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.