Book III THE RED HEAD CHIEF (continued 3)

"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:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved.