. At the same moment five snow peaks burst into
+view,--Rainier, Hood, St. Helens, Adams, and to the southeast another
+snowy cone which Clark at once saluted, "Mount Jefferson!"
+
+For the first recorded time a white man gazed on the river Willamette.
+
+This sudden vision of emerald hills, blue waters, and snowy peaks
+forced the involuntary exclamation, "The only spot west of the Rocky
+Mountains suitable for a settlement!" The very air of domestic
+occupation gleamed on the meadows flecked with deer and waterfall.
+Amid the scattered groves of oak and dogwood, bursting now into
+magnolian bloom, Clark half expected to see some stately mansion rise,
+as in the park of some old English nobleman. The ever-prevailing
+flowering currant lit the landscape with a hue of roses.
+
+A dozen miles or more Clark pressed on, up the great inland river, and
+slept one night near the site of the present Portland. He examined the
+soil, looked at the timber, and measured a fallen fir three hundred
+and eighteen feet as it lay.
+
+Watching the current rolling its uniform flow from some unknown
+distant source, the Captain began taking soundings.
+
+"This river appears to possess water enough for the largest ship. Nor
+is it rash to believe that it may water the country as far as
+California." For at least two-thirds of the width he could find no
+bottom with his five-fathom line.
+
+Along that wide deep estuary, the grainships of the world to-day ride
+up to the wharves of Portland. The same snow peaks are there, the same
+emerald hills, and the bounteous smile of Nature blushing in a
+thousand orchards.
+
+All along the shores were deserted solitary houses of broad boards
+roofed with cedar bark, with household furniture, stone mortars,
+pestles, canoes, mats, bladders of train oil, baskets, bowls,
+trenchers--all left. The fireplaces were filled with dead embers, the
+bunk-line tiers of beds were empty. All had just gone or were going to
+the fisheries.
+
+"And where?"
+
+"To Clackamas nation. _Hyas tyee Tumwater._ Great Falls. Salmon."
+
+Had Clark but passed a few miles further up, he would have found
+hundreds of Indians at the fishing rendezvous, Clackamas Rapids and
+Willamette Falls.
+
+"How many of the Clackamas nation?"
+
+"Eleven villages, to the snow peak."
+
+"And beyond?"
+
+"Forty villages, the Callapooias." With outstretched hand the Indian
+closed his eyes and shook his head,--evidently he had never been so
+far to the south.
+
+Back around Warrior's Point Clark came, whence the Multnomahs were
+wont to issue to battle in their huge war canoes. An old Indian trail
+led up into the interior, where for ages the lordly Multnomahs had
+held their councils. Many houses had fallen entirely to ruin.
+
+Clark inquired the cause of decay. An aged Indian pointed to a woman
+deeply pitted with the smallpox.
+
+"All died of that. _Ahn-cutty!_ Long time ago!"
+
+The Multnomahs lived on Wapato Island. A dozen nations gave fealty to
+Multnomah. All had symbolic totems, carved and painted on door and
+bedstead, and at every bedhead hung a war club and a Moorish scimitar
+of iron, thin and sharp, rude relic of Ko-na-pe's workshop.
+
+Having now dried sufficient meat to last to the Nez Percés, Lewis and
+Clark set out for the Dalles, that tragical valley, racked and
+battered, where the devils held their tourneys when the world was
+shaped by flood and flame.
+
+Through the sheeny brown basaltic rock, three rifts let through the
+river, where, in fishing time, salmon leaped in prodigious numbers,
+filling the Indians' baskets, tons and tons a day. But the salmon had
+not yet come.
+
+At this season the upper tribes came down to the Dalles to traffic
+robes and silk grass for sea-shells and wapato. Fish was money. After
+the traders came, beads, beads, became the Indian's one ambition. For
+beads he would sacrifice his only garment and his last morsel of food.
+
+In this annual traffic of east and west, the Dalles Indians had become
+traders, robbers, pirates. No canoe passed that way without toll.
+Dressed in deerskin, elk, bighorn, wolf, and buffalo, these savages
+lay now in wait for Lewis and Clark, portaging up the long narrows.
+
+Tugging, sweating, paddling, poling, pulling by cords, it was
+difficult work hauling canoes up the narrow way.
+
+Crowds of Indians pressed in.
+
+"Six tomahawks and a knife are gone!"
+
+"Another tomahawk gone!"
+
+"Out of the road," commanded Lewis. "Whoever steals shall be shot
+instantly."
+
+The crowds fell back. Every man toiled on with gun in hand. But from
+village to village, dishes, blankets, and whatever the Indians could
+get their hands on, disappeared. Soon there would be no baggage.
+
+It seemed impossible to detect a thief. "Nothing but numbers protects
+us," said the white men.
+
+Worse even than the pirates of the Sioux, it came almost to pitched
+battle. Again and again Lewis harangued the chiefs for the restoration
+of stolen property. Once he struck an Indian. Finally he set out to
+burn a village, but the missing property came to light, hidden in an
+Indian hut.
+
+So long did it take to make these portages that food supplies failed.
+In the heart of a thickly populated and savage country the expedition
+was bankrupt.
+
+With what gratitude, then, they met Yellept, chief of the Walla
+Wallas, waiting upon his hills.
+
+"Come to my village. You shall have food. You shall have horses."
+
+Gladly they accompanied him to his village at the mouth of the Walla
+Walla river. Immediately he called in not only his own but the
+neighbouring nations, urging them to hospitality. Then Chief Yellept,
+the most notable man in all that country, himself brought an armful of
+wood for their fires and a platter of roasted mullets.
+
+At once all the Walla Wallas followed with armloads of fuel; the
+campfires blazed and crackled. Footsore, weary, half-starved, Lewis
+and Clark and their men supped and then slept.
+
+Fortunately there was among the Walla Wallas a captive Shoshone boy
+who spoke the tongue of Sacajawea. In council the Captains explained
+themselves and the object of their journey.
+
+"Opposite our village a shorter route leads to the Kooskooskee," said
+Yellept. "A road of grass and water, with deer and antelope."
+
+Clark computed that this cut-off would save eighty miles.
+
+In vain the Captains desired to press on.
+
+"Wait," begged Yellept. "Wait." Already he had sent invitations to the
+Eyakimas, his friends the Black Bears, and to the Cayuses.
+
+Possibly Sacajawea had hinted something; at any rate with a cry of
+"Very Great Medicine," the lame, the halt, the blind pressed around
+the camp. The number of unfortunates, products of Indian battle,
+neglect, and exposure, was prodigious.
+
+Opening the medicine chest, while Lewis bought horses, Clark turned
+physician, distributing eye-water, splinting broken bones, dealing out
+pills and sulphur. One Indian with a contracted knee came limping in.
+
+"My own father, Walla Walla chief," says old Se-cho-wa, an aged Indian
+woman on the Umatilla to-day. "Lots of children, lots of horses. I,
+very little girl, follow them."
+
+With volatile liniments and rubbing the chief was relieved.
+
+In gratitude Yellept presented Clark with a beautiful white horse;
+Clark in turn gave all he had--his sword.
+
+Bidding the chief adieu, the Captains recorded: "We may, indeed,
+justly affirm, that of all the Indians whom we have met since leaving
+the United States the Walla Wallas were the most hospitable and
+sincere."
+
+Poor old Yellept! One hundred years later his medal was found in the
+sand at the mouth of the Walla Walla. All his sons were slain in
+battle or died of disease. When the last one lay stretched in the
+grave, the old chief stepped in upon the corpse and commanded his
+people to bury them in one grave together.
+
+"On account of his great sorrow," says old Se-cho-wa.
+
+And so he was buried.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+_CAMP CHOPUNNISH_
+
+
+As Lewis and Clark with twenty-three horses set out over the camas
+meadows that April morning a hundred years ago, the world seemed
+brighter for the kindness of the Walla Wallas.
+
+At the Dalles the forest had ended. Now they were on the great
+Columbian plains that stretch to the Rockies, the northwest granary of
+to-day. The dry exhilarating air billowed the verdure like a sea.
+
+Meadow larks sang and flitted. Dove-coloured sage hens, the cock of
+the plains, two-thirds the size of a turkey, cackled like domestic
+fowl before the advancing cavalcade. Spotted black-and-white pheasants
+pecked in the grass like the little topknot "Dominicks" the men had
+known around their boyhood homes.
+
+And everywhere were horses.
+
+"More hor-r-ses between th' Gr-reat Falls av th' Columby and th' Nez
+Percés than I iver saw in th' same space uv countery in me loife
+before," said Patrick Gass. "They are not th' lar-r-gest soize but
+very good an' active."
+
+"Of an excellent race, lofty, elegantly formed, and durable," those
+Cayuse horses are described by Lewis and Clark. "Many of them appear
+like fine English coursers, and resemble in fleetness and bottom, as
+well as in form and colour, the best blooded horses of Virginia."
+
+A hundred years ago, the Cayuse of the Columbian plains was a recent
+importation from the bluest blooded Arabian stock of Spain.
+White-starred, white-footed, he was of noble pedigree. Traded or
+stolen from tribe to tribe, these Spanish horses found a home on the
+Columbia. All winter these wild horses fattened on the plain; madly
+their Indian owners rode them; and when they grew old, stiff, and
+blind, they went, so the Indians said, to Horse Heaven on the Des
+Chutes to die.
+
+Following the old Nez Percés trail, that became a stage road in the
+days of gold, and then a railroad, Lewis and Clark came to the land of
+the Nez Percés,--Chopunnish.
+
+Thirty-one years later the missionary Spalding planted an apple-tree
+where Lewis and Clark reached the Snake at the mouth of Alpowa creek,
+May 4, 1806.
+
+We-ark-koompt, the Indian express, came out to meet them. Over the
+camp of Black Eagle the American flag was flying. Chiefs vied with one
+another to do them honour. Tunnachemootoolt, Black Eagle, spread his
+leather tent and laid a parcel of wood at the door. "Make this your
+lodge while you remain with me." Hohastilpilp, Red Wolf, came riding
+over the hills with fifty people.
+
+The Captains had a fire lighted, and all night in the leather tent on
+the banks of the Kooskooske the chiefs smoked and pondered on the
+journey of the white men.
+
+Lewis and Clark drew maps and pointed out the far-away land of the
+President. Sacajawea and the Shoshone boy interpreted until worn out,
+and then fell asleep. And ever within Black Eagle's village was heard
+the dull "thud, thud, thud," of Nez Percé women pounding the camas and
+the kouse, "with noise like a nail-factory," said Lewis. All night
+long their outdoor ovens were baking the bread of kouse, and the
+kettles of camas mush, flavoured with yamp, simmered and sweetened
+over the dull red Indian fires. The hungry men were not disposed to
+criticise the cuisine of the savage, not even when they were offered
+the dainty flesh of dried rattlesnake!
+
+Labiche killed a bear. In amazement the redmen gathered round.
+
+"These bears are tremendous animals to the Indians,--kill all you
+can," said Captain Lewis. Elated, every hunter went bear-hunting.
+
+"Wonderful men that live on bears!" exclaimed the Indians.
+
+Again the council was renewed, and they talked of wars. Bloody Chief,
+fond of war, showed wounds received in battle with the Snakes.
+
+"It is not good," said Clark. "It is better to be at peace. Here is a
+white flag. When you hold it up it means peace. We have given such
+flags to your enemies, the Shoshones. They will not fight you now."
+
+Fifty years later, that chief, tottering to his grave, said, "I held
+that flag. I held it up high. We met and talked, but never fought
+again."
+
+"We have confided in the white men. We shall follow their advice,"
+Black Eagle went proclaiming through the village.
+
+All the kettles of soup were boiling. From kettle to kettle Black
+Eagle sprinkled in the flour of kouse. "We have confided in the white
+men. Those who are to ratify this council, come and eat. All others
+stay away."
+
+The mush was done, the feast was served; a new dawn had arisen on the
+Nez Percés.
+
+Finding it impossible to cross the mountains, a camp was established
+at Kamiah Creek, on a part of the present Nez Percé reservation in
+Idaho county, Idaho, where for a month they studied this amiable and
+gentle people. Games were played and races run, Coalter outspeeding
+all. Frazer, who had been a fencing master in Rutland, back in
+Vermont, taught tricks, and the music of the fiddles delighted them.
+
+Stout, portly, good-looking men were the Nez Percés, and better
+dressed than most savages, in their whitened tunics and leggings of
+deerskin and buffalo, moccasins and robes and breastplates of otter,
+and bandeaus of fox-skins like a turban on the brow. The women were
+small, of good features and generally handsome, in neatly woven
+tight-fitting grass caps and long buckskin skirts whitened with clay.
+
+Upon the Missouri the eagle was domesticated. Here, too, the Nez Percé
+had his wicker coop of young eaglets to raise for their tail feathers.
+Any Rocky Mountain Indian would give a good horse for the
+black-and-white tail feather of a golden eagle. They fluttered from
+the calumet and hung in cascades from head to foot on the sacred war
+bonnet.
+
+A May snowstorm whitened the camas meadows and melted again. Thick
+black loam invited the plough, but thirty Springs should pass before
+Spalding established his mission and gave ploughs to the redmen.
+Twisted Hair saw the advent of civilisation. Red Wolf planted an
+orchard. Black Eagle went to see Clark at St. Louis and died there.
+
+Captain Lewis held councils, instructing, educating, enlightening the
+Kamiahs, so that to this day they are among the most advanced of
+Indian tribes.
+
+Captain Clark, with simple remedies and some knowledge of medicine,
+became a mighty "tomanowos" among the ailing. With basilicons of pitch
+and oil, wax and resins, a sovereign remedy for skin eruptions, with
+horse-mint teas and doses of sulphur and cream-of-tartar, with
+eye-water, laudanum, and liniment, he treated all sorts of ills. Fifty
+patients a day crowded to the tent of the Red Head. Women suffering
+from rheumatism, the result of toil and exposure in the damp camas
+fields, came dejected and hysterical. They went back shouting, "The
+Red Head chief has made me well."
+
+The wife of a chief had an abscess. Clark lanced it, and she slept for
+the first time in days. The grateful chief brought him a horse that
+was immediately slaughtered for supper. A father gave a horse in
+exchange for remedies for his little crippled daughter.
+
+With exposure to winds, alkali sand, and the smoke of chimneyless
+fires, few Indians survived to old age without blindness.
+
+"Eye-water! Eye-water!" They reached for it as for a gift from the
+gods. Clark understood such eyes, for the smoke of the pioneer cabin
+had made affections of the eye a curse of the frontier.
+
+But affairs were now at their lowest. Even the medicines were
+exhausted, and the last awl, needle, and skein of thread had gone. Off
+their shabby old United States uniforms the soldiers cut the last
+buttons to trade for bread. But instead of trinkets the sensible Nez
+Percés desired knives, buttons, awls for making moccasins, blankets,
+kettles. Shields the gunsmith ingeniously hammered links of
+Drouillard's trap into awls to exchange for bread.
+
+The tireless hunters scoured the country. Farther and farther had
+scattered the game. Even the bears had departed. Thirty-three people
+ate a deer and an elk, or four deer a day. There was no commissariat
+for this little army but its own rifles. And yet, supplies must be
+laid in for crossing the mountains.
+
+Every day Captain Lewis looked at the rising river and the melting
+snows of the Idaho Alps.
+
+"That icy barrier, which separates me from my friends and my country,
+from all which makes life estimable--patience--patience--"
+
+"The snow is yet deep on the mountains. You will not be able to pass
+them until the next full moon, or about the first of June," said the
+Indians.
+
+"Unwelcome intelligence to men confined to a diet of horse meat and
+roots!" exclaimed Captain Lewis.
+
+Finally even horse-flesh failed. Suspecting the situation, Chief Red
+Wolf came and said, "The horses on these hills are ours. Take what you
+need."
+
+He wore a tippet of human scalps, but, says Lewis, "we have, indeed,
+on more than one occasion, had to admire the generosity of this
+Indian, whose conduct presents a model of what is due to strangers in
+distress."
+
+Gradually the snows melted, and the high water subsided.
+
+"The doves are cooing. The salmon will come," said the Indians. Blue
+flowers of the blooming camas covered the prairies like a lake of
+silver. With sixty-five horses and all the dried horse meat they could
+carry, on June 16, 1806, Lewis and Clark started back over the Bitter
+Root Range on the Lolo trail by which they had entered.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+_OVER THE BITTER ROOT RANGE_
+
+
+Dog-tooth violets, roses, and strawberry blossoms covered the plain of
+Weippe without end, but the Lolo trail was deep with snow. Deep and
+deeper grew the drifts, twelve and fifteen feet. The air was keen and
+cold with winter rigours. To go on in those grassless valleys meant
+certain death to all their horses, and so, for the first time, they
+fell back to wait yet other days for the snows to melt upon the
+mountains.
+
+"We must have experienced guides." Drouillard and Shannon were
+dispatched once more to the old camp, and lo! the salmon had come, in
+schools and shoals, reddening the Kooskooskee with their flickering
+fins.
+
+Again they faced the snowy barrier with guides who traversed the
+trackless region with instinctive sureness.
+
+"They never hesitate," said Lewis. "They are never embarrassed. So
+undeviating is their step that whenever the snow has disappeared, even
+for a hundred paces, we find the summer road."
+
+Up in the Bitter Root peaks, like the chamois of the Alps, the Oregon
+mazama, the mountain goat, frolicked amid inaccessible rocks. And
+there, in the snows of the mountain pass, most significant of all,
+were found the tracks of barefooted Indians, supposed to have been
+Flatheads, fleeing in distress from pursuing Blackfeet. Such was the
+battle of primitive man.
+
+The Indians regarded the journey of the white men into the country of
+their hereditary foes as a venture to certain death.
+
+"Danger!" whispered the guides, significantly rapping on their heads,
+drawing their knives across their throats, and pointing far ahead.
+
+Every year the Nez Percés followed the Lolo trail, stony and steep and
+ridgy with rocks and crossed with fallen trees, into the Buffalo
+Illahee, the buffalo country of the Missouri. And for this the
+Blackfeet fought them.
+
+The Blackfeet, too, had been from time immemorial the deadly foe of
+the Flatheads, their bone of contention for ever the buffalo. The
+Blackfeet claimed as their own all the country lying east of the main
+range, and looked upon the Flatheads who went there to hunt as
+intruders.
+
+The Flathead country was west and at the base of the main Rockies,
+along the Missoula and Clark's Fork and northward to the Fraser. With
+their sole weapon, the arrow, and their own undaunted audacity, twice
+a year occurred the buffalo chase, once in Summer and once in Winter.
+But "the ungodly Blackfeet," scourge of the mountains, lay in wait to
+trap and destroy the Flatheads as they would a herd of buffalo.
+
+And so it had been war, bitter war, for ages. But a new force had
+given to the Blackfeet at the west and the Sioux at the east supremacy
+over the rest of the tribes,--that was the white man's gun from the
+British forts on the Saskatchewan.
+
+For spoils and scalps the Blackfeet, Arabs of the North, raided from
+the Saskatchewan to Mexico. They besieged Fort Edmonton at the north,
+and left their tomahawk mark on the Digger Indian's grave at the
+south. The Shoshone-Snakes, too, were immemorial and implacable
+enemies of both the Blackfeet and the Columbia tribes. They fought to
+the Dalles and Walla Walla and up through the Nez Percés to Spokane.
+Their mad raiders threw up the dust of the Utah desert, and chased the
+lone Aztec to his last refuge in Arizona cliffs.
+
+The Blackfeet fought the Shoshones, the Crows, by superior cunning,
+fought the Blackfeet, the Assiniboines fought the Crows, and the
+Sioux, the lordly Sioux, fought all.
+
+It was time for the white man's hand to stay the diabolical dance of
+death.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+_BEWARE THE BLACKFEET!_
+
+
+On the third of July, at the mouth of Lolo creek, the expedition
+separated, Lewis to cross to the Falls of the Missouri and explore
+Marias River, Clark to come to the three forks and cross to the
+Yellowstone.
+
+With nine men and five Indians Captain Lewis crossed the Missoula on a
+raft, and following the Nez Percé trail along the River-of-the-Road
+-to-Buffalo, the Big Blackfoot of to-day, came out July 7, the first
+of white men, on the opening through the main range of the Rockies now
+known as the Lewis and Clark Pass. A Blackfoot road led down to the
+churning waters of the Great Falls.
+
+Pawing, fighting, ten thousand buffaloes were bellowing in one
+continuous roar that terrified the horses. The plain was black with a
+vast and angry army, bearing away to the southwest, flinging the dust
+like a simoom, through which deep-mouthed clangor rolled like thunder
+far away. And at their immediate feet, Drouillard noted fresh tracks
+of Indians dotting the soil; grizzly bears, grim guardians of the
+cataract, emitted hollow growls, and great gray wolves hung in packs
+and droves along the skirts of the buffalo herds, glancing now and
+then toward the little group of horsemen.
+
+In very defiance of danger, again Lewis pitched his camp beside the
+Falls, green and foamy as Niagara. Again buffalo meat, marrow bones,
+ribs, steaks, juicy and rich, sizzled around the blaze, and the hungry
+men ate, ate, ate. They had found the two extremes--want on one side
+of the mountains and abundance on the other.
+
+While Lewis tried to write in his journal, huge brown mosquitoes,
+savage as the bears, bit and buzzed. Lewis's dog howled with the
+torture, the same little Assiniboine dog that had followed all their
+footsteps, had guarded and hunted as well as the best, had slept by
+the fire at Clatsop and been stolen at the Dalles.
+
+Hurrying to their _cache_ at the Bear Islands, it was discovered that
+high water had flooded their skins and the precious specimens of
+plants were soaked and ruined. A bottle of laudanum had spoiled a
+chestful of medicine. But the charts of the Missouri remained
+uninjured, and trunks, boxes, carriage wheels, and blunderbuss were
+all right.
+
+"Transport the baggage around the Falls and wait for me at the mouth
+of Maria's River to the first of September," said Captain Lewis,
+setting out with Drouillard and the Fields boys. "If by that time I am
+not there, go on and join Captain Clark and return home. But if my
+life and health are spared, I shall meet you on the 5th of August."
+
+It was not without misgivings that Sergeant Gass and his comrades saw
+the gallant Captain depart into the hostile Blackfoot country. With
+only three men at his back it was a daring venture. Already the five
+Nez Percés, fearful of their foes, had dropped off to seek their
+friends the Flatheads. In vain Lewis had promised to intercede and
+make peace between the tribes. Their terror of the Blackfeet surpassed
+their confidence in white men.
+
+"Look!"
+
+On the second day out Drouillard suddenly pointed, and leaning far
+over on his horse, examined a trail that would have escaped an eye
+less keen than his. "Blackfeet!" the vicious and profligate rovers
+that of all it was most desirable not to meet!
+
+Hastily crossing the Teton into a thick wood, the party camped that
+night unmolested.
+
+On the eighth day Captain Lewis suddenly spied several Indians on a
+hilltop intently watching Drouillard in the valley. Thirty horses,
+some led, some saddled, stood like silhouettes against the sky.
+Kneeling they scanned the movements of the unconscious hunter below.
+
+"Escape is impossible. We must make the most of our situation. If they
+attempt to rob us, we will resist to the last extremity. I would
+rather die than lose my papers and instruments."
+
+Boldly advancing with a flag in his hand, followed by the two Fields
+brothers, Lewis drew quite near before the Indians perceived these
+other white men. Terrified, they ran about in confusion. Evidently
+with them a stranger meant a foe.
+
+Captain Lewis dismounted, and held out his hand.
+
+Slowly the chief Blackfoot approached, then wheeled in flight. At
+last, with extreme caution, the two parties met and shook hands. Lewis
+gave to one a flag, to another a medal, to a third a handkerchief. The
+tumultuous beating of the Indians' hearts could almost be heard. There
+proved to be but eight of them, armed with two guns, bows, arrows, and
+eye-daggs, a sort of war-hatchet.
+
+"I am glad to see you," said Lewis. "I have much to say. Let us camp
+together."
+
+The Indians assented and set up their semi-circular tent by the
+willows of the river. Here Drouillard, the hunter, skilled in the sign
+language of redmen, drew out their story.
+
+Yes, they knew white men. They traded on the Saskatchewan six days'
+march away.
+
+Yes, there were more of them, two large bands, on the forks of this
+river, a day above.
+
+What did they trade at the Saskatchewan? Skins, wolves, and beaver,
+for guns and ammunition.
+
+Then Lewis talked. He came from the rising sun. He had been to the
+great lake at the west. He had seen many nations at war and had made
+peace. He had stopped to make peace between the Blackfeet and the
+Flatheads.
+
+"We are anxious for peace with the Flatheads. But those people have
+lately killed a number of our relatives and we are in mourning."
+
+Yes, they would come down and trade with Lewis if he built a fort at
+Maria's River.
+
+Until a late hour they smoked, then slept. Lewis and Drouillard lay
+down and slept with the Indians, while the two Fields boys kept guard
+by the fire at the door of the tent.
+
+"Let go my gun."
+
+It was the voice of Drouillard in the half-light of the tent at
+sunrise struggling with a Blackfoot. With a start Lewis awoke and
+reached for his gun. It was gone. The deft thieves had all but
+disarmed the entire party.
+
+Chase followed. In the scuffle for his gun, Reuben Fields stabbed a
+Blackfoot to the heart.
+
+No sooner were the guns recovered than the horses were gone. "Leave
+the horses or I will shoot," shouted Lewis, chasing out of breath to a
+steep notch in the river bluffs. Madly the Indians were tearing away
+with the horses. Lewis fired and killed a Blackfoot. Bareheaded, the
+Captain felt a returning bullet whistle through his hair, but the
+Indians dropped the horses, and away went swimming across the Marias.
+
+Delay meant death. Quickly saddling their horses, Lewis and his men
+made for the Missouri as fast as possible, hearing at every step in
+imagination the pursuing "hoo-oh! whoop-ah-hooh!" that was destined to
+make Marias River the scene of many a bloody massacre by the vengeful
+Blackfeet.
+
+Expecting interception at the mouth of Marias River, the white men
+rode with desperation to form a junction with their friends. All day,
+all night they galloped, until, exhausted, they halted at two o'clock
+in the morning to rest their flagging horses.
+
+That forenoon, having ridden one hundred and twenty miles since the
+skirmish, they reached the mouth of Marias River, just in time to see
+Sergeant Gass, the fleet of canoes, and all, descending from above.
+Leaping from their horses, they took to the boats, and soon left the
+spot, seventy, eighty, a hundred miles a day, down the swift Missouri.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+_DOWN THE YELLOWSTONE_
+
+
+As Lewis turned north toward Marias River, Clark with the rest of the
+party and fifty horses set his face along the Bitter Root Valley
+toward the south. Every step he trod became historic ground in the
+romance of settlement, wars, and gold. Into this Bitter Root Valley
+were to come the first white settlers of Montana, and upon them,
+through the Hell Gate Pass of the Rockies, above the present Missoula,
+were to sweep again and again the bloodthirsty Blackfeet.
+
+"It is as safe to enter the gates of hell as to enter that pass," said
+the old trappers and traders.
+
+More and more beautiful became the valley, pink as a rose with the
+delicate bloom of the bitter-root, the Mayflower of Montana. Here for
+ages the patient Flatheads had dug and dried their favourite root
+until the whole valley was a garden.
+
+As Clark's cavalcade wound through this vale, deer flitted before the
+riders, multitudinous mountain streams leaped across their way, herds
+of bighorns played around the snowbanks on the heights. Across an
+intervening ridge the train descended into Ross Hole, where first they
+met the Flatheads. There were signs of recent occupation; a fire was
+still burning; but the Flatheads were gone.
+
+Out of Ross Hole Sacajawea pointed the way by Clark's Pass, over the
+Continental Divide, to the Big Hole River where the trail disappeared
+or scattered. But Sacajawea knew the spot. "Here my people gather the
+kouse and the camas; here we take the beaver; and yonder, see, a door
+in the mountains."
+
+On her little pony, with her baby on her back, the placid Indian girl
+led the way into the labyrinthine Rockies.
+
+Clark followed, descending into the beautiful Big Hole prairie, where
+in 1877 a great battle was to be fought with Chief Joseph, exactly one
+hundred years after the 1777 troubles, when George Rogers Clark laid
+before Patrick Henry his plan for the capture of Illinois. Out of the
+Big Hole, Chief Joseph was to escape with his women, his children, and
+his dead, to be chased a thousand miles over the very summit of the
+Rockies!
+
+Standing there on the field of future battle, "Onward!" still urged
+Sacajawea, "the gap there leads to your canoes!" The Bird Woman knew
+these highlands,--they were her native hills. As Sacajawea fell back,
+the men turned their horses at a gallop.
+
+Almost could they count the milestones now, down Willard creek, where
+first paying gold was discovered in Montana, past Shoshone cove, over
+the future site of Bannock to the Jefferson.
+
+Scarcely taking the saddles from their steeds, the eager men ran to
+open the _cache_ hid from the Shoshones. To those who so long had
+practised self-denial it meant food, clothing, merchandise--an Indian
+ship in the wild. Everything was safe, goods, canoes, tobacco. In a
+trice the long-unused pipes were smoking with the weed of old
+Virginia.
+
+"Better than any Injun red-willer k'nick-er-k'nick!" said Coalter, the
+hunter.
+
+Leaving Sergeant Pryor with six men to bring on the horses, Captain
+Clark and the rest embarked in the canoes, and were soon gliding down
+the emerald Jefferson, along whose banks for sixty years no change
+should come.
+
+Impetuous mountain streams, calmed to the placid pool of the beaver
+dam, widened into lakes and marshes. Beaver, otter, musk-rats
+innumerable basked along the shore. Around the boats all night the
+disturbed denizens flapped the water with their tails,--angry at the
+invasion of their solitude.
+
+At the Three Forks, Clark's pony train remounted for the Yellowstone,
+prancing and curveting along the beaver-populated dells of the
+Gallatin.
+
+Before them arose, bewildering, peak on peak, but again the Bird
+Woman, Sacajawea, pointed out the Yellowstone Gap, the Bozeman Pass of
+to-day, on the great Shoshone highway. Many a summer had Sacajawea,
+child of elfin locks, ridden on the trailing travoises through this
+familiar gateway into the buffalo haunts of Yellowstone Park.
+
+Slowly Clark and his expectant cavalcade mounted the Pass, where for
+ages the buffalo and the Indian alone had trod. As they reached the
+summit, the glorious Yellowstone Alps burst on their view. At their
+feet a rivulet, born on the mountain top, leaped away, bright and
+clear, over its gravelly bed to the Yellowstone in the plains below.
+
+It was the brother of George Rogers Clark that stood there, one to the
+manner born of riding great rivers or breaking through mountain
+chains. But thirty years had elapsed since that elder brother and
+Daniel Boone had threaded the Cumberland Gap of the Alleghanies. The
+highways of the buffalo became the highways of the nation.
+
+"It is no more than eighteen miles," said Clark, glancing back from
+the high snowy gap, half piercing, half surmounting the dividing ridge
+between the Missouri and the Yellowstone, so nearly do their
+headwaters interlock. In coming up this pass, Clark's party went
+through the present city limits of Bozeman, the county seat of
+Gallatin, and over the route of future Indians, trappers, miners, road
+builders, and last and greatest of all, armies of permanent occupation
+that are marching still to the valleys of fertile Montana. Up the
+shining Yellowstone, over the Belt range, through the tunnel to
+Bozeman, the iron horse flits to-day, on, westerly one hundred miles
+to Helena, almost in the exact footsteps trodden by the heroic youth
+of one hundred years ago.
+
+Among the cottonwood groves of the Yellowstone, Clark's men quickly
+fashioned a pair of dugouts, lashed together with rawhide; and in
+these frail barks, twenty-eight feet long, the Captain and party
+embarked, leaving Sergeant Pryor, Shannon, Windsor, and Hall to bring
+on the horses. All manner of trouble Pryor had with those horses. Lame
+from continual travel, he made moccasins for their feet. They were
+buffalo runners, trained for the hunt. At sight of the Yellowstone
+herds away they flew, to chase in the old wild Indian fashion of their
+red masters. No sooner had Pryor rounded them up and brought them back
+than they disappeared utterly,--stolen by the Crows. Not one of the
+entire fifty horses was ever recovered.
+
+Here was a serious predicament. Down the impetuous Yellowstone Clark's
+boats had already gone. Alone in the heart of the buffalo country
+these four men were left, thousands of miles from the haunts of
+civilised man.
+
+"We must join Captain Clark at all hazards. We must improvise boats,"
+said Shannon.
+
+Sergeant Pryor recalled the Welsh coracles of the Mandans. "Can we
+make one?"
+
+Long slim saplings were bent to form a hoop for the rim, another hoop
+held by cross-sticks served for the bottom. Over this rude basket
+green buffalo hides were tightly drawn, and in these frail craft they
+took to the water, close in the wake of their unconscious Captain.
+
+And meanwhile Clark was gliding down the Yellowstone. On either bank
+buffaloes dotted the landscape, under the shade of trees and standing
+in the water like cattle, or browsing on a thousand hills. Gangs of
+stately elk, light troops of sprightly antelopes, fleet and graceful
+as the gazelle of Oriental song, deer of slim elastic beauty, and even
+bighorns that could be shot from the boat. Sometimes were heard the
+booming subterranean geysers hidden in the hollows of the mountains,
+but none in the party yet conceived of the wonders of Yellowstone Park
+that Coalter came back to discover that same Autumn.
+
+One day Clark landed to examine a remarkable rock. Its sides were
+carved with Indian figures, and a cairn was heaped upon the summit.
+Stirred by he knew not what impulse, Clark named it Pompey's Pillar,
+and carved his name upon the yielding sandstone, where his bold
+lettering is visible yet to-day.
+
+More and more distant each day grew the Rockies, etched fainter each
+night on the dim horizon of the west. More and more numerous grew the
+buffaloes, delaying the boats with their countless herds stampeding
+across the Yellowstone. For an hour one day the boats waited, the wide
+river blackened by their backs, and before night two other herds, as
+numerous as the first, came beating across the yellow-brown tide.
+
+But more than buffaloes held sway on the magic Yellowstone. Wrapped in
+their worn-out blankets the men could not sleep for the scourge of
+mosquitoes; they could not sight their rifles for the clouds of
+moving, whizzing, buzzing, biting insects. Even the buffalo were
+stifled by them in their nostrils.
+
+Nine hundred miles now had they come down the Yellowstone, to its
+junction with the Missouri half a mile east of the Montana border, but
+no sign yet had they found of Lewis. Clark wrote on the sand, "W. C. A
+few miles further down on the right hand side."
+
+August 8, Sergeant Pryor and his companions appeared in their little
+skin tubs. Four days later, there was a shout and waving of caps,--the
+boats of Captain Lewis came in sight at noon. But a moment later every
+cheek blanched with alarm.
+
+"Where is Captain Lewis?" demanded Clark, running forward.
+
+There in the bottom of a canoe, Lewis lay as one dead, pale but
+smiling. He had been shot. With the gentleness of a brother Clark
+lifted him up, and they carried him to camp.
+
+"A mistake,--an accident,--'tis nothing," he whispered.
+
+And then the story leaked out. Cruzatte, one-eyed, near-sighted,
+mistaking Lewis in his dress of brown leather for an elk, had shot him
+through the thigh. With the assistance of Patrick Gass, Lewis had
+dressed the wound himself. On account of great pain and high fever he
+slept that night in the boat. And now the party were happily reunited.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+_THE HOME STRETCH_
+
+
+In the distance there was a gleam of coloured blankets where the
+beehive huts of the Mandan village lay. A firing of guns and the
+blunderbuss brought Black Cat to the boats.
+
+"Come and eat." And with the dignity of an old Roman, the chief
+extended his hand.
+
+"Come and eat," was the watchword of every chieftain on the Missouri.
+Even the Sioux said, "Come and eat!"
+
+Hospitable as Arabs, they spread the buffalo robe and brought the
+pipe. While the officers talked with the master of the lodge, the
+silent painstaking squaws put the kettles on the fire, and slaughtered
+the fatted dog for the honoured guests.
+
+"How many chiefs will accompany us to Washington?" That was the first
+inquiry of the business-pushing white men. Through Jussaume the
+Indians answered.
+
+"I would go," said the Black Cat, "but de Sioux--"
+
+"De Sioux will certainly kill us," said Le Borgne of the Minnetarees.
+"Dey are waiting now to intercept you on de river. Dey will cut you
+off."
+
+"We stay at home. We listen to your counsel," piped up Little Cherry.
+"But dey haf stolen our horses. Dey haf scalp our people."
+
+"We must fight to protect ourselves," added the Black Cat. "We live in
+peace wit' all nation--'cept de Sioux!"
+
+In vain Captain Clark endeavoured to quiet their apprehensions. "We
+shall not suffer the Sioux to injure one of our red children."
+
+"I pledge my government that a company of armed men shall guard you on
+your return," added Lewis.
+
+At this point Jussaume reported that Shahaka, or Big White, in his
+wish to see the President, had overcome his fears. He would go to
+Washington.
+
+Six feet tall, of magnificent presence, with hair white and coarse as
+a horse's mane, Shahaka, of all the chiefs, was the one to carry to
+the States the tradition of a white admixture in the Mandan blood.
+"The handsomest Injun I iver saw," said Patrick Gass.
+
+Arrangements for departure were now made as rapidly as possible.
+Presents of corn, beans, and squashes, more than all the boats could
+carry, were piled around the white men's camp.
+
+The blacksmith's tools were intrusted to Charboneau for the use of the
+Mandans. The blunderbuss, given to the Minnetarees, was rolled away to
+their village with great exultation.
+
+"Now let the Sioux come!" It was a challenge and a refuge.
+
+The iron corn mill was nowhere to be seen. For scarcely had Lewis and
+Clark turned their backs for the upper Missouri before it had been
+broken into bits to barb the Indian arrows.
+
+Sacajawea looked wistfully. She, too, would like to visit the white
+man's country.
+
+"We will take you and your wife down if you choose to go," said
+Captain Clark to Charboneau.
+
+"I haf no acquaintance, no prospect to mak' a leeving dere," answered
+the interpreter. "I mus' leeve as I haf done."
+
+"I will take your son and have him educated as a white child should
+be," continued the Captain.
+
+Charboneau and Sacajawea looked at one another and at their beautiful
+boy now nineteen months old, prattling in their midst.
+
+"We would be weeling eef de child were weaned," slowly spake
+Charboneau. "Een wan year, he be ole enough to leaf he moder. I den
+tak' eem to you eef you be so friendly to raise eem as you t'ink
+proper."
+
+"Bring him to me in one year. I will take the child," said Captain
+Clark.
+
+Captain Lewis paid Charboneau five hundred dollars, loaded Sacajawea
+with what gifts he could, and left them in the Mandan country.
+
+All was now ready for the descent to St. Louis. The boats, lashed
+together in pairs, were at the shore. Big White was surrounded by his
+friends, seated in a circle, solemnly smoking. The women wept aloud;
+the little children trembled and hid behind their mothers.
+
+More courageous than any, Shahaka immediately sent his wife and son
+with their baggage on board. The interpreter, Jussaume, with his wife
+and two children, accompanied them. Yes, Madame Jussaume was going to
+Washington!
+
+Sacajawea, modest princess of the Shoshones, heroine of the great
+expedition, stood with her babe in arms and smiled upon them from the
+shore. So had she stood in the Rocky Mountains pointing out the gates.
+So had she followed the great rivers, navigating the continent.
+
+Sacajawea's hair was neatly braided, her nose was fine and straight,
+and her skin pure copper like the statue in some old Florentine
+gallery. Madonna of her race, she had led the way to a new time. To
+the hands of this girl, not yet eighteen, had been intrusted the key
+that unlocked the road to Asia.
+
+Some day upon the Bozeman Pass, Sacajawea's statue will stand beside
+that of Clark. Some day, where the rivers part, her laurels will vie
+with those of Lewis. Across North America a Shoshone Indian Princess
+touched hands with Jefferson, opening her country.
+
+All the chiefs had gathered to see the boats start. "Stay but one
+moment," they said.
+
+Clark stepped back. Black Cat handed him a pipe, as if for
+benediction. The solemn smoke-wreaths soon rolled upward.
+
+"Tell our Great Fader de young men will remain at home and not mak'
+war on any people, except in self-defence."
+
+"Tell de Rickara to come and visit. We mean no harm."
+
+"Tak' good care dis chief. He will bring word from de Great Fader."
+
+It was a promise and a prayer. Strong chiefs turned away with
+misgiving and trepidation as they saw Shahaka depart with the white
+men.
+
+Dropping below their old winter quarters at Fort Mandan, Lewis and
+Clark saw but a row of pickets left. The houses lay in ashes,
+destroyed by an accidental fire. All were there for the homeward pull
+but Coalter. He had gone back with Hancock and Dickson, two
+adventurers from Boone's settlement, to discover the Yellowstone Park.
+
+On the fourth day out three Frenchmen were met approaching the Mandan
+nation with the message,--
+
+"Seven hundert Sioux haf pass de Rickara to mak' war on de Mandan an'
+Minnetaree." Fortunately, Shahaka did not understand, and no one told
+him.
+
+The Arikara village greeted the passing boats. Lewis, still lame,
+requested Clark to go up to the village. Like children confessing
+their misdeeds the Arikaras began:
+
+"We cannot keep the peace! Our young men follow the Sioux!"
+
+The wild Cheyennes, with their dogs and horses and handsome leathern
+lodges, were here on a trading visit, to exchange with the Arikaras
+meat and robes for corn and beans. They were a noble race, of straight
+limbs and Roman noses, unaccustomed to the whites, shy and cautious.
+
+"We war against none but the Sioux, with whom we have battled for
+ever," they said.
+
+Everywhere there was weeping and mourning. "My son, my son, he has
+been slain by the Sioux!"
+
+Between the lands of the warring nations surged seas of buffalo, where
+to-day are the waving bonanza wheat fields of North Dakota.
+
+From an eminence Clark looked over the prairies. "More buffalo than
+ever I have seen before at one time,"--and he had seen many. "If it be
+not impossible to calculate the moving multitude that darkens the
+plains, twenty thousand would be no exaggerated estimate."
+
+They were now well into the country of the great Sioux Indian
+Confederacy. Arms and ammunition were inspected.
+
+The sharp air thrilled and filled them with new vigour. No wonder the
+Sioux were never still. The ozone of the Arctic was in their veins,
+the sweeping winds drove them, the balsamic prairie was their bed, the
+sky their canopy. They never shut themselves up in stuffy mud huts, as
+did the Mandans; they lived in tents. Unrestrained, unregenerate,
+there was in them the fire of the Six Nations, of King Philip and of
+Pontiac. Tall, handsome, finely formed, agile, revengeful,
+intelligent, capable,--they loved their country and they hated
+strangers. So did the Greeks. An effeminate nation would have fallen
+before them as did the Roman before the Goth, but in the Anglo-Saxon
+they met their master.
+
+"Whoop-ah-ho-o-oh!"
+
+As anticipated, Black Buffalo and his pirate band were on the hills.
+Whether that fierce cry meant defiance or greeting no man could tell.
+
+"Whoop-ah-ho-o-oh!"
+
+The whole band rushed down to the shore, and even out into the water,
+shouting invitations to land, and waving from the sand-banks.
+
+But too fresh in memory was the attempt to carry off Captain Clark.
+Jubilant, hopeful, and full of the fire of battle as the white men
+were, yet no one wished to test the prowess of the Sioux.
+
+Unwilling to venture an interview, the boats continued on their way.
+Black Buffalo shook his war bonnet defiantly, and returning to the
+hill smote the earth three times with the butt of his rifle, the
+registration of a mighty oath against the whites.
+
+Leaving behind them a wild brandishing of bows, arrows, and tomahawks,
+and an atmosphere filled with taunts, insults, and imprecations, the
+boats passed out of sight.
+
+Wafted on the wind followed that direful "Whoop-ah-ho-o-oh!" ending
+with the piercing shrill Indian yell that for sixty years froze the
+earliest life blood of Minnesota and Dakota.
+
+Here in the land of the Teton Sioux was to be planted the future Fort
+Rice, where exactly sixty years after Lewis and Clark, there crossed
+the Missouri one of the most powerful, costly, and best equipped
+expeditions ever sent out against hostile Indians,--four thousand
+cavalry, eight hundred mounted infantry, twelve pieces of artillery,
+three hundred government teams, three hundred beef steers, and fifteen
+steamboats to carry supplies,--to be joined here on the Fourth of
+July, 1864, by an emigrant train of one hundred and sixty teams and
+two hundred and fifty people,--the van guard of Montana settlement.
+The Sioux were defeated in the Bad Lands, and the emigrants were
+carried safely through to Helena, where they and their descendants
+live to-day.
+
+Already sweeping up the Missouri, Lewis and Clark met advancing
+empire. Near Vermilion River, James Aird was camping with a license to
+trade among the Sioux.
+
+"What is the news from St. Louis?"
+
+There on the borders of a future great State, Lewis and Clark first
+heard that Burr and Hamilton had fought a duel and Hamilton was
+killed; that three hundred American troops were cantoned at
+Bellefontaine, a new log fort on the Missouri; that Spain had taken a
+United States frigate on the Mediterranean; that two British ships of
+war had fired on an American ship in the port of New York, killing the
+Captain's brother.
+
+Great was the indignation in the United States against Jefferson and
+the impressment of American seamen.
+
+"The money spent for Louisiana would have been much better used in
+building fighting ships."
+
+"The President had much better be protecting our rights than cutting
+up animals and stuffing the skins of dead raccoons."
+
+"Where is our national honour? Gone, abandoned on the Mississippi."
+
+And these _coureurs_ on the Mississippi heard that the conflict
+foreseen by Napoleon, when he gave us Louisiana, was raging now in all
+its fury, interdicting the commerce of the world.
+
+To their excited ears the river rushed and rocked, the earth rumbled,
+with the roar of cannon. To themselves Lewis and Clark seemed a very
+small part of the forces that make and unmake nations,--and yet that
+expedition meant more to the world than the field of Waterloo!
+
+The next noon, on ascending the hill of Floyd's Bluff they found the
+Indians had opened the grave of their comrade. Reverently it was
+filled again.
+
+Home from the buffalo hunt in the plains of the Nebraska, the Omahas
+were firing guns to signal their return to gather in their harvest of
+corn, beans, and pumpkins. Keel boats, barges, and bateaux came
+glistening into view,--Auguste Chouteau with merchandise to trade with
+the Yanktons, another Chouteau to the Platte, a trader with two men to
+the Pawnee Loupes, and Joseph La Croix with seven men bound for the
+Omahas.
+
+Through the lessening distance Clark recognised on one of the barges
+his old comrade, Robert McClellan, the wonderful scout of Wayne's
+army, who had ridden on many an errand of death. Since Wayne's victory
+McClellan had been a ranger still, but now the Indians were quieting
+down,--all except Tecumseh.
+
+"The country has long since given you up," he told the Captain. "We
+have word from Jefferson to seek for news of Lewis and Clark. The
+general opinion in the United States is that you are lost in the
+unfathomable depths of the continent. But President Jefferson has
+hopes. The last heard of you was at the Mandan villages."
+
+With a laugh they listened to their own obituaries. On the same barge
+with McClellan was Gravelines with orders from Jefferson to instruct
+the Arikaras in agriculture, and Dorion to help make way through the
+Sioux.
+
+"Brave Raven, the Arikara chief, died in Washington," said Gravelines.
+"I am on my way to them with a speech from the President and the
+presents which have been made to the chief."
+
+How home now tugged at their heart strings! Eager to be on the way,
+they bade farewell to McClellan.
+
+Down, down they shot along, wind, current, and paddle in their favour,
+past shores where the freebooting Kansas Indians robbed the traders,
+past increasing forests of walnut, elm, oak, hickory.
+
+The men were now reduced to a biscuit apiece. Wild turkeys gobbled on
+shore, but the party paused not a moment to hunt.
+
+On the twentieth a mighty shout went up. They heard the clank of cow
+bells, and saw tame cattle feeding on the hills of Charette, the home
+of Daniel Boone. With cheers and firing of guns they landed at the
+village.
+
+"We are indeet astonished," exclaimed the joyful habitants, grasping
+their hands. "You haf been given up for det long tam since." The men
+were scattered among the families for the night, honoured guests of
+Charette.
+
+"Plaintee tam we wish ourself back on ole San Loui'," said Cruzatte to
+his admiring countrymen.
+
+To their surprise Lewis and Clark found new settlements all the way
+down from Charette. September 21, firing a tremendous salute from the
+old stone tower behind the huts, all St. Charles paid tribute to the
+Homeric heroes who had wandered farther than Ulysses and slain more
+monsters than Hercules.
+
+Just above the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers loomed
+the fresh mud chimneys of the new log Fort Bellefontaine, Colonel
+Thomas Hunt in command, and Dr. Saugrain, surgeon, appointed by
+Jefferson.
+
+The Colonel's pretty little daughter, Abby Hunt, looked up in
+admiration at Lewis and Clark, and followed all day these "Indian
+white men" from the north. Forty years after she told the story of
+that arrival. "They wore dresses of deerskin, fringed and worked with
+porcupine quills, something between a military undress frock coat and
+an Indian shirt, with leggings and moccasins, three-cornered cocked
+hats and long beards."
+
+Standing between the centuries in that log fort on the Missouri,
+pretty little Abby Hunt herself was destined to become historic, as
+the wife of Colonel Snelling and the mother of the first white child
+born in Minnesota.
+
+After an early breakfast with Colonel Hunt, the expedition set out for
+the last stretch homeward. They rounded out of the Missouri into the
+Mississippi, and pulled up to St. Louis at noon, Tuesday, September
+23, 1806, after an absence of nearly two years and a half.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+_THE OLD STONE FORTS OF ST. LOUIS_
+
+
+It was noon when Lewis and Clark sighted the old stone forts of the
+Spanish time. Never had that frontier site appeared so noble, rising
+on a vast terrace from the rock-bound river.
+
+As the white walls burst on their view, with simultaneous movement
+every man levelled his rifle. The Captains smiled and gave the
+signal,--the roar of thirty rifles awoke the echoes from the rocks.
+
+Running down the stony path to the river came the whole of St.
+Louis,--eager, meagre, little Frenchmen, tanned and sallow and quick
+of gait, smaller than the Americans, but graceful and gay, with a
+heartfelt welcome; black-eyed French women in camasaks and kerchiefs,
+dropping their trowels in their neat little gardens where they had
+been delving among the hollyhocks; gay little French children in red
+petticoats; and here and there a Kentuckian, lank and lean,
+eager,--all tripping and skipping down to the water's edge.
+
+Elbowing his way among them came Monsieur Auguste Chouteau, the most
+noted man in St. Louis. Pierre, his brother, courtly, well-dressed,
+eminently social, came also; and even Madame, their mother, did not
+disdain to come down to welcome her friends, _Les Américains_.
+
+It was like the return of a fur brigade, with shouts of laughter and
+genuine rejoicing.
+
+"_Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_ eet ees Leewes an' Clark whom ve haf mournt as
+det in dose Rock Mountain. What good word mought dey bring from te fur
+countree."
+
+With characteristic abandon the emotional little Frenchmen flung their
+arms around the stately forms of Lewis and Clark, and more than one
+pretty girl that day printed a kiss on their bearded lips.
+
+"Major Christy,--well, I declare!" An old Wayne's army comrade grasped
+Captain Clark by the hand. What memories that grasp aroused! William
+Christy, one of his brother officers, ready not more than a dozen
+years ago to aid in capturing this same San Luis de Ilinoa!
+
+"I have moved to this town. I have a tavern. Send your baggage right
+up!" And forthwith a creaking charette came lumbering down the rocky
+way.
+
+"Take a room at my house." Pierre Chouteau grasped the hands of both
+Captains at once. And to Chouteau's they went.
+
+"But first we must send word of our safe arrival to the President,"
+said Lewis, feeling unconsciously for certain papers that had slept
+next his heart for many a day.
+
+"Te post haf departed from San Loui'," remarked a bystander.
+
+"Departed? It must be delayed. Here, Drouillard, hurry with this note
+to Mr. Hay at Cahokia and bid him hold the mail until to-morrow noon."
+
+Drouillard, with his old friend Pascal Cerré, the son of Gabriel, set
+off at once across the Mississippi. The wharf was lined with flatboats
+loaded with salt for 'Kasky and furs for New Orleans.
+
+Once a month a one-horse mail arrived at Cahokia. Formerly St. Louis
+went over there for mail,--St. Louis was only a village near Cahokia
+then; but already _Les Américains_ were turning things upside down.
+
+"We haf a post office now. San Loui' haf grown."
+
+Every one said that. To eyes that had seen nothing more stately than
+Fort Mandan or Clatsop, St. Louis had taken on metropolitan airs. In
+the old fort where lately lounged the Spanish governor, peering
+anxiously across the dividing waters, and whence had lately marched
+the Spanish garrison, American courts of justice were in session. Out
+of the old Spanish martello tower on the hill, a few Indian prisoners
+looked down on the animated street below.
+
+With the post office and the court house had come the American school,
+and already vivacious French children were claiming as their own,
+Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.
+
+Just opposite the Chouteau mansion was the old Spanish Government
+House, the house where George Rogers Clark had met and loved the
+dazzling Donna.
+
+Aaron Burr had lately been there, feted by the people, plotting
+treason with Wilkinson in the Government House itself; and now his
+disorganised followers, young men of birth and education from Atlantic
+cities, stranded in St. Louis, were to become the pioneer
+schoolmasters of Upper Louisiana.
+
+New houses were rising on every hand. In the good old French days,
+goods at fabulous prices were kept in boxes. Did Madame or
+Mademoiselle wish anything, it must be unpacked as from a trunk. Once
+a year goods arrived. Sugar, gunpowder, blankets, spices, knives,
+hatchets, and kitchen-ware, pell-mell, all together, were coming out
+now onto shelves erected by the thrifty Americans. Already new stores
+stood side by side with the old French mansions.
+
+"Alas! te good old quiet times are gone," sighed the French habitants,
+wiping a tear with the blue bandana.
+
+And while they looked askance at the tall Americans, elephantine
+horses, and Conestoga waggons, that kept crossing the river, the
+prices of the little two-acre farms of the Frenchmen went up, until in
+a few years the old French settlers were the nabobs of the land.
+
+Already two ferry lines were transporting a never-ending line through
+this new gateway to the wider West. Land-mad settlers were flocking
+into "Jefferson's Purchase," grubbing out hazel roots, splitting
+rails, making fences, building barns and bridges. Men whose sole
+wealth consisted in an auger, a handsaw, and a gun, were pushing into
+the prairies and the forests. Long-bearded, dressed in buckskin, with
+a knife at his belt and a rifle at his back, the forest-ranging
+backwoodsman was over-running Louisiana.
+
+"Why do you live so isolated?" the stranger would ask.
+
+"I never wish to hear the bark of a neighbour's dog. When you hear
+the sound of a neighbour's gun it is time to move away."
+
+Thus, solitary and apart, the American frontiersman took up Missouri.
+
+Strolling along the Rue Royale, followed by admiring crowds, Lewis and
+Clark found themselves already at the Pierre Chouteau mansion, rising
+like an old-world chateau amid the lesser St. Louis. Up the stone
+steps, within the demi-fortress, there were glimpses of fur
+warehouses, stables, slaves' quarters, occupying a block,--practically
+a fort within the city.
+
+Other guests were there before them,--Charles Gratiot, who had visited
+the Clarks in Virginia, and John P. Cabanné, who was to wed Gratiot's
+daughter, Julia. On one of those flatboats crowding the wharf that
+morning came happy Pierre Menard, the most illustrious citizen of
+Kaskaskia, with his bride of a day, Angelique Saucier. Pierre Menard's
+nephew, Michel Menard, was shortly to leave for Texas, to become an
+Indian trader and founder of the city of Galveston.
+
+At the board, too, sat Pierre Chouteau, the younger, just returned
+from a trip up the Mississippi with Julien Dubuque, where he had
+helped to start Dubuque and open the lead mines.
+
+Out of the wild summer grape the old inhabitants of St. Louis had long
+fabricated their choicest Burgundy. But of late the Chouteaus had
+begun to import their wine from France, along with ebony chairs,
+claw-footed tables, and other luxuries, the first in this Mississippi
+wild. For never had the fur-trade been so prosperous.
+
+There was laughter and clinking of glasses, and questions of lands
+beyond the Yellowstone. Out of that hour arose schemes for a trapper's
+conquest along the trail on which ten future States were strung.
+
+"The mouth of the Yellowstone commands the rich fur-trade of the Rocky
+mountains," said Captain Clark. Captain Lewis dwelt on the Three Forks
+as a strategic point for a fort. No one there listened with more
+breathless intent than the dark-haired boy, the young Chouteau, who
+was destined to become the greatest financier of the West, a king of
+the fur trade, first rival and then partner of John Jacob Astor.
+
+No wonder the home-coming of Lewis and Clark was the signal for
+enterprises such as this country had never yet seen. They had
+penetrated a realm whose monarch was the grizzly bear, whose queen was
+the beaver, whose armies were Indian tribes and the buffalo.
+
+Gallic love of gaiety and amusement found in this return ample
+opportunity for the indulgence of hospitable dancing and feasting.
+Every door was open. Every house, from Chouteau's down, had its guest
+out of the gallant thirty-one.
+
+Hero-worship was at its height. Hero-worship is characteristic of
+youthful, progressive peoples. Whole nations strive to emulate ideals.
+The moment that ceases, ossification begins.
+
+Here the ideals were Lewis and Clark. They had been west; their men
+had been west. They, who had traced the Missouri to its cradle in the
+mountains, who had smoked the calumet with remotest tribes, who had
+carried the flag to the distant Pacific, became the lions of St.
+Louis.
+
+Such spontaneous welcome made a delightful impression upon the hearts
+of the young Captains, and they felt a strong inclination to make the
+city their permanent home.
+
+The galleries of the little inns of St. Louis were filled with
+Frenchmen, smoking and telling stories all day long. Nothing hurried,
+nothing worried them; the rise of the river, the return of a brigade,
+alone broke the long summer day of content.
+
+But here was something new.
+
+Even York, addicted to romance, told Munchausen tales of thrilling
+incidents that never failed of an appreciative audience. Trappers,
+flat-boatmen, frontiersmen, and Frenchmen loved to spin long yarns at
+the Green Tree Inn, but York could outdo them all. He had been to the
+ocean, had seen the great whale and sturgeon that put all inland fish
+stories far into the shade.
+
+Petrie, Auguste Chouteau's old negro, who came with him as a boy and
+grew old and thought he owned Auguste Chouteau,--Petrie, who always
+said, "Me and the Colonel," met in York for the first time one greater
+than himself.
+
+Immediately upon their return Lewis and Clark had repaired to the
+barber and tailor, and soon bore little resemblance to the tawny
+frontiersmen in fringed hunting-shirts and beards that had so lately
+issued from the wilderness.
+
+In the upper story of the Chouteau mansion, the Captains regarded with
+awe the high four-poster with its cushiony, billowy feather-bed.
+
+"This is too luxurious! York, bring my robe and bear-skin."
+
+Lewis and Clark could not sleep in beds that night. They heard the
+watch call and saw the glimmer of campfires in their dreams. The
+grandeur of the mountains was upon them, cold and white and crowned
+with stars, the vastness of the prairie and the dashing of ocean, the
+roar of waterfalls, the hum of insects, and the bellowing of buffalo.
+
+They knew now the Missouri like the face of a friend; they had stemmed
+its muddy mouth, had evaded its shifting sandbanks, had watched its
+impetuous falls that should one day whirl a thousand wheels. Up
+windings green as paradise they had drunk of its crystal sources in
+the mountains.
+
+They had seen it when the mountains cast their shadows around the
+campfires, and in the blaze of noon when the quick tempest beat it
+into ink. They had seen it white in Mandan winter, the icy trail of
+brave and buffalo; and they had seen it crimson, when far-off peaks
+were tipped with amethystine gold.
+
+In the vast and populous solitude of nature they had followed the same
+Missouri spreading away into the beaver-meadows of the Madison, the
+Jefferson, and the Gallatin, and had written their journals on
+hillsides where the windflower and the larkspur grew wild on Montana
+hills.
+
+An instinct, a relic, an inheritance of long ago was upon them, when
+their ancestors roved the earth untrammelled by cities and
+civilisation, when the rock was man's pillow and the cave his home,
+when the arrow in his strong hand brought the fruits of the chase,
+when garments of skin clad his limbs, and God spoke to the white
+savage under the old Phoenician stars.
+
+In their dreams they felt the rain and wind beat on their leather
+tent. Sacajawea's baby cried, Spring nodded with the rosy clarkia,
+screamed with Clark's crow, and tapped with Lewis's woodpecker.
+
+"Rat-tat-tat!" Was that the woodpecker? No, some one was knocking at
+the door of their bed chamber. And no one else than Pierre Chouteau
+himself.
+
+"Drouillard is back from Cahokia ready to carry your post. The rider
+waits."
+
+This was the world again. It was morning. Throwing off robes and
+bear-skins, and rising from the hardwood floor where they had
+voluntarily camped that night, both Captains looked at the tables
+strewn with letters, where until past midnight they had sat the night
+before.
+
+There lay Clark's letter to his brother, George Rogers, and there,
+also, was the first rough draft of Lewis's letter to the President, in
+a hand as fine and even as copperplate, but interlined, and blotted
+with erasures.
+
+In the soft, warm St. Louis morning, with Mississippi breezes rustling
+the curtain, after a hurried breakfast both set to work to complete
+the letters.
+
+For a time nothing was heard but the scratching of quill pens, as each
+made clean copies of their letters for transmission to the far-off
+centuries. But no centuries troubled then; to-day,--_to-day_, was
+uppermost.
+
+York stuck in his head, hat in hand. "Massah Clahk, Drewyer say he hab
+jus' time, sah."
+
+"Well, sir, tell Drouillard the whole United States mail service can
+wait on us to-day. We are writing to the President."
+
+Before ten o'clock Drouillard was off to Cahokia with messages that
+gave to the nation at large its first intimation that the Pacific
+expedition was a consummated fact.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+_TO WASHINGTON_
+
+
+There were hurried days at St. Louis, a village that knew not haste
+before. The skins were sunned and stored in the rooms of Cadet
+Chouteau. Boxes of specimens were packed for the Government. Captain
+Lewis opened his trunk and found his papers all wet. The hermetically
+sealed tin cases that held the precious journals alone had saved these
+from destruction.
+
+The Captains had their hands full. The restless men must be paid and
+discharged. Nine of the adventurers within a week after the return to
+St. Louis sold their prospective land claims for a pittance. Seven of
+these claims were bought by their fellow soldiers; Sergeant John
+Ordway took several of the men and settled on the site of the present
+city of New Madrid.
+
+Robert Frazer received two hundred and fifty dollars for his claim,
+and prepared to publish his travels,--a volume that never saw the
+light. In addition to land grants, the men received double pay
+amounting altogether to eleven thousand dollars.
+
+A grand dinner, given by St. Louis, a ball and farewell, and the
+Captains were on the way with their Mandan chief, Big White, and his
+Indians, and Gass, Shannon, Ordway, Pryor, and Bratton.
+
+"The route by which I propose travelling to Washington is by way of
+Cahokia, Vincennes, Louisville, the Crab Orchard, Fincastle, Staunton,
+and Charlottesville," Captain Lewis had written in that letter to
+Jefferson. "Any letters directed to me at Louisville will most
+probably meet me at that place."
+
+With well-filled saddle-bags, the returning heroes crossed to Cahokia
+and set out across Illinois in the Indian summer of 1806.
+
+Governor Harrison was at Vincennes, and Vigo, and a hundred others to
+welcome.
+
+"Hurrah for old Kentucky!" cried Clark, as he caught sight of its
+limestone shores. On many a smiling hilltop, the log cabin had
+expanded into a baronial country seat, with waxed floors and pianos.
+Already the stables were full of horses, the halls were full of music.
+
+Clark, Lewis, and Big White climbed the cliff to the Point of Rock.
+Who but chiefs should visit there?
+
+With newspapers around him, sat George Rogers Clark, following the
+career of Napoleon. That calm and splendid eye kindled at sight of his
+brother. His locks had grown longer, his eye a deeper black under the
+shaggy brows, but the Revolutionary hero shone in every lineament as
+he took the hands of the two explorers.
+
+With the dashing waters at their feet, upon the lonely Point of Rock,
+above the Falls of the Ohio, William Clark stopped first to greet his
+brother from the great expedition. Painters may find a theme here, and
+future romancers a page in drama.
+
+Without delay, taking his rusty three-cornered _chapeau_ from its peg,
+and donning his faded uniform, the conqueror of Illinois accompanied
+the explorers to Locust Grove, ablaze that night with welcome.
+
+Lucy, Fanny, Edmund were there; and Jonathan from Mulberry Hill; Major
+Croghan, the courtly host of old; and the lad, George Croghan, now in
+his fifteenth year. All too quickly fled the hours; the hickory flamed
+and the brass andirons shone not brighter than the happy faces.
+
+Spread around for exhibition were Mandan robes, fleeces of the
+mountain goat, Clatsop hats, buffalo horns, and Indian baskets,
+Captain Clark's "tiger-cat coat," Indian curios, and skins of grizzly
+bears,--each article suggestive of adventure surpassing Marco Polo or
+the Arabian nights. Another huge box, filled with bones for the
+President, had been left with George Rogers Clark at the Point of
+Rock.
+
+Louisville received the explorers with bonfires and cannonry. A grand
+ball was given in their honour, in which the Indians, especially,
+shone in medals and plumage.
+
+The next day there was a sad visit to Mill Creek, where lamenting
+parents received the last token and listened to the final word
+concerning their beloved son, Sergeant Charles Floyd.
+
+A cold wind and a light fall of snow warned them no time must be lost
+in crossing the Kentucky mountains; but encumbered with the Indian
+retinue they made slow progress along that atrocious road, on which
+the followers of Boone had "sometimes paused to pray and sometimes
+stopped to swear."
+
+A few days beyond Cumberland Gap, Clark's heart beat a tattoo; they
+had come to Fincastle! Among its overhanging vines and trees, the
+Hancock mansion was in holiday attire,--Harriet Kennerly had just been
+married to Dr. Radford of Fincastle.
+
+Colonel Hancock had been proud to entertain George Rogers Clark, still
+more was he now delighted with the visit of the famous explorers.
+
+"La!" exclaimed Black Granny at the announcement of Captain Clark.
+"Miss Judy?" Black Granny had nursed Miss Judy from the cradle.
+
+Sedately Miss Judy came down the long staircase,--not the child that
+Clark remembered, but a woman, petite, serious. The chestnut brown
+curls with a glint of gold were caught with a high back comb, and a
+sweeping gown had replaced the short petticoats that lately tripped
+over the foothills of the Blue Ridge.
+
+"My pretty cousin going to marry that ugly man?" exclaimed Harriet,
+when she heard of the early engagement.
+
+There was nothing effeminate about Clark, nor artificial. His features
+were rugged almost to plainness; his head was high from the ear to the
+top, a large brain chamber.
+
+"Absolutely beautiful," said Judy to herself, associating those
+bronzed features with endless winds that blew on far-off mountains.
+
+Behind the respectable old Hancock silver, Judy's mother turned the
+tea and talked. Turning up his laced sleeves to carve the mutton,
+Colonel Hancock asked a thousand questions regarding that wonderful
+journey.
+
+"We passed the winter on the Pacific, then crossed the mountains, and
+my division came down the Yellowstone," Clark was saying. "By the way,
+Judy, I have named a river for you,--the Judith."
+
+A peal of laughter rang through the dining-room.
+
+"Judith! Judith, did you say? Why, Captain Clark, my name is Julia."
+
+Clark was confounded. He almost feared Judy was making fun of him.
+
+"Is it, really, now? I always supposed Judy stood for Judith."
+
+Again rang out the infectious peal, in which Clark himself joined; but
+to this day rolls the river Judith in Montana, named for Clark's
+mountain maid of Fincastle.
+
+"That I should live to see you back from the Pacific!" was Aunt
+Molly's greeting at "The Farm," at Charlottesville. "I reckoned the
+cannibal savages would eat you. We looked for nothing less than the
+fate of Captain Cook."
+
+But Maria, whose eyes had haunted Lewis in many a long Montana day,
+seemed strangely shy and silent. In fact, she had another lover,
+perhaps a dearer one.
+
+Uncle Nicholas was sick. He was growing old, but still directed the
+negroes of a plantation that extended from Charlottesville to the
+Fluvanna.
+
+It was sunset when Captain Lewis reached the home at Locust Hill, and
+was folded to his mother's bosom. With daily prayer had Lucy
+Meriwether followed her boy across the Rocky Mountains.
+
+Meriwether's little pet sister, Mary Marks, had blossomed into a
+bewitching rose.
+
+"Here is a letter from the President."
+
+Captain Lewis read his first message from Jefferson in more than two
+years and a half.
+
+Turning to Big White, the chief, who at every step had gazed with
+amazement at the white man's country,--
+
+"The President says 'Tell my friend of Mandan that I have already
+opened my arms to receive him."
+
+"Ugh! Ugh!" commented Big White, with visions of barbaric splendour in
+his untutored brain.
+
+That afternoon the entire party rode over to Monticello to show the
+chief the President's Indian hall, where all their gifts and tokens
+had been arranged for display. The next day, by Richmond,
+Fredericksburg, and Alexandria, the party set out for the national
+capital. Every step of the way was a triumphal progress.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+_THE PLAUDITS OF A NATION_
+
+
+It was well into January before both Captains reached Washington.
+Workmen were still building at the Capitol, rearing a home for
+Congress. Tools of carpentry and masonry covered the windy lawn where
+Jefferson rode daily, superintending as on his own Virginia
+plantation.
+
+Never had Captain Lewis seen his old friend, the President, so moved
+as when black Ben, the valet, with stentorian call announced,
+"Captains Mehwether Lewis and William Clahk!"
+
+In silk stockings and pumps they stood in the Blue Room. At sight of
+that well-known figure in blue coat faced with yellow, red plush
+waistcoat, and green velveteen breeches, Meriwether Lewis bounded as a
+boy toward his old friend.
+
+The gray-haired president visibly trembled as he strained the two sons
+of his country to his heart. Tears gushed from his eyes, "The suspense
+has been awful." Then pausing, with difficulty he controlled his
+emotion. "But the hopes, the dreams, the ambitions of twenty years are
+now vindicated, and you are safe, boys, you are safe. I felt that if
+you were lost the country would hold me responsible."
+
+If others had asked questions about the route, Jefferson now
+overwhelmed them with an avalanche, put with the keenness of a scholar
+and the penetration of a scientist. For with the possible exception of
+Franklin, Thomas Jefferson was the most learned man of his time.
+
+Into the President's hands Lewis placed the precious journals,
+obtained at such a cost in toil and travel. Each pocket volume,
+morocco-bound, had as soon as filled been cemented in a separate tin
+case to prevent injury by wetting. But now Lewis had slipped the cases
+off and displayed them neat and fresh as on the day of writing.
+
+On rocking boats, on saddle pommels, and after dark by the flickering
+campfire, had the writing been done. T's were not always crossed, nor
+i's dotted, as hurriedly each event was jotted down to be read and
+criticised after a hundred years. Written under such circumstances,
+and in such haste, it is not remarkable that words are misspelled and
+some omitted. A considerable collection of later letters gives ample
+evidence that both the Captains were graceful correspondents.
+
+And the vocabularies, the precious vocabularies gathered from Council
+Bluffs to Clatsop, were taken by Jefferson and carefully laid away for
+future study.
+
+Big White and his Indians were entertained by Jefferson and the
+cabinet. Dolly Madison, Mrs. Gallatin, and other ladies of the White
+House, manifested the liveliest interest as the tall Shahaka, six feet
+and ten inches, stood up before them in his best necklace of bear's
+claws, admiring the pretty squaws that talked to them.
+
+"And was your father a chief, and your father's father?" Mrs. Madison
+inquired of Shahaka. She was always interested in families and
+lineage. "And what makes your hair so white?" But Shahaka had never
+heard of Prince Madoc.
+
+Never had the village-capital been so gay. Dinners and balls followed
+in rapid succession, eulogies and poems were recited in honour of the
+explorers. There was even talk of changing the name of the Columbia to
+Lewis River.
+
+In those days everybody went to the Capitol to hear the debates. The
+report of Lewis and Clark created a lively sensation. Complaints of
+the Louisiana Purchase ceased. From the Mississippi to the sea, the
+United States had virtually taken possession of the continent.
+Members of Congress looked at one another with dilated eyes. With
+lifted brow and prophetic vision the young republic pierced the
+future. The Mississippi, once her utmost border, was now but an inland
+river. Beyond it, the Great West hove in sight, with peaks of snow and
+the blue South Sea. The problem of the ages had been solved; Lewis and
+Clark had found the road to Asia.
+
+The news fell upon Europe and America as not less than a revelation.
+
+Congress immediately gave sixteen hundred acres of land each to the
+Captains, and double pay in gold and three hundred and twenty acres to
+each of their men, to be laid out on the west side of the Mississippi.
+On the third day of March, 1807, Captain Lewis was appointed Governor
+of Louisiana; and on March 12, Captain Clark was made Brigadier
+General, and Indian Agent for Louisiana.
+
+Tall, slender, but twenty-nine, Henry Clay was in the Senate,
+advocating roads,--roads and canals to the West. He was planning,
+pleading, persuading for a canal around the Falls of the Ohio, he was
+appealing for the improvement of the Wilderness Road through which
+Boone had broken a bridle trace. His prolific imagination grasped the
+Chesapeake and Ohio canal and an interior connection with the Lakes.
+
+Henry Clay--"Harry Clay" as Kentucky fondly called him--had a faculty
+for remembering names, faces, places. As yesterday, he recalled
+William Clark at Lexington.
+
+And Clark remembered Clay, standing in an ox-waggon, with flashing
+eyes, hair wildly waving, and features aglow, addressing an entranced
+throng. The same look flashed over him now as he stepped toward the
+heroes of the Pacific.
+
+"Congratulations, Governor."
+
+"Congratulations, General."
+
+The young men smiled at their new titles.
+
+Another was there, not to be forgotten, strong featured, cordial,
+cheerful, of manly beauty and large dark eyes, endeavouring to
+interest Congress in his inventions,--Robert Fulton of the steamboat.
+
+Wherever they went, a certain halo seemed to hang around these men of
+adventure. They were soldiers and hunters, and more. Through heat and
+cold, and mount and plain, four thousand miles by canoe, on foot and
+horseback, through forests of gigantic pines and along the banks of
+unknown rivers, among unheard-of tribes who had never seen a white
+man, they had carried the message of the President and brought back a
+report on the new land that is authority to this day.
+
+"What did you find?" Eager inquirers crowded on every side to hear the
+traveller's tale. At Louisville, men drove in from distant
+plantations; at Fincastle their steps were thronged along the village
+walks; in Washington they were never alone.
+
+"What did we find? Gigantic sycamores for canoes, the maple for sugar,
+the wild cherry and walnut for joiner's work, red and white elm for
+cartwrights, the osage orange for hedges impenetrable, white and black
+oak for ship and carpenter work, pine for countless uses, and durable
+cedar.
+
+"What did we find? All sorts of plants and herbs for foods, dyes, and
+medicines, and pasturage unending. Boone's settlers on the Missouri
+frontier have farms of wheat, maize, potatoes, and little cotton
+fields, two acres sufficient for a family. Hemp is indigenous to the
+soil. Even in the Mandan land, the Indians, with implements that
+barely scratch the earth, have immense gardens of corn, beans,
+pumpkins, and squashes.
+
+"What did we find? Oceans of beaver and seas of buffalo, clay fit for
+bricks and white clay for pottery, salt springs, saltpetre, and
+plaster, pipestone, and quarries of marble red and white, mines of
+iron, lead and coal, horses to be bought for a song, cedar, and fir
+trees six and eight feet in diameter, enormous salmon that block the
+streams."
+
+No wonder the land was excited at the report of Lewis and Clark. All
+at once the unknown mysterious West stood revealed as the home of
+natural resources. Their travels became the Robinson Crusoe of many a
+boy who lived to see for himself the marvels of that trans-Mississippi.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sergeant Gass received his pay in gold and went home to Wellsburg,
+West Virginia, to find his old father smoking still beside the fire.
+With the help of a Scotch schoolmaster Patrick published his book the
+next year, immortalising the name of the gallant Irish Sergeant. Then
+he "inlisted" again, and fought the Creeks, and in 1812 lost an eye at
+Lundy's Lane. Presently he married the daughter of a Judge, and lived
+to become a great student in his old age, and an authority on Indians
+and early times.
+
+John Ordway went home to New Hampshire and married, and returned to
+live on his farm near New Madrid.
+
+William Bratton tarried for a time in Kentucky, served in the War of
+1812 under Harrison, and was at Tippecanoe and the Thames. He married
+and lived at Terre Haute, Indiana, and is buried at Waynetown.
+
+George Gibson settled at St. Louis, and lived and died there.
+Nathaniel Pryor and William Werner became Indian agents under William
+Clark; Pryor died in 1831 among the Osages. George Drouillard went
+into the fur trade and was killed by the Blackfeet at the Three Forks
+of the Missouri. John Coalter, after adventures that will be related,
+settled at the town of Daniel Boone, married a squaw and died there.
+John Potts was killed by the Blackfeet on the river Jefferson.
+Sacajawea and Charboneau lived for many years among the Mandans, and
+their descendants are found in Dakota to this day.
+
+Of the voyageurs who went as far as the Mandan town, Lajaunnesse
+accompanied Fremont across the mountains; and two others, Francis
+Rivet and Philip Degie, were the earliest settlers of Oregon, where
+they lived to a great old age, proud of the fact that they had
+"belonged to Lewis and Clark."
+
+
+
+
+Book III
+
+_THE RED HEAD CHIEF_
+
+
+
+
+Book III
+
+_THE RED HEAD CHIEF_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+_THE SHADOW OF NAPOLEON_
+
+
+"Thank God for the safety of our country!" ejaculated Jefferson, in
+one of his long talks with Lewis regarding the upheaval across the
+sea.
+
+In 1802 Napoleon had been declared Consul for life; May 18, 1804, four
+days after Lewis and Clark started, he had been saluted Emperor of
+France. Then came Jena. When Lewis and Clark reached the Mandan towns,
+Napoleon was entering Berlin with the Prussian monarchy at his feet.
+
+While they camped at Clatsop in those December days of 1805, and while
+Baranof prayed for ships in his lonely Sitkan outpost, across seas
+"the sun of Austerlitz" had risen. Against Russian and Austrian,
+Napoleon had closed a war with a clap of thunder.
+
+Every breeze bore news that overawed the world.
+
+"Napoleon has taken Italy."
+
+"Napoleon has conquered Austria."
+
+"Napoleon has defeated Russia."
+
+"Napoleon has ruined Prussia."
+
+"Napoleon has taken Spain."
+
+While Lewis and Clark were at Washington came the battles of Eylau and
+Dantzic. In December Napoleon annexed Portugal, and the Court of
+Lisbon fled to Brazil, to escape his arms and to rear anew the House
+of Braganza.
+
+How much more remained to conquer? How soon might the theatre of
+action come over the sea? Still there was England.
+
+For a time the Napoleonic wars had thrown the carrying trade of the
+ocean into American hands. American farmers could not reach the coast
+fast enough with their fleets of grain, the food for armies. Cotton
+went up to a fabulous price. Enterprise fired the young republic.
+Ships were building two thousand miles inland to carry her products to
+the ocean. She grew, she throve, and an ever-increasing inland fleet
+carried to and fro the red life of a growing nation.
+
+On the other hand, the torch of liberty, lit in America and burning
+there still with calm and splendid lustre, carried by French soldiers
+to France had kindled a continent, sweeping like a firebrand through a
+conflagration of abuses. All tradition was overturning. America alone
+was quiet, the refuge of the world. Every ship that touched our shores
+brought fugitives fleeing from battle-scarred fields where Europe
+groaned in sobs and blood.
+
+Napoleon was now master of almost the entire coast of Europe. Did he
+cast regretful eyes this way? America feared it. Nothing but fear of
+England ever made Napoleon give us Louisiana.
+
+In May, 1806, England blockaded the French coast. Napoleon retaliated
+by the Berlin Decrees, shutting up all England, interdicting the
+commerce of the world.
+
+And so, when Lewis and Clark returned, the giants were locked in
+struggle, like Titans of old, tearing up kingdoms, palatinates, and
+whole empires to hurl at each other.
+
+And we had Louisiana.
+
+When Captain Lewis went to Washington he was the bearer of a mass of
+papers on land claims sent by Auguste Chouteau.
+
+"I have had some disturbing news from Louisiana," said Jefferson. "In
+the first place, Monsieur Auguste Chouteau writes requesting
+self-government, and that Louisiana remain for ever undivided. Now the
+day may come when we shall desire to cut Louisiana up into sovereign
+states,--not now, I grant, but in time, in time.
+
+"Then the French people of New Orleans protest against American rule.
+Such is the dissatisfaction, it is said, that the people of Louisiana
+are only waiting for Bonaparte's victory in his war with the allies to
+return to their allegiance with France.
+
+"St. Louis asks for a Governor 'who must reside in the territory,'
+hence I propose to put you there."
+
+So it came about that Meriwether Lewis wrote back in February, "I
+shall probably come on to St. Louis for the purpose of residing among
+you."
+
+There was trouble with Spain. In July, 1806, everybody thought there
+would be a war with her. But Napoleon was Spain's protector. It would
+never do to declare war against Napoleon. Napoleon!--the very word
+meant subjugation.
+
+"Why are we safe from Bonaparte?" exclaimed Jefferson. "Only because
+he has not the British fleet at his command."
+
+Even while Congress was at its busiest, devising a government for New
+Orleans, not at all was Jefferson sure of the loyalty of the French of
+Louisiana.
+
+"If they are not making overtures to Napoleon, they are implicated in
+the treason of Aaron Burr."
+
+All Washington was aflame over Aaron Burr. Only two years before
+Captain Lewis had left him in the seat of honour at Washington. The
+greatest lawyers in the country now were prosecuting his trial at
+Richmond, Randolph of Roanoke foreman of the jury and John Marshall
+presiding.
+
+Borne with the throng, Lewis went over to Richmond. Washington Irving
+was there, Winfield Scott, and Andrew Jackson, "stamping up and down,
+damning Jefferson and extolling Burr."
+
+Burr's friends, outcrying against Jefferson, caught sight of
+Meriwether Lewis; his popularity in a degree counteracted their
+vituperation. William Wirt of Maryland came down after making his
+great speech, to present a gold watch to his friend Meriwether Lewis.
+
+With saddened heart Captain Lewis left Richmond. The beautiful
+Theodosia had come to stay with her father at the penitentiary. Lewis
+always liked Aaron Burr. What was he trying to do? The Mississippi was
+ours and Louisiana. But even the Ursuline nuns welcomed Burr to New
+Orleans, and the Creoles quite lost their heads over his winning
+address. All seemed to confirm the suspicions of Jefferson, who
+nightly tossed on his couch of worry.
+
+It was necessary for Captain, now Governor, Lewis, to go to
+Philadelphia, to place his zoölogical and botanical collections in the
+hands of Dr. Barton. Scarce had the now famous explorer reached the
+city before he was beset by artists. Charles Willson Peale, who had
+painted the portraits of the most prominent officers of the
+Revolution, who had followed Washington and painted him as a Virginia
+colonel, as commander-in-chief, and as president, who had sat with him
+at Valley Forge and limned his features, cocked hat and all, on a
+piece of bed-ticking,--Peale now wanted to paint Lewis and Clark.
+
+Of course such a flattering invitation was not to be resisted, and so,
+while Peale's assistants were mounting Lewis's antelopes, the first
+known to naturalists, and preparing for Jefferson the head and horns
+of a Rocky Mountain ram, Governor Lewis was sitting daily for his
+portrait.
+
+This detained him in Philadelphia, when suddenly, on the 27th of June,
+the great upheaval of Europe cast breakers on our shores that made the
+country rock.
+
+It seemed as if in spite of herself the United States would be drawn
+into the Napoleonic wars. England needed sailors, she must have
+sailors, she claimed and demanded them from American ships on the high
+seas.
+
+"You _shall not search_ my ship," said the Captain of the American
+frigate _Chesapeake_ off the Virginian capes. Instantly and
+unexpectedly, the British frigate _Leopard_ rounded to and poured
+broadsides into the unprepared _Chesapeake_.
+
+"Never," said Jefferson, "has this country been in such a state of
+excitement since Lexington."
+
+"Fired on our ship!" The land was aflame. By such white heat are
+nations welded.
+
+It was a bold thing for England to disavow. But no apologies could now
+conceal the fact, that not Napoleon, but England, was destined to be
+our foe, England, who claimed the commerce of the world.
+
+Meriwether Lewis came home to hear Virginia ringing for war; not yet
+had she forgotten Yorktown.
+
+The mountains of Albemarle were clothed in all the brilliancy of
+summer beauty when Lewis kissed his mother good-bye, and set out to
+assume the governorship of Louisiana.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+_AMERICAN RULE IN ST. LOUIS_
+
+
+Immediately after his appointment in charge of Indian affairs, Clark
+left Washington, with Pryor and Shannon, Big White and Jussaume and
+their Indian families. The Ohio, swollen to the highest notch, bore
+them racing into the Mississippi.
+
+"Manuel Lisa haf gone up de Meessouri," was the news at St. Louis. All
+winter Manuel Lisa had been flying around St. Louis with Pierre Menard
+and George Drouillard, preparing for an early ascent into the fur
+country. So also had been the Chouteaus, intending to escort Big White
+back to the Mandans.
+
+At any time an Indian trader was a great man in St. Louis. He could
+command fabulous prices for his skill, and still more now could
+Drouillard, fresh from the unexploited land beyond the Mandans. All
+his money Drouillard put into the business, and with the earliest
+opening of 1807, Lisa, Menard and Drouillard set out for the upper
+Missouri with an outfit of sixteen thousand dollars.
+
+"Wait for the Mandan chief," said Frederick Bates, the new Territorial
+Secretary.
+
+Manuel Lisa was not a man to wait. "While others consider whether they
+will start, I am on my way," he answered.
+
+Dark, secret, unfathomable, restless, enterprising, a very Spaniard
+for pride, distrusted and trusted, a judge of men, Manuel Lisa had in
+him the spirit of De Soto and Coronado.
+
+For twenty years Lisa had traded with Indians. Of late the Spanish
+government had given him exclusive rights on the Osage, a privilege
+once held by the Chouteaus, but alas for Lisa! a right now tumbled by
+the cession. For the United States gave no exclusive privileges.
+
+He reached the ear of Drouillard; they went away together. No one
+better than Lisa saw the meaning of that great exploration.
+
+Coincidently with the arrival of Clark and Big White out of the Ohio,
+came down a deputation of Yankton Sioux with old Dorion from the
+Missouri. With that encampment of Indians, around, behind, before the
+Government House, began the reign of the Red Head chief over the
+nations of the West that was to last for thirty years. St. Louis
+became the Red Head's town, and the Red Head's signature came to be
+known to the utmost border of Louisiana.
+
+"We want arms and traders," said the Yankton Sioux.
+
+Both were granted, and laden with presents, before the close of May
+they were dispatched again to their own country. And with them went
+Big White in charge of Ensign Pryor, Sergeant George Shannon, and
+Pierre Chouteau, with thirty-two men for the Mandan trade.
+
+Even the Kansas knew that Big White had gone down the river, and were
+waiting to see him go by.
+
+"The whites are as the grasses of the prairie," said Big White.
+
+In July the new Governor, Meriwether Lewis, arrived and assumed the
+Government. With difficulty the officers had endeavoured to harmonise
+the old and the new. All was in feud, faction, disorder.
+
+St. Louis was a foreign village before the cession. Nor was this
+changed in a day.
+
+"Deed not de great Napoleon guarantee our leebertee?" said the French.
+"We want self-government."
+
+But Lewis and Clark, these two had met the French ideal of chivalry in
+facing the Shining Mountains and the Ocean. Pretty girls sat in the
+verandas to see them pass. Fur magnates set out their choicest viands.
+The conquest of St. Louis was largely social. With less tact and less
+winning personalities we might have had discord.
+
+Whatever Lewis wanted, Clark seconded as a sort of Lieutenant
+Governor. It seemed as if the two might go on forever as they had done
+in the great expedition. Ever busy, carving districts that became
+future States, laying out roads, dispensing justice and treating with
+Indians, all went well until the 16th of October, when a wave of
+sensation swept over St. Louis.
+
+"Big White, the Mandan chief, is back. The American flag at the bow of
+his boat has been fired on and he is compelled to fall back on St.
+Louis."
+
+All summer the vengeful Arikaras had been watching.
+
+"They killed our chief, the Brave Raven."
+
+The Teton Sioux plotted. "They will give the Mandans arms and make our
+enemies stronger than we are." So in great bands, Sioux and Arikaras
+had camped along the river to intercept the returning brave.
+
+"These are the machinations of the British," said Americans in St.
+Louis.
+
+"This is a trick of Manuel Lisa," said the fur traders. "His boats
+passed in safety, why not ours?"
+
+In fact, there had been a battle. Not with impunity should trade be
+carried into the land of anarchy. Three men were killed and several
+wounded, including Shannon and René Jussaume. And they in turn had
+killed Black Buffalo, the Teton chief that led the onslaught.
+
+All the way down the Missouri George Shannon had writhed with his
+wounded knee. Blood poisoning set in. They left him at Bellefontaine.
+
+"Dees leg must come off," said Dr. Saugrain, the army surgeon.
+
+He sent for Dr. Farrar, a young American physician who had lately
+located in St. Louis. Together, without anesthetics, they performed
+the first operation in thigh amputation ever known in that region.
+
+"Woonderful! woonderful!" exclaimed the Creoles. "Dees Dogtors can cut
+une man all up." Great already was the reputation of Dr. Saugrain; to
+young Farrar it gave a prestige that made him the Father of St. Louis
+surgery.
+
+Shannon lay at the point of death for eighteen months, but youth
+rallied, and he regained sufficient strength to journey to Lexington,
+where he took up the study of law. He lived to become an eminent
+jurist and judge, and the honoured progenitor of many distinguished
+bearers of his name.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+_FAREWELL TO FINCASTLE_
+
+
+General Clark had had a busy summer, travelling up and down the river,
+assisting the Governor at St. Louis in reducing his tumultuous domain
+to order, treating with Indians, conferring with Governor Harrison in
+his brick palace at Old Vincennes, consulting with his brothers,
+General Jonathan and General George Rogers Clark at the Point of Rock.
+Now, in mid-autumn, he was again on his way to Fincastle.
+
+Never through the tropic summer had Julia been absent from his
+thoughts. A little house in St. Louis had been selected that should
+shelter his bride; and now, as fast as hoof and horse could speed him,
+he was hastening back to fix the day for his wedding.
+
+October shed glory on the burnished forests. Here and there along the
+way shone primitive farmhouses, the homes of people. The explorer's
+heart beat high. He had come to that time in his life when he, too,
+should have a home. Those old Virginia farmhouses, steep of roof and
+sloping at the eaves, four rooms below and two in the attic, with
+great chimneys smoking at either end, seemed to speak of other fond
+and happy hearts.
+
+The valley of Virginia extends from the Potomac to the Carolina line.
+The Blue Ridge bounds it on one side, the Kittatinnys on the other,
+and in the trough-like valley between flows the historic Shenandoah.
+
+From the north, by Winchester, scene of many a border fray and
+destined for action more heroic yet, Clark sped on his way to
+Fincastle. Some changes had taken place since that eventful morning
+when Governor Spotswood looked over the Blue Ridge. A dozen miles from
+Winchester stood Lord Fairfax's Greenway Court, overshadowed by
+ancient locusts, slowly mouldering to its fall. Here George Washington
+came in his boyhood, surveying for the gaunt, raw-boned, near-sighted
+old nobleman who led him hard chases at the fox hunt.
+
+From the head spring of the Rappahannock to the head spring of the
+Potomac, twenty-one counties of old Virginia once belonged to the
+Fairfax manor, now broken and subdivided into a thousand homes. Hither
+had come tides of Quakers, and Scotch-Presbyterians, penetrating
+farther and farther its green recesses, cutting up the fruitful acres
+into colonial plantations.
+
+"The Shenandoah, it is the very centre of the United States," said the
+emigrants.
+
+The valley was said to be greener than any other, its waters were more
+transparent, its soil more fruitful. At any rate German-Pennsylvanians
+pushed up here, rearing barns as big as fortresses, flanked round with
+haystacks and granaries. Now and then Clark met them, in loose leather
+galligaskins and pointed hats, sunning in wide porches, smoking pipes
+three feet long, while their stout little children tumbled among the
+white clover.
+
+Here and there negroes were whistling with notes as clear as a fife,
+and huge Conestoga waggons loaded with produce rumbled along to
+Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond. Every year thousands of waggons
+went to market, camping at night and making the morning ring with
+Robin Hood songs and jingling bells.
+
+Yonder lived Patrick Henry in his last years, at picturesque Red Hill
+on the Staunton. Here in his old age he might have been seen under the
+trees in his lawn, buried in revery, or on the floor, with
+grandchildren clambering over him or dancing to his violin.
+
+But Clark was not thinking of Patrick Henry, or Fairfax,--in fact he
+scarcely remembered their existence, so intent was his thought on his
+maid of the mountains, Julia Hancock.
+
+The leaves were falling from elm and maple, strewing the path with
+gold and crimson. The pines grew taller in the twilight, until he
+could scarcely see the bypaths chipped and blazed by settlers'
+tomahawks.
+
+Sunset was gilding the Peaks of Otter as Clark drew rein at the little
+tavern near Fincastle.
+
+"I was rented to the King of England by my Prince of Hesse Cassel,"
+the Hessian proprietor was saying. "I was rented out to cut the
+throats of people who had never done me any harm. Four pence three
+farthings a day I got, and one penny farthing went to His Royal
+Highness, the Prince. I fought you, then I fell in love with you, and
+when the war was over I stayed in America."
+
+Clark listened. It was a voice out of the Revolution.
+
+After a hurried luncheon the tireless traveller was again in his
+saddle; and late that night in the moonlight he opened the gate at
+Colonel Hancock's.
+
+York had followed silently through all the journey,--York, no longer a
+slave, for in consideration of his services on the expedition the
+General had given him his freedom. But as a voluntary body-guard he
+would not be parted from his master.
+
+"For sho'! who cud tek cah o' Mars Clahk so well as old Yawk?"
+
+"What if love-lorn swains from a dozen plantations have tried to woo
+and win my pretty cousin! The bronzed face of Lochinvar is bleaching,"
+said the teasing Harriet when she heard that the wedding date was
+really set. "One day, who knows, his skin may be white as yours."
+
+Sudden as a flood in the Roanoke came Julia's tears. Relenting, the
+lively, light-hearted Harriet covered her cousin's curls with kisses.
+
+"The carriage and horses are at your service. Hunt, fish, lounge as
+you please," said Colonel Hancock, "for I must be at the courthouse to
+try an important case."
+
+With thousands of acres and hundreds of negroes, it was the dream of
+Colonel Hancock to one day drop these official cares and retire
+altogether into the privacy of his plantation. Already, forty miles
+away, at the very head spring of the Roanoke river, he was building a
+country seat to be called "Fotheringay," after Fotheringay Castle.
+
+Back and forth in the gorgeous October weather rode Clark and Julia,
+watching the workmen at Fotheringay.
+
+Now and then the carriage stopped at an orchard. Passers were always
+at liberty to help themselves to the fruit. Peaches so abundant that
+they fed the hogs with them, apples rosy and mellow, grapes for the
+vintage, were in the first flush of abundance. What a contrast to that
+autumn in the Bitter Root Mountains!
+
+Then late in November to Fincastle came Governor Lewis and his brother
+Reuben, on their way to the west. He, too, had been to Washington on
+business concerning St. Louis.
+
+"The great success of York among the Mandans has decided Reuben to
+take Tom along," laughed Lewis, as Reuben's black driver dismounted
+from the carriage--the same family chariot in which Meriwether had
+brought his mother from Georgia, now on the way to become the state
+coach of Louisiana.
+
+Black Tom beamed, expansively happy, on York who had been "tuh th'
+Injun country" where black men were "Great Medicine."
+
+"Ha, Your Excellency," laughed the teasing Harriet, "the beauty of
+Fincastle dines with us to-night,--Miss Letitia Breckenridge."
+
+"Wait and the Governor will court you," some one whispered to the
+charming Letitia.
+
+"I have contemplated accompanying my father to Richmond for some
+time," replied Letitia. "If I stay now it will look like a challenge,
+therefore I determine to go."
+
+Governor Lewis underwent not a little chafing when two days after his
+arrival the lovely Letitia was gone,--to become the wife of the
+Secretary of War in John Quincy Adams's cabinet.
+
+"Miss Breckenridge is a very sweet-looking girl," wrote Reuben to his
+sister, "and I should like to have her for a sister. General Clark's
+intended is a charming woman. When I tell you that she is much like my
+sweetheart you will believe I think so."
+
+"What are you doing?" Clark asked of Julia, as she sat industriously
+stitching beside the hickory fire in the great parlour at Fincastle.
+
+"Working a little screen to keep the fire from burning my face,"
+answered the maiden, rosy as the glow itself. Much more beautiful than
+the little Sacajawea, stitching moccasins beside the fire at Clatsop,
+she seemed to Clark; and yet the feminine intuition was the same, to
+sew, to stitch, to be an artist with the needle.
+
+     "The mistletoe hung in Fincastle hall,
+     The holly branch shone on the old oak wall,
+     And the planter's retainers were blithe and gay,
+     A-keeping their Christmas holiday."
+
+There was sleighing at Fincastle when the wedding day came, just after
+New Year's, 1808. The guests came in sleighs from as far away as
+Greenway Court, for all the country-side knew and loved Judy Hancock.
+
+Weeping, soft-hearted Black Granny tied again the sunny curls and
+looped the satin ribbons of her beloved "Miss Judy." The slaves vied
+with one another, strewing the snow with winter greens that no foot
+might touch the chill.
+
+The wainscoted and panelled walls glowed with greenery. Holly hung
+over the carved oaken chimneys, and around the fowling pieces and
+antlers of the chase that betokened the hunting habits of Colonel
+Hancock. Silver tankards marked with the family arms sparkled on the
+damask table cloth, and silver candlesticks and snuffers and silver
+plate. Myrtleberry wax candles gave out an incense that mingled with
+the odour of hickory snapping in the fireplace.
+
+"Exactly as her mother looked," whispered the grandmother when Judy
+came down,--grandmother, a brisk little white-capped old lady in
+quilted satin, who remembered very well the mother of Washington.
+
+The stars hung blazing on the rim of the Blue Ridge and the snow
+glistened, when out of the great house came the sound of music and
+dancing. There were wedding gifts after the old Virginia fashion, and
+when all had been inspected Clark handed his bride a small jewel case
+marked with her name.
+
+The cover flew open, revealing a set of topaz and pearls, "A gift from
+the President."
+
+Out into the snow went these wedding guests of a hundred years ago, to
+scatter and be forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+_THE BOAT HORN_
+
+
+All the romance of the old boating time was in Clark's wedding trip
+down the Ohio. It was on a May morning when, stepping on board a
+flatboat at Louisville, he contrasted the daintiness of Julia with
+that of any other travelling companion he had ever known.
+
+The river, foaming over its rocky bed, the boatmen blowing their long
+conical bugles from shore to shore, the keelboats, flat-bottoms, and
+arks loaded with emigrants all intent on "picking guineas from
+gooseberry bushes," spoke of youth, life, action. Again the boatman
+blew his bugle, echoes of other trumpets answered, "Farewell,
+farewell, fare--we-ll." Soon they were into the full sweep of the
+pellucid Ohio, mirroring skies and shores dressed in the livery of
+Robin Hood.
+
+Frowning precipices and green islets arose, and projecting headlands
+indenting the Ohio with promontories like a chain of shining lakes.
+Hills clothed in ancient timber, hoary whitened sycamores draped in
+green clusters of mistletoe, and magnificent groves of the dark green
+sugar tree reflected from the water below. Shut in to the water's
+edge, a woody wilderness still, the river glided between its
+umbrageous shores.
+
+Now and then the crowing of cocks announced a clearing where the axe
+of the settler had made headway, or some old Indian mound blossomed
+with a peach orchard. Flocks of screaming paroquets alighted in the
+treetops, humming birds whizzed into the honeysuckle vines and flashed
+away with dewdrops on their jewelled throats.
+
+On the water with them, now near, now far, were other boats,--ferry
+flats and Alleghany skiffs, pirogues hollowed from prodigious
+sycamores, dug-outs and canoes, stately barges with masts and sails
+and lifted decks like schooners, keel boats, slim and trim for low
+waters, Kentucky arks, broadhorns, roomy and comfortable, filled up
+with chairs, beds, stoves, tables, bound for the Sangamon, Cape
+Girardeau, Arkansas.
+
+Floating caravans of men, women, children, servants, cattle, hogs,
+horses, sheep, and fowl were travelling down the great river. Some
+boats fitted up for stores dropped off at the settlements, blowing the
+bugle, calling the inhabitants down to trade.
+
+Here a tinner with his tinshop, with tools and iron, a floating
+factory, there a blacksmith shop with bellows and anvil, dry-goods
+boats with shelves for cutlery and cottons, produce boats with
+Kentucky flour and hemp, Ohio apples, cider, maple sugar, nuts,
+cheese, and fruit, and farther down, Tennessee cotton, Illinois corn,
+and cattle, Missouri lead and furs, all bound for New Orleans, a
+panorama of endless interest to Julia. Here white-winged schooners
+were laden entirely with turkeys, tobacco, hogs, horses, potatoes, or
+lumber. Nature pouring forth perennial produce from a hundred
+tributary streams.
+
+A bateau could descend from the mouth of the Ohio to New Orleans in
+three weeks; three months of toil could barely bring it back. How
+could boats be made to go against the current? Everywhere and everywhere
+inventive minds were puzzling over motors, paddles--duck-foot,
+goose-foot, and elliptical,--wings and sails, side-wheels,
+stern-wheels, and screws,--and steam was in the air.
+
+As the sun went down in lengthening shadows a purple haze suffused the
+waters. Adown La Belle Rivière, "the loveliest stream that ever
+glistened to the moon," arose the evening cadence of the boatmen,--
+
+     "Some row up, but we row down,
+       All the way to Shawnee Town,
+     Pull away! Pull away!
+       Pull away to Shawnee Town."
+
+The crescent moon shone brightly on crag and stream and floating
+forest, the air was mild and moist, the boat glided as in a dream, and
+the mocking bird enchanted the listening silence.
+
+To Clark no Spring had ever seemed so beautiful. Sitting on deck with
+Julia he could not forget that turbulent time when as a boy he first
+plunged down these waters. Symbolic of his whole life it seemed, until
+now the storm and stress of youth had calmed into the placid current
+of to-day. The past,--the rough toil-hardened past of William
+Clark,--fell away, and as under a lifted silken curtain he floated
+into repose. The rough old life of camps and forts was gone forever.
+
+And to Julia, everything was new and strange,--La Belle Rivière itself
+whispered of Louisiana. Like an Alpine horn the bugle echoed the
+dreamlife of the waters.
+
+The fiddles scraping, boatmen dancing, the smooth stream rolling
+calmly through the forest, the girls who gathered on shore to see the
+pageant pass, the river itself, momentarily lost to view, then leaping
+again in Hogarth's line of beauty,--all murmured perpetual music.
+
+Then slumber fell upon the dancers, but still Clark and Julia sat
+watching. From clouds of owls arose voices of the night, cries of
+wolves reverberated on shore, the plaintive whippoorwill in the
+foliage lamented to the moon, meteors rose from the horizon to sweep
+majestically aloft and burst in a showering spray of gems below.
+
+The very heavens were unfamiliar. Awed, impressed, by the mysteries
+around them, they slept.
+
+Before sun-up the mocking-bird called from the highest treetop and
+continued singing until after breakfast, imitating the jay, the
+cardinal, and the lapwing, then sailing away into a strain of his own
+wild music.
+
+At the mouth of the Wabash arks were turning in to old Vincennes.
+Below, broader grew the Ohio, unbroken forests still and twinkling
+stars. Here and there arose the graceful catalpa in full flower, and
+groves of cottonwoods so tall that at a distance one could fancy some
+planter's mansion hidden in their depths. Amid these Eden scenes
+appeared here and there the deserted cabin of some murdered woodman
+whose secret only the Shawnee knew.
+
+Wild deer, crossing the Ohio, heard the bugle call, and throwing their
+long branching antlers on their shoulders sank out of sight, swimming
+under the water until the shore opened into the sheltering forest.
+
+At times the heavens were darkened with the flights of pigeons; there
+was a song of the thrush and the echoing bellow of the big horned owl.
+Wild turkeys crossed their path and wild geese screamed on their
+journey to the lakes.
+
+One day the boats stopped, and before her Julia beheld the Mississippi
+sweeping with irresistible pomp and wrath, tearing at the shores,
+bearing upon its tawny bosom the huge drift of mount and meadow, whole
+herds of drowned buffalo, trunks of forest trees and caved-in banks of
+silt, leaping, sweeping seaward in the sun. Without a pause the
+bridegroom river reached forth his brawny arm, and gathered in the
+starry-eyed Ohio. Over his Herculean shoulders waved her silver
+tresses, deep into his bosom passed her gentle transparency as the
+twain made one swept to the honeymoon.
+
+All night Clark's bateau lay in a bend while York and the men kept off
+the drift that seemed to set toward them in their little cove as
+toward a magnet.
+
+On the 26th of May Governor Lewis received a letter from Clark asking
+for help up the river. Without delay the Governor engaged a barge to
+take their things to Bellefontaine and another barge to accommodate
+the General, his family and baggage.
+
+Dispatching a courier over the Bellefontaine road, Governor Lewis sent
+to Colonel Hunt a message, asking him to send Ensign Pryor to meet the
+party.
+
+With what delight Clark and his bride saw the barges with Ensign Pryor
+in charge, coming down from St. Louis. Then came the struggle up the
+turbulent river. Clark was used to such things, but never before had
+he looked on them with a bride at his side. With sails and oars and
+cordelles all at once, skilled hands paddled and poled and stemmed the
+torrent, up, up to the rock of the new levee.
+
+Thus the great explorer brought home his bride to St. Louis in that
+never-to-be-forgotten May-time one hundred years ago.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+_A BRIDE IN ST. LOUIS_
+
+
+"An _Américaine_ bride, General Clark haf brought! She haf beeutiful
+eyes! She haf golden hair!" The Creole ladies were in a flutter.
+
+"_Merci!_ She haf a carriage!" they cried, peeping from their
+lattices. Governor Lewis himself had met the party at the shore, and
+now in the first state coach St. Louis had ever seen, was driving
+along the Rue de l'Église to Auguste Chouteau's.
+
+"_Merci!_ She haf maids enough!" whispered the gazers, as Rachel,
+Rhody, Chloe, Sarah, brought up the rear with their mistress's
+belongings. Then followed York, looking neither to the right nor the
+left. He knew St. Louis was watching, and he delighted in the stir.
+
+The fame of the beauty of General Clark's American bride spread like
+wild-fire. For months wherever she rode or walked admiring crowds
+followed, eager to catch a glimpse of her face. Thickly swathed in
+veils, Julia concealed her features from the public gaze, but that
+only increased the interest.
+
+"She shall haf a party, une grande réception," said Pierre Chouteau,
+and the demi-fortress was opened to a greater banquet than even at the
+return of Lewis and Clark.
+
+Social St. Louis abandoned itself to gaiety. Dancing slippers were at
+a premium, and all the gay silks that ever came up from New Orleans
+were refurbished with lace and jewels.
+
+"They are beautiful women," said Julia that night. "I thought you told
+me there were only Indians here."
+
+Clark laughed. "Wait until you walk in the streets."
+
+And sure enough, with the arrival of the beautiful Julia came also
+certain Sacs and Iowas who had been scalping settlers within their
+borders. With bolted handcuffs and leg shackles they were shut up in
+the old Spanish martello tower. From the Chouteau house Julia could
+see their cell windows covered with iron gratings and the guard pacing
+to and fro.
+
+At the trial in the old Spanish garrison house on the hill the streets
+swarmed with red warriors.
+
+"How far away St. Louis is from civilisation," remarked Julia. "We
+seem in the very heart of the Indian country."
+
+"The Governor has organised the militia, and our good friend Auguste
+Chouteau is their colonel," answered her husband, reassuringly.
+
+"Why these fortifications, these bastions and stone towers?" inquired
+Julia, as they walked along the Rue.
+
+"They were built a long time ago for defences against the Indians. In
+fact my brother defended St. Louis once against an Indian raid."
+
+"Tell me the story," cried Julia. And walking along the narrow streets
+under the honey-scented locusts, Clark told Julia of the fight and
+fright of 1780.
+
+"And was that when the Spanish lady was here?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And what became of her finally?"
+
+"She fled with the nuns to Cuba at the cession of New Orleans."
+
+Trilliums red and white, anemones holding up their shell-pink cups,
+and in damp spots adder's tongues and delicate Dutchman's breeches,
+were thick around them as they walked down by the old Chouteau Pond.
+Primeval forests surrounded it, white-armed sycamores and thickets of
+crab-apple.
+
+"This is the mill that makes bread for St. Louis. Everybody comes down
+to Chouteau's mill for flour. It is so small I am not surprised that
+they call St. Louis 'Pain Court'--'short of bread.' To-morrow the
+washerwomen will be at the pond, boiling clothes in iron pots and
+drying them on the hazel bushes."
+
+As they came back in the flush of evening all St. Louis had moved out
+of doors. The wide galleries were filled with settees and tables and
+chairs, and the neighbourly Creoles were visiting one another, and
+greeting the passers-by.
+
+Sometimes the walk led over the hill to the Grand Prairie west of
+town. The greensward waved in the breezes like a wheatfield in May.
+Cabanné's wind-mill could be seen in the distance across the prairie
+near the timber with its great wings fifty and sixty feet long flying
+in the air like things of life.
+
+Cabanné the Swiss had married Gratiot's daughter.
+
+St. Louis weddings generally took place at Easter, so other brides and
+grooms were walking there in those May days a hundred years ago. Night
+and morning, as in Acadia, the rural population still went to and from
+the fields with their cattle and carts and old-style wheel ploughs.
+
+In November Clark and his bride moved into the René Kiersereau cottage
+on the Rue Royale. The old French House of René Kiersereau dated back
+to the beginning of St. Louis. Built of heavy timbers and plastered
+with rubble and mortar, it bade fair still to withstand the wear and
+tear of generations. With a long low porch in front and rear, and a
+fence of cedar pickets like a miniature stockade, it differed in no
+respect from the other modest cottages of St. Louis. Back of the house
+rushed the river; before it, locusts and lightning bugs flitted in the
+summer garden. Beside the Kiersereau house Clark had his Indian office
+in the small stone store of Alexis Marie.
+
+Into this little house almost daily came Meriwether Lewis, and every
+moment that could be spared from pressing duties was engrossed in work
+on the journals of the expedition. Sometimes Julia brought her harp
+and sang. But into this home quiet were coming constant echoes of the
+Indian world.
+
+"Settlers are encroaching on the Osage lands. We shall have trouble,"
+said Governor Lewis. Under an escort of a troop of cavalry Clark rode
+out into the Indian country to make a treaty with the Osages. The
+Shawnees and Delawares had been invited to settle near St. Louis to
+act as a shield against the barbarous Osages. The Shawnees and
+Delawares were opening little farms and gardens near Cape Girardeau,
+building houses and trying to become civilised. But settlers had gone
+on around them into the Osage wilderness.
+
+"I will establish a fort to regulate these difficulties," said the
+General, and on his return Fort Osage was built.
+
+"Settlers are encroaching on our lands," came the cry from Sacs,
+Foxes, and Iowas. Governor Lewis himself held a council with the
+discontented tribes and established Fort Madison, the first United
+States post up the Mississippi.
+
+But there were still Big White and his people not yet returned to the
+Mandan country, and this was the most perplexing problem of all.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+_THE FIRST FORT IN MONTANA_
+
+
+Manuel Lisa had enemies and ambition. These always go together.
+
+Scarcely had Clark and his bride settled at St. Louis before down from
+the north came Manuel Lisa's boats, piled, heaped, and laden to the
+gunwale edge with furs out of the Yellowstone. His triumphant guns
+saluted Charette, St. Charles, St. Louis. He had run the gauntlet of
+Sioux, Arikara, and Assiniboine. He had penetrated the Yellowstone and
+established Fort Lisa at the mouth of the Bighorn in the very heart of
+the Crow-land,--the first building in what is now Montana.
+
+"Dey say you cause de attack on Big White," buzzed a Frenchman in his
+ear. Angry at such an imputation, the Spaniard hastened to Governor
+Lewis.
+
+"I disclaim all responsibility for that disaster. The Arikaras fired
+across my bow. I stopped. But I had my men-at-arms, my swivels ready.
+I understood presents. I smoked the pipe of peace, with a musket in my
+hand. Of course I passed. Even the Mandans fired on me, and the
+Assiniboines. Should that dismay a trader?"
+
+Manuel Lisa, the successful, was now monarch of the fur trade. Even
+his enemies capitulated.
+
+"If he is stern in discipline, the service demands it. He has gone
+farther, dared more, accomplished more, and brought home more, than
+any other. What a future for St. Louis! We must unite our forces."
+
+And so the city on the border reached out toward her destiny. Pierre
+and Auguste Chouteau, William Clark and Reuben Lewis, locked fortunes
+with the daring, indomitable Manuel Lisa. Pierre Menard, Andrew Henry,
+and others, a dozen altogether, put in forty thousand dollars,
+incorporating the Missouri Fur Company. Into the very heart of the
+Rocky Mountains it was resolved to push, into those primeval beaver
+meadows whither Lewis and Clark had led the way.
+
+"Abandon the timid methods of former trade,--plunge at once deep into
+the wilderness," said Lisa; "ascend the Missouri to its utmost
+navigable waters, and by establishing posts monopolise the trade of
+the entire region."
+
+Already had Lisa dreamed of the Santa Fé,--now he looked toward the
+Pacific.
+
+And now, too, was the time to send Big White back to the Mandans.
+Under the convoy of two hundred and fifty people,--enlisted soldiers
+and _engagés_, American hunters, Creoles, and Canadian voyageurs,--the
+fur flotilla set sail with tons of traps and merchandise.
+
+As the flotilla pulled out, a tall gaunt frontiersman with two white
+men and an Indian came pulling into St. Louis. Clark turned a second
+time,--"Why, Daniel Boone!"
+
+"First rate! first rate!" Furrowed as a sage and tanned as a hunter,
+with a firm hand-grasp, the old man stepped ashore. Two summers now
+had Daniel Boone and his two sons brought down to St. Louis a cargo of
+salt, manufactured by themselves at Boone's Lick, a discovery of the
+old pioneer.
+
+"Any settlers comin'? We air prepared to tote 'em up."
+
+Ever a welcome guest to the home of General Clark, Daniel Boone strode
+along to the cottage on the Rue. At sight of Julia he closed his eyes,
+dazzled.
+
+"'Pears to me she looks like Rebecca."
+
+Never, since that day when young Boone went hunting deer in the Yadkin
+forest and found Rebecca Bryan, a ruddy, flax-haired girl, had he
+ceased to be her lover. And though years had passed and Rebecca had
+faded, to him she was ever the gold-haired girl of the Yadkin. Poor
+Rebecca! Hers had been a hard life in camp and cabin, with pigs and
+chickens in the front yard and rain dripping through the roof.
+
+"Daniel!" she sometimes said, severely.
+
+"Wa-al, now Rebecca, thee knows I didn't have time to mend that air
+leak in the ruff last summer; I war gone too long at the beaver. But
+thee shall have a new house." And again the faithful Rebecca stuffed a
+rag in the ceiling with her mop-handle and meekly went on baking
+hoe-cake before the blazing forelog.
+
+Daniel had long promised a new house, but now, at last, he was really
+going to build. For this he was studying St. Louis.
+
+A day looking at houses and disposing of his salt and beaver-skins,
+and back he went, with a boatload of emigrants and a cargo of
+school-books. Mere trappers came and went,--Boone brought settlers.
+Pathfinder, judge, statesman, physician to the border, he now carried
+equipments for the first school up the Missouri.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+_A MYSTERY_
+
+
+Furs were piled everywhere, the furs that had been wont to go to
+Europe,--otter, beaver, deer, and bear and buffalo. American ships,
+that had sped like eagles on every sea, were threatened now by England
+if they sailed to France, by France if they sailed to England.
+
+"If our ships, our sailors, our goods are to be seized, it is better
+to keep them at home," said Jefferson.
+
+"War itself would be better than that," pled Gallatin.
+
+The whole world was taking sides in the cataclysm over the sea.
+Napoleon recognised no neutrals. England recognised none. Denmark
+tried it, and the British fleet burned Copenhagen. Ominously the
+conflagration glimmered,--such might be the fate of any American
+seaport.
+
+"If we must fight let us go with France," said some. "Napoleon will
+guarantee us the cession of Canada and Nova Scotia."
+
+But Jefferson, carrying all before him, on Tuesday, December 22,
+1807, signed an embargo act, shutting up our ships in our own
+harbours. In six months commercial life-blood ceased to flow. Ships
+rotted at the wharfs. Grass grew in the streets of Baltimore and
+Boston.
+
+St. Louis traders tried to go over to Canada, but were stopped at
+Detroit--"by that evil embargo."
+
+St. Louis withered. "De Meeseppi ees closed. Tees worse dan de
+Spaniard!"
+
+This unpopularity of Jefferson cast Governor Lewis into deepest gloom.
+The benevolent President's system of peaceable coercion was bringing
+the country to the verge of rebellion. England cared not nor France,
+and America was stifling with wheat, corn, and cattle, without a
+market.
+
+Fur, fur,--the currency and standard of value in St. Louis was
+valueless. Taxes even could no longer be paid in shaved deerskins.
+Peltry bonds, once worth their weight in gold, had dropped to nothing.
+Moths and mildew crept into the Chouteau warehouses. A few weeks more
+and the fruits of Lisa's adventure would perish.
+
+Into the Clark home there had come an infant boy, "named Meriwether
+Lewis," said the General, when the Governor came to look at the child.
+Every day now he came to the cradle, for, weary with cares, the quiet
+domestic atmosphere rested him. He moved his books and clothes, and
+the modest little home on the Rue became the home of the Governor.
+Beside the fire Julia stitched, stitched at dainty garments while the
+General and the Governor worked on their journals. Now and then their
+eyes strayed toward the sleeping infant.
+
+"This child is fairer than Sacajawea's at Clatsop," remarked Lewis.
+"But it cries the same, and is liable to the same ills."
+
+"And did you name a river for Sacajawea, too?" laughed Julia.
+
+"Certainly, certainly, but the Governor's favourite river was named
+Maria," slyly interposed Clark.
+
+A quick flush passed over the Governor's cheek. He had lately
+purchased a three-and-a-half arpent piece of land north of St. Louis
+for a home for his mother,--or was it for Maria? However, in June
+Clark took Julia and the baby with him on a trip to Louisville, and
+the same month Maria was married to somebody else.
+
+But on the Ohio the joyous activity had ceased. No longer the
+boatman's horn rang over cliff and scar. Jefferson's embargo had
+stagnated the waters.
+
+When General Clark returned to St. Louis in July he found his friend
+still more embarrassed and depressed.
+
+"My bills are protested," said the Governor. "Here is one for eighteen
+dollars rejected by the Secretary of the Treasury. This has given me
+infinite concern, as the fate of others drawn for similar purposes
+cannot be in doubt. Their rejection cannot fail to impress the public
+mind unfavourably with respect to me."
+
+"And what are these bills for?" inquired Clark.
+
+"Expenses incurred in governing the territory," answered Lewis.
+
+General Clark did not have to look back many years to recall the wreck
+of his brother on this same snag of protested bills, and exactly as
+with George Rogers Clark the proud and sensitive heart of Meriwether
+Lewis was cut to the core.
+
+"More painful than the rejection, is the displeasure which must arise
+in the mind of the executive from my having drawn for public moneys
+without authority. A third and not less embarrassing circumstance is
+that my private funds are entirely incompetent to meet these bills if
+protested."
+
+With the generosity of his nature Clark gave Lewis one hundred
+dollars, and Lewis arranged as soon as possible to go to Washington
+with his vouchers to see the President.
+
+With the courage of upright convictions, Governor Lewis contended with
+the difficulties of his office, and in due course received the rest of
+his protested bills. If he raged at heart he said little. If he spent
+sleepless nights tossing, and communing with himself, he spoke no word
+to those around him. Though the dagger pierced he made no sign.
+Borrowing money of his friends as George Rogers Clark had done, he
+met his bills as best he might. But his haggard face and evident
+illness alarmed his friends.
+
+"You had better take a trip to the east," they urged. "You have
+malarial fever."
+
+He decided to act on this suggestion, and with the journals of the
+western expedition and his vouchers the Governor bade his friends
+farewell and dropped down the river, intending to take a coasting
+vessel to New Orleans and pass around to Washington by sea.
+
+But at the Chickasaw Bluffs, now Memphis, Lewis was ill. Moreover,
+rumours of war were in the air.
+
+"These precious manuscripts that I have carried now for so many miles,
+must not be lost," thought Lewis, "nor the vouchers of my public
+accounts on which my honour rests. I will go by land through the
+Chickasaw country."
+
+The United States agent with the Chickasaw Indians, Major Neely,
+arriving there two days later, found Lewis still detained by illness.
+"I must accompany and watch over him," he said, when he found that the
+Governor was resolved to press on at all hazards. "He is very ill."
+
+One hundred years ago the Natchez trace was a new military road that
+had been cut through the wilderness of Tennessee to the Spanish
+country. Over this road the pony express galloped day and night and
+pioneer caravans paused at nightfall at lonely wayside inns. Brigands
+infested the forest, hard on the trail of the trader returning from
+New Orleans with a pouch of Spanish silver in his saddlebags.
+
+Over that road Aaron Burr had travelled on his visit to Andrew Jackson
+at Nashville, and on it Tecumseh was even now journeying to the tribes
+of the south.
+
+"Two of the horses have strayed," was the servant's report at the end
+of one day's journey. But even that could not delay the Governor.
+
+"I will wait for you at the house of the first white inhabitant on the
+road," said Lewis, as Neely turned back for the lost roadsters.
+
+It was evening when the Governor arrived at Grinder's stand, the last
+cabin on the borders of the Chickasaw country.
+
+"May I stay for the night?" he inquired of the woman at the door.
+
+"Come you alone?" she asked.
+
+"My servants are behind. Bring me some wine."
+
+Alighting and bringing in his saddle, the Governor touched the wine
+and turned away. Pulling off his loose white blue-striped travelling
+gown, he waited for his servants.
+
+The woman scanned her guest,--of elegant manners and courtly bearing,
+he was evidently a gentleman. But a troubled look on his face, an
+impatient walk to and fro, denoted something wrong. She listened,--he
+was talking to himself. His sudden wheels and turns and strides
+startled her.
+
+"Where is my powder? I am sure there was some powder in my canister,"
+he said to the servants at the door.
+
+After a mouthful of supper, he suddenly started up, speaking in a
+violent manner, flushed and excited. Then, lighting his pipe, he sat
+down by the cabin door.
+
+"Madame, this is a very pleasant evening."
+
+Mrs. Grinder noted the kindly tone, the handsome, haggard face, the
+air of abstraction. Quietly he smoked for a time, then again he
+flushed, arose excitedly, and stepped into the yard. There he began
+pacing angrily to and fro.
+
+But again he sat down to his pipe, and again seemed composed. He cast
+his eyes toward the west, that West, the scene of his toils and
+triumphs.
+
+"What a sweet evening it is!" He had seen that same sun silvering the
+northern rivers, gilding the peaks of the Rockies, and sinking into
+the Pacific. It all came over him now, like a soothing dream, calming
+the fevered soul and stilling its tumult.
+
+The woman was preparing the usual feather-bed for her guest.
+
+"I beg you, Madame, do not trouble yourself. Pernia, bring my
+bearskins and buffalo robe."
+
+The skins and robe were spread on the floor and the woman went away to
+her kitchen. The house was a double log cabin with a covered way
+between. Such houses abound still in the Cumberland Mountains.
+
+"I am afraid of that man," said the woman in the kitchen, putting her
+children in their beds. "Something is wrong. I cannot sleep."
+
+The servants slept in the barn. Neely had not come. Night came down
+with its mysterious veil upon the frontier cabin.
+
+But still that heavy pace was heard in the other cabin. Now and then a
+voice spoke rapidly and incoherently.
+
+"He must be a lawyer," said the woman in the kitchen. Suddenly she
+heard the report of a pistol, and something dropped heavily to the
+floor. There was a voice,--"O Lord!"
+
+Excited, peering into the night, the trembling woman listened. Another
+pistol, and then a voice at her door,--"Oh, madame, give me some water
+and heal my wounds!"
+
+Peering into the moonlight between the open unplastered logs, she saw
+her guest stagger and fall. Presently he crawled back into the room.
+Then again he came to the kitchen door, but did not speak. An empty
+pail stood there with a gourd,--he was searching for water. Cowering,
+terrified, there in the kitchen with her children the woman waited for
+the light.
+
+At the first break of day she sent two of the children to the barn to
+arouse the servants. And there, on his bearskins on the cabin floor,
+they found the shattered frame of Meriwether Lewis, a bullet in his
+side, a shot under his chin, and a ghastly wound in his forehead.
+
+"Take my rifle and kill me!" he begged. "I will give you all the money
+in my trunk. I am no coward, but I am so strong,--so hard to die! Do
+not be afraid of me, Pernia, I will not hurt you."
+
+And as the sun rose over the Tennessee trees, Meriwether Lewis was
+dead, on the 11th of October, 1809.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+_A LONELY GRAVE IN TENNESSEE_
+
+
+A hero of his country was dead, the Governor of its largest
+Territory,--dead, on his way to Washington, where fresh honours
+awaited him,--dead, far from friends and kindred in a wild and
+boundless forest.
+
+Did he commit suicide in a moment of aberration, or was he foully
+murdered by an unknown hand on that 11th of October, 1809? President
+Jefferson, who had observed signs of melancholy in him in early life,
+favoured the idea of suicide, but in the immediate neighbourhood the
+theory of murder took instant shape. Where was Joshua Grinder? Where
+were those servants? Where was Neely himself?
+
+"I never for a moment entertained the thought of suicide," said his
+mother, when she heard the news. "His last letter was full of hope. I
+was to live with him in St. Louis."
+
+Of all men in the world why should Meriwether Lewis commit suicide?
+The question has been argued for a hundred years and is to-day no
+nearer solution than ever.
+
+"Old Grinder killed him and got his money," said the neighbours. "He
+saw he was well dressed and evidently a person of distinction and
+wealth." Grinder was arrested and tried but no proof could be secured.
+
+"Alarmed by his groans the robbers hid his pouch of gold coins in the
+earth, with the intention of securing it later," said others. "They
+never ventured to return,--it lies there, buried, to this day." And
+the superstitions of the neighbourhood have invested the spot with the
+weird fascination of Captain Kidd's treasure, or the buried box of
+gold on Neacarney.
+
+"He was killed by his French servant," said the Lewis family. Later,
+when Pernia visited Charlottesville and sent word to Locust Hill,
+Meriwether's mother refused to see him.
+
+John Marks, half-brother of Meriwether Lewis, went immediately to the
+scene of tragedy, but nothing more could be done or learned.
+Proceeding to St. Louis, the estate was settled.
+
+When at last the trunks arrived at Washington they were found to
+contain the journals, papers on the protested bills, and the
+well-known spy-glass used by Lewis on the expedition. But there were
+no valuables or money.
+
+Years after, Meriwether's sister and her husband unexpectedly met
+Pernia on the streets of Mobile, and Mary recognised in his possession
+the William Wirt watch and the gun of her brother. On demand they were
+promptly surrendered.
+
+In the lonely heart of Lewis county, Tennessee, stands to-day a
+crumbling gray stone monument with a broken shaft of limestone erected
+by the State on the spot where, in the thirty-fifth year of his age,
+Meriwether Lewis met his death. In solitude and desolation, moss
+overlies his tomb, but his name lives on, brightening with the years.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+_TRADE FOLLOWS THE FLAG_
+
+
+"_Bon jour_, Ms'ieu, you want to know where dat Captinne?" The polite
+Creole lifted his cap.
+
+"'Pears now, maybe I heerd he wuz Guv'ner," said the keen-eyed trapper
+thoughtfully.
+
+"Guff'ner Lewees ees det,--kilt heeself. Generale Clark leeves on de
+Rue Royale, next de Injun office."
+
+In unkempt beard, hair shaggy as a horse's mane, and clothing all of
+leather, the stranger climbed the rocky path, using the stock of his
+gun for a staff.
+
+It did not take long to find the Indian office. With a dozen lounging
+braves outside and a council within, sat William Clark, the Red Head
+Chief.
+
+General Clark noted the shadow in the door that bright May morning.
+Not in vain had these men faced the West together.
+
+"Bless me, it's Coalter! Where have you been? How did you come?"
+
+From the mountains, three thousand miles in thirty days, in a small
+canoe, Coalter had come flying down the melting head-snows of the
+Rockies. He was haggard with hunger and loss of sleep.
+
+Leading his old companion to the cottage, Clark soon had him
+surrounded with the comforts of a civilised meal. Refreshed, gradually
+the trapper unfolded his tale.
+
+When John Coalter left Lewis and Clark at the Mandan towns and went
+back with Hancock and Dickson, in that Summer of 1806, they, the first
+of white men, entered the Yellowstone Park of to-day. In the Spring,
+separating from his companions, Coalter set out for St. Louis in a
+solitary canoe. At the mouth of the Platte he met Manuel Lisa and
+Drouillard coming up. And with them, John Potts, another of the Lewis
+and Clark soldiers. On the spot Coalter re-enlisted and returned a
+third time to the wilderness.
+
+Such a man was invaluable to that first venture in the north. After
+Lisa had stockaded his fort at the mouth of the Bighorn, he sent
+Coalter to bring the Indians. Alone he set out with gun and knapsack,
+travelled five hundred miles, and brought in his friends the Crows.
+That laid the foundation of Lisa's fortune.
+
+When Lisa came down with his furs in the Spring, Coalter and Potts
+with traps on their backs set out for the beaver-meadows of the Three
+Forks, the Madison, the Jefferson, and the Gallatin.
+
+"We knew those Blackfoot sarpints would spare no chance to skelp us,"
+said Coalter, "so we sot our traps by night an' tuk 'em afore
+daylight. Goin' up a creek six miles from the Jefferson, examinin' our
+traps one mornin', on a suddent we heerd a great noise. But the banks
+wuz high an' we cudn't see.
+
+"'Blackfeet, Potts. Let's retreat,' sez I.
+
+"'Blackfut nuthin'. Ye must be a coward. Thet's buffaloes,' sez Potts.
+An' we kep' on.
+
+"In a few minutes five or six hunderd Injuns appeared on both sides uv
+the creek, beckonin' us ashore. I saw 't warnt no use an' turned the
+canoe head in.
+
+"Ez we touched, an Injun seized Potts' rifle. I jumped an' grabbed an'
+handed it back to Potts in the canoe. He tuk it an' pushed off.
+
+"An' Injun let fly an arrer. Jest ez I heard it whizz, Potts cried,
+'Coalter, I'm wounded.'
+
+"'Don't try to get off, Potts, come ashore,' I urged. But no, he
+levelled his rifle and shot a Blackfoot dead on the spot. Instanter
+they riddled Potts,--dead, he floated down stream.
+
+"Then they seized and stripped me. I seed 'em consultin'.
+
+"'Set 'im up fer a target,' said some. I knew ther lingo, lernt it
+'mongst the Crows, raound Lisa's fort, at the Bighorn. But the chief
+asked me, 'Can ye run fast?'
+
+"'No, very bad runner,' I answered."
+
+Clark smiled. Well he remembered Coalter as the winner in many a
+racing bout.
+
+"The chief led me aout on the prairie, 'Save yerself ef ye can.'
+
+"Et thet instant I heerd, 'Whoop-ahahahahah-hooh!' like ten thousand
+divils, an' I _flew_.
+
+"It wuz six miles to the Jefferson; the graound wuz stuck like a
+pinquishen with prickly-pear an' sand burrs, cuttin' my bare feet, but
+I wuz half acrosst before I ventured to look over the shoulder. The
+sarpints ware pantin' an' fallin' behind an' scatterin'. But one with
+a spear not more'n a hunderd yeards behind was gainin'.
+
+"I made another bound,--blood gushed from my nostrils. Nearer, nearer
+I heerd his breath and steps, expectin' every minute to feel thet
+spear in my back.
+
+"Agin I looked. Not twenty yeards behind he ran. On a suddint I
+stopped, turned, and spread my arms. The Blackfoot, astonished at the
+blood all over my front, perhaps, tried to stop but stumbled an' fell
+and broke his spear. I ran back, snatched the point, and pinned him to
+the earth.
+
+"The rest set up a hidjus yell. While they stopped beside ther fallen
+comrade, almost faintin' I ran inter the cottonwoods on the borders uv
+the shore an' plunged ento the river.
+
+"Diving under a raft of drift-timber agin the upper point of a little
+island, I held my head up in a little opening amongst the trunks of
+trees covered with limbs and brushwood.
+
+"Screechin', yellin' like so many divils, they come onto the island.
+Thro' the chinks I seed 'em huntin', huntin', huntin', all day long. I
+only feared they might set the raft on fire.
+
+"But at night they gave it up; the voices grew faint and fer away; I
+swam cautiously daown an' acrost, an' landin' travelled all night.
+
+"But I wuz naked. The broilin' sun scorched my skin, my feet were
+filled with prickly-pears, an' I wuz hungry. Game, game plenty on the
+hills, but I hed no gun. It was seven days to Lisa's fort on the
+Bighorn.
+
+"I remembered the Injun turnip that Sacajawea found in there, an'
+lived on it an' sheep sorrel until I reached Lisa's fort, blistered
+from head to heel."
+
+As in a vision the General saw it all. Judy's eyes were filled with
+tears. Through the Gallatin, the Indian Valley of Flowers, where
+Bozeman stands to-day, the lonely trapper had toiled in the July sun
+and over the Bozeman Pass, whither Clark's cavalcade had ridden two
+summers before.
+
+Six years now had Coalter been gone from civilisation, but he had
+discovered the Yellowstone Park. No one in St. Louis would believe his
+stories of hot water spouting in fountains, "Coalter's Hell," but
+William Clark traced his route on the map that he sent for
+publication.
+
+John Coalter now received his delayed reward for the
+expedition,--double pay and three hundred acres of land,--and went up
+to find Boone at Charette.
+
+"What! Pierre Menard!" Another boat had come out of the north.
+General Clark grasped the horny hand of the fur trader. "What luck?"
+
+"Bad, bad," gloomily answered the trader with a shake of his flowing
+mane. "Drouillard is dead, and the rest are likely soon to be."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Blackfeet!"
+
+Clark guessed all, even before he heard the full details behind locked
+doors of the Missouri Fur Company at the warehouse of Pierre Chouteau.
+
+"As you knew," began Menard, "we spent last winter at Fort Lisa on the
+Bighorn. When Lisa started down here in March we packed our traps on
+horses, crossed to the Three Forks, and built a double stockade of
+logs at the confluence of the rivers. Every night the men came in with
+beaver, beaver, beaver. We confidently expected to bring down not less
+than three hundred packs this fall but that hope is shattered. On the
+12th of April our men were ambuscaded by Blackfeet. Five were killed.
+All their furs, traps, horses, guns, and equipments are without doubt
+by this time at Fort Edmonton on the Saskatchewan."
+
+"But you expected to visit the Snakes and Flatheads," suggested one to
+rouse the despondent trader from his revery.
+
+"I did. And the object was to obtain a Blackfoot prisoner if possible
+in order to open communication with his tribe. They are the most
+unapproachable Indians we have known. They refuse all overtures.
+
+"Just outside the fort Drouillard was killed. A high wind was blowing
+at the time, so he was not heard, but the scene of the conflict
+indicated a desperate defence.
+
+"Despair seized our hunters. They refused to go out. Indeed, it was
+impossible to go except in numbers, so Henry and I concluded it was
+best to report. I set out by night, and here I am, with these men and
+thirty packs of beaver. God pity poor Henry at the Three Forks!"
+
+Thus at one blow were shattered the high hopes of the Missouri Fur
+Company. All thought of Andrew Henry, tall, slender, blue-eyed,
+dark-haired, a man that spoke seldom, but of great deeds. Would he
+survive a winter among the Blackfeet?
+
+But there was another cause of disquiet to the Missouri Fur Company.
+
+"Have you heard of John Jacob Astor?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"He has gone with Wilson Price Hunt to Montreal to engage men for an
+expedition to the Columbia."
+
+"What, Hunt who kept an Indian shop here on the Rue?" They all knew
+him. He had come to St. Louis in 1804 and become an adept in
+outfitting.
+
+Two or three times Astor had offered to buy stock in the Missouri Fur
+Company but had been refused. Jefferson himself had recommended him to
+Lewis. Now he was carrying trade into the fur country over their
+heads. Already he had a great trade on the lakes, and to the
+headwaters of the Mississippi. He had profited by the surrender of
+Detroit and Mackinaw. Another stride took him to the Falls of St.
+Anthony; and now, along the trail of Lewis and Clark he planned to be
+first on the Pacific. With ships by sea and caravans by land, he could
+at last accomplish the wished-for trade to China.
+
+"But I, too, planned the Pacific trade," said Manuel Lisa, coming down
+in the Autumn. There was some jealousy that a New York man should be
+first to follow the trail to the sea.
+
+The winter was one of anxiety, for Astor's men had arrived in St.
+Louis and had gone up the Missouri to camp until Spring. Anxiety, too,
+for Andrew Henry, out there alone in the Blackfoot country.
+
+Could they have been gifted with sufficient sight, the partners in St.
+Louis might even then have seen the brave Andrew Henry fighting for
+his life on that little tongue of land between the Madison and the
+Jefferson. No trapping could be done. It was dangerous to go any
+distance from the fort except in large parties. Fearing the entire
+destruction of his little band, Henry moved across the mountains into
+the Oregon country, and wintered on what is now Henry's Fork of the
+river Snake, the first American stronghold on the Columbia.
+
+"We must exterminate Hunt's party," said Manuel Lisa.
+
+"No," said Pierre Chouteau. "Next year he will send again and again,
+and in time will exterminate us. Your duty will be to protect his men
+on the water, and may God Almighty have mercy on them in the
+mountains, for they will never reach their destination."
+
+From his new home at Charette John Coalter saw Astor's people going
+by, bound for the Columbia. To his surprise they inquired for him.
+
+"General Clark told us you were the best informed man in the country."
+
+Coalter told them of the hostility of the Blackfeet and the story of
+his escape. He longed to return with them to the mountains, but he had
+just married a squaw and he decided to stay. Moreover, a twinge in his
+limbs warned him that that plunge in the Jefferson had given him
+rheumatism for life.
+
+Daniel Boone, standing on the bank at Charette when Hunt went by, came
+down and examined their outfit. "Jist returned from my traps on the
+Creek," he said, pointing to sixty beaver skins.
+
+Tame beavers and otters, caught on an island opposite Charette Creek,
+were playing around his cabin. And his neighbours had elk and deer and
+buffalo, broken to the yoke.
+
+Several seasons had Boone with his old friend Calloway trapped on the
+Kansas; now he longed for the mountains.
+
+"Another year and I, too, will go to the Yellowstone," said Daniel
+Boone.
+
+"Andrew Henry must be rescued. His situation is desperate. He may be
+dead," said General Clark, President of the Missouri Fur Company at
+St. Louis.
+
+Three weeks behind Hunt, Lisa set out in a swift barge propelled by
+twenty oars, with a swivel on the bow and two blunderbusses in the
+cabin. Lisa had been a sea-captain,--he rigged his boat with a good
+mast, mainsail and topsail, and led his men with a ringing boat-song.
+
+Then followed a keelboat race of a thousand miles up the Missouri.
+June 2 Lisa caught up with Hunt near the present Bismarck, and met
+Andrew Henry coming down with forty packs of beaver.
+
+To avoid the hostile Blackfeet, Hunt bought horses and crossed through
+the Yellowstone-Crow country to the abandoned fort of Henry on the
+Snake, and on to the Columbia.
+
+Aboard that barge with Lisa went Sacajawea. True to her word, she had
+brought the little Touissant down to St. Louis, where Clark placed him
+with the Catholic sisters to be trained for an interpreter. Sacajawea
+was dressed as a white woman; she had quickly adopted their manners
+and language; but, in the words of a chronicler who saw her there,
+"she had become sickly, and longed to revisit her native country. Her
+husband also had become wearied of civilised life."
+
+So back they went to the Minnetarees, bearing pipes from Clark to the
+chiefs. Five hundred dollars a year Charboneau now received as Indian
+agent for the United States. For more than thirty years he held his
+post, and to this day his name may be traced in the land of Dakota.
+
+We can see Sacajawea now, startled and expectant, her heart beating
+like a trip-hammer under her bodice, looking at Julia! No dreams of
+her mountains had ever shown such sunny hair, such fluffs of curls,
+like moonrise on the water. And that diaphanous cloud,--was it a
+dress? No Shoshone girl ever saw such buckskin, finer than blossom of
+the bitter-root.
+
+"I am come," said Sacajawea.
+
+A whole year she had tarried among the whites, quickly accommodating
+herself to their ways. But in the level St. Louis she dreamed of her
+northland, and now she was going home!
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+_TECUMSEH_
+
+
+"It is madness to contend against the whites," said Black Hoof, chief
+of the Shawnees. "The more we fight the more they come."
+
+He had led raids against Boonsboro, watched the Ohio, and sold scalps
+at Detroit. Three times his town was burnt behind him, twice by Clark
+and once by Wayne. Then he gave up, signed the treaty at Greenville,
+and for ever after kept the peace. Now he was living with a band of
+Shawnees at Cape Girardeau, and made frequent visits to his old
+friend, Daniel Boone.
+
+Indian Phillips was with those who besieged Boonsboro. Phillips was a
+white man stolen as a child who had always lived with the Shawnees. To
+him Daniel Boone was the closest of friends. They hunted together and
+slept together. Boone took Phillips' bearskins and sold them with his
+own in St. Louis.
+
+"If I should die while I am out with you, Phillips, you must mark my
+grave and tell the folks so they can carry me home."
+
+Long after those Indians in the West had welcomed Boone's sons, an old
+squaw said, "I was an adopted sister during his captivity with the
+Ohio Indians."
+
+Sometimes Boone went over to Cape Girardeau, and sat with his friends
+talking over old times.
+
+"Do you remember, Dan," Phillips would say, "when we had you prisoner
+at Detroit? You remember the British traders gave you a horse and
+saddle and Black Fish adopted you, and you and he made an agreement
+you would lead him to Boonsboro and make them surrender and bury the
+tomahawk, and live like brothers and sisters?"
+
+"Yes, I remember," said Boone, smiling at the recollection of those
+arts of subterfuge.
+
+"Do you remember one warm day when Black Fish said, 'Dan, the corn is
+in good roasting ears. I would like to have your horse and mine in
+good condition before we start to Boonsboro. We need a trough to feed
+them in. I will show you a big log that you can dig out.' Black Fish
+led you to a big walnut log. You worked a while and then lay down.
+Black Fish came and said, 'Well, Dan, you haven't done much.'
+
+"'No,' you answered, 'you and your squaw call me your son, but you
+don't love me much. When I am at home I don't work this way,--I have
+negroes to work for me.'
+
+"'Well,' said Black Fish, 'come to camp and stay with your brothers.'"
+
+Quietly the two old men chuckled together. Boone always called Black
+Fish, father, and when he went hunting brought the choicest bit to the
+chief.
+
+But now Boone's visits to Girardeau were made with a purpose.
+
+"What is Tecumseh doing?"
+
+"Tecumseh? He says no tribe can sell our lands. He refuses to move out
+of Ohio."
+
+Old Black Hoof had pulled away from Tecumseh. The Shooting Star
+refused to attend Wayne's treaty at Greenville. In 1805 he styled
+himself a chief, and organised the young blood of the Shawnees into a
+personal band.
+
+About this time Tecumseh met Rebecca Galloway, whose father, James
+Galloway, had moved over from Kentucky to settle near Old Chillicothe.
+At the Galloway hearth Tecumseh was ever a welcome guest.
+
+"Teach me to read the white man's book," said Tecumseh to the fair
+Rebecca.
+
+With wonderful speed the young chief picked up the English alphabet.
+Hungry for knowledge, he read and read and Rebecca read to him.
+Thereafter in his wonderful war and peace orations, Tecumseh used the
+language of his beloved Rebecca. For, human-like, the young chief lost
+his heart to the white girl. Days went by, dangerous days, while
+Rebecca was correcting Tecumseh's speech, enlarging his English
+vocabulary, and reading to him from the Bible.
+
+"Promise me, Tecumseh, never, never will you permit the massacre of
+helpless women and children after capture." Tecumseh promised.
+
+"And be kind to the poor surrendered prisoner."
+
+"I will be kind," said Tecumseh.
+
+But time was fleeting,--game was disappearing,--Tecumseh was an
+Indian. His lands were slipping from under his feet.
+
+It was useless to speak to the fair Rebecca. Terrified at the fire she
+had kindled, she saw him no more. Enraged, wrathful, he returned to
+his band. Tecumseh never loved any Indian woman. A wife or two he
+tried, then bade them "Begone!"
+
+When Lewis and Clark returned from the West, Tecumseh and his brother,
+the Prophet, were already planning a vast confederation to wipe out
+the whites.
+
+Jefferson heard of these things.
+
+"He is visionary," said the President, and let him go on unmolested.
+
+"The Seventeen Fires are cheating us!" exclaimed Tecumseh. "The
+Delawares, Miamis, and Pottawattamies have sold their lands! The Great
+Spirit gave the land to all the Indians. No tribe can sell without the
+consent of all. The whites have driven us from the sea-coast,--they
+will shortly push us into the Lakes."
+
+The Governor-General of Canada encouraged him. Then came rumours of
+Indian activity. Like the Hermit of old, Tecumseh went out to rouse
+the redmen in a crusade against the whites. Still Jefferson paid no
+heed.
+
+About the time that Clark and his bride came down the Ohio, the
+distracted Indians were swarming on Tippecanoe Creek, a hundred miles
+from Fort Dearborn, the future Chicago. All Summer, whisperings came
+into St. Louis, "Tecumseh is persuading the Sacs, Foxes, and Osages to
+war."
+
+"I will meet the Sacs and Foxes," said Lewis.
+
+Clark went out and quieted the Osages. Boone's son and Auguste
+Chouteau went with him.
+
+"The Great Spirit bids you destroy Vincennes and sweep the Ohio to the
+mouth," was the Prophet's reported advice to the Chippewas.
+
+"Give up our land and buy no more, and I will ally with the United
+States," said Tecumseh to General Harrison at Vincennes, in August of
+1809.
+
+"It cannot be," said Harrison.
+
+"Then I will make war and ally with England," retorted the defiant
+chieftain.
+
+The frontier had much to fear from an Indian war. More and more
+vagrant red men hovered around St. Louis,--Sacs, Foxes, Osages, who
+had seen Tecumseh. The Illinois country opposite swarmed with them,
+making raids on the farmers, killing stock, stealing horses. Massacres
+and depredations began.
+
+"'Tis time to fortify," said Daniel Boone to his sons and neighbours.
+
+In a little while nine forts had been erected in St. Charles county
+alone, and every cabin was stockaded. The five stockades at Boone's
+Lick met frequent assaults. Black Hawk was there, the trusted
+lieutenant of Tecumseh. The whole frontier became alarmed.
+
+Then Manuel Lisa came down the river.
+
+"The British are sending wampum to the Sioux. All the Missouri nations
+are urged to join the confederacy."
+
+In fact, the Prophet with his mystery fire was visiting all the
+northwest tribes, even the Blackfeet. Ten thousand Indians promised to
+follow him back. Dressed in white buckskin, with eagle feathers in his
+hair, Tecumseh, on a spirited black pony, came to Gomo and Black
+Partridge on Peoria Lake in the summer of 1810.
+
+"I cannot join you," said Black Partridge, the Pottawattamie, holding
+up a silver medal. "This token was given to me at Greenville by the
+great chief [Wayne]. On it you see the face of our father at
+Washington. As long as this hangs on my neck I can never raise my
+tomahawk against the whites."
+
+Gomo refused. "Long ago the Big Knife [George Rogers Clark] came to
+Kaskaskia and sent for the chiefs of this river. We went. He desired
+us to remain still in our own villages, saying that the Americans
+were able, of themselves, to fight the British."
+
+"Will anything short of the complete conquest of the Canadas enable us
+to prevent their influence on our Indians?" asked Governor Edwards of
+Illinois. Edwards and Clark planned together for the protection of the
+frontier.
+
+In July, 1811, Tecumseh went to Vincennes and held a last stormy
+interview with Harrison without avail. Immediately he turned south to
+the Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles. They watched him with
+kindling eyes.
+
+"Brothers, you do not mean to fight!" thundered Tecumseh to the
+hesitating Creeks. "You do not believe the Great Spirit has sent me.
+You shall know. From here I go straight to Detroit. When I arrive
+there I shall stamp on the ground, and shake down every house in this
+village."
+
+As Tecumseh strode into the forest the terrified Creeks watched. They
+counted the days. Then came the awful quaking and shaking of the New
+Madrid earthquake.
+
+"Tecumseh has reached Detroit! Tecumseh has reached Detroit!" cried
+the frantic Creeks, as their wigwams tumbled about them.
+
+Tecumseh was coming leisurely up among the tribes of Missouri,
+haranguing Black Hoof at Cape Girardeau, Osages, and Kickapoos, and
+Iowas at Des Moines.
+
+But Tippecanoe had been fought and lost.
+
+"There is to be an attack," said George Rogers Clark Floyd, tapping at
+the door of Harrison's tent at three o'clock in the morning of
+November 7, 1811. Harrison sprang to his horse and with him George
+Croghan and John O'Fallon.
+
+It was a battle for possession. Every Indian trained by Tecumseh knew
+his country depended upon it. Every white knew he must win or the log
+cabin must go. In the darkness and rain the combatants locked in the
+death struggle of savagery against civilisation. Tecumseh reached the
+Wabash to find the wreck of Tippecanoe.
+
+"Wretch!" he cried to his brother, "you have ruined all!" Seizing the
+Prophet by the hair, Tecumseh shook him and beat him and cuffed him
+and almost killed him, then dashed away to Canada and offered his
+tomahawk to Great Britain.
+
+"The danger is not over," said Clark after Harrison's battle.
+
+To save as many Indians as possible from the machinations of Tecumseh,
+immediately after Tippecanoe Clark summoned the neighbouring tribes to
+a council at St. Louis. Over the winter snows the runners sped,
+calling them in for a trip to Washington.
+
+It was May of 1812 when Clark got together his chiefs of the Great and
+Little Osages, Sacs, Foxes, Shawnees, and Delawares.
+
+"Ahaha! Great Medicine!" whispered the Indians, when General Clark
+discovered their wily plans.
+
+Nothing could be hid from the Red Head Chief. Feared and beloved, none
+other could better have handled the inflammable tribes at that moment.
+Old chiefs among them remembered his brother of the Long Knives, and
+looked upon this Clark as his natural successor. And the General took
+care not to dispel this fancy, but on every occasion strengthened and
+deepened it.
+
+Never before in St. Louis had Indians been watched so strenuously.
+Moody, taciturn, repelling familiarity, they bore the faces of men who
+knew secrets. Tecumseh had whispered in their ear. "Shall we listen to
+Tecumseh?" They were wavering.
+
+Cold, impassively stoic, they heeded no question when citizens
+impelled by curiosity or friendly feeling endeavoured to draw them
+into conversation. If pressed too closely, the straight forms lifted
+still more loftily, and wrapping their blankets closer about them the
+council chiefs strode contemptuously away.
+
+But if Clark spoke, every eye was attention.
+
+"Before we go," said Clark, "I advise you to make peace with one
+another and bury the hatchet."
+
+They did, and for the most part kept it for ever.
+
+It was May 5 when Clark started with his embassy of ninety chiefs to
+see their "Great God, the President," as they called Madison,
+following the old trail to Vincennes, Louisville, and Pittsburg. Along
+with them went a body-guard of soldiers, and also Mrs. Clark, her
+maids, and the two little boys, on the way to Fincastle. Mrs. Clark's
+especial escort was John O'Fallon, nineteen years of age, aide to
+Harrison at Tippecanoe, who had come to his uncle at St. Louis
+immediately after the battle.
+
+In their best necklaces of bears' claws the chiefs arrived at
+Washington. War had been declared against Great Britain. There was a
+consultation with the President.
+
+"We, too, have declared war," announced the redmen, as they strode
+with Clark from the White House. But Black Hawk of the Rock River Sacs
+was not there. He had followed Tecumseh.
+
+About the same time, on the eastern bank of the Detroit river Tecumseh
+was met by anxious Ohio chiefs who remembered Wayne.
+
+"Let us remain neutral," they pleaded. "This is the white man's war."
+
+Tecumseh shook his tomahawk above the Detroit. "My bones shall bleach
+on this shore before I will join in any council of neutrality."
+
+"The Great Father over the Big Water will never bury his war-club
+until he quiets these troublers of the earth," said General Brock to
+Tecumseh's redmen. Then came larger gifts than ever from "their
+British Father."
+
+"War is declared! Go," said Tecumseh, "cut off Fort Dearborn before
+they hear the news!" Two emissaries from Tecumseh came flying into the
+Illinois.
+
+That night the Indians started for Chicago on her lonely lake. Black
+Partridge mounted his pony and tried to dissuade them. He could not.
+Then spurring he reached Fort Dearborn first. With tears he threw down
+his medal before the astonished commander.
+
+"My young men have gone on the warpath. Here is your medal. I will not
+wear an emblem of friendship when I am compelled to act as an enemy."
+
+Before the sun went down the shores of Lake Michigan were red with the
+blood of men, women, and children. Like the Rhine of old France, the
+lakes were still the fighting border.
+
+President Madison felt grateful to Clark for the step he had taken
+with the Indians.
+
+"Will you command the army at Detroit?"
+
+"I can do more for my country by attending to the Indians," was the
+General's modest reply.
+
+The country waited to hear that Hull had taken Upper Canada. Instead
+the shocked nation heard, "_Hull has surrendered_!"
+
+"Hull has surrendered!"
+
+Runners flew among the Indians to the remotest border,--the Creeks
+heard it before their white neighbours. Little Crow and his Sioux
+snatched up the war hatchet. Detroit had fallen with Tecumseh and
+Brock at the head of the Anglo-Indian army.
+
+"We shall drive these Americans back across the Ohio," said General
+Brock.
+
+At this, the old and popular wish of the Lake Indians, large numbers
+threw aside their scruples and joined in the war that followed.
+
+In December General Clark was appointed Governor of the newly
+organised territory of Missouri.
+
+Meanwhile in the buff and blue stage coach, a huge box mounted on
+springs, Julia and her children were swinging toward Fotheringay. The
+air was hot and dusty, the leather curtains were rolled up to catch
+the slightest breeze, and the happy though weary occupants looked out
+on the Valley of Virginia.
+
+Forty miles a day the coach horses travelled, leaving them each
+evening a little nearer their destination. The small wayside inns
+lacked comforts, but such as they were our travellers accepted
+thankfully. Now and then the post-rider blew his horn and dashed by
+them, or in the heat of the day rode leisurely in the shade of poplars
+along the road, furtively reading the letters of his pack as he paced
+in the dust.
+
+And still over the mountains were pouring white-topped Conestoga
+waggons, careening down like boats at sea, laden with cargoes of
+colonial ware, pewter, and mahogany. The golden age of coaching times
+had come, and magnificent horses, dappled grays and bays in
+scarlet-fringed housings and jingling bells, seemed bearing away the
+world on wheels.
+
+To the new home Julia was coming, at Fotheringay.
+
+Before the coach stopped Julia perceived through enshrining trees
+Black Granny standing in the wide hallway. Throwing up her apron over
+her woolly head to hide the tears of joy,--
+
+"Laws a-honey! Miss Judy done come hum!"
+
+"Fotheringay!" sang out the dusty driver with an unusual flourish of
+whip-lash and echo-waking blast of the postillion's horn. In a trice
+the steps were down, and surrounded by babies and bandboxes, brass
+nail-studded hair trunks and portmanteaus of pigskin, "Miss Judy" was
+greeted by the entire sable population of Fotheringay. Light-footed as
+a girl she ran forward to greet her father, Colonel Hancock. The
+Colonel hastened to his daughter,--
+
+"Hull has surrendered," he said.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+_CLARK GUARDS THE FRONTIER_
+
+
+The Indian hunt was over; they were done making their sugar; the women
+were planting corn. The warriors hid in the thick foliage of the river
+borders, preparing for war.
+
+"Madison has declared war against England!"
+
+The news was hailed with delight. Now would end this frightful
+suspense. In Illinois alone, fifteen hundred savages under foreign
+machinations held in terror forty thousand white people,--officers and
+soldiers of George Rogers Clark and others who had settled on the
+undefended prairies.
+
+"Detroit has fallen!"
+
+"Mackinac is gone!"
+
+"The savages have massacred the garrison at Fort Dearborn!"
+
+"They are planning to attack the settlements on the Mississippi. If
+the Sioux join the confederacy--" cheeks paled at the possibility.
+
+The greatest body of Indians in America resided on the Mississippi.
+Who could say at what hour the waters would resound with their whoops?
+Thousands of them could reach St. Louis or Cahokia from their homes in
+five or six days. Immense quantities of British gifts were coming from
+the Lakes to the Indians at Peoria, Rock Island, Des Moines.
+
+"Yes, we shall attack when the corn is ripe," said the Indians at Fort
+Madison.
+
+"Unless I hear shortly of more assistance than a few rangers I shall
+bury my papers in the ground, send my family off, and fight as long as
+possible," said Edwards, the Governor of Illinois.
+
+In Missouri, surrounded by Pottawattamies, champion horsethieves of
+the frontier, and warlike Foxes, Iowas, and Kickapoos, the settlers
+ploughed their fields with sentinels on guard. Horns hung at their
+belts to blow as a signal of danger. In the quiet hour by the
+fireside, an Indian would steal into the postern gate and shoot the
+father at the hearth, the mother at her evening task.
+
+Presently the settlers withdrew into the forts, unable to raise crops.
+With corn in the cabin loft, the bear hunt in the fall, the turkey
+hunt at Christmas, and venison hams kept over from last year, still
+there was plenty.
+
+Daniel Boone, the patriarch of about forty families, ever on the
+lookout with his long thin eagle face, ruled by advice and example.
+The once light flaxen hair was gray, but even yet Boone's step was
+springy as the Indian's, as gun in hand he watched around the forts.
+
+Maine, Montana, each has known it all, the same running fights of
+Kentucky and Oregon. Woe to the little children playing outside the
+forted village,--woe to the lad driving home the cows,--woe to the
+maid at milking time.
+
+The alarm was swelled by Quas-qua-ma, a chief of the Sacs, a very
+pacific Indian and friend of the whites, who came by night to bring
+warning and consult Clark. In his search Quas-qua-ma tip-toed from
+porch to porch. Frightened habitants peered through the shutters.
+
+"What ees wanted?"
+
+"The Red Head Chief."
+
+But Clark had not arrived.
+
+"We must take this matter into our own hands," said the people.
+"British and Indians came once from Mackinac. They may again."
+
+"Mackinac? They are at Fort Madison now, murdering our regulars and
+rangers. How long since they burned our boats and cargoes at Fort
+Bellevue? Any day they may drop down on St. Louis."
+
+"We must fortify."
+
+"The old bastions may be made available for service."
+
+"The old Spanish garrison tower must be refitted for the women and
+children."
+
+Such were the universal conclusions. Men went up the river to the
+islands to bring down logs. Another party set to work to dig a wide,
+deep ditch for a regular stockade.
+
+When Clark arrived to begin his duties as Territorial Governor he
+found St. Louis bordering on a state of panic. There was the
+cloud-shadow of the north. Below, one thousand Indians, Cherokees,
+Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Catawbas on a branch of the Arkansas
+within three days' journey of Saint Genevieve were crossing the river
+at Chickasaw Bluffs. Tecumseh's belts of wampum were flying
+everywhere.
+
+In their best necklaces of bears' claws Clark's ninety chiefs came
+home, laden with tokens of esteem. Civilised military dress had
+succeeded the blanket; the wild fierce air was gone.
+
+"We have declared war against Kinchotch [King George]," said the proud
+chiefs, taking boat to keep their tribes quiet along the west.
+
+A sense of security returned to St. Louis. Would they not act as a
+barrier to tribes more remote? The plan for local fortification was
+abandoned, but a cordon of family blockhouses was built from
+Bellefontaine to Kaskaskia, a line seventy-five miles in length, along
+which the rangers rode daily, watching the red marauders of Illinois.
+The Mississippi was picketed with gunboats.
+
+"Whoever holds Prairie du Chien holds the Upper Mississippi," said
+Governor Clark. "I will go there and break up that rendezvous of
+British and Indians."
+
+Who better than Clark knew the border and the Indian? He could ply the
+oar, or level the rifle, or sleep at night on gravel stones.
+
+"It requires time and a little smoking with Indians if you wish to
+have peace with them."
+
+As soon as possible a gunboat, the _Governor Clark_, and several
+smaller boats, manned with one hundred and fifty volunteers and sixty
+regular troops, went up into the hostile country. Fierce Sacs glared
+from Rock Island, Foxes paused in their lead digging at Dubuque's
+mines,--lead for British cannon.
+
+Although on Missouri territory, Prairie du Chien was still occupied by
+Indians and traders to the exclusion of Americans. Six hundred, seven
+hundred miles above St. Louis, a little red bird whispered up the
+Mississippi, "Long Knives coming!" The traders retired.
+
+"Whoever enjoys the trade of the Indians will have control of their
+affections and power," said Clark. "Too long have we left this point
+unfortified."
+
+A great impression had been made on the savages by the liberality of
+the British traders. Their brilliant red coats--"Eenah! eenah!
+eenamah!" exclaimed the Sioux.
+
+But now the Long Knives! Wabasha, son of Wabasha of the Revolution,
+remembered the Long Knives. When Clark arrived at Prairie du Chien
+Wabasha refused to fight him. Red Wing came down to the council. Upon
+his bosom Rising Moose proudly exhibited a medal given him by Captain
+Pike in 1805. The Indians nicknamed him "Tammaha, the Pike."
+
+Twenty-five leagues above Tammaha's village lived Wabasha, and
+twenty-five above Wabasha, the Red Wing, all great chiefs of the
+Sioux, all very friendly now to the Long Knife who had come up in his
+gunboat.
+
+Since time immemorial Wabasha had been a friend of the British, twice
+had he, the son of Wabasha I., been to Quebec and received flags and
+medals. But now he remembered Captain Pike who visited their northern
+waters while Lewis and Clark were away at the west. Grasping the hand
+of Clark,--
+
+"We have the greatest friendship for the United States," said the
+chiefs,--all except Little Crow. He was leading a war party to the
+Lakes.
+
+Leaving troops to erect a fort and maintain a garrison at the old
+French Prairie du Chien, Governor Clark returned to his necessary
+duties at St. Louis. Behind on the river remained the gunboat to guard
+the builders.
+
+"A fort at the Prairie?" cried the British traders at Mackinac. "That
+cuts off our Dakota trade." And forthwith an expedition was raised to
+capture the garrison.
+
+Barely was the rude fortification completed before a force of British
+and Chippewas were marching upon it.
+
+"I will not fight the Big Knives any more," said Red Wing.
+
+"Why?" asked the traders.
+
+"The lion and the eagle fight. Then the lion will go home and leave us
+to the eagle." Red Wing was famed for foretelling events at Prairie du
+Chien.
+
+In June Manuel Lisa came down the Missouri.
+
+"De Arrapahoe, Arikara, Gros Ventre, and Crow are at war wit' de
+American. De British Nort'west traders embroil our people wit' de
+sauvages to cut dem off!"
+
+"We must extend the posts of St. Louis to the British border,"
+cautioned Clark to Lisa. "And if necessary arm the Yanktons and Omahas
+against the Sacs and Iowas. I herewith commission you, Lisa, my
+especial sub-agent among the nations of the Missouri to keep them at
+peace."
+
+Very well Clark knew whom he was trusting. Now that war had crippled
+the Missouri Fur Company, Lisa alone represented them in the field.
+Familiar with the fashions of Indians, the size and colour of the
+favourite blanket, the shape and length of tomahawks, no trader was
+more a favourite than Manuel Lisa. Besides, he still maintained the
+company's posts,--Council Bluffs with the Omahas, six hundred miles up
+the Missouri, and another at the Sioux, six hundred miles further
+still, with two hundred hunters in his employ. Here was a force not to
+be despised.
+
+Ten months in the year Lisa was buried in the wilderness, hid in the
+forest and the prairie, far from his wife in St. Louis. Wily, winning,
+and strategic, no trader knew Indians better.
+
+"And," continued the Governor, "I offer you five hundred dollars for
+sub-agent's salary."
+
+"A poor five hundred tollar!" laughed Lisa. "Eet will not buy te
+tobacco which I give annually to dose who call me Fader. But Lisa will
+go. His interests and dose of de Government are one."
+
+Then after a moment's frowning reflection,--"I haf suffered enough,"
+almost wailed Lisa, "I haf suffered enough in person and in property
+under a different government, to know how to appreciate de one under
+w'ich I now live."
+
+Even while they were consulting, "Here is your friend, de Rising
+Moose!" announced old Antoine Le Claire.
+
+"Rising Moose?" Governor Clark started to his feet as one of the
+Prairie du Chien chiefs came striding through the door.
+
+"The fort is taken, but I will not fight the Long Knife. Tammaha is an
+American."
+
+All the way down on the gunboat riddled with bullets, Tammaha had come
+with the fleeing soldiers to offer his tomahawk to Governor Clark. The
+guns were not yet in when the enemy swept down on the fort at Prairie
+du Chien.
+
+"Prairie du Chien lost? It shall be recovered. Wait until Spring."
+
+And the British, too, said, "Wait until Spring and we will take St.
+Louis." But they feared the gunboats.
+
+Governor Clark accepted Tammaha's service, commissioning him a chief
+of the Red Wing band of Sioux. "Wait and go up with Lisa. Tell your
+people the Long Knife counsels them to remain quiet."
+
+When Lisa set out for the north as agent of both the fur business and
+that of the Government, he carried with him mementoes and friendly
+reminders to all the principal chiefs of the northern tribes.
+
+Big Elk of the Omahas, Black Cat and Big White of the Mandans, Le
+Borgne of the Minnetarees, even the chiefs of the dreaded Teton Sioux
+were not forgotten. The Red Head had been there, had visited their
+country. He was the son of their Great Father,--they would listen to
+the Red Head Chief.
+
+At this particular juncture of our national history, Clark the Red
+Head and Manuel Lisa the trader formed a fortunate combination for the
+interests of the United States. Their words to the northern chiefs
+were weighty. Their gifts were continued pledges of sacred friendship.
+While the eyes of the nation were rivetted on the conflict in the East
+and on the ocean, Clark held the trans-Mississippi with even a
+stronger grip than his illustrious brother had held the
+trans-Alleghany thirty years before.
+
+Along with Lisa up the Missouri to the Dakotas went Tammaha, the
+Rising Moose, and crossed to Prairie du Chien.
+
+"Where do you come from and what business have you here?" cried the
+British commander, rudely jerking Tammaha's bundle from his back and
+examining it for letters.
+
+"I come from St. Louis," answered the Moose. "I promised the Long
+Knife I would come to Prairie du Chien and here I am."
+
+"Lock him in the guard house. He ought to be shot!" roared the
+officer.
+
+"I am ready for death if you choose to kill me," answered Rising
+Moose.
+
+At last in the depth of winter they sent him away.
+
+Determined now, the old chief set out in the snows to turn all his
+energy against the British.
+
+"The Old Priest," said some of the Indians, "Tammaha talks too much!"
+
+All along the Missouri, from St. Louis to the Mandans, Lisa held
+councils with the Indians with wonderful success. But the Mississippi
+tribes, nearer to Canada, were for the most part won over to Great
+Britain.
+
+In other directions Governor Clark sent out for reports from the
+tribes. The answer was appalling. As if all were at war, a cordon of
+foes stretched from the St. Lawrence to the Arkansas and Alabama.
+
+Even Black Partridge,--at the Fort Dearborn massacre he had snatched
+Mrs. Helm from the tomahawk and held her in the lake to save her life.
+Late that night at an Indian camp a friendly squaw-mother dressed her
+wounds. Black Partridge loved that girl.
+
+"Lieutenant Helm is a prisoner among the Indians," said agent Forsythe
+at Peoria. "Here are presents, Black Partridge. Go ransom him. Here is
+a written order on General Clark for one hundred dollars when you
+bring him to the Red Head Chief."
+
+Black Partridge rode to the Kankakee village and spread out his
+presents. "And you shall have one huntret tollars when you bring him
+to te Red Head Chief."
+
+"Not enough! Not enough!" cried the Indians.
+
+"Here, then, take my pony, my rifle, my ring," said the Partridge,
+unhooking the hoop of gold from his nose. The bargain was made. The
+man was ransomed, and mounted on ponies all started for St. Louis.
+Lieutenant Helm was saved.
+
+Late at night, tired and hungry, the rain falling in torrents, without
+pony or gun, Black Partridge arrived at his village on Peoria Lake.
+His village? It was gone. Black embers smouldered there.
+
+Wrapped in his blanket, Black Partridge sat on the ground to await the
+revelation of dawn. Wolves howled a mournful wail in his superstitious
+ear. Day dawned. There lay the carnage of slaughter,--his daughter,
+his grandchild, his neighbours, dead. The rangers had burnt his town.
+
+Breathing vengeance, "I will go on the war path," said Black
+Partridge, the Pottawattamie.
+
+Two hundred warriors went from the wigwams of Illinois under Black
+Partridge, Shequenebec sent a hundred from his stronghold at the head
+of Peoria Lake, Mittitass led a hundred from his village at the
+portage on the Rivière des Plaines. Painted black they came,
+inveterate since Tippecanoe.
+
+"Look out for squalls," wrote John O'Fallon from St. Louis to his
+mother at Louisville. "An express arrived from Fort Madison yesterday
+informing that the sentinels had been obliged to fire upon the Indians
+almost every night to keep them at their distance. Indians are
+discovered some nights within several feet of the pickets."
+
+Black Hawk was there. Very angry was Black Hawk at the building of
+Fort Madison at the foot of Des Moines rapids.
+
+While Lewis and Clark were gone in 1804, William Henry Harrison,
+directed by Jefferson, made a treaty with the Sacs and Foxes by which
+they gave up fifty millions of acres. Gratiot, Vigo, the Chouteaus,
+and officers of the state and army, Quasquama and four other chiefs,
+attached their names to that treaty in the presence of Major Stoddard.
+
+"I deny its validity!" cried Black Hawk. "I never gave up my land."
+
+Now Black Hawk was plotting and planning and attacking Fort Madison,
+until early in September a panting express arrived at St. Louis.
+
+"Fort Madison is burned, Your Excellency."
+
+"How did it happen?" inquired the Governor.
+
+"Besieged until the garrison was reduced to potatoes alone, we decided
+to evacuate. Digging a tunnel from the southeast blockhouse to the
+river, boats were made ready. Slipping out at night, crowding through
+the tunnel on hands and knees, our last man set fire to Fort Madison.
+Like tinder the stockade blazed, kissing the heavens. Indians leaped
+and yelled with tomahawks, expecting our exit. At their backs, under
+cover of darkness, we escaped down the Mississippi."
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+_THE STORY OF A SWORD_
+
+
+"Show me what kind of country we have to march through," said the
+British General to Tecumseh, after Detroit had fallen.
+
+Taking a roll of elm-bark Tecumseh drew his scalping knife and etched
+upon it the rivers, hills, and woods he knew so well. And the march
+began,--to be checked at Fort Stephenson by a boy of twenty-one.
+
+It was the dream and hope of the British Fur Companies to extend their
+territory as far within the American border as possible. The whole War
+of 1812 was a traders' war. Commerce, commerce, for which the world is
+battling still, was the motive power on land and sea.
+
+At the Lakes now, the British fur traders waved their flags again
+above the ramparts of Detroit. "We must hold this post,--its loss too
+seriously deranges our plans."
+
+Smouldering, the old Revolutionary fires had burst anew. Did George
+III. still hope to conquer America?
+
+"Hull surrendered?" America groaned at the stain, the stigma, the
+national disgrace! In a day regiments leaped to fill the breach.
+"Detroit must be re-taken!"
+
+Along the Lakes battle succeeded battle in swift succession.
+
+At Louisville two mothers, Lucy and Fanny, were anxious for their
+boys. Both George Croghan and John O'Fallon had been with Harrison at
+Tippecanoe. Both had been promoted. Then came the call for swords.
+
+"Get me a sword in Philadelphia," wrote O'Fallon to his mother.
+
+"Send me a sword to Cincinnati," begged Croghan.
+
+Sitting under the trees at Locust Grove the sisters were discussing
+the fall of Detroit. Fanny had John O'Fallon's letter announcing the
+burning of Fort Madison. Lucy was devouring the last impatient scrawl
+from her fiery, ambitious son, George Croghan, now caged in an obscure
+fort on Sandusky River near Lake Erie.
+
+"The General little knows me," wrote Croghan. "To assist his cause, to
+promote in any way his welfare, I would bravely sacrifice my best and
+fondest hopes. I am resolved on quitting the army as soon as I am
+relieved of the command of this post."
+
+Scarcely had the two mothers finished reading when a shout rang
+through the streets of Louisville.
+
+"Hurrah for Croghan! Croghan! Croghan!"
+
+"Why, what is the matter?"
+
+Pale with anxiety Lucy ran to the gate. The whole street was filled
+with people coming that way. In a few hurried words she heard the
+story from several lips at once.
+
+"Why, you see, Madam, General Harrison was afraid Tecumseh would make
+a flank attack on Fort Stephenson, in charge of George Croghan, and so
+ordered him to abandon and burn it. But no,--he sent the General word,
+'We are determined to hold this place, and by heaven we will!'
+
+"That night George hastily cut a ditch and raised a stockade. Then
+along came Proctor and Tecumseh with a thousand British and Indians,
+and summoned him to surrender.
+
+"The boy had only one hundred and sixty inexperienced men and a single
+six-pounder, but he sent back answer: 'The fort will be defended to
+the last extremity. No force, however great, can induce us to
+surrender. We are resolved to hold this post or bury ourselves in its
+ruins.'"
+
+Tears ran down Lucy's cheeks as she listened,--she caught at the gate
+to keep from falling. Before her arose the picture of that son with
+red hair flying, and fine thin face like a blooded warhorse,--she knew
+that look.
+
+"Again Proctor sent his flag demanding surrender to avoid a terrible
+massacre.
+
+"'When this fort is taken there will be none to massacre,' answered
+the boy, 'for it will not be given up while a man is left to resist!'
+
+"The enemy advanced, and when close at hand, Croghan unmasked his
+solitary cannon and swept them down. Again Proctor advanced, and again
+the rifle of every man and the masked cannon met them. Falling back,
+Proctor and Tecumseh retreated, abandoning a boatload of military
+stores on the bank."
+
+"Hurrah for Croghan! Croghan! Croghan!" again rang down the streets of
+Louisville. The bells rang out a peal as the Stars and Stripes ran up
+the flag-staff.
+
+"The little game cock, he shall have my sword," said George Rogers
+Clark, living again his own great days.
+
+And with that sword there was a story.
+
+When Tippecanoe was won and the world was ringing with "Harrison!" men
+recalled another hero who "with no provisions, no munitions, no
+cannon, no shoes, almost without an army," had held these same redmen
+at bay.
+
+"And does he yet live?"
+
+"He lives, an exile and a hermit on a Point of Rock on the Indiana
+shore above the Falls of the Ohio."
+
+"Has he no recognition?"
+
+Men whispered the story of the sword.
+
+When John Rogers went back from victorious Vincennes with Hamilton a
+prisoner-of-war, the grateful Virginian Assembly voted George Rogers
+Clark a sword.
+
+"And you, Captain Rogers, may present it."
+
+The sword was ready, time passed, difficulties multiplied. Clark
+presented his bill to the Virginia Legislature. To his amazement and
+mortification the House of Delegates refused to allow his claim.
+
+Clark went home, sold his bounty lands, and ruined himself to pay for
+the bread and meat of his army.
+
+And then it was rumoured, "To-day a sword will be presented to George
+Rogers Clark."
+
+All the countryside gathered, pioneers and veterans, with the civic
+and military display of that rude age to see their hero honoured. The
+commissioner for Virginia appeared, and in formal and complimentary
+address delivered the sword. The General received it; then drawing
+the long blade from its scabbard, plunged it into the earth and broke
+it off at the hilt. Turning to the commissioner, he said, "Captain
+Rogers, return to your State and tell her for me first to be just
+before she is generous."
+
+For years those old veterans had related to their children and
+grandchildren the story of that tragic day when Clark, the hero, broke
+the sword Virginia gave him.
+
+But a new time had come and new appreciation. While the smoke of
+Tippecanoe was rolling away a member of the Virginia Legislature
+related anew the story of that earlier Vincennes and of the sword that
+Clark, "with haughty sense of wounded pride and feeling had broken and
+cast away." With unanimous voice Virginia voted a new sword and the
+half-pay of a colonel for the remainder of his life.
+
+The commissioners found the old hero partially paralysed. Lucy had
+gone to him at the Point of Rock. "Brother, you are failing, you need
+care, I will look after you," and tenderly she bore him to her home at
+Locust Grove, where now, all day long, in his invalid chair, George
+Rogers Clark studied the long reach of the blue Ohio or followed
+Napoleon and the boys of 1812.
+
+Nothing had touched him like this deed of his nephew,--"Yes, yes, he
+shall have my sword!"
+
+The next morning after the battle General Harrison wrote to the
+Secretary of War: "I am sorry I cannot submit to you Major Croghan's
+official report. He was to have sent it to me this morning, but I have
+just heard that he was so much exhausted by thirty-six hours of
+constant exertion as to be unable to make it. It will not be among the
+least of General Proctor's mortifications to find that he has been
+baffled by a youth who has just passed his twenty-first year. He is,
+however, a hero worthy of his gallant uncle, General George Rogers
+Clark."
+
+The cannon, "Old Betsy," stands yet in Fort Stephenson at Fremont,
+Ohio, where every passing year they celebrate the victory of that
+second day of August, 1813,--the first check to the British advance in
+the War of 1812.
+
+A few days later, Perry's victory on Lake Erie opened the road to
+Canada and Detroit was re-taken.
+
+"Britannia, Columbia, both had set their heels upon Detroit, and young
+Columbia threw Britannia back across the Lakes," says the chronicler.
+
+Then followed the battle of the Thames and the death of Tecumseh. A
+Canadian historian says, "But for Tecumseh, it is probable we should
+not now have a Canada."
+
+What if he had won Rebecca? Would Canada now be a peaceful sister of
+the States?
+
+Tecumseh fought with the fur traders,--their interests were his,--to
+keep the land a wild, a game preserve for wild beasts and wilder men.
+Civilisation had no part or place in Tecumseh's plan.
+
+With the medal of George III. upon his breast, Tecumseh fell, on
+Canadian soil, battle-axe in hand, hero and patriot of his race, the
+last of the great Shawnees. Tecumseh's belt and shot pouch were sent
+to Jefferson and hung on the walls of Monticello. Tecumseh's son
+passed with his people beyond the Mississippi.
+
+From his invalid chair at Locust Grove George Rogers Clark was writing
+to his brother:
+
+     "Your embarkation from St. Louis on your late hazardous
+     expedition [to Prairie du Chien] was a considerable source
+     of anxiety to your friends and relatives. They were pleased
+     to hear of your safe return....
+
+     "As to Napoleon ... the news of his having abdicated the
+     throne--"
+
+"Napoleon abdicated?" Governor Clark scarce finished the letter.
+Having crushed him, what armies might not England hurl hitherward! New
+danger menaced America.
+
+"Napoleon abdicated!" New Orleans wept.
+
+Then followed the word, "England is sailing into the Gulf,--Sir Edward
+Pakenham, brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, with a part of
+Wellington's victorious army, fifty ships, a thousand guns and twenty
+thousand men!"
+
+Never had Great Britain lost sight of the Mississippi. This was a part
+of the fleet that burned Washington and had driven Dolly Madison and
+the President into ignominious flight.
+
+Terrified, New Orleans, the beautiful Creole maiden, beset in her
+orange bower, flung out her arms appealing to the West! And that West
+answered, "Never, while the Mississippi rolls to the Gulf, will we
+leave you unprotected." And out of that West came Andrew Jackson and
+tall Tennesseeans, Kentuckians, Mississippians, in coonskin caps and
+leathern hunting shirts, to seal for ever our right to Louisiana.
+
+The hottest part of the battle was fought at Chalmette, above the
+grave of the Fighting Parson. Immortal Eighth of January, 1815!
+Discontented Creoles of 1806 proved loyal Americans, vindicating their
+right to honour.
+
+Napoleon laughed when he heard it at Elba,--"I told them I had given
+England a rival that one day would humble her pride."
+
+Even the Ursuline nuns greeted their deliverers with joy, and the dim
+old cloistered halls were thrown open for a hospital.
+
+"I expect at this moment," said Lord Castlereagh in Europe, "that most
+of the large seaport towns of America are laid in ashes, that we are
+in possession of New Orleans, and have command of all the rivers of
+the Mississippi Valley and the Lakes."
+
+But he counted without our ships at sea. The War of 1812 was fought
+upon the ocean, "the golden age of naval fighting." Bone of her bone,
+flesh of her flesh, under the "Gridiron Flag," tars of the American
+Revolution, sailor boys who under impressment had fought at Trafalgar,
+led in a splendid spectacular drama, the like of which England or the
+world had never seen. She had trained up her own child. A thousand sail
+had Britain--America a dozen sloops and frigates altogether,--but
+the little tubs had learned from their mother.
+
+"The territory between the Lakes and the Ohio shall be for ever set
+apart as an Indian territory," said England at the opening of the
+peace negotiations. "The United States shall remove her armed vessels
+from the lakes and give England the right of navigating the
+Mississippi."
+
+Clay, Gallatin, Adams packed up their grips preparatory to starting
+home, when England bethought herself and came to better terms.
+
+The next year America passed a law excluding foreigners from our
+trade, and the British fur traders reluctantly crossed the border. But
+they held Oregon by "Joint Occupation."
+
+"All posts captured by either power shall be restored," said the
+treaty. "There shall be joint occupancy of the Oregon Country for ten
+years."
+
+"A great mistake! a great mistake!" cried out Thomas Hart Benton, a
+young lawyer who had settled in St. Louis. "In ten years that little
+nest egg of 'Joint Occupation' will hatch out a lively fighting
+chicken."
+
+Benton was a Western man to the core,--he felt a responsibility for
+all that sunset country. And why should he not? Missouri and Oregon
+touched borders on the summit of the Rockies. Were they not next-door
+neighbours, hobnobbing over the fence as it were? Every day at
+Governor Clark's at St. Louis, he and Benton discussed that Oregon
+"Joint Occupancy" clause.
+
+"As if two nations ever peacefully occupied the same territory! I tell
+you it is a physical impossibility," exclaimed Benton, jamming down
+his wine-glass with a crash.
+
+The War of 1812,--how Astor hated it! "But for that war," he used to
+say, "I should have been the richest man that ever lived." As it was,
+the British fur companies came in and gained a foothold from which
+they were not ousted until American ox-teams crossed the plains and
+American frontiersmen took the country. A million a year England
+trapped from Oregon waters.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+_PORTAGE DES SIOUX_
+
+
+"Come and make treaties of friendship."
+
+As his brother had done at the close of the Revolution, so now William
+Clark sent to the tribes to make peace after the War of 1812.
+
+"No person ought to be lazy to be de bearer of such good news," said
+old Antoine Le Claire, the interpreter.
+
+Up the rivers and toward the Lakes, runners carried the word of the
+Red Head Chief, "Come, come to St. Louis!"
+
+To the clay huts of the sable Pawnees of the Platte, to the reed
+wigwams of the giant Osages, to the painted lodges of the Omahas, and
+to the bark tents of the Chippewas, went "peace talks" and gifts and
+invitations.
+
+"De Iowas are haughty an' insolent!" St. Vrain, first back, laid their
+answer on the table.
+
+"De Kickapoo are glad of de peace, but de Sauk an' Winnebago insist on
+war! De Sauk haf murdered deir messenger!"
+
+That was Black Hawk. With a war party from Prairie du Chien he was met
+by the news of peace.
+
+"Peace?" Black Hawk wept when he heard it. He had been at the battle
+of the Thames.
+
+"De messenger to de Sioux are held at Rock River!"
+
+One by one came runners into the Council Hall, and, cap in hand, stood
+waiting. Outside, their horses pawed on the Rue, their boats were tied
+at the river.
+
+"Some one must pass Rock River, to the Sioux, Chippewas, and
+Menomonees," said Clark. Not an interpreter stirred.
+
+"We dare not go into dose hostile countrie," said Antoine Le Claire,
+spokesman for the rest.
+
+"What? With an armed boat?"
+
+The silence was painful as the Governor looked over the council room.
+
+"I will go."
+
+Every eye was turned toward the speaker, James Kennerly, the
+Governor's private secretary, the cousin of Julia and brother of
+Harriet of Fincastle. The same spirit was there that led a whole
+generation of his people to perish in the Revolution. His father had
+been dragged from the field of Cowpens wrapped in the flag he had
+rescued.
+
+At the risk of his life, when no one else would venture, the faithful
+secretary went up the Mississippi to bring in the absent tribes.
+Black-eyed Elise, the daughter of Dr. Saugrain, wept all night to
+think of it. Governor Clark himself had introduced Elise to his
+secretary. How she counted the days!
+
+"The Chippewas would have murdered me but for the timely arrival of
+the Sioux," said Kennerly, on his safe return with the band of Rising
+Moose.
+
+"The Red Coats are gone!" said Rising Moose. "I rush in. I put out the
+fire. I save the fort."
+
+Without waiting for troops from St. Louis, forty-eight hours after the
+news of peace the British had evacuated Prairie du Chien. A day or two
+later they returned, took the cannon, and set fire to the fort with
+the American flag flying.
+
+Into the burning fort went Rising Moose, secured the flag and an
+American medal, and brought them down to St. Louis.
+
+While interpreters were speeding by horse and boat over half a hundred
+trails, Manuel Lisa, sleepless warden of the plains, arrived with
+forty-three chiefs and head men of the Missouri Sioux. Wild Indians
+who never before had tasted bread, brought down in barges camped on
+the margin of the Mississippi, the great council chiefs of their
+tribes, moody, unjoyous, from the Stony Mountains. For weeks other
+deputations followed, to the number of two thousand, to make treaties
+and settle troubles arising out of the War of 1812.
+
+Whether even yet a council could be held was a query in Governor
+Clark's mind. Across the neighbouring Mississippi, Sacs, Foxes, Iowas
+were raiding still, capturing horses and attacking people. That was
+Black Hawk.
+
+The eyes of the Missouri Sioux flashed. "Let us go and fight those
+Sacs and Iowas. They shall trouble us no more." With difficulty were
+they held to the council.
+
+There was a steady and unalterable gloom of countenance, a melancholy,
+sullen musing among the gathered tribes, as they camped on the council
+ground at Portage des Sioux on the neck of land between the two rivers
+at St. Charles. Over this neck crossed Sioux war parties in times
+past, avoiding a long detour, bringing home their scalps.
+
+Resplendent with oriental colour were the bluffs and the prairies.
+Chiefs and warriors had brought their squaws and children,--Sioux from
+the Lakes and the high points of the Mississippi in canoes of white
+birch, light and bounding as cork upon the water; Sioux of the
+Missouri in clumsy pirogues; Mandans in skin coracles, barges,
+dug-outs, and cinnamon-brown fleets of last year's bark.
+
+The panorama of forest and prairie was there,--Sioux of the Leaf,
+Sioux of the Broad Leaf, and Sioux Who Shoot in the Pine Tops, in
+hoods of feathers, Chinese featured Sioux, of smooth skins and Roman
+noses, the ideal Indian stalking to and fro with forehead banded in
+green and scarlet and eagle plumes.
+
+For Wabasha, Little Crow, and Red Wing had come, great sachems of the
+Sioux nation. The British officers at Drummond's Island in Lake Huron
+had sent for Little Crow and Wabasha.
+
+"I would thank you in the name of George III. for your services in the
+war."
+
+"My father," said Wabasha, "what is this I see on the floor before me?
+A few knives and blankets! Is this all you promised at the beginning
+of the war? Where are those promises you made? You told us you would
+never let fall the hatchet until the Americans were driven beyond the
+mountains. Will these presents pay for the men we lost? I have always
+been able to make a living and can do so still."
+
+"After we have fought for you," cried Little Crow, "endured many
+hardships, lost some of our people, and awakened the vengeance of our
+powerful neighbours, you make a peace and leave us to obtain such
+terms as we can! You no longer need us and offer these goods for
+having deserted us. We will not take them."
+
+Kicking the presents contemptuously with his foot, Little Crow turned
+away.
+
+"Arise, let us go down to the Red Head Parshasha!" In handsome bark
+canoes propelled by sails alone, the Sioux came down to St. Louis.
+
+Walking among their elliptical tents, lounging on panther skins at
+their wigwam doors, waited the redmen, watching, lynx-eyed, losing
+nothing of the scene before them. Beaded buckskin glittered in the
+sun, tiny bells tinkled from elbow to ankle, and sashes outrivalled
+Louisiana sunsets.
+
+Half-naked Osages with helmet-crests and eagle-quills, full-dressed in
+breech-clouts and leggings fringed with scalp-locks, the tallest men
+in North America, from their warm south hills, mingled with
+Pottawattamies of the Illinois, makers of fire, Shawnees with
+vermilion around their eyes, Sacs, of the red badge, and Foxes,
+adroitest of thieves, all drumming on their tambourines. Winnebagoes,
+fish eaters, had left their nets on the northern lakes, Omahas their
+gardens on the Platte, and Ojibway arrow makers sat chipping, chipping
+as the curious crowds walked by. For all the neighbouring country had
+gathered to view the Indian camp of 1815.
+
+Oblivious, contemptuous perhaps, of staring crowds, the industrious
+women skinned and roasted dogs on sticks, the warriors gambled with
+one another, staking their tents, skins, rifles, dogs, and squaws.
+Here and there sachems were mending rifles, princesses carrying water,
+children playing ball.
+
+About the first of July, Governor Clark of Missouri, Governor Ninian
+Edwards of Illinois, and Auguste Chouteau of St. Louis, opened the
+council,--one of the greatest ever held in the Mississippi Valley.
+
+Auguste Chouteau, prime vizier of all the old Spanish commandants,
+now naturally slipped into the same office with Clark, and Governor
+Edwards of Illinois, who as a father had guarded the frontier against
+the wiles of Tecumseh, and had risked his entire fortune to arm the
+militia,--all in queues, high collared coats, and ruffled shirts,
+faced each other and the chiefs.
+
+In front of their neatly arranged tents sat the tawny warriors in
+imposing array, with dignified attention to the interpretation of each
+sentence.
+
+"The long and bloody war is over. The British have gone back over the
+Big Water," said Governor Clark, "and now we have sent for you, my
+brothers, to conclude a treaty of peace."
+
+"Heigh!" cried all the Indians in deep-toned resonance that rolled
+like a Greek chorus to the bluffs beyond. The sky smiled down as on
+the old Areopagus, the leaves of the forest rustled, the river swept
+laughing by.
+
+"Every injury or act of hostility by one or either of us against the
+other, shall be mutually forgiven and forgot."
+
+"Heigh! heigh! heig-h!"
+
+"There shall be perpetual peace and friendship between us."
+
+"Heigh!"
+
+"You will acknowledge yourselves under the protection of the United
+States, and of no other nation, power, or sovereign whatsoever."
+
+"Heigh!"
+
+A Teton Sioux who had come down with Lisa struggled to his feet,
+approached, shook hands with the commissioners, then retreated and
+fixed his keen eye on the Governor. His voice rang clear over the
+assembled thousands,--
+
+"We have come down expressly to notify you, our father, that we will
+assist in chastising those nations hostile to our government."
+
+The two factions faced each other. Scowls of lightning hate flashed
+over the council. But the wisdom and tact of Clark were equal to
+regiments. "The fighting has ended," he said. "The peace has come."
+
+"Heigh!" shouted all the Indians. "Heig-h!"
+
+Partisan was there, the Teton chief, who with Black Buffalo had made
+an attempt to capture Clark on the way to the Pacific. And now
+Partisan was bristling to fight for Clark.
+
+Wabasha arose, like a figure out of one of Catlin's pictures, in a
+chief's costume, with bullock horns and eagle feathers. There was a
+stir. With a profile like the great Condé, followed by his pipe
+bearers with much ceremony, the hereditary chief from the Falls of St.
+Anthony walked up to Governor Clark.
+
+"I shake hands," he said.
+
+Every neck was craned. When before had Wabasha stood? In their
+northern councils he spoke sitting. "I am called upon to stand only in
+the presence of my Great Father at Washington or Governor Clark at St.
+Louis. But I am not a warrior," said Wabasha. "My people can prosper
+only at peace with one another and the whites. Against my advice some
+of my young men went into the war."
+
+The fiery eyes of Little Crow flashed, the aquiline curve of his nose
+lifted, like the beak of an eagle. He had come down from his
+bark-covered cabin near St. Paul.
+
+"I am a _war chief_!" said Little Crow. "But I am willing to conclude
+a peace."
+
+"I alone was an American," said Rising Moose, "when all my people
+fought with the British." All the rest of his life Tammaha, Rising
+Moose, wore a tall silk hat and carried Governor Clark's commission in
+his bosom.
+
+Big Elk, the Omaha, successor of Blackbird, spoke with action
+energetic and graceful.
+
+"Last Winter when you sent your word by Captain Manuel Lisa, in the
+night one of the whites wanted my young men to rise. He told them if
+they wanted good presents, to cross to the British. This man was
+Baptiste Dorion. When I was at the Pawnees I wanted to bring some of
+them down, but the whites who live among them told them not to go,
+that no good came from the Americans, that good only came from the
+British. I have told Captain Manuel to keep those men away from us.
+Take care of the Sioux. Take care. They will fly from under your
+wing."
+
+Sacs who had been hostile engaged in the debate. Noble looking chiefs,
+with blanket thrown around the body in graceful folds, the right arm,
+muscular and brawny, bare to the shoulder, spoke as Cato might have
+spoken to the Roman Senate.
+
+"My father, it is the request of my people to keep the British traders
+among us." As he went on eloquently enumerating their advantages in
+pleading tone and voice and glance and gesture,--hah! the wild
+rhetoric of the savage! how it thrilled the assembled concourse of
+Indians and Americans!
+
+Clark shook his head. "It cannot be. We can administer law, order, and
+justice ourselves. Come to us for goods,--the British traders belong
+beyond the border."
+
+The Indians gave a grunt of anger.
+
+"It has been promised already," cried another chief. "The Americans
+have double tongues!"
+
+"Heigh!" ran among the Indians. Many a one touched his tongue and held
+up two fingers, "You lie!"
+
+With stern and awful look Clark immediately dismissed the council. The
+astonished chiefs covered their mouths with their hands as they saw
+the commissioners turn their backs to go out.
+
+That afternoon a detachment of United States artillery arrived and
+camped in full view of the Indians. They had been ordered to the Sac
+country. Colonel Dodge's regiment of dragoons, each company of a solid
+colour, blacks and bays, whites, sorrels, grays and creams, went
+through the manoeuvres of battle, charge and repulse, in splendid
+precision. It was enough. The Sac chiefs, cowed, requested the renewal
+of the council.
+
+"My father," observed the offending chief of the day before, "you
+misunderstood me. I only meant to say we have always understood from
+our fathers that the Americans used two languages, the French and the
+English!"
+
+Clark smiled and the council proceeded.
+
+But by night, July 11, the Sacs, Foxes, and Kickapoos secretly left
+the council. At the same time came reports of great commotion at
+Prairie du Chien where the northern tribes were divided by the British
+traders.
+
+Head bent, linked arm in arm with Paul Louise, his little interpreter,
+the giant Osage chief, White Hair, gave strict attention. White Hair
+had been in St. Clair's defeat, and in seeking to scalp a victim had
+grasped--his wig! This he ever after wore upon his own head, a crown
+of white hair. He said, "I felt a fire within me,--it drove me to the
+fight of St. Clair. His army scattered. I returned to my own people.
+But the fire still burned, and I went over the mountains toward the
+western sea."
+
+Every morning the Osages set up their matutinal wail, dolefully
+lamenting, weeping as if their hearts would break.
+
+"What is the matter?" inquired Governor Clark, riding out in concern.
+
+"We are mourning for our ancestors," answered the chief, shedding
+copious tears and sobbing anew, for ages the custom of his people.
+
+"They are dead long ago,--let them rest!" said the Governor.
+
+Brightening up, White Hair slipped on his wig and followed him to the
+council.
+
+Houseless now and impoverished Black Partridge and his people clung to
+Colonel George Davenport as to a father. Poor helpless Pottawattamies!
+
+"Come with me," said Davenport, "I will take you to St. Louis."
+
+So down in a flotilla of canoes had come Davenport with thirteen
+chiefs, all wreathed in turkey feathers, emblems of the
+Pottawattamies. No more they narrated their heroic exploits in
+fighting with Tecumseh.
+
+Grave, morose, brooding over his wrongs, Black Partridge was seventy
+now, his long coarse unkempt hair in matted clusters on his shoulders,
+but figure still erect and firm. "I would be a friend to the whites,"
+he said. "I was compelled to go with my tribe." The silver medallion
+of George Washington was gone from his breast. Many and sad had been
+the vicissitudes since that day, when, in a flood of tears, he had
+thrown it down at the feet of the commander at Fort Dearborn. Tall,
+slim, with a high forehead, large nose and piercing black eyes, with
+hoops of gold in his ears, Black Partridge was a typical
+savage,--asking for civilisation. But it rolled over him. Here and
+there a missionary tarried to talk, but commerce, commerce, the great
+civiliser, arose like a flood, drowning the redmen.
+
+"The settlements are crowding our border," Black Partridge spoke for
+his people on their fairy lake, Peoria. "And whom shall we call
+Father, the British at Malden or the Americans at St. Louis? Who shall
+relieve our distresses?"
+
+"Put it in your mind," said Auguste Chouteau, the shrewd old French
+founder of St. Louis, "put it in your mind, that when de British made
+peace with us, dey left you in de middle of de prairie without a shade
+against sun or rain. Left you in de middle of de prairie, a sight to
+pity. We Americans have a large umbrella; keeps off de sun and rain.
+You come under our umbrella."
+
+And they did.
+
+The Indian has a fine sense of justice. The situation was evident.
+Abandoned by the British who had led him into the war, he stood ready
+at last to return to the friends on whom he was most dependent.
+
+One by one the chiefs came forward and put their mark to the treaty of
+peace and friendship. Clark brought the peace pipes,--every neck was
+craned to scan them.
+
+Sioux pipes sometimes cost as much as forty horses,--finely wrought
+pipes of variegated red and white from the Minnesota quarries,
+Shoshone pipes of green, and pipes of purple from Queen Charlottes,
+were sold for skins and slaves,--but these, Clark's pipes of silver
+bowls and decorated stems, these were worth a hundred horses!
+
+Puffing its fragrant aroma, the fierce wild eye of the savage
+softened. Twenty thousand dollars' worth of goods was distributed in
+presents, flags, blankets, and rifles, ornaments and clothing.
+
+"Ah, ha! Great Medicine!" whispered the Indians as the beautiful gifts
+came one by one into their hands.
+
+"We need traders," said Red Wing, sliding his hand along the soft nap
+of the blankets. "That made us go into the war. Without traders we
+have to clothe ourselves in grass and eat the earth."
+
+"You shall have traders," answered Clark. "I shall not let you travel
+five or six hundred miles to a British post."
+
+Every September thereafter he sent them up a few presents to begin
+their fall hunting, and counselled his agents to listen to their
+complaints and render them justice.
+
+"We must depend on policy rather than arms," said the Governor. "For
+they are our children, the wards of the nation."
+
+The Indians were dined in St. Louis and entertained with music and
+dancing. By their dignity, moderation, and untiring forbearance, the
+Commissioners of Portage des Sioux exemplified the paternal
+benevolence of the Government.
+
+At the end of the council Lisa started back with his chiefs, on a
+three months' voyage to their northern home, and on the last day of
+September Clark dismissed the rest.
+
+Thus making history, the summer had stolen away. All next summer and
+the next were spent in making treaties, until at last there was peace
+along the border.
+
+"Did you sign?" finally asked some one of Black Hawk of the British
+band.
+
+"I touched the goose quill," answered the haughty chief.
+
+So ended the War of 1812.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+_"FOR OUR CHILDREN, OUR CHILDREN!"_
+
+
+As soon as the Indian scare was silenced, all the world seemed rushing
+to Missouri. Ferries ran by day and night. Patriarchal planters of
+Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia passed ever west in long,
+unending caravans of flocks, servants, herds, into the new land of the
+Louisianas. New Englanders and Pennsylvanians, six, eight, and ten
+horses to a waggon, and cattle with their hundred bells, tinkled
+through the streets of St. Louis.
+
+"Where are you going, now?" inquired the citizens.
+
+"To Boone's Lick, to be sure."
+
+"Go no further," said Clark, ever enthusiastic about St. Louis. "Buy
+here. This will be the city."
+
+"But ah!" exclaimed the emigrant. "If land is so good here what must
+Boone's Lick be!"
+
+Perennial childhood of the human heart, ever looking for Canaan just
+beyond!
+
+The Frenchmen shrugged their shoulders at the strange energy of these
+progressive "Bostonnais." It annoyed them to have their land titles
+looked into. "A process! a lawsuit!" they clasped their hands in
+despair. But ever the people of St. Louis put up their lands to a
+better figure, and watched out of their little square lattices for the
+coming of _les Américains_.
+
+All the talk was of land, land, land! The very wealth of ancient
+estates lay unclaimed for the first heir to enter, the gift of God.
+
+In waggons, on foot and horseback, with packhorses, handcarts, and
+wheelbarrows, with blankets on their backs and children by the hand,
+the oppressed of the old world fled across the new.
+
+"Why do you go into the wilderness?"
+
+"For my children, my children," answered the pioneer.
+
+More and more came people in a mighty flood, peasants, artisans, sons
+of the old crusaders, children of feudal knights of chivalry and
+romance, descendants of the hardy Norsemen who captured Europe five
+hundred years before, scions of Europe's most titled names, thronging
+to our West.
+
+Frosts and crop failures in the Atlantic States and a financial panic
+uprooted old Revolutionary centres. "A better country, a better
+country!" was the watchword of the mobile nation.
+
+"Let's go over to the Territory," said the soldiers of 1812. "Let us
+go to Arkansas, where corn can be had for sixpence a bushel and pork
+for a penny a pound. Two days' work in Texas is equal to the labour of
+a week in the North." And on they pressed into No Man's Land, a land
+of undeveloped orchards, maple syrup and honey, fields of cotton and
+wool and corn.
+
+Conestoga waggons crowded on the Alleghanies, teams fell down
+precipices and perished, but the tide pushed madly on. Colonies of
+hundreds were pouring into Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois. New towns
+were named for their founders, new counties, lakes, rivers, streams,
+and hills,--the settlers wrote their names upon the geography of the
+nation.
+
+In the midst of the war Daniel Boone had come down to Clark at St.
+Louis.
+
+"I have spoken to Henry Clay about your claim," said the Governor. "He
+says Congress will do something for you."
+
+"Now Rebecca, thee shall hev a house!"
+
+That house, the joint product of Nathan, the Colonel, and his slaves,
+was a work of years. Not far from the old cabin by the spring it
+stood, convenient to the Judgment Tree. For Boone still held his court
+beneath the spreading elm.
+
+The stones were quarried and chiselled, two feet thick, and laid so
+solidly that to-day the walls of the old Boone mansion are as good as
+new. The plaster was mixed and buried in the ground over winter to
+ripen. Roomy and comfortable, two stories and an attic it was built,
+with double verandas and chimneys at either end, the finest mansion on
+the border.
+
+But in March Rebecca died. Boone buried her where he could watch the
+mound.
+
+The house was finished. The Colonel bought a coffin and put it under
+the bed to be ready. Sometimes he tried his coffin, to see how it
+would seem when he slept beside Rebecca.
+
+In December came the land, a thousand arpents in his Spanish grant.
+"If I only cud hev told Rebecca," sobbed Daniel, kneeling at her
+grave. "She war a good woman, and the faithful companion of all my
+wanderings."
+
+In the Spring Boone sold his land, and set out for Kentucky.
+
+"Daniel Boone has come! Daniel Boone has come!" Old hunters,
+Revolutionary heroes, came for miles to see their leader who had
+opened Kentucky. There was a reception at Maysville. Parties were
+given in his honour wherever he went. Once more he embraced his old
+friend, Simon Kenton.
+
+"How much do I owe ye?" he said to one and another.
+
+Whatever amount they named, that he paid, and departed. One day the
+dusty old hunter re-entered his son's house on the Femme Osage with
+fifty cents in his pocket.
+
+"Now I am ready and willing to die. I have paid all my debts and
+nobody can say, 'Boone was a dishonest man.'"
+
+Then came the climax of his life.
+
+"Nate, I am goin' to the Yellowstone."
+
+While Clark was holding his peace treaties, Daniel Boone, eighty-two
+years old, with a dozen others set out in boats for the Upper
+Missouri.
+
+Autumn came. Somewhere in the present Montana, they threw up a winter
+camp and were besieged by Indians. A heavy snow-storm drove the
+Indians off. In early Spring, coming down the Missouri on the return,
+again they were attacked by Indians and landed in a thicket of the
+opposite shore. Under cover of a storm in the night Boone ordered them
+into the boat, and silently in the pelting rain they escaped.
+
+Boone himself brought the furs to St. Louis, and went back with a bag
+full of money and a boat full of emigrants.
+
+Farther and farther into his district emigrants began setting up their
+four-post sassafras bedsteads and scouring their pewter platters.
+Women walked thirty miles to hear the first piano that came into the
+Boone settlement.
+
+In the last year of the war Boone's favourite grandson was killed at
+Charette.
+
+"The history of the settlement of the western country is my history,"
+said the old Colonel in his grief. "Two darling sons, a grandson, and
+a brother have I lost by savage hands, besides valuable horses and
+abundance of cattle. Many sleepless nights have I spent, separated
+from the society of men, an instrument ordained of God to settle the
+wilderness."
+
+"You must paint Daniel Boone," said Governor Clark to Chester Harding,
+a young American artist fresh from Paris in the summer of 1819. The
+Governor was Harding's first sitter. He invited the Indians into his
+studio.
+
+"Ugh! ugh! ugh!" grunted the Osage chiefs, putting their noses close
+and rubbing their fingers across the Governor's portrait.
+
+In June Harding set out up the Missouri to paint Boone. In an old
+blockhouse of the War of 1812, he found him lying on a bunk, roasting
+a strip of venison wound around his ramrod, turning it before the
+fire.
+
+"What? Paint my pictur'?"
+
+"Yes, on canvas. Make a portrait, you know."
+
+The old man consented. With amazement the frontiersman saw the picture
+grow,--still more amazed, his grandchildren watched the likeness of
+"granddad" growing on the canvas.
+
+Ruddy and fair, with silvered locks, always humming a tune, he sat in
+his buckskin hunting-shirt trimmed with otter's fur, and the knife in
+his belt he had carried on his first expedition to Kentucky.
+
+Every day now, in his leisure hours, the old pioneer was busily
+scraping with a piece of glass. "Making a powder-horn," he said.
+"Goin' to hunt on the Fork in the Fall."
+
+A hundred miles up the Kansas he had often set his traps, but Boone's
+legs were getting shaky, his eyes were growing dim. Every day now he
+tried his coffin,--it was shining and polished and fair, of the wood
+he loved best, the cherry. People came for miles to look at Boone's
+coffin.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+_TOO GOOD TO THE INDIANS_
+
+
+Manuel Lisa had out-distanced all his competitors in the fur trade.
+But the voice of envy whispered, "Manuel must cheat the Government,
+and Manuel must cheat the Indians, otherwise Manuel could not bring
+down every summer so many boats loaded with rich furs."
+
+"Good!" exclaimed Lisa to Governor Clark, when the fleets were tying
+up at St. Louis in 1817. "My accounts with the Government will show
+whether I receive anything out of which to cheat it."
+
+"I have not blamed you, Manuel," explained the Governor. "On the
+contrary I have conveyed to the Government my high appreciation of
+your very great services in quieting the Indians of the Missouri. It
+is not necessary to worry yourself with the talk of babblers who do
+not understand."
+
+"Cheat the Indians!" The Spaniard stamped the floor. "The respect and
+friendship which they have for me, the security of my possessions in
+the heart of their country, respond to this charge, and declare with
+voices louder than the tongues of men that it cannot be true.
+
+"'But Manuel gets so much rich fur.'" Lisa ground out the words with
+scorn.
+
+"Well, I will explain how I get it. First I put into my operations
+great activity,--I go a great distance, while some are considering
+whether they will start to-day or to-morrow. I impose upon myself
+great privations,--ten months in a year I am buried in the forest, at
+a vast distance from my own house. I appear as the benefactor, and not
+as the pillager, of the Indians. I carried among them the seed of the
+large pumpkin, from which I have seen in their possession the fruit
+weighing one hundred and sixty pounds. Also the large bean, the
+potato, the turnip, and these vegetables now make a great part of
+their subsistence. This year I have promised to carry the plough.
+Besides, my blacksmiths work incessantly for them, charging nothing. I
+lend them traps, only demanding preference in their trade. My
+establishments are the refuge of the weak and of the old men no longer
+able to follow their lodges; and by these means I have acquired the
+confidence and friendship of these nations, and the consequent choice
+of their trade. These things I have done, and I propose to do more."
+
+In short, Manuel Lisa laid down his commission as sub-agent to embark
+yet more deeply in the fur trade.
+
+"What is that noise at the river?"
+
+Ten thousand shrieking eagles and puffs of smoke arose from the
+yellow-brown Mississippi below. The entire population of St. Louis was
+flocking to the river brink to greet the _General Pike_, the first
+steamboat that ever came up to St. Louis. People rushed to the landing
+but the Indians drew back in terror lest the monster should climb the
+bank and pursue them inland. Pell-mell into Clark's Council House they
+tumbled imploring protection.
+
+Never had St. Louis appeared so beautiful as when Julia and the
+children came into their new home in 1819. Clark, the Governor, had
+built a mansion, one of the finest in St. Louis. Wide verandas gave a
+view of the river, gardens of fruit and flowers bloomed.
+
+But Julia was ill.
+
+"Take her back to the Virginia mountains," said Dr. Farrar, the family
+physician. "St. Louis heats are too much for her."
+
+In dress suit, silk hat, and sword cane, Farrar was a notable figure
+in old St. Louis, riding night and day as far out as Boone's Lick,
+establishing a reputation that remains proverbial yet. He had married
+Anne Thruston, the daughter of Fanny.
+
+"Let her try a trip on the new steamboat," said the Doctor.
+
+So after her picture was painted by Chester Harding in that Spring of
+1819, Clark and Julia and the little boys, Meriwether Lewis, William
+Preston, and George Rogers Hancock, set out for New Orleans in the
+"new-fangled steamboat."
+
+It was a long and dangerous trip; the river was encumbered with snags;
+every night they tied up to a tree.
+
+"Travel by night? Couldn't think of it! We'd be aground before
+morning!" said the Captain.
+
+Around by sea the Governor and his wife sailed by ship to Washington.
+
+"I will join you at the Sweet Springs," said President Monroe to the
+Governor and his wife in Washington.
+
+"The Sweet Springs cure all my ills," said Dolly Madison at
+Montpelier.
+
+"She will recover at the Sweet Springs," said Jefferson at Monticello.
+
+But at the Sweet Springs Julia grew so ill they had to carry her on a
+bed to Fotheringay.
+
+"Miss Judy done come home sick!" The servants wept.
+
+Something of a physician himself, Clark began the use of fumes of tar
+through a tube, and to the surprise of all "Miss Judy" rallied again.
+
+"As soon as I can leave her in safety I shall return to St. Louis,"
+wrote the Governor to friends at the Missouri capital.
+
+"If I should die," said Julia sweetly one day, "and you ever think of
+marrying again, consider my cousin Harriet."
+
+"Ah, but you will be well, my darling, when Spring comes."
+
+And she was better in the Spring, thinking of the new house at St.
+Louis. Julia was a very neat and careful housekeeper. Everything was
+kept under lock and key, she directed the servants herself, and was
+the light of a houseful of company. For the Governor's house was the
+centre of hospitality,--never a noted man came that way, but, "I must
+pay my respects to the Governor." Savants from over the sea came to
+look at his Indian museum. General Clark had made the greatest
+collection in the world, and had become an authority on Indian
+archæology.
+
+Governor Clark, too, was worried about affairs in St. Louis. Missouri
+was just coming in as a State, and a new executive must be elected
+under the Constitution.
+
+"Go," said Julia, "I shall be recovered soon now." Indeed, deceptive
+roses were blooming in her cheeks.
+
+With many regrets and promises of a speedy return, Clark hastened back
+to his official duties. He found Missouri in the midst of a heated
+campaign, coming in as a State and electing a Governor. For seven
+years he had held the territorial office with honour.
+
+But a new candidate was before the people.
+
+"Governor Clark is too good to the Indians!" That was the chief
+argument of the opposing faction. "He looks after their interests to
+the disadvantage of the whites."
+
+"To the disadvantage of the whites? How can that be?" inquired his
+friends. "Did he not in the late war deal severely with the hostile
+tribes? And what do you say of the Osage lands? When hostilities began
+President Madison ordered the settlers out of the Boone's Lick country
+as invaders of Indian lands. What did the Governor do? He
+remonstrated, he delayed the execution of those orders until they were
+rescinded, and the settlers were allowed to remain."
+
+"How could he do that?"
+
+"How? Why, he simply told the Indians those lands were included in the
+Osage treaty of 1808. He made that treaty, and he knew. No Indian
+objected. They trusted Clark; his explanation was sufficient. And his
+maps proved it."
+
+"Too good to the Indians! Too good to the Indians!" What Governor
+before ever lost his head on such a charge?
+
+At that moment, flying down the Ohio, came a swift messenger,--"Mrs.
+Clark is dead at Fotheringay."
+
+With the shock upon him, General Clark sent a card to the papers,
+notifying his fellow citizens of his loss, and of his necessary
+absence until the election was over. And with mingled dignity and
+sorrow he went back to Fotheringay to bury the beloved dead.
+
+Granny Molly, "Black Granny," who had laced "Miss Judy's" shoes and
+tied up her curls with a ribbon in the old Philadelphia days, never
+left her beloved mistress.
+
+A few days before "Miss Judy" went away, little Meriwether Lewis, then
+eleven years of age, came to her bedside with his curly hair
+dishevelled and his broad shirt collar tumbled.
+
+"Aunt Molly," said the mother, "watch my boy and keep him neat. He is
+so beautiful, Granny!"
+
+After her body was placed on two of the parlour chairs, Granny Molly
+noticed a little dust on the waxed floor. "Miss Judy would be
+'stressed if she could see it." Away she ran, brought a mop, and had
+it all right by the time the coffin came.
+
+Down on her knees scrubbing, scrubbing for the last time the floor for
+"Miss Judy," tears trickled down the ebony cheeks.
+
+"Po', po' Miss Judy. You's done gwine wid de angels."
+
+They laid her in the family tomb, overlooking the green valley of the
+Roanoke. Two weeks after her death, Colonel Hancock himself also
+succumbed.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+_THE RED HEAD CHIEF_
+
+
+"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."
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+_THE GREAT COUNCIL AT PRAIRIE DU CHIEN_
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+_THE LORDS OF THE RIVERS_
+
+
+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 Phoenicians
+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.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+_FOUR INDIAN AMBASSADORS_
+
+
+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.
+
+At last, even the Blackfeet were reached. The British tried to woo
+them back to the Saskatchewan at Fort Edmonton, but eventually they
+tumbled over one another to trade with the Fire Boat that annually
+climbed the Missouri staircase.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+_BLACK HAWK_
+
+
+The Roman faces of Black Hawk and Keokuk were often seen in St. Louis,
+where the chiefs came to consult Clark in regard to their country.
+
+"Keokuk signed away my lands," said Black Hawk. He had never been
+satisfied with that earliest treaty made while Lewis and Clark were
+absent beyond the mountains.
+
+For thirty years Black Hawk had paid friendly visits to Chouteau and
+sold him furs. More often he was at Malden consulting his "British
+Father." Schooled by Tecumseh, the disloyal Black Hawk was wholly
+British.
+
+Fort Armstrong had been built at Rock Island for the protection of the
+border. Those whitewashed walls and that tower perched on a high cliff
+over the Mississippi reminded the traveller up the Father of Waters
+seventy years ago of some romantic castle on the Rhine. And it was
+erected for the same reason that were the castles of the Rhine. Not
+safe were the traders who went up and down the great river, not safe
+were the emigrants seeking entrance to Rock River,--for Black Hawk
+watched the land.
+
+The white settlements had already come up to the edge of Black Hawk's
+field.
+
+"No power is vested in me to stop the progress of settlements on ceded
+lands, and I have no means of inducing the Indians to move but
+persuasion, which has little weight with those chiefs who have always
+been under British influence," said Clark in 1829.
+
+Again and again Clark wrote to the Secretary of War on this subject.
+The policy of moving the tribes westward stirred the wrath of Black
+Hawk.
+
+"The Sacs never sold their country!"
+
+But the leader of the "British band" had lost his voice in the
+council.
+
+"Who is Black Hawk?" asked General Gaines at Rock Island. "Is he a
+chief? By what right does he speak?"
+
+"My father, you ask who is Black Hawk. I will tell you who I am. I am
+a Sac. My father was a Sac. I am a warrior. So was my father. Ask
+those young men who have followed me to battle and they will tell you
+who Black Hawk is. Provoke our people to war and you will learn who
+Black Hawk is."
+
+Haughtily gathering up his robes, the chief and his followers stalked
+over to Canada for advice. In his absence Keokuk made the final
+cession to the United States and prepared to move beyond the
+Mississippi. Back like a whirlwind came the Hawk,--
+
+"Sold the Sac village, sold your country!"
+
+"Keokuk," he whispered fiercely in his ear, "give mines, give
+everything, but keep our cornfields and our dead."
+
+"Cross the Mississippi," begged Keokuk.
+
+"I will stay by the graves of my fathers," reiterated the stubborn and
+romantic Black Hawk.
+
+The Indians left the silver rivers of Illinois, their sugar groves,
+and bee trees with regret. No wonder the chief's heart clung to his
+native village, among dim old woods of oak and walnut, and orchards of
+plum and crab. For generations there had they tilled their Indian
+gardens.
+
+From his watchtower on Rock River the old chief scanned the country.
+Early in the Spring of 1832 he discovered a scattering train of whites
+moving into the beloved retreat.
+
+"Quick, let us plant once more our cornfields."
+
+In a body Black Hawk and his British band with their women and
+children came pulling up Rock River in their canoes. The whites were
+terrified.
+
+"Black Hawk has invaded Illinois," was the word sent by Governor
+Reynolds to Clark at St. Louis. Troops moved out from Jefferson
+Barracks.
+
+"Go," said Governor Clark to Felix St. Vrain, his Sac interpreter.
+"Warn Black Hawk to withdraw across the Mississippi."
+
+St. Vrain sped away,--to be shot delivering his message. Then
+followed the war, the flight and chase and battle of Bad Axe, and the
+capture of Black Hawk. Wabasha's Sioux fell upon the last fleeing
+remnant, so that few of Black Hawk's band were left to tell the tale.
+
+"Farewell, my nation!" the old chief cried. "Black Hawk tried to save
+you and avenge your wrongs. He drank the blood of some of the whites.
+He has been taken prisoner and his plans are stopped. He can do no
+more. He is near his end. His sun is setting and he will rise no more.
+Farewell to Black Hawk."
+
+In chains Black Hawk and his prophet, Wabokeskiek, were brought by
+Jefferson Davis to St. Louis. As his steamboat passed Rock Island, his
+old home, Black Hawk wept like a child.
+
+"It was our garden," he said, "such as the white people have near
+their villages. I spent many happy days on this island. A good spirit
+dwelt in a cave of rocks where your fort now stands. The noise of the
+guns has driven him away."
+
+It hurt Clark to see his old friend dragging a ball and chain at
+Jefferson Barracks. He seldom went there. But the little Kennerly
+children carried him presents and kinnikinick for his pipe.
+
+There were guests at the house of Clark,--Maximilian, Prince of Wied,
+and his artist,--when early in April of 1833 a deputation of Sacs and
+Foxes headed by Keokuk came down in long double canoes to intercede
+for Black Hawk, and with them, haggard and worn from long wanderings,
+came Singing Bird, the wife of Black Hawk.
+
+With scientific interest Maximilian looked at them, dressed in red,
+white, and green blankets, with shaven heads except a tuft behind,
+long and straight and black with a braided deer's tail at the end.
+They were typical savages with prominent noses and eagle plumes,
+wampum shells like tassels in their ears, and lances of sword-blades
+fastened to poles in their hands.
+
+"This is a great Chief from over the Big Water, come to see you," said
+Clark introducing the Prince.
+
+"Hah!" said the Indians, giving the Prince the right hand of
+friendship and scanning him steadily.
+
+Bodmer, the artist, brought out his palette. Keokuk in green blanket,
+with a medal on his heart and a long calumet ornamented with eagle
+feathers in his hand, was ready to pose.
+
+"Hah!" laughed the Indians as stroke by stroke they saw their chief
+stand forth on canvas, even to the brass necklace and bracelets on
+throat and wrists. "Great Medicine!"
+
+"I have chartered the _Warrior_ to go down to Jefferson Barracks,"
+said Clark.
+
+Striking their hands to their mouths, the Indians gave the war whoop,
+and stepped on board the "big fire canoe." Intent, each animated,
+fiery, dark-brown eye watched the engine hissing and roaring down to
+the Barracks.
+
+"If you will keep a watchful eye on Black Hawk I will intercede for
+him," said Clark.
+
+"I will watch him," promised Keokuk.
+
+Clark left them for a moment, and then led in a little old man of
+seventy years, with gray hair, light yellow face, and a curved Roman
+nose.
+
+It was an affecting sight when Keokuk stepped forward to embrace Black
+Hawk. Keokuk, subtle, dignified, in splendid array of deer-skin and
+bear-claws, grasped the hand of his fallen rival. Poor dethroned old
+Black Hawk! In a plain suit of buckskin and a string of wampum in his
+ears, he stood alone, fanning himself with the tail of a black hawk.
+
+Keokuk tried to get him released. Often had he visited Clark on that
+errand, but no,--Black Hawk was summoned to Washington and went.
+Antoine Le Claire, son of old Antoine, was his interpreter.
+
+Released, presently, he made a triumphal tour home, applauded by
+thousands along the route, even as Lafayette had been a few years
+before. Not so the Roman conquerors treated their captives! But Black
+Hawk came home to Keokuk to die.
+
+The defeat of Black Hawk opened Iowa to settlement, and a day later
+prairie schooners overran the Black Hawk Purchase.
+
+On the staff of General Atkinson when he marched out of Jefferson
+Barracks for the Black Hawk War, was Meriwether Lewis Clark, now a
+graduate of West Point, and his cousin Robert Anderson, grandson of
+Clark's sister Eliza.
+
+In the hurry and the heat of the march one day, Lieutenant Clark,
+riding from the rear back to the General, became enclosed by the
+troops of cavalry and had to ride slowly. By his side on a small horse
+he noticed a long-legged, dark-skinned soldier, with black hair
+hanging in clusters around his neck, a volunteer private. Admiringly
+the private gazed at Clark's fine new uniform and splendidly accoutred
+horse, a noble animal provided by his father at St. Louis.
+
+Young Clark spoke to the soldier of awkward and unprepossessing
+appearance, whose witticisms and gift for stories kept his comrades in
+a state of merriment. He proved very inquisitive.
+
+"The son of Governor Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition, did you
+say?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And related to all those great people?"
+
+"Yes," with a laugh.
+
+They chatted until the ranks began to thin.
+
+"I must ride on," but feeling an interest in the lank, long-haired
+soldier, Lieutenant Clark turned again,--
+
+"Where are you from and to what troop do you belong?"
+
+"I am an Illinois volunteer."
+
+"Well, now, tell me your name, and I will bid you good bye."
+
+"My name is Abraham Lincoln, and I have not a relation in the world."
+
+The next time they met, Meriwether Lewis Clark was marching through
+the streets of Washington City with other prisoners in Lee's
+surrendered army. And the President on the White House steps was
+Abraham Lincoln. The cousin of Meriwether Lewis Clark, Robert
+Anderson, hero of Fort Sumter, stood by Lincoln's side, with tears in
+his eyes.
+
+Weeks before, when the land was ringing with his valour, the
+President had congratulated him and asked, "Do you remember me?"
+
+"No, I never met you before."
+
+"Yes," answered the President, "you are the officer that swore me in
+as a volunteer private in the Black Hawk War."
+
+The next day the assassin's bullet laid low the martyred Lincoln; none
+mourned him more than Meriwether Lewis Clark, for in that President he
+had known a friend.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+_A GREAT LIFE ENDS_
+
+
+"Ruskosky, man, you tie my queue so tight I cannot shut my eyes!"
+
+With both hands up to his head Governor Clark rallied his Polish
+attendant, who of all things was particular about his friend's
+appearance. For Ruskosky never considered himself a servant, nor did
+Clark. Ruskosky was an old soldier of Pulaski, a great swordsman, a
+gentleman, of courtly address and well educated, the constant
+companion of Governor Clark after the death of York.
+
+"Come, let us walk, Ruskosky."
+
+A narrow black ribbon was tied to the queue, the long black cloth
+cloak was brushed and the high broad-brim hat adjusted, the sword cane
+with buckhorn handle and rapier blade was grasped, and out they
+started.
+
+Children stared at the ancient queue and small clothes. The oldest
+American in St. Louis, Governor Clark had come to be regarded as a
+"gentleman of the old school." A sort of halo hung around his
+adventures. Beloved, honoured, trusted, revered, his prominent nose
+and firm-set lips, his thin complexion in which the colour came and
+went, seemed somehow to belong to the Revolution. He was locally
+regarded as a great literary man, for had not the journals of his
+expedition been given to the world?
+
+And now, too, delvers in historic lore began to realise what George
+Rogers Clark had done. Eighteen different authors desired to write his
+life, among them Madison, Chief Justice Marshall, and Washington
+Irving. But the facts could not be found. Irving sent his nephew to
+inquire of Governor Clark at St. Louis. But the papers were scattered,
+to be collected only by the industry of historical students later.
+
+"Governor Clark is a fine soldier-like looking man, tall and thin,"
+Irving's nephew reported to his uncle. "His hair is white, but he
+seems to be as hardy and vigorous as ever, and speaks of his exposures
+and hardships with a zest that shows that the spirit of the old
+explorer is not quenched."
+
+Children danced on an old carriage in the orchard.
+
+"Uncle Clark, when did you first have this carriage? When was it new?"
+
+The chivalrous and romantic friendship of his youth came back to the
+Governor, and his eyes filled with tears.
+
+"Children, that carriage belonged to Meriwether Lewis. In the
+settlement of his estate, I bought it. Many a time have we ridden in
+it together. That is the carriage that met Judy Hancock when she
+landed at St. Louis, the first American bride, a quarter of a century
+ago. Many a vicissitude has it encountered since, in journeyings
+through woods and prairies. It is old now, but it has a history."
+
+In his later years Governor Clark travelled, made a tour of the Lakes,
+and visited New York, Boston, Buffalo, Cleveland, Sandusky, and
+Detroit.
+
+"Hull?" said Clark at Detroit. "He was not a coward, but afraid for
+the people's sake of the cruelty of the Indians."
+
+One day Governor Clark came ashore from a steamer on the Ohio and
+stood at the mouth of the Hockhocking where Dunmore had his camp in
+1774. The battle of Point Pleasant? that was ancient history. Most of
+the residents in that region had never heard of it, and looked upon
+the old gentleman in a queue as a relic of the mound-builders.
+
+With wide-eyed wonder they listened again to the story of that day
+when civilisation set its first milestone beyond the Alleghanies.
+
+When the thundering cannon in 1837 announced the return of a fur
+convoy from the Yellowstone, Governor Clark expected a messenger.
+
+"They haf put the sand over him," explained a Frenchman. "Yes, he is
+dead and buried."
+
+"And my Mandan?"
+
+"There are no more Mandans."
+
+Clark looked at the trader in surprise.
+
+"Small-pox."
+
+The cheek of the Red Head paled.
+
+Small-pox! In 1800 it swept from Omaha to Clatsop leaving a trail of
+bones. Thirty years later ten thousand Pawnees, Otoes, and Missouris
+perished. And now, despite all precautions, it had broken out on the
+upper Missouri.
+
+In six weeks the wigwams of the Mandans were desolate. Out of sixteen
+hundred souls but thirty-one remained. Arikara, Minnetaree, Ponca,
+Assiniboine, sank before the contagion. The Sioux survived only
+because they lived not in fixed villages and were roaming
+uncontaminated.
+
+Blackfeet along the Marias left their lodges standing with the dead in
+them, and never returned. The Crows abandoned their stricken ones, and
+fled to the mountains. Across the border beseeching Indians carried
+the havoc to Hudson's Bay, to Athabasca, and the Yukon. Over half a
+continent terrified tribes burnt their towns, slaughtered their
+families, pierced their own hearts or flung themselves from
+precipices.
+
+Redmen yet unstricken poured into St. Louis imploring the white man's
+magic. Clark engaged physicians. Day after day vaccinating,
+vaccinating, they sat in their offices, saving the life of hundreds.
+He sent out agents with vaccine to visit the tribes, but the
+superstitious savages gathered up their baggage and scattered,----
+
+"White men have come with small-pox in a bottle."
+
+With this last great shock, the decimation of the tribes, upon him,
+Clark visibly declined.
+
+"My children," he said to his sons, "I want to sleep in sight and
+sound of the Mississippi."
+
+When the summons came, September 1, 1838, in the sixty-eighth year of
+his age, Meriwether Lewis Clark and his wife were with him, the
+deputy, James Kennerly and his wife, Elise, and old Ruskosky,
+inconsolable.
+
+With great pomp and solemnity his funeral was celebrated, as had been
+that of his brother at Louisville twenty years before. Both were
+buried as soldiers, with minute guns and honours of war. In sight of
+the Ohio, George Rogers Clark sleeps, and below the grave of William
+Clark sweeps the Mississippi, roaring, swirling, bearing the
+life-blood of the land they were the first to explore.
+
+The Sacs, with Keokuk at their head, marched in the long funeral train
+of their Red Head Father and wept genuine tears of desolation. No
+more, dressed in their best, did the Indians sing and dance through
+the streets of St. Louis, receiving gifts from door to door. The
+friend of the redmen was dead. St. Louis ceased to be the Mecca of
+their pilgrimages; no more their gala costumes enlivened the market;
+they disappeared.
+
+For more than forty years William Clark had been identified with St.
+Louis,--had become a part of its history and of the West.
+
+October 3, 1838, a few days after Clark, Black Hawk, too, breathed his
+last in his lodge, and was buried like the Sac chieftains of old,
+sitting upright, in the uniform given him by President Jackson, with
+his hand resting on the cane presented by Henry Clay.
+
+He, too, said, "I like to look upon the Mississippi. I have looked
+upon it from a child. I love that beautiful river. My home has always
+been upon its banks." And there they buried him. Every day at sunset
+travellers along that road heard the weird heart-broken wail of
+Singing Bird, the widow of Black Hawk.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+_THE NEW WEST_
+
+
+Four years after the death of Governor Clark began the rush to Oregon.
+Dr. Lewis F. Linn, Senator from Missouri, and grandson of William
+Linn, the trusted lieutenant of George Rogers Clark, introduced a bill
+in Congress offering six hundred and forty acres of land to every
+family that would emigrate to Oregon. The Linns came to Missouri with
+Daniel Boone, and with the Boones they looked ever west! west!
+
+"Six hundred and forty acres of land! A solid square mile of God's
+earth, clear down to the centre!" men exclaimed in amaze. While Ohio
+was still new, and the Mississippi Valley billowed her carpets of
+untrodden bloom, an eagle's flight beyond, civilisation leaped to
+Oregon.
+
+From ferries where Kansas City and Omaha now stand they started,
+crossing the Platte by fords, by waggon-beds lashed together, and on
+rafts, darkening the stream for days. Before their buffalo hunters,
+innumerable herds made the earth tremble where Kansas-Nebraska cities
+are to-day. In 1843 Marcus Whitman piloted the first waggon train
+through to the Columbia.
+
+"A thousand people? Starving did you say? Lord! Lord! They must have
+help to-night," exclaimed Dr. McLoughlin, the old white-haired
+Hudson's Bay trader at Fort Vancouver.
+
+"Man the boats! People are starving at the Dalles!" and the
+noble-hearted representative of a rival government sent out his
+provision-laden bateaux to rescue the perishing Americans, who in
+spite of storms and tempests were gliding down the great Columbia as
+sixty years before their fathers floated down the Indian-haunted
+Ohio.
+
+And Indians were here, with tomahawks ready.
+
+"Let us kill these Bostons!"
+
+McLoughlin heard the word, and shook the speaker as a terrier shakes a
+rat.
+
+"Dogs, you shall be punished!"
+
+In his anxiety lest harm should come to the approaching Americans, all
+night long, his white hair wet in the rain, Dr. McLoughlin stood
+watching the boats coming down the Columbia, and building great
+bonfires where Lewis and Clark had camped in 1806. Women and little
+children and new-born babes slept in the British fur-trader's fort.
+Anglo-Saxon greeted Anglo-Saxon in the conquest of the world, to march
+henceforward hand in hand for ever.
+
+Among the emigrants on the plains in 1846, was Alphonso Boone, the son
+of Jesse, the son of Daniel. Several grown-up Boone boys were there,
+and the beautiful Chloe and her younger sisters.
+
+Chloe Boone rode a thorough-bred mare, a descendant of the choicest
+Boone stock, from the old Kentucky blue-grass region. Mounted upon her
+high-stepping mare, Chloe and her sisters and other young people of
+the train rode on ahead of the slow-going line of waggons and oxen.
+Gay was the laughter, and merry the songs, that rang out on the bright
+morning air.
+
+Francis Parkman, the great historian, then a young man just out of
+college, was on the plains that year, collecting material for his
+books. Now and then they met parties of soldiers going to the Mexican
+War, and many a boy in blue turned to catch a glimpse of the sweet
+girl faces in Chloe's train.
+
+Happily they rode in the Spring on the plains; more slowly when the
+heats of Summer came and the sides of the Rocky Mountains grew steep
+and rough; and slower still in the parched lands beyond, when the
+woodwork of the waggons began to shrink, and the worn-out animals to
+faint and fall.
+
+"So long a journey!" said Chloe. Six months it took. Clothes wore out,
+babes were born, and people died.
+
+They came into Oregon by the southern route, guided by Daniel Boone's
+old compass, the one given him by Dunmore to bring in the surveyors
+from the Falls of the Ohio seventy-two years before.
+
+The Fall rains had set in. The Umpqua River was swollen,--eighteen
+times from bank to bank Chloe forded, in getting down Umpqua canyon.
+
+"We shall have to leave the waggons and heavy baggage with a guard,"
+said Colonel Boone, "and hurry on to the settlements."
+
+They reached the Willamette Valley, pitched their tents where
+Corvallis now stands, and that Winter, in a little log cabin, Chloe
+Boone taught the first school ever conducted by a woman outside of the
+missions in Oregon.
+
+Leaving the girls, Colonel Boone went back after the waggons. Alas!
+the guard was killed, the camp was looted, and Daniel Boone's old
+compass was gone for ever. Its work was done.
+
+Alphonso Boone built a mansion near the present capital city of Salem
+and here Chloe married the Governor, George L. Curry, and for years
+beside the old Boone fireside the Governor's wife extended the
+hospitalities of the rising State. Albert Gallatin Boone camped on the
+site of Denver twenty years before Denver was, and negotiated the sale
+of Colorado from the Indians to the United States. John C. Boone, son
+of Nathan Boone, explored a new cut-off and became a pioneer of
+California. James Madison Boone drove stakes in Texas.
+
+What years had passed since the expedition of Lewis and Clark! It
+seemed like a bygone event, but one who had shared its fortunes still
+lived on and on,--our old friend, Patrick Gass. In the War of 1812,
+above the roaring Falls of Niagara, Sergeant Gass spiked the enemy's
+cannon at the battle of Lundy's Lane. Years went on. A plain
+unpretentious citizen, Patrick worked at his trade in Wellsburg and
+raised his family.
+
+In 1856 Patrick Gass headed a delegation of gray-haired veterans of
+the War of 1812 to Washington, and was everywhere lionised as the last
+of the men of Lewis and Clark.
+
+On July 4, 1861, the land was aflame over the firing on Fort Sumter.
+All Wellsburg with her newly enlisted regiments for the war was
+gathered at Apple Pie Ridge to celebrate the day.
+
+"Where is Patrick Gass?"
+
+A grand carriage was sent for him, and on the shoulders of the boys in
+blue he was brought in triumph to the platform.
+
+"Speech! speech!"
+
+And the speech of his life Patrick Gass made that day, for his country
+and the Union. The simple, honest old hero brought tears to every eye,
+with a glimpse of the splendid drama of Lewis and Clark. Again they
+saw those early soldier-boys bearing the flag across the Rockies,
+suffering starvation and danger and almost death, to carry their
+country to the sea.
+
+"But me byes, it's not a picnic ye're goin' to,--oh, far from it! No!
+no! 'T will be hard fur ye when ye come marchin' back lavin' yer
+comrades lyin' far from home and friends, but there is One to look to,
+who has made and kept our country."
+
+It seemed the applause would never cease, with cheering and firing of
+cannon.
+
+"Stay! stay!" cried the people. "Sit up on the table and let us have
+our banquet around you with the big flag floating over your head." In
+an instant Pat was down.
+
+"Far enough is far enough!" he cried, "and be the divil, will yez try
+to make sport of mesilf?" Excitedly the modest old soldier slipped
+away.
+
+The war ended. A railroad crossed the plains. Oregon and California
+were States. Alaska was bought. Still Pat lived on, until 1870, when
+he fell asleep, at the age of ninety-nine, the last of the heroic band
+of Lewis and Clark.
+
+William Walker, who gave to the world the story of the Nez Percés, led
+his Wyandots into Kansas, and, with the first white settlers,
+organising a Provisional Government after the plan of Oregon, became
+himself the first Governor of Kansas-Nebraska.
+
+Oh, Little Crow! Little Crow! what crimes were committed in thy name!
+In the midst of the war, 1862, Little Crow the third arose against the
+white settlers of Minnesota in one of the most frightful massacres
+recorded in history. Then came Sibley's expedition sweeping on west,
+opening the Dakotas and Montana.
+
+The Indian? He fought and was vanquished. How we are beginning to love
+our Indians, now that we fear them no longer! No wild man ever so
+captured the imagination of the world. With inherent nobility, courage
+to the border of destruction, patriotism to the death, absolutely
+refusing to be enslaved, he stands out the most perfect picture of
+primeval man. We might have tamed him but we had not time. The
+movement was too swift, the pressure behind made the white men drivers
+as the Indians had driven before. Civilisation demands repose, safety.
+And until repose and safety came we could do no effective work for the
+Indian. We of to-day have lived the longest lives, for we have seen a
+continent transformed.
+
+We have forgotten that a hundred years ago Briton and Spaniard and
+Frenchman were hammering at our gates; forgotten that the Indian
+beleaguered our wooden castles; forgotten that wolves drummed with
+their paws on our cabin doors, snapping their teeth like steel traps,
+while the mother hushed the wheel within and children crouched beneath
+the floor.
+
+O mothers of a mighty past, thy sons are with us yet, fighting new
+battles, planning new conquests, for law, order, and justice.
+
+Where rolls the Columbia and where the snow-peaks of Hood, Adams,
+Jefferson, Rainier, and St. Helens look down, a metropolis has arisen
+in the very Multnomah where Clark took his last soundings. Northward,
+Seattle sits on her Puget sea, southward San Francisco smiles from her
+golden gate, Spanish no more. Over the route where Lewis and Clark
+toiled slowly a hundred years ago, lo! in three days the traveller
+sits beside the sunset. Five transcontinental lines bear the rushing
+armies westward, ever westward into the sea. Bewildered a moment they
+pause, then turn--to the Conquest of the Poles and the Tropics. The
+frontiersman? He is building Nome City under the Arctic: he is hewing
+the forests of the Philippines.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+  Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+  been preserved.
+
+  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42925 ***