"I am a _war chief_!" said Little Crow. "But I am willing to conclude

a peace."

"I alone was an American," said Rising Moose, "when all my people

fought with the British." All the rest of his life Tammaha, Rising

Moose, wore a tall silk hat and carried Governor Clark's commission in

his bosom.

Big Elk, the Omaha, successor of Blackbird, spoke with action

energetic and graceful.

"Last Winter when you sent your word by Captain Manuel Lisa, in the

night one of the whites wanted my young men to rise. He told them if

they wanted good presents, to cross to the British. This man was

Baptiste Dorion. When I was at the Pawnees I wanted to bring some of

them down, but the whites who live among them told them not to go,

that no good came from the Americans, that good only came from the

British. I have told Captain Manuel to keep those men away from us.

Take care of the Sioux. Take care. They will fly from under your

wing."

Sacs who had been hostile engaged in the debate. Noble looking chiefs,

with blanket thrown around the body in graceful folds, the right arm,

muscular and brawny, bare to the shoulder, spoke as Cato might have

spoken to the Roman Senate.

"My father, it is the request of my people to keep the British traders

among us." As he went on eloquently enumerating their advantages in

pleading tone and voice and glance and gesture,--hah! the wild

rhetoric of the savage! how it thrilled the assembled concourse of

Indians and Americans!

Clark shook his head. "It cannot be. We can administer law, order, and

justice ourselves. Come to us for goods,--the British traders belong

beyond the border."

The Indians gave a grunt of anger.

"It has been promised already," cried another chief. "The Americans

have double tongues!"

"Heigh!" ran among the Indians. Many a one touched his tongue and held

up two fingers, "You lie!"

With stern and awful look Clark immediately dismissed the council. The

astonished chiefs covered their mouths with their hands as they saw

the commissioners turn their backs to go out.

That afternoon a detachment of United States artillery arrived and

camped in full view of the Indians. They had been ordered to the Sac

country. Colonel Dodge's regiment of dragoons, each company of a solid

colour, blacks and bays, whites, sorrels, grays and creams, went

through the manoeuvres of battle, charge and repulse, in splendid

precision. It was enough. The Sac chiefs, cowed, requested the renewal

of the council.

"My father," observed the offending chief of the day before, "you

misunderstood me. I only meant to say we have always understood from

our fathers that the Americans used two languages, the French and the

English!"

Clark smiled and the council proceeded.

But by night, July 11, the Sacs, Foxes, and Kickapoos secretly left

the council. At the same time came reports of great commotion at

Prairie du Chien where the northern tribes were divided by the British

traders.

Head bent, linked arm in arm with Paul Louise, his little interpreter,

the giant Osage chief, White Hair, gave strict attention. White Hair

had been in St. Clair's defeat, and in seeking to scalp a victim had

grasped--his wig! This he ever after wore upon his own head, a crown

of white hair. He said, "I felt a fire within me,--it drove me to the

fight of St. Clair. His army scattered. I returned to my own people.

But the fire still burned, and I went over the mountains toward the

western sea."

Every morning the Osages set up their matutinal wail, dolefully

lamenting, weeping as if their hearts would break.

"What is the matter?" inquired Governor Clark, riding out in concern.

"We are mourning for our ancestors," answered the chief, shedding

copious tears and sobbing anew, for ages the custom of his people.

"They are dead long ago,--let them rest!" said the Governor.

Brightening up, White Hair slipped on his wig and followed him to the

council.

Houseless now and impoverished Black Partridge and his people clung to

Colonel George Davenport as to a father. Poor helpless Pottawattamies!

"Come with me," said Davenport, "I will take you to St. Louis."

So down in a flotilla of canoes had come Davenport with thirteen

chiefs, all wreathed in turkey feathers, emblems of the

Pottawattamies. No more they narrated their heroic exploits in

fighting with Tecumseh.

Grave, morose, brooding over his wrongs, Black Partridge was seventy

now, his long coarse unkempt hair in matted clusters on his shoulders,

but figure still erect and firm. "I would be a friend to the whites,"

he said. "I was compelled to go with my tribe." The silver medallion

of George Washington was gone from his breast. Many and sad had been

the vicissitudes since that day, when, in a flood of tears, he had

thrown it down at the feet of the commander at Fort Dearborn. Tall,

slim, with a high forehead, large nose and piercing black eyes, with

hoops of gold in his ears, Black Partridge was a typical

savage,--asking for civilisation. But it rolled over him. Here and

there a missionary tarried to talk, but commerce, commerce, the great

civiliser, arose like a flood, drowning the redmen.

"The settlements are crowding our border," Black Partridge spoke for

his people on their fairy lake, Peoria. "And whom shall we call

Father, the British at Malden or the Americans at St. Louis? Who shall

relieve our distresses?"

"Put it in your mind," said Auguste Chouteau, the shrewd old French

founder of St. Louis, "put it in your mind, that when de British made

peace with us, dey left you in de middle of de prairie without a shade

against sun or rain. Left you in de middle of de prairie, a sight to

pity. We Americans have a large umbrella; keeps off de sun and rain.

You come under our umbrella."

And they did.

The Indian has a fine sense of justice. The situation was evident.

Abandoned by the British who had led him into the war, he stood ready

at last to return to the friends on whom he was most dependent.

One by one the chiefs came forward and put their mark to the treaty of

peace and friendship. Clark brought the peace pipes,--every neck was

craned to scan them.

Sioux pipes sometimes cost as much as forty horses,--finely wrought

pipes of variegated red and white from the Minnesota quarries,

Shoshone pipes of green, and pipes of purple from Queen Charlottes,

were sold for skins and slaves,--but these, Clark's pipes of silver

bowls and decorated stems, these were worth a hundred horses!

Puffing its fragrant aroma, the fierce wild eye of the savage

softened. Twenty thousand dollars' worth of goods was distributed in

presents, flags, blankets, and rifles, ornaments and clothing.

"Ah, ha! Great Medicine!" whispered the Indians as the beautiful gifts

came one by one into their hands.

"We need traders," said Red Wing, sliding his hand along the soft nap

of the blankets. "That made us go into the war. Without traders we

have to clothe ourselves in grass and eat the earth."

"You shall have traders," answered Clark. "I shall not let you travel

five or six hundred miles to a British post."

Every September thereafter he sent them up a few presents to begin

their fall hunting, and counselled his agents to listen to their

complaints and render them justice.

"We must depend on policy rather than arms," said the Governor. "For

they are our children, the wards of the nation."

The Indians were dined in St. Louis and entertained with music and

dancing. By their dignity, moderation, and untiring forbearance, the

Commissioners of Portage des Sioux exemplified the paternal

benevolence of the Government.

At the end of the council Lisa started back with his chiefs, on a

three months' voyage to their northern home, and on the last day of

September Clark dismissed the rest.

Thus making history, the summer had stolen away. All next summer and

the next were spent in making treaties, until at last there was peace

along the border.

"Did you sign?" finally asked some one of Black Hawk of the British

band.

"I touched the goose quill," answered the haughty chief.

So ended the War of 1812.

XIV

_"FOR OUR CHILDREN, OUR CHILDREN!"_

As soon as the Indian scare was silenced, all the world seemed rushing

to Missouri. Ferries ran by day and night. Patriarchal planters of

Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia passed ever west in long,

unending caravans of flocks, servants, herds, into the new land of the

Louisianas. New Englanders and Pennsylvanians, six, eight, and ten

horses to a waggon, and cattle with their hundred bells, tinkled

through the streets of St. Louis.

"Where are you going, now?" inquired the citizens.

"To Boone's Lick, to be sure."

"Go no further," said Clark, ever enthusiastic about St. Louis. "Buy

here. This will be the city."

"But ah!" exclaimed the emigrant. "If land is so good here what must

Boone's Lick be!"

Perennial childhood of the human heart, ever looking for Canaan just

beyond!

The Frenchmen shrugged their shoulders at the strange energy of these

progressive "Bostonnais." It annoyed them to have their land titles

looked into. "A process! a lawsuit!" they clasped their hands in

despair. But ever the people of St. Louis put up their lands to a

better figure, and watched out of their little square lattices for the

coming of _les Américains_.

All the talk was of land, land, land! The very wealth of ancient

estates lay unclaimed for the first heir to enter, the gift of God.

In waggons, on foot and horseback, with packhorses, handcarts, and

wheelbarrows, with blankets on their backs and children by the hand,

the oppressed of the old world fled across the new.

"Why do you go into the wilderness?"

"For my children, my children," answered the pioneer.

More and more came people in a mighty flood, peasants, artisans, sons

of the old crusaders, children of feudal knights of chivalry and

romance, descendants of the hardy Norsemen who captured Europe five

hundred years before, scions of Europe's most titled names, thronging

to our West.

Frosts and crop failures in the Atlantic States and a financial panic

uprooted old Revolutionary centres. "A better country, a better

country!" was the watchword of the mobile nation.

"Let's go over to the Territory," said the soldiers of 1812. "Let us

go to Arkansas, where corn can be had for sixpence a bushel and pork

for a penny a pound. Two days' work in Texas is equal to the labour of

a week in the North." And on they pressed into No Man's Land, a land

of undeveloped orchards, maple syrup and honey, fields of cotton and

wool and corn.

Conestoga waggons crowded on the Alleghanies, teams fell down

precipices and perished, but the tide pushed madly on. Colonies of

hundreds were pouring into Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois. New towns

were named for their founders, new counties, lakes, rivers, streams,

and hills,--the settlers wrote their names upon the geography of the

nation.

In the midst of the war Daniel Boone had come down to Clark at St.

Louis.

"I have spoken to Henry Clay about your claim," said the Governor. "He

says Congress will do something for you."

"Now Rebecca, thee shall hev a house!"

That house, the joint product of Nathan, the Colonel, and his slaves,

was a work of years. Not far from the old cabin by the spring it

stood, convenient to the Judgment Tree. For Boone still held his court

beneath the spreading elm.

The stones were quarried and chiselled, two feet thick, and laid so

solidly that to-day the walls of the old Boone mansion are as good as

new. The plaster was mixed and buried in the ground over winter to

ripen. Roomy and comfortable, two stories and an attic it was built,

with double verandas and chimneys at either end, the finest mansion on

the border.

But in March Rebecca died. Boone buried her where he could watch the

mound.

The house was finished. The Colonel bought a coffin and put it under

the bed to be ready. Sometimes he tried his coffin, to see how it

would seem when he slept beside Rebecca.

In December came the land, a thousand arpents in his Spanish grant.

"If I only cud hev told Rebecca," sobbed Daniel, kneeling at her

grave. "She war a good woman, and the faithful companion of all my

wanderings."

In the Spring Boone sold his land, and set out for Kentucky.

"Daniel Boone has come! Daniel Boone has come!" Old hunters,

Revolutionary heroes, came for miles to see their leader who had

opened Kentucky. There was a reception at Maysville. Parties were

given in his honour wherever he went. Once more he embraced his old

friend, Simon Kenton.

"How much do I owe ye?" he said to one and another.

Whatever amount they named, that he paid, and departed. One day the

dusty old hunter re-entered his son's house on the Femme Osage with

fifty cents in his pocket.

"Now I am ready and willing to die. I have paid all my debts and

nobody can say, 'Boone was a dishonest man.'"

Then came the climax of his life.

"Nate, I am goin' to the Yellowstone."

While Clark was holding his peace treaties, Daniel Boone, eighty-two

years old, with a dozen others set out in boats for the Upper

Missouri.

Autumn came. Somewhere in the present Montana, they threw up a winter

camp and were besieged by Indians. A heavy snow-storm drove the

Indians off. In early Spring, coming down the Missouri on the return,

again they were attacked by Indians and landed in a thicket of the

opposite shore. Under cover of a storm in the night Boone ordered them

into the boat, and silently in the pelting rain they escaped.

Boone himself brought the furs to St. Louis, and went back with a bag

full of money and a boat full of emigrants.

Farther and farther into his district emigrants began setting up their

four-post sassafras bedsteads and scouring their pewter platters.

Women walked thirty miles to hear the first piano that came into the

Boone settlement.

In the last year of the war Boone's favourite grandson was killed at

Charette.

"The history of the settlement of the western country is my history,"

said the old Colonel in his grief. "Two darling sons, a grandson, and

a brother have I lost by savage hands, besides valuable horses and

abundance of cattle. Many sleepless nights have I spent, separated

from the society of men, an instrument ordained of God to settle the

wilderness."

"You must paint Daniel Boone," said Governor Clark to Chester Harding,

a young American artist fresh from Paris in the summer of 1819. The

Governor was Harding's first sitter. He invited the Indians into his

studio.

"Ugh! ugh! ugh!" grunted the Osage chiefs, putting their noses close

and rubbing their fingers across the Governor's portrait.

In June Harding set out up the Missouri to paint Boone. In an old

blockhouse of the War of 1812, he found him lying on a bunk, roasting

a strip of venison wound around his ramrod, turning it before the

fire.

"What? Paint my pictur'?"

"Yes, on canvas. Make a portrait, you know."

The old man consented. With amazement the frontiersman saw the picture

grow,--still more amazed, his grandchildren watched the likeness of

"granddad" growing on the canvas.

Ruddy and fair, with silvered locks, always humming a tune, he sat in

his buckskin hunting-shirt trimmed with otter's fur, and the knife in

his belt he had carried on his first expedition to Kentucky.

Every day now, in his leisure hours, the old pioneer was busily

scraping with a piece of glass. "Making a powder-horn," he said.

"Goin' to hunt on the Fork in the Fall."

A hundred miles up the Kansas he had often set his traps, but Boone's

legs were getting shaky, his eyes were growing dim. Every day now he

tried his coffin,--it was shining and polished and fair, of the wood

he loved best, the cherry. People came for miles to look at Boone's

coffin.

XV

_TOO GOOD TO THE INDIANS_

Manuel Lisa had out-distanced all his competitors in the fur trade.

But the voice of envy whispered, "Manuel must cheat the Government,

and Manuel must cheat the Indians, otherwise Manuel could not bring

down every summer so many boats loaded with rich furs."

"Good!" exclaimed Lisa to Governor Clark, when the fleets were tying

up at St. Louis in 1817. "My accounts with the Government will show

whether I receive anything out of which to cheat it."

"I have not blamed you, Manuel," explained the Governor. "On the

contrary I have conveyed to the Government my high appreciation of

your very great services in quieting the Indians of the Missouri. It

is not necessary to worry yourself with the talk of babblers who do

not understand."

"Cheat the Indians!" The Spaniard stamped the floor. "The respect and

friendship which they have for me, the security of my possessions in

the heart of their country, respond to this charge, and declare with

voices louder than the tongues of men that it cannot be true.

"'But Manuel gets so much rich fur.'" Lisa ground out the words with

scorn.

"Well, I will explain how I get it. First I put into my operations

great activity,--I go a great distance, while some are considering

whether they will start to-day or to-morrow. I impose upon myself

great privations,--ten months in a year I am buried in the forest, at

a vast distance from my own house. I appear as the benefactor, and not

as the pillager, of the Indians. I carried among them the seed of the

large pumpkin, from which I have seen in their possession the fruit

weighing one hundred and sixty pounds. Also the large bean, the

potato, the turnip, and these vegetables now make a great part of

their subsistence. This year I have promised to carry the plough.

Besides, my blacksmiths work incessantly for them, charging nothing. I

lend them traps, only demanding preference in their trade. My

establishments are the refuge of the weak and of the old men no longer

able to follow their lodges; and by these means I have acquired the

confidence and friendship of these nations, and the consequent choice

of their trade. These things I have done, and I propose to do more."

In short, Manuel Lisa laid down his commission as sub-agent to embark

yet more deeply in the fur trade.

"What is that noise at the river?"

Ten thousand shrieking eagles and puffs of smoke arose from the

yellow-brown Mississippi below. The entire population of St. Louis was

flocking to the river brink to greet the _General Pike_, the first

steamboat that ever came up to St. Louis. People rushed to the landing

but the Indians drew back in terror lest the monster should climb the

bank and pursue them inland. Pell-mell into Clark's Council House they

tumbled imploring protection.

Never had St. Louis appeared so beautiful as when Julia and the

children came into their new home in 1819. Clark, the Governor, had

built a mansion, one of the finest in St. Louis. Wide verandas gave a

view of the river, gardens of fruit and flowers bloomed.

But Julia was ill.

"Take her back to the Virginia mountains," said Dr. Farrar, the family

physician. "St. Louis heats are too much for her."

In dress suit, silk hat, and sword cane, Farrar was a notable figure

in old St. Louis, riding night and day as far out as Boone's Lick,

establishing a reputation that remains proverbial yet. He had married

Anne Thruston, the daughter of Fanny.

"Let her try a trip on the new steamboat," said the Doctor.

So after her picture was painted by Chester Harding in that Spring of

1819, Clark and Julia and the little boys, Meriwether Lewis, William

Preston, and George Rogers Hancock, set out for New Orleans in the

"new-fangled steamboat."

It was a long and dangerous trip; the river was encumbered with snags;

every night they tied up to a tree.

"Travel by night? Couldn't think of it! We'd be aground before

morning!" said the Captain.

Around by sea the Governor and his wife sailed by ship to Washington.

"I will join you at the Sweet Springs," said President Monroe to the

Governor and his wife in Washington.

"The Sweet Springs cure all my ills," said Dolly Madison at

Montpelier.

"She will recover at the Sweet Springs," said Jefferson at Monticello.

But at the Sweet Springs Julia grew so ill they had to carry her on a

bed to Fotheringay.

"Miss Judy done come home sick!" The servants wept.

Something of a physician himself, Clark began the use of fumes of tar

through a tube, and to the surprise of all "Miss Judy" rallied again.

"As soon as I can leave her in safety I shall return to St. Louis,"

wrote the Governor to friends at the Missouri capital.

"If I should die," said Julia sweetly one day, "and you ever think of

marrying again, consider my cousin Harriet."

"Ah, but you will be well, my darling, when Spring comes."

And she was better in the Spring, thinking of the new house at St.

Louis. Julia was a very neat and careful housekeeper. Everything was

kept under lock and key, she directed the servants herself, and was

the light of a houseful of company. For the Governor's house was the

centre of hospitality,--never a noted man came that way, but, "I must

pay my respects to the Governor." Savants from over the sea came to

look at his Indian museum. General Clark had made the greatest

collection in the world, and had become an authority on Indian

archæology.

Governor Clark, too, was worried about affairs in St. Louis. Missouri

was just coming in as a State, and a new executive must be elected

under the Constitution.

"Go," said Julia, "I shall be recovered soon now." Indeed, deceptive

roses were blooming in her cheeks.

With many regrets and promises of a speedy return, Clark hastened back

to his official duties. He found Missouri in the midst of a heated

campaign, coming in as a State and electing a Governor. For seven

years he had held the territorial office with honour.

But a new candidate was before the people.

"Governor Clark is too good to the Indians!" That was the chief

argument of the opposing faction. "He looks after their interests to

the disadvantage of the whites."

"To the disadvantage of the whites? How can that be?" inquired his

friends. "Did he not in the late war deal severely with the hostile

tribes? And what do you say of the Osage lands? When hostilities began

President Madison ordered the settlers out of the Boone's Lick country

as invaders of Indian lands. What did the Governor do? He

remonstrated, he delayed the execution of those orders until they were

rescinded, and the settlers were allowed to remain."

"How could he do that?"

"How? Why, he simply told the Indians those lands were included in the

Osage treaty of 1808. He made that treaty, and he knew. No Indian

objected. They trusted Clark; his explanation was sufficient. And his

maps proved it."

"Too good to the Indians! Too good to the Indians!" What Governor

before ever lost his head on such a charge?

At that moment, flying down the Ohio, came a swift messenger,--"Mrs.

Clark is dead at Fotheringay."

With the shock upon him, General Clark sent a card to the papers,

notifying his fellow citizens of his loss, and of his necessary

absence until the election was over. And with mingled dignity and

sorrow he went back to Fotheringay to bury the beloved dead.

Granny Molly, "Black Granny," who had laced "Miss Judy's" shoes and

tied up her curls with a ribbon in the old Philadelphia days, never

left her beloved mistress.

A few days before "Miss Judy" went away, little Meriwether Lewis, then

eleven years of age, came to her bedside with his curly hair

dishevelled and his broad shirt collar tumbled.

"Aunt Molly," said the mother, "watch my boy and keep him neat. He is

so beautiful, Granny!"

After her body was placed on two of the parlour chairs, Granny Molly

noticed a little dust on the waxed floor. "Miss Judy would be

'stressed if she could see it." Away she ran, brought a mop, and had

it all right by the time the coffin came.

Down on her knees scrubbing, scrubbing for the last time the floor for

"Miss Judy," tears trickled down the ebony cheeks.

"Po', po' Miss Judy. You's done gwine wid de angels."

They laid her in the family tomb, overlooking the green valley of the

Roanoke. Two weeks after her death, Colonel Hancock himself also

succumbed.

To a double funeral the Governor came back. High on the hillside they

laid them, in a mausoleum excavated out of the solid rock.

"De Cunnel, he done watch us out ob dat iron window up dah," said the

darkies. "He sits up dah in a stone chair so he can look down de

valley and see his slaves at deir work."

To this day the superstitious darkies will not pass his tomb.

On his way to Washington, Governor Clark stopped again at Monticello.

"Ah, the joyous activity of my grandfather!" exclaimed Thomas

Jefferson Randolph. "He mounts his horse early in the morning, canters

down the mountain and across country to the site of the university.

All day long he assists at the work. He has planned it, engaged

workmen, selected timber, bought bricks. He has sent to Italy for

carvers of stone."

Out of those students flocking to consult Jefferson had grown the

University of Virginia. Books and professors were brought from

England, and the institution opened in 1825.

Martha Jefferson's husband, Thomas Mann Randolph, was Governor of

Virginia now, but the sage of Monticello paid little attention. All

his talk was of schools,--schools and colleges for Virginia.

"Slavery in Missouri?" Clark broached the discussion that was raging

at the West.

Instantly the sage of Monticello was attentive.

"This momentous question, like a firebell in the night, awakened and

filled me with terror. It is the knell of the Union. Since Bunker Hill

we have never had so ominous a question." He who had said, "Pensacola

and Florida will come in good time," and, "I have ever looked on Cuba

as the most interesting addition which could be made to our system of

States," had corresponded with the Spanish minister concerning a canal

through the isthmus, and sent Lewis and Clark to open up a road to

Asia,--Jefferson, more than any other, had the vision of to-day.

Governor Clark went on to Washington.

Ramsay Crooks and Russell Farnham of the Astor expedition were

quartered at the same hotel with Floyd of Virginia and Benton of

Missouri.

Beside their whale-oil lamps they talked of Oregon. Benton was writing

for Oregon,--he made a noise in all the papers. John Floyd framed a

bill, the first for Oregon occupancy.

Missouri was just coming in as a State. The moment Benton, her first

Senator, was seated, he flew to Floyd's support.

"We must occupy the Columbia," said Benton. "Mere adventurers may

enter upon it as Æneas entered upon the Tiber, and as our forefathers

came upon the Potomac, the Delaware, and the Hudson, and renew the

phenomenon of individuals laying the foundation of future empire. Upon

the people of eastern Asia the establishment of a civilised power upon

the opposite coast of America cannot fail to produce great and

wonderful results. Science, liberal principles, government, and the

true religion, may cast their lights across the intervening sea. The

valley of the Columbia may become the granary of China and Japan, and

an outlet for their imprisoned and exuberant population."

Staid Senators smiled and called Benton a dreamer, but he and Floyd

were the prophets of to-day.

For thirty years after Astor had been driven out, England and her fur

companies enriched themselves in Oregon waters. For thirty years

Benton stood in his place and fought to save us Oregon. From the

bedside of the dying Jefferson, and from the lips of the living Clark,

he took up the great enterprise of an overland highway to India.

When Governor Clark came sorrowing back to St. Louis with the little

boys, Missouri was a State and a new Governor sat in the chair, but

though governors came and governors went, the officer that had held

the position through all the territorial days was always called

"Governor" Clark. As United States superintendent of Indian affairs

for the West, Governor Clark now became practically autocrat of the

redmen for life.

"If you ever think of marrying again, consider my cousin Harriet."

More than a year Governor Clark "considered," and then the most noted

citizen of St. Louis married the handsome widow Radford.

"From Philadelphia she haf a wedding trousseau," said the vivacious

Creole girls, drinking tea in their wide verandas. "She haf de majesty

look, like one queen."

From the home of her brother, James Kennerly, the fun-loving Harriet

of other years went to become the grave and dignified hostess in the

home of the ex-governor.

XVI

_THE RED HEAD CHIEF_

"Hasten, Ruskosky, rebraid my queue. Kings and half kings are in there

as plenty as blackberries in the woods, and I must see what is the

matter."

Hurriedly the Polish valet, who dressed Clark in his later years,

knelt to button the knees of his small clothes and fasten on a big

silk bow in place of a buckle. Directly the tall figure wrapped in a

cloak entered the council chamber connected with his study.

The walls of the council chamber were covered with portraits of

distinguished chiefs, and with Indian arms and dresses, the handsomest

the West afforded. Nothing pleased the redmen better than to be

honoured by the acceptance of some treasure for this museum.

Against this wall the Indians sat, and the little gray-haired

interpreter, Antony Le Claire, lit the tomahawk pipe. As the fumes

rolled upward the Red Head Chief took his seat at the table before

him. The Indians lifted their heads. Justice would now be done.

It was a sultry day and the council doors were open. But sultrier

still was the debate within.

"Our Father," said the Great and Little Osages, "we have come to meet

our enemies, the Delawares and Shawnees and Kickapoos and Peorias, in

your Council Hall. We ourselves can effect a peace."

And so the Red Head listened. "Make your peace."

Six days they argued, Paul Louise interpreter. Hot and hotter grew the

debate, and mutual recriminations.

"White Hair's warriors shot at one of my young men."

"But you, Delawares, robbed our relations," cried the Osage chiefs.

"You stole our otter-skins," retorted the Delawares.

"And you hunted on our lands."

"Last Summer when we were absent, you bad-hearted Osages destroyed our

fields of corn and cut up our gardens," cried the angry Shawnees, who

always sided with the Delawares.

"You speak with double tongues--"

Clark stepped in and hushed the controversy.

"Who gave you leave to hunt on Osage lands?"

"White Hair and his principal braves," answered the Delawares.

"When did they shoot at your man?"

"At the Big Bend of the Arkansas."

"Who owned the peltries the Osages took?"

"All of us."

"Very well then, restitution must be made."

Soothing as a summer breeze was his gentle voice, "My children, I

cannot have you injured. The Delawares are my children, and the

Osages, the Shawnees, the Kickapoos, and the Peorias. I cannot permit

any one to injure my children. Whoever does that is no longer child of

mine. You must bury the sharp hatchet underground."

He calmed the heated tribes and effected peace. Like little children

they gave each other strings of beads, pipes, and tobacco, and

departed reconciled.

"Bring all your difficulties to me or to Paul Louise and we will judge

for you," said the Red Head Chief, as one by one they filed in plumed

array down the steps of the Council House.

Scarce had the reconciled tribes departed before officers of the law

brought in seven chiefs, hostages of the Iowas,--"Accused by the Sacs,

Your Honour, of killing cattle; accused by the whites of killing

settlers."

"My father." The mournful appealing tone of the Indian speaker always

affected Clark. He was singularly fitted to be their judge and

friend. "My son." There was an air of sympathy and paternal kindness

as the Red Head Chief listened. His heart was stirred by their wrongs,

and his face would redden with indignation as he listened to the

pitiful tales of his children.

With bodies uncovered to the waist, with blanket on the left arm and

the right arm and breast bare, a chief stepped forth to be examined

concerning a border fray with the backwoodsmen.

Drawing himself to his full height, and extending his arm toward

Clark, the Iowa began:

"Red Head, if I had done that of which my white brother accuses me, I

would not stand here now. The words of my red head father have passed

through both my ears and I have remembered them. I am accused. I am

not guilty.

"I thought I would come down to see my red head father to hold a talk

with him.

"I come across the line. I see the cattle of my white brother dead. I

see the Sauk kill them in great numbers. I said there would be

trouble. I thought to go to my village. I find I have no provisions. I

say, 'Let us go down to our white brother and trade for a little.' I

do not turn on my track to my village."

Then turning to the Sacs and pointing,--

"The Sauk who tells lies of me goes to my white brother and says, 'The

Ioway has killed your cattle.'

"When the lie has talked thus to my white brother, he comes up to my

village. We hear our white brother coming. We are glad and leave our

cabins to tell him he is welcome. While I shake hands with my white

brother, my white brother shoots my best chief through the

head,--shoots three my young men, a squaw, and her children.

"My young men hear, they rush out, they fire,--four of my white

brothers fall. My people fly to the woods, and die of cold and

hunger."

Dropping his head and his arm, in tragic attitude he stands, the

picture of despair. The lip of the savage quivers. He lifts his

eyes,--

"While I shake hands my white brother shoots my chief, my son, my only

son."

Only by consummate tact can Clark handle these distressing conflicts

of the border. Who is right and who is wrong? The settlers hate the

Indians, the Indians dread and fear the settlers.

"Governor Clark," said the Shawnees and Delawares, "since three or

four years we are crowded by the whites who steal our horses. We

moved. You recommended us to raise stock and cultivate our ground.

That advice we have followed, but again white men have come."

The Cherokees complained, "White people settle without our consent.

They destroy our game and produce discord and confusion."

Clark could see the heaving of their naked breasts and their lithe

bodies, the tigers of their kind, shaken by irrepressible emotion.

And again in the Autumn,--

"What is it?" inquired the stranger as pennons came glittering down

the Missouri.

"Oh, nothing, only another lot of Indians coming down to see their

red-headed daddy," was the irreverent response, as the solemn,

calm-featured braves glided into view, gazing as only savages can gaze

at the wonders of civilisation.

"What! going to war?" cried Clark, in a tone of thunder, as they made

known their errand at the Council House. "Your Great Father, the

President, forbids it. He counsels his children to live in peace. If

you insist on listening to bad men I shall come out there and make you

desist."

The stormy excitement subsided. They shrank from his reproofs, and

felt and feared his power.

"Go home. Take these gifts to my children, and tell them they were

sent by the Red Head Chief."

Viewed with admiration, the presents were carefully wrapped in skins

to be laid away and treasured on many a weary march and through many a

sad vicissitude. A few days in St. Louis, then away go the willowy

copper-skin paddlers to dissuade their braves from incurring the

awful displeasure of the Red Head Chief. The West of that day was sown

with his medals that disappeared only with the tribes.

In time they came to know Clark's signature, and preserved it as a

sacred talisman. Could the influence of one man have availed against

armies of westward pressing trappers, traders, and pioneers, the

tribes would have been civilised.

"Shall we accept the missionaries? Shall we hearken to their

teaching?"

"Yes," he said to the Osages. "Yes," to the Pawnees, to the Shawnees,

and "Yes," to a delegation that came from the far-off Nez Percés

beyond the Rocky Mountains.

In days of friction and excitement Clark did more than regiments to

preserve peace on the frontier. He was a buffer, a perpetual

break-water between the conflicting races.

As United States superintendent of Indian affairs the Red Head Chief

grew venerable. The stately old officer lived in style in St. Louis,

and as in the colonial time Sir William Johnson ruled from the

Atlantic to the Mississippi, so now Clark's word was Indian law from

the Mississippi to the Pacific. His voice was raised in continual

advantage to the Indian. While civilisation was pushing west and west,

and crowding them out of their old domains, he was softening as much

as possible the rigour of their contact with whites.

"Our position with regard to the Indians has entirely changed," he

used to say. "Before Wayne's campaigns in 1794 and events of 1818, the

tribes nearest our settlements were a formidable and terrible enemy.

Since then their power has been broken, their warlike spirit subdued,

and themselves sunk into objects of pity and commiseration. While

strong and hostile, it has been our obvious duty to weaken them; now

that they are weak and harmless, and most of their lands fallen into

our hands, justice and humanity require us to cherish and befriend

them. To teach them to live in houses, to raise grain and stock, to

plant orchards, to set up landmarks, to divide their possessions, to

establish laws for their government, to get the rudiments of common

learning, such as reading, writing, and ciphering, are the first steps

toward improving their condition."

This was the policy of Jefferson, reaffirmed by Clark. It was the key

to all Clark's endeavours.

At Washington City he discussed the question with President Monroe.

"But to take these steps with effect the Indians should be removed

west of the Mississippi and north of the Missouri."

"Let them move singly or in families as they please," said Clark.

"Place agents where the Indians cross the Mississippi, to supply them

with provisions and ammunition. A constant tide is now going on from

Ohio, Indiana, Illinois. They cross at St. Louis and St. Genevieve,

and my accounts show the aid which is given them. Many leading chiefs

are zealous in this work, and are labouring hard to collect their

dispersed and broken tribes at their new and permanent homes."

"And the land?" inquired the President.

"It is well watered with numerous streams and some large rivers,

abounds with grass, contains prairies, land for farms, and affords a

temporary supply of game.

"It is in vain for us to talk about learning and religion; these

Indians want food. The Sioux, the Osages, are powerful tribes,--they

are near our border, and my official station enables me to know the

exact truth. They are distressed by famine; many die for want of food;

the living child is buried with the dead mother because no one can

spare it food through its helpless infancy.

"Grain, stock, fences are the first things. Property alone can keep up

the pride of the Indian and make him ashamed of drunkenness, lying,

and stealing.

"The period of danger with an Indian is when he ceases to be a hunter

and before he gets the means of living from flocks and agriculture. In

the transit from a hunter to a farmer, he degenerates from a proud and

independent savage to a beggar, drunkard, thief. To counteract the

danger, property in horses, hogs, and cattle is indispensable. They

should be assisted in making fences and planting orchards, and be

instructed in raising cotton and making cloth. Small mills should be

erected to save the women the labour of pounding corn, and mechanics

should be employed to teach the young Indians how to make ploughs,

carts, wheels, hoes, and axes."

Benton and other great men argued in the Senate. "In contact with the

white race the Indians degenerate. They are a dangerous neighbour

within our borders. They prevent the expansion of the white race, and

the States will not be satisfied until all their soil is open to

settlement."

And so, to remove the Indians to a home of their own became the great

work of Clark's life.

"A home where the whites shall never come!" the Indians were

delighted. "We will look at these lands."

"I recommend that the government send special agents to collect the

scattered bands and families and pay their expenses to the lands

assigned them," said Clark, estimating the cost at one hundred

thousand dollars. But not all of the tribes would listen.

In November, 1826, Clark drove from St. Louis in his carriage to the

Choctaw nation in Alabama, to persuade them to move west of the

Mississippi.

"After many years spent in reflection," said the Commissioners, "your

Great Father, the President, has determined upon a plan for your

happiness. The United States has a large unsettled country on the west

side of the great river Mississippi into which they do not intend

their white settlements shall enter. This is the country in which our

Great Father intends to settle his red children.

"Many of the tribes are now preparing to remove and are making

application for land. The Cherokees and Muscogees have procured lands,

and your people can have five times as much land in that fine country

as they are now living on in this."

Never before in the conquest of nations had the weaker race been

offered such advantageous terms. Two days passed while the Indians

considered and argued among themselves.

"What shall we give to you?" asked the Commissioners. "These lands and

titles to them, provisions and clothing, a cow and corn and farming

implements to each family, and blacksmiths and ploughmakers and

annuities."

"Friends and brothers of the Choctaw nation," said Clark in the

council, "I have spent half the period of an accustomed life among

you. Thirty-six years ago I passed through your country and saw your

distressed condition. Now I see part of your nation much improved in

prosperity and civilisation. This affords me much happiness. But I am

informed that a very large majority of the Choctaw nation are seeking

food among the swamps by picking cotton for white planters.

"Cannot provision be made to better their condition?

"Let me recommend that the poorer and less enlightened be moved

without delay to their lands west of the Mississippi. There will I

take pleasure in advancing their interests. In my declining years it

would be a great consolation to me to see them prosper in agriculture.

"Come to my country where I can have it in my power to act as your

father and your friend. You shall be protected and peaceful and

happy."

The Choctaws were touched, but they answered,--

"We cannot part with our country. It is the land of our birth,--the

hills and streams of our youth."

XVII

_THE GREAT COUNCIL AT PRAIRIE DU CHIEN_

St. Louis was a cold place in those prairie years; a great deal of

snow fell, and sleighbells rang beside the Great River. No Indians

came during the cold weather, but with the springing grass and

blossoming trees, each year the Indians camped around the twin lakes

at Maracasta, Clark's farm west of St. Louis.

There were wigwams all over Maracasta. James Kennerly, Clark's Indian

deputy, busy ever with the ruddy aborigines, dealing out annuities,

arranging for treaties and instructing the tribes, kept open house for

the chiefs at _Côte Plaquemine_, the Persimmon Hill. Clark's boys shot

bows and arrows with the little Indians, Kennerly's little girls made

them presents of "kinnikinick," dried leaves of the sumac and red

osier dogwood, to smoke in their long pipes.

Every delegation came down laden with gifts for the Red Head,--costly

furs, buffalo robes, bows, arrows, pipes, moccasins.

Tragedies of the plains came daily to the ears of General Clark, far,

far beyond the reach of government in the wild battle-ground of the

West.

In 1822 the Sioux and Cheyennes combined against the Crows and fell

upon their villages. In the slaughter of that day five thousand

defenceless men, women, and children were butchered on the prairie.

All their lodges and herds of horses and hundreds of captive girls

were carried away. As a people the Crows never recovered.

Drunk with victory the triumphant Sioux rolled back on the Chippewas,

Sacs, Foxes, and Iowas.

"If continued, these wars will embroil all the tribes of the West,"

said Clark. "We must do something more to promote peace. They must

become civilised."

President Monroe was working up a new Indian policy, with Clark as a

chief adviser.

"Go, Paul Louise, take this talk to my Osages. I am coming up to their

country. Tell them to meet me on the first of June."

In his canoe, with his squaw and his babies, the wizened little

Frenchman set out. He could not read, he could not write, he could

only make his mark, but the Indians loved and trusted Paul Louise.

"And you, Baronet Vasquez, take this to the Kansas nation."

Vasquez belonged to the old Spanish _régime_. As a youth he had gone

out with the Spanish garrison at the cession of St. Louis, to return a

fur trader.

Then came Lafayette from the memories of Monticello. Escorted by a

troop of horse, he had ascended that historic mountain. The alert

lithe figure of the little Marquis leaped from the carriage; at the

same moment the door opened, revealing the tall, bent, wasted figure

of Jefferson in the pillared portico. The music ceased, and every head

uncovered. Slowly the aged Jefferson descended the steps, slowly the

little Marquis approached his friend, then crying, with outstretched

arms, "Ah, Jefferson!" "Ah, Lafayette!" each fell upon the other's

bosom. The gentlemen of the cavalcade turned away with tears, and the

two were left to solitude and recollection.

Long and often had Jefferson and Lafayette laboured together in

anxious and critical periods of the past. It was in chasing "the boy"

Lafayette that the British came to Charlottesville. When Jefferson was

minister in Paris, the young and popular nobleman assisted the

unaccustomed American at the Court of France. Together they had seen

the opening of the French Revolution. What memories came back as they

sat in the parlour at Monticello, discussing the momentous events of

two continents in which they had been actors!

"What would I have done with the Queen?" asked the aged Jefferson. "I

should have shut her up in a convent, putting harm out of her power. I

have ever believed if there had been no Queen there would have been no

French Revolution."

Lafayette went to Montpelier to see Madison, and then to Yorktown,

over the same road which he himself had opened in 1781 in the retreat

before Cornwallis. One long ovation followed his route. Even old

ladies who had seen him in their youth pressed forward with the plea,

"Let me see the young Marquis again!" forgetful of the flight of

years. Echoes of his triumphal tour had reached the border. St. Louis,

a city and a State not dreamed of in Revolutionary days, begged the

honour of entertaining Lafayette.

Far down the river they saw the smoke of his steamer, coming up from

New Orleans.

"Welcome!" the hills echoed. "_Vive_ Lafayette!"

The Marquis lifted his eyes,--white stone houses gay with gardens and

clusters of verdure arose before him in a town of five thousand

inhabitants. Below stood the massive stone forts of the Spanish time,

and on the brow of the bluff frowned the old round tower, the last

fading relic of feudalism in North America.

Every eye was fixed upon the honoured guest. A few were there who

could recall the pride of Lafayette in his American troops, with their

helmets and flowing crests and the sabres he himself had brought from

France. The banquet, the toasts, the ball, all these have passed into

tradition.

The Marquis visited Clark's cabinet of Indian curios.

"I present you this historic cloak of an Indian chief," said the

General, offering a robe like a Russian great coat.

In turn, Lafayette presented his mess chest, carried through the

Revolution, and placed on the Governor's finger a ring of his hair.

Later Clark sent him the live cub of a grizzly bear, that grew to be a

wonder in the Jardin des Plantes of Paris.

"And your great brother, George Rogers Clark?" inquired the Marquis.

"He died seven years ago at Louisville," answered the Governor.

"In securing the liberties of this country I esteem him second only to

Washington," said Lafayette.

"Those thieving Osages have taken six more of my horses," complained

Chouteau the next morning at the office of Governor Clark.

"And four blankets and three axes of me," added Baptiste Dardenne.

"Worse yet, they have stolen my great-coat and razor case," said

Manuel Roderique.

Two thousand dollars' worth of claims were paid in that summer of

1825.

"We must get them out of the way," persisted the exasperated whites.

"Acts and acts of Congress regulating trade and intercourse with the

tribes are of no avail. They must be removed, and as far as possible.

They are banditti, robbers!" said Benton.

In spite of all proclamations clothes disappeared from the line, silk

stockings and bed-quilts and ladies' hats mysteriously went into the

wigwams of the vagrants.

"This state of affairs is intolerable!" exclaimed Benton. "Governor

Clark, if you will conclude a treaty removing those tribes to the West

I will stake my honour on putting a ratification through Congress.

I'll present the case!"

Again the great senator ground out the words between his teeth, "_I'll

present the case_. It will be a kindness to both parties. The poor

Indians have lost all,--we must reimburse them, we must take care of

them, they must have a home,--but far away, _far away_!" shaking his

fingers and closing his eyes with the significant shrug so well known

to the friends of Colonel Benton.

"Not so bad as eet once was," urged the kind-hearted Creoles. "Not so

bad by far. In de old Spanish days dey once left St. Genevieve wit'out

a horse to turn a mill. Dey came in to de village in de night and

carried away everyt'ing dey could find. Nobody ever pursue dem. But

_les Américains_, dey chase dem. But den," commented the tolerant

Creoles, "de Osage do not _kill_, like de Kickapoo and de Cherokee.

Dey take de goods, steal de furs, beat with ramrods, drive him

off,--but dey don't _kill_!"

So in May, after the departure of Lafayette, Governor Clark steamed up

the Missouri, met the Kansas and Osage Indians, and made treaties for

the cession of all their lands within the present boundary of

Missouri.

"You shall have lands, hogs, fowls, cattle, carts, and farming tools

to settle farther west."

This was wealth to the poor Osages, whose hunting fields had become

exhausted.

"Go to the earth and till it, it will give you bread and meat and

clothes and comfort and happiness. You may talk about your poverty

always, and it will never make you better off. You must be

industrious," said Clark. "And your old friend, Boone, shall be your

farmer."

For almost forty years now they had known Daniel M. Boone, the son of

the great pioneer,--since, indeed, those days when as a boy of

eighteen he trapped on the Kansas. Two springs later the removal was

made, and Boone, as "farmer for the Kansas Indians," took up his

residence in the Kaw Valley where his chimney stacks may yet be seen

near the present Lecompton. The next year was born Napoleon Boone, the

first white child in Kansas.

All this time the northern clans were gathering at Prairie du Chien, a

work of months. June 30 Governor Clark's barge started north from St.

Louis, laden with presents, provisions, interpreters.

"We are afraid to come," said the Omahas. "We are afraid to cross the

hostile territory."

William Preston Clark, in looks and dress the blonde double of the

poet Byron, said, "Let me bring them, father."

So young Clark, intimate with Indians, went after the Omahas and

brought them safely in. But Big Elk left his medal with his son, "I

never expect to reach home alive," he said. "We cross the country of

the Sacs!"

The Yanktons refused. "Shall we be butchered by the Sacs?" But later

they came to St. Louis, smoked with the Sacs and shook hands. Even the

Sioux feared the Sacs, the warriors of the central valley.

Mahaska, head chief of the Iowas, with his braves went up with Clark,

and Rant-che-wai-me, the Flying Pigeon. Rant-che-wai-me had been to

Washington. A year ago, when her husband left her alone at the wigwam

on the Des Moines, she set out for St. Louis. The steamer was at the

shore, the chief was about to embark, when he felt a blow upon his

back. Shaking his plumes in wrath, Mahaska turned,--to behold the

Flying Pigeon, with uplifted tomahawk in her hand.

"Am I your wife?" she cried.

"You are my wife," answered the surprised chief.

"Are you my husband?"

"I am your husband."

"Then will I, too, go with you to shake the Great Father by the hand."

Mahaska smiled,--"You are my pretty wife, Flying Pigeon; you shall go

to Washington." Clark, too, smiled,--"Yes, she can go."

The pretty Rant-che-wai-me was feted at the White House, and had her

picture painted by a great artist as a typical Iowa Princess. And now

she was going to Prairie du Chien.

Not for ten years had Clark visited his northern territory. Few

changes had come on the Mississippi. Twice a year Colonel George

Davenport brought a hundred thousand dollars' worth of goods to his

trading post at Rock Island.

Beyond, Julien Dubuque lay in perpetual state on his hills, wrapped

only in a winding sheet in his tomb, exposed to the view of every

traveller that cared to climb the grassy height to gaze through the

grated windows of his lonely mausoleum.

"The Great Chief, the Red Head is coming," whispered all the Indians,

as Clark's barges hove in sight.

Prairie du Chien was alive with excitement. Governor Cass of Michigan

was already there. Not only the village, but the entire banks of the

river for miles above and below were covered with high-pointed buffalo

tents. Horses browsed upon the bluffs in Arabian abandon. Below, tall

and warlike, Chippewas and Winnebagoes from Superior and the valley of

St. Croix jostled Menomonees, Pottawattamies, and Ottawas from Lake

Michigan and Green Bay.

"Whoop-oh-hoo-oh!"

Major Taliferro from the Falls of St. Anthony made the grand entry

with his Sioux and Chippewas, four hundred strong, drums beating,

flags flying. Taliferro was very popular with the Sioux,--even the

squaws said he was "_Weechashtah Washtay_,"--a handsome man.

Over from Sault Ste. Marie the learned agent Schoolcraft had brought

one hundred and fifty Chippewas, brothers of Hiawatha.

Keokuk, the Watchful Fox, with his Sacs and Iowas, was the last to

arrive. Leagued against the Sioux, they had camped on an island below

to paint and dress, and came up the Mississippi attired in full war

costume singing their battle-song. It was a thrilling sight when they

came upon the scene with spears, battle-lances, and crested locks like

Roman helmets, casting bitter glances at their ancient foe, the Sioux.

Nearly nude, with feather war-flags flying, and beating tambourines,

the Sacs landed in compact ranks, breathing defiance. From his

earliest youth Keokuk had fought the Sioux.

"Bold, martial, flushed with success, Keokuk landed, majestic and

frowning," said Schoolcraft, "and as another Coriolanus spoke in the

council and shook his war lance at the Sioux."

At the signal of a gun, every day at ten o'clock, the chiefs

assembled.

"Children," said Governor Clark to the assembled savages, "your Great

Father has not sent us here to ask anything from you--we want

nothing--not the smallest piece of your land. We have come a great way

to meet for your own good. Your Great Father the President has been

informed that war is carried on among his red children,--the Sacs,

Foxes, and Chippewas on one side and the Sioux on the other,--and that

the wars of some of you began before any of you were born."

"Heigh! heigh!" broke forth the silent smokers. "Heigh! heigh!"

exclaimed the warriors. "Heigh! heigh!" echoed the vast and impatient

concourse around the council.

"Your father thinks there is no cause for continuation of war between

you. There is land enough for you to live and hunt on and animals

enough. Why, instead of peaceably following the game and providing for

your families, do you send out war parties to destroy each other? The

Great Spirit made you all of one colour and placed you upon the land.

You ought to live in peace as brothers of one great family. Your Great

Father has heard of your war songs and war parties,--they do not

please him. He desires that his red children should bury the

tomahawk."

"Heigh! heigh!"

"Children! look around you. See the result of wars between nations who

were once powerful and are now reduced to a few wandering families.

You have examples enough before you.

"Children, your wars have resulted from your having no definite

boundaries. You do not know what belongs to you, and your people

follow the game into lands claimed by other tribes."

"Heigh! heigh!"

"Children, you have all assembled under your Father's flag. You are

under his protection. Blood must not be spilt here. Whoever injures

one of you injures us, and we will punish him as we would punish one

of our own people."

"Heigh! heigh! heigh!" cried all the Indians.

"Children," said General Cass, "your Great Father does not want your

land. He wants to establish boundaries and peace among you. Your Great

Father has strong limbs and a piercing eye, and an arm that extends

from the sea to Red River.

"Children, you are hungry. We will adjourn for two hours."

"Heigh! heigh! heigh-h!" rolled the chorus across the Prairie.

As to an army, rations were distributed, beef, bread, corn, salt,

sugar, tobacco. Each ate, ate, ate,--till not a scrap was left to feed

a humming-bird.

Revered of his people, Wabasha and his pipe-bearers were the observed

of all.

"I never yet was present at so great a council as this," said Wabasha.

Three thousand were at Prairie du Chien.

The Sioux? Far from the northwest they said their fathers came,--the

Tartar cheek was theirs. Wabasha and his chiefs alone had the

Caucasian countenance.

Three mighty brothers ruled the Sioux in the days of

Pontiac,--Wabasha, Red Wing, and Little Crow. Their sons, Wabasha, Red

Wing, and Little Crow ruled still.

"Boundaries?" they knew not the meaning of the word. Restless,

anxious, sharp-featured Little Crow fixed his piercing hazel eye upon

the Red Head,--

"_Taku-wakan!_--that is incomprehensible!"

"Heigh! What does this mean?" exclaimed the Chippewas.

"We are all one people," sagely observed Mahaska, the Iowa. "My

father, I claim no lands in particular."

"I never yet heard that any one had any exclusive right to the soil,"

said Chambler, the Ottawa.

"I have a tract of country. It is where I was born and now live," said

Red Bird, the Winnebago. "But the Foxes claim it and the Sacs, the

Menomonees, and Omahas. We use it in common."

Red Bird was a handsome Indian, dressed Yankton fashion in white

unsoiled deerskin and scarlet, and glove-fitting moccasins,--the dandy

of his tribe.

The debate grew animated. "Our tract is so small," cried the

Menomonees, "that we cannot turn around without touching our

neighbours." Then every Indian began to describe his boundaries,

crossing and recrossing each other.

"These are the causes of all your troubles," said Clark. "It is better

for each of you to give up some disputed claim than to be fighting for

ever about it."

That night the parties two by two discussed their lines, the first

step towards civilisation. They drew maps on the ground,--"my hunting

ground," and "mine," and "mine." After days of study the boundary

rivers were acknowledged, the belt of wampum was passed, and the pipe

of peace.

Wabasha, acknowledged by every chief to be first of the Seven Fires of

the Sioux, was treated by all with marked distinction and deference.

And yet Wabasha, dignified and of superior understanding, when asked,

"Wabasha? What arrangement did you make with the Foxes about

boundaries?" replied, "I never made any arrangement about the line.

The only arrangement I made was about peace!"

"When I heard the voice of my Great Father," said Mongazid, the Loon's

Foot, from Fond du Lac, "when I heard the voice of my Father coming up

the Mississippi, calling to this treaty, it seemed as a murmuring

wind. I got up from my mat where I sat musing, and hastened to obey.

My pathway has been clear and bright. Truly it is a pleasant sky above

our heads this day. There is not a cloud to darken it. I hear nothing

but pleasant words. The raven is not waiting for his prey. I hear no

eagle cry, 'Come, let us go,--the feast is ready,--the Indian has

killed his brother.'"

Shingaba Wassin of Sault Ste. Marie, head chief of the Chippewas, had

fought with Britain in the War of 1812 and lost a brother at the

battle of the Thames. He and a hundred other chiefs with their pipe

bearers signed the treaty. Everybody signed. And all sang, even the

girls, the Witcheannas of the Sioux.

"We have buried our bad thoughts in the ashes of the pipe," said

Little Crow.

"I always had good counsel from Governor Clark," observed Red Wing.

"You put this medal on my neck in 1812," said Decorah, the Winnebago,

"and when I returned I gave good advice to the young men of our

village."

After a fierce controversy and the rankling of a hundred wrongs, the

warring tribes laid down their lances and buried the tomahawk. Sacs

and Sioux shook hands; the dividing lines were fixed; all the chiefs

signed, and the tribes were at peace for the first time in a thousand

years.

"Pray God it may last," said Clark, as his boat went away homeward

along with the Sacs down the Mississippi.

The great Council at Prairie du Chien was over.

XVIII

_THE LORDS OF THE RIVERS_

For thirty years after the cession, St. Louis was a great military

centre. Sixty thousand dollars a year went into the village from

Bellefontaine, and still more after the opening of Jefferson Barracks

in 1826. Nor can it be denied that the expenditure of large sums of

money in Indian annuities through the office of Governor Clark did

much for the prosperity of the frontier city.

And ever the centre of hospitality was the home of Governor Clark.

Both the Governor and his wife enjoyed life, took things leisurely,

both had the magnetic faculty of winning people, and they set a

splendid table.

"I like to see my house full," said the Governor. There were no modern

hotels in those days, and his house became a stopping place for all

noted visitors to St. Louis.

Their old-fashioned coach, with the footman up behind in a tall silk

hat, met at the levee many a distinguished stranger,--travellers,

generals, dukes, and lords from Europe who came with letters to the

Indian autocrat of the West. All had to get a pass from Clark, and all

agents and sub-agents were under and answerable to him.

But unspoiled in the midst of it passed the plain, unaristocratic Red

Head Chief and friend of the oppressed. For years he corresponded with

Lafayette, and yet Clark was not a scholar. He was a man of affairs,

of which this country has abounded in rich examples.

Prince Paul of Wurtemberg came, the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and

Maximilian, Prince of Wied, all seeking passports for the Indian

country, all coming back with curios for their palaces and castles.

Very politely Mrs. Clark listened to their broken English and

patiently conversed with them when the Governor was away.

One of the first pianos came to the Clark parlours, and on special

occasions the Indian council room was cleared and decorated for grand

balls. Many a young "milletoer," as the Creoles called them, dashed up

from Jefferson Barracks to win a bride among the girls of St. Louis.

For the preservation of peace and the facilitation of Indian removals,

Fort Des Moines was built among the Iowas, Fort Atkinson near the

present Omaha, Fort Snelling at the Falls of St. Anthony, and Fort

Leavenworth on the borders of Kansas.

Half the area of the United States lay out there, with no law, no

courts, but those of battle. As quietly as possible, step by step, the

savage land was taken into custody. And the pretty girls of St. Louis

did their share to reconcile the "milletoers" to life at the frontier

posts.

"Ho for Santa Fé!" One May morning in 1824 a caravan of waggons passed

through the streets of St. Louis.

Penned in the far-off Mexican mountains a little colony of white

people were shut from the world. Twice before a few adventurous

pack-trains had penetrated their mountain solitudes, as Phoenicians

of old went over to Egypt, India, Arabia.

"_Los Americanos! Los Americanos!_" shouted the eager mountain

dwellers, rushing out to embrace the traders and welcome them to their

lonely settlement. Silks, cottons, velvets, hardware, were bought up

in a trice, and the fortunate traders returned to St. Louis with

horseload after horseload of gold and silver bullion.

"Those people want us. But the Spanish authorities are angry and tax

us as they used to tax the traders at New Orleans. The people beg us

to disregard their tyrannous rulers,--they must have goods."

In 1817 young Auguste Chouteau tried it, and was cast into prison and

his goods confiscated.

"What wish you?" demanded the Spanish Governor, in answer to repeated

solicitations from the captive.

"_Mi libertad Gobernador._"

Wrathfully they locked him closer than ever in the old donjon of Santa

Fé.

"My neighbour's son imprisoned there without cause!" exclaimed

Governor Clark. All the old Spanish animosity roiled in his veins. He

appealed to Congress. There was a rattling among the dry bones, and

Chouteau and his friends were released.

And now, on the 15th of May, 1824, eighty men set out in the first

waggon train, with twenty thousand dollars' worth of merchandise for

the isolated Mexican capital. In September the caravan returned with

their capital increased a hundred-fold in sacks of gold and silver and

ten thousand dollars' worth of furs.

The Santa Fé trade was established never to be shaken, though Indian

battles, like conflicts with Arab sheiks of the desert, grew wilder

than any Crusader's tale. Young men of the Mississippi dreamed of that

"farther west" of Santa Fé and Los Angeles.

"We must have a safe road," said the traders. "We may wander off into

the desert and perish."

In the same year Senator Benton secured an appropriation of ten

thousand dollars for staking the plains to Santa Fé.

"We must have protection," said the traders to Governor Clark at the

Council House. At Council Grove, a buffalo haunt in a thickly wooded

bottom at the headwaters of the Neosho in the present Kansas, Clark's

agents met the Osage Indians and secured permission for the caravans

to pass through their country. But the dreaded Pawnees and Comanches

were as yet unapproachable.

In spite of the inhumanity of Spaniards, in spite of murderous

Pawnees, in spite of desert dust and red-brown grass and cacti, year

by year the caravans grew, the people became more friendly and

solicitous of each other's trade, until one day New Mexico was ready

to step over into the ranks of the States.

And one day Kit Carson, whose mother was a Boone, only sixteen and

small of his age, ran away from a hard task-master to join the Santa

Fé caravan and grow up on the plains.

Daniel Boone was dead, at eighty-six, just as Missouri came in as a

State. Jesse, the youngest of the Boone boys to come out from

Kentucky, was in the Constitutional Convention that adjourned in his

honour, and Jesse's son, Albert Gallatin Boone, in 1825, joined as

private secretary that wonderful Ashley expedition that keel-boated up

the Platte, crossed from its head-waters over to Green River, kept on

west, discovered the Great South Pass of the Rockies, the overland

route of future emigration, and set up its tents on the borders of

Utah Lake.

Overwhelmed with debt Ashley set out,--he came back a millionaire with

the greatest collection of furs ever known up to that time. Everything

was Ashley then, "Ashley boats" and "Ashley beaver,"--he was the

greatest man in St. Louis, and was sent to Congress.

Sixty years ago the Lords of the Rivers ruled St. Louis.

The Rocky Mountain Fur Company went out and camped on the site of a

dozen future capitals. From the Green River Valley under the Wind

River Mountains of Wyoming, from the Tetons of Colorado, the Uintahs

of Utah, and the Bitter Roots of Idaho, from the shining Absarokas and

the Bighorn Alps, they came home with mink and otter, beaver, bear,

and buffalo.

The American Fur Company came to St. Louis, and the Chouteaus, at

first the rivals, became the partners of John Jacob Astor. Born in the

atmosphere of furs, for forty years Pierre Chouteau the younger had no

rival in the Valley except Clark. The two stood side by side, one

representing commerce, the other the Government.

Pierre Chouteau, the largest fur trader west of the Alleghanies, sent

his boats to Itasca, the headwaters of the Mississippi, the Missouri,

the Yellowstone, the Osage, the Kansas, and the Platte, employing a

thousand men and paying skilled pilots five thousand dollars for a

single expedition. With Chouteau's convoys came down Clark's chiefs,

going back in the same vessels. To their untutored minds the trader's

capital and the Red Head Town were synonymous.

If there was a necessary conflict between the policy of the government

and that of the fur trade, no one could have softened it more than the

Red Head diplomat. With infinite tact and unfailing good sense, he

harmonised, reconciled, and pushed for the best interest of the

Indian.

"Give up the chase and settle into agricultural life," said Clark's

agents to the Indians.

"Go to the chase," said the trader.

Clark sent up hoes to supersede the shoulder-blade of the buffalo. The

trader sent up fusils and ammunition. The two combined in the

evolution of the savage. The squaw took the hoe, the brave the gun.

Winter expresses came down to St. Louis from the far-off Powder and

the Wind River Mountains. "Send us merchandise." With the first

breaking ice of Spring the boats were launched, the caravans ready.

Deck-piled, swan-like upon the water the Missouri steamboat started.

Pierre Chouteau was there to see her off, Governor Clark was there to

bid farewell to his chiefs. _Engagés_ of the Company, fiercely

picturesque, with leg knives in their garters, jumped to store away

the cargo.

Up as far as St. Charles Clark and the Chouteaus sometimes went with

the ladies of their families to escort the up-bound steamer, and with

a last departing, "_Bon voyage! bon voyage, mes voyageurs!_"

disembarked to return to St. Louis.

On, on steamed the messenger of commerce and civilisation, touching

later at Fort Pierre Chouteau in the centre of the great Sioux

country, the capital of South Dakota to-day, at Fort Union at the

Yellowstone, where McKenzie lived in state like the Hudson's Bay

magnates at the north, at Fort Benton at the foot of the Great Falls

of the Missouri. Traders from St. Louis laid the foundations of Kansas

City and Topeka, built the first forts at Council Bluffs and Omaha,

pre-empted the future sites of Yankton and Bismarck.

"A boat! a boat!"

For a hundred miles Indian runners brought word.

Barely had the steamer touched the wharf before the solitude became

populous with colour and with sound. Night and day went on the loading

and unloading of furs and merchandise. A touch of the hand, a

farewell,--before the June rise falls, back a hundred miles a day she

snorts to St. Louis with tens of thousands of buffalo robes, buffalo

tongues, and buffalo hides, and carefully wrapped bales of the

choicest furs. The cargoes opened, weighed, recounted, repacked, down

the river the smokestacks go in endless procession on the way to New

York.

Overland on horseback rode Pierre Chouteau to Philadelphia or New

York, to arrange shipments to France and England, and to confer with

John Jacob Astor. Back up from New Orleans came boatloads of furniture

to beautify the homes of St. Louis, bales on bales of copper and

sheet-iron kettles, axes and beaver traps, finger rings, beads,

blankets, bracelets, steel wire and ribbons, the indispensables of the

frontier fur trade.

Sometimes fierce battles were fought up the river, and troops were

dispatched,--for commerce, the civiliser, stops not. The sight of

troops paraded in uniforms, the glare of skyrockets at night, the

explosion of shells and the colours of bunting and banners, the blare

of brass bands and the thunder of artillery, won many a bloodless

victory along the prairies of the West.

But blood flowed, fast and faster, when trapping gave way to Days of

Gold and the pressure of advancing settlement.

The trapper saw no gold. Otter, beaver, mink, and fox filled his

horizon. Into every lonely glen where the beaver built his house, the

trapper came. A million dollars a year was the annual St. Louis trade.

Rival fur companies kept bubbling a tempest in a teapot. They fought

each other, fought the Hudson's Bay Company. West and west passed the

fighting border,--St. Lawrence, Detroit, Mackinaw, Mandan, Montana,

Oregon.

Astor, driven out by the War of 1812, had been superseded on the

Columbia by Dr. John McLoughlin, a Hudson's Bay magnate who combined

in himself the functions of a Chouteau and a Clark. But the story of

McLoughlin is a story by itself.

XIX

_FOUR INDIAN AMBASSADORS_

As the years went by Clark's plant of the Indian Department extended.

In his back row were found the office and Council House, rooms for

visiting Indians, an armory for repairs of Indian guns and

blacksmiths' shops for Indian work, extending from Main Street to the

river.

Daily he sat in his office reading reports from his agents of Indian

occurrences.

Four muskrats or two raccoon skins the Indians paid for a quart of

whiskey.

"Whiskey!" Clark stamped his foot. "A drunken Indian is more to be

dreaded than a tiger in the jungle! An Indian cannot be found among a

thousand who would not, after a first drink, sell his horse, his gun,

or his last blanket for another drink, or even commit a murder to

gratify his passion for spirits. There should be total prohibition."

And the Government made that the law.

"I hear that you have sent liquor into the Indian country," he said to

the officers of the American Fur Company. "Can you refute the charge?"

And the great Company, with Chouteau and Astor at its head, hastened

to explain and extenuate.

There was trouble with Indian agents who insisted on leaving their

posts and coming to St. Louis, troubles with Indians who wanted to see

the President, enough of them to have kept the President for ever busy

with Indian affairs.

The Sacs and the Sioux were fighting again.

"Why not let us fight?" said Black Hawk. "White men fight,--they are

fighting now."

Twice in the month of May, 1830, Sacs and Foxes came down to tell of

their war with the Sioux. "We might sell our Illinois lands and move

west," hinted the Sacs and Foxes. Instantly Clark approved and wrote

to Washington.

"I shall have to go up there and quiet those tribes," said Clark. In

July, 1830, again he set out for Prairie du Chien. Indian runners went

ahead announcing, "The Red Head Chief! the Red Head Chief!"

Seventy-eight Sacs and Foxes crowded into his boats and went up. This

time in earnest, Clark began buying lands, giving thousands of dollars

in annuities, provisions, clothing, lands, stock, agricultural

implements. Many of these Indians came on with him down to St. Louis

to get their presents and pay.

There came a wailing from the Indians of Illinois. "The game is gone.

Naked and hungry, we need help."

"Poor, misguided, and unreflecting savages!" exclaimed the Governor.

"The selfish policy of the traders would keep them in the hunter's

state. The Government would have them settled and self-supporting."

Funds ran out, but Clark on his own credit again and again went ahead

with his work of humanity, moving families, tribes, nations.

Assistance in provisions and stock was constantly called for. The

great western migration of tribes from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, was

sweeping on, the movement of a race. The Peorias were crossing, the

Weas, Piankeshaws, and others forgotten to-day.

"Those miserable bands of Illinois rovers, those wretched nations in

want of clothes and blankets!" Clark wrote to Washington, begging the

Department for help. Their annuities, a thousand dollars a year for

twelve years, had expired.

"Exchange your lands for those in the West," he urged the Indians. To

the Government he recommended an additional annuity to be used in

breaking up, fencing, and preparing those lands for cultivation.

Horses were stolen from the settlers by tens and twenties and fifties,

and cattle killed. The farmers were exasperated.

"Banditti, robbers, thieves, they must get out! The Indians hunt on

our lands, and kill our tame stock. They are a great annoyance."

For two years Governor Edwards had been asking for help.

"The General Government has been applied to long enough to have freed

us from so serious a grievance. If it declines acting with effect, it

will soon learn that these Indians _will_ be removed, and that very

promptly."

Clark himself was personally using every exertion to prevail on the

Indians to move as the best means of preserving tranquillity, and did

all he could without actual coercion. The Indians continued to promise

to go, but they still remained.

"More time," said the Indians. "Another year."

The combustible train was laid,--only a spark was needed, only a move

of hostility, to fire the country. Will Black Hawk apply that spark?

"We cannot go," said the Pottawattamies. "The sale of our lands was

made by a few young men without our consent."

Five hundred Indians determined to hold all the northern part of

Illinois for ever.

Sacs, Foxes, Pottawattamies, sent daily letters and complaints. "Our

Father! our Father! our Father!"--it was a plea and a prayer, and

trouble, trouble, trouble. Black Partridge's letters make one weep.

"Some of my people will be dead before Spring."

Meanwhile agents were ahead surveying lands in that magic West. The

Indians were becoming as interested in migration as the whites had

been; the same causes were pushing them on.

Clark was busily making contracts for saw-mills and corn-mills on the

Platte and Kansas, arranging for means of transportation, for

provisions for use on the way and after they settled, for oxen and

carts and stock,--when one day four strange Indians, worn and

bewildered, arrived at St. Louis, out of that West. Some kind hand

guided them to the Indian office.

That tunic, that bandeau of fox skins,--Clark recalled it as the

tribal dress of a nation beyond the Rocky Mountains. With an

expression of exquisite joy, old Tunnachemootoolt, for it was he, the

Black Eagle, recognised the Red Head of a quarter of a century before.

Clark could scarcely believe that those Indians had travelled on foot

nearly two thousand miles to see him at St. Louis.

As but yesterday came back the memory of Camp Chopunnish among the Nez

Percés of Oregon. Over Tunnachemootoolt's camp the American flag was

flying when they arrived from the Walla Walla.

It did not take long to discover their story. Some winters before an

American trapper (in Oregon tradition reputed to have been Jedediah

Smith), watched the Nez Percés dance around the sun-pole on the

present site of Walla Walla.

"It is not good," said the trapper, "such worship is not acceptable to

the Great Spirit. You should get the white man's Book of Heaven."

Voyageurs and Iroquois trappers from the Jesuit schools of Canada said

the same. Then Ellice, a chief's son, came back from the Red River

country whither the Hudson's Bay Company had sent him to be educated.

From several sources at once they learned that the white men had a

Book that taught of God.

"If this be true it is certainly high time that we had the Book." The

chiefs called a national council. "If our mode of worship is wrong we

must lay it aside. We must know about this. It cannot be put off."

"If we could only find the trail of Lewis and Clark they would tell us

the truth."

"Yes, Lewis and Clark always pointed upward. They must have been

trying to tell us."

So, benighted, bewildered, the Nez Percés talked around their council

fires. Over in the buffalo country Black Eagle's band met the white

traders.

"They come from the land of Lewis and Clark," said the Eagle. "Let us

follow them."

And so, four chiefs were deputed for that wonderful journey, two old

men who had known Lewis and Clark,--Black Eagle and the

Man-of-the-Morning, whose mother was a Flathead,--and two young

men,--Rabbit-Skin-Leggings of the White Bird band on Salmon River,

Black Eagle's brother's son, and No-Horns-On-His-Head, a young brave

of twenty, who was a doubter of the old beliefs.

"They went out by the Lolo trail into the buffalo country of Montana,"

say their descendants still living in Idaho.

One day they reached St. Louis and inquired for the Red Head Chief.

Very well Governor Clark remembered his Nez Percé-Flathead friends.

His silver locks were shaken by roars of laughter at their reminders

of his youth, the bear hunts, the sale of buttons for camas and for

kouse. The hospitality of those chiefs who said, "The horses on these

hills are ours, take what you need," should now be rewarded.

With gratitude and with the winsomeness for which he was noted, he

invited them into his own house and to his own table. Mrs. Clark

devoted herself to their entertainment.

Black Eagle insisted on an early council. "We have heard of the Book.

We have come for the Book."

"What you have heard is true," answered Clark, puzzled and sensible of

his responsibility. Then in simple language, that they might

understand, he related the Bible stories of the Creation, of the

commandments, of the advent of Christ and his crucifixion.

"Yes," answered Clark to their interrogatories, "a teacher shall be

sent with the Book."

Just as change of diet and climate had prostrated Lewis and Clark with

sickness among the Nez Percés twenty-five years before, so now the Nez

Percés fell sick in St. Louis. The Summer was hotter than any they had

known in their cool northland. Dr. Farrar was called. Mrs. Clark herself

brought them water and medicine as they lay burning with fever in the

Council House. They were very grateful for her attentions,--"the

beautiful squaw of the Red Head Chief."

But neither medicine nor nursing could save the aged Black Eagle.

"The most mournful procession I ever saw," said a young woman of that

day, "was when those three Indians followed their dead companion to

the grave."

His name is recorded at the St. Louis cathedral as "Keepeelele, buried

October 31, 1831," a "ne Percé de la tribu des Choponeek, nation

appellée Tête Plate." "Keepeelele," the Nez Percés of to-day say "was

the old man, the Black Eagle." Sometimes they called him the "Speaking

Eagle," as the orator on occasions.

Still the other Indians remained ill.

"I have been sent by my nation to examine lands for removal to the

West," said William Walker, chief of the Wyandots.

William Walker was the son of a white man, stolen as a child from

Kentucky and brought up by the Indians. His mother was also the

descendant of a stolen white girl. Young William, educated at the

Upper Sandusky mission, became a chief.

The semi-Christian Wyandots desired to follow their friends to the

West. Sitting there in the office, transacting business, Governor

Clark spoke of the Flathead Nez Percés.

"I have never seen a Flathead, but have often heard of them," answered

William Walker. Curiosity prompted him to step into the next room.

Small in size, delicately formed, and of exact symmetry except the

flattened head, they lay there parched with fever.

"Their diet at home consists chiefly of vegetables and fish," said the

Governor. "As a nation they have the fewest vices of any tribe on the

continent of America."

November 10, ten days after the burial of Black Eagle, Colonel Audrain

of St. Charles, a member of the Legislature, died also at Governor

Clark's house. His body was conveyed to St. Charles in the first

hearse ever seen there. On December 25, Christmas Day, 1831, Mrs.

Clark herself died after a brief illness.

There was sickness all over St. Louis. Was it a beginning of that

strange new malady that by the next Spring had grown into a devouring

plague,--the dreaded Asiatic cholera?

At the bedside of his dead wife, Governor Clark sat, holding her waxen

hand, with their little six-year-old son, Jefferson, in his lap. "My

child, you have no mother now," said the father with streaming tears.

After the funeral, nothing was recorded in Clark's letter-books for

some days, and when he began again, the handwriting was that of an

aged man.

None mourned this sad event more than the tender-hearted Nez Percés,

who remained until Spring.

When the new steamer _Yellowstone_ of the American Fur Company, set

out for its first great trip up the Missouri, Governor Clark made

arrangements to send the chiefs home to their country. A day later,

the other old Indian, The-Man-of-the-Morning, died and was buried near

St. Charles.

Among other passengers on that steamer were Pierre Chouteau the

younger and George Catlin, the Indian artist, who was setting out to

visit the Mandans.

"You will find the Mandans a strange people and half white," said

Governor Clark to his friend the artist, as he gave him his passport

into the Indian country.

On the way up the river Catlin noticed the two young Nez Percés, and

painted their pictures.

As if pursued by a strange fatality, at the mouth of the Yellowstone

No-Horns-On-His-Head died,--Rabbit-Skin-Leggings alone was left to

carry the word from St. Louis.

Earlier than ever that year the Nez Percés had crossed the snowy

trails of the Bitter Root to the buffalo country in the Yellowstone

and Judith Basin.

"For are not our messengers coming?"

And there, camped with their horses and their lodges, watching,

Rabbit-Skin-Leggings met them and shouted afar off,--"A man shall be

sent with the Book."

Back over the hills and the mountains the message flew,--"A man shall

be sent with the Book."

Every year after that the Nez Percés went over to the east, looking

for the man with the Book.

Nearly a year elapsed before William Walker got back from his

explorations and wrote a public letter giving an account of the Nez

Percés in their search for the Book. His account of meeting them in

General Clark's office, and of the object of their errand, created a

tremendous sensation.

Religious committees called upon General Clark, letters were written,

and to one and all he said, "That was the sole object of their

journey,--to obtain the white man's Book of Heaven."

The call rang like a trumpet summons through the churches. The next

year, 1834, the Methodists sent Jason Lee and three others to Oregon.

Two years later followed Whitman and Spalding and their brides, the

first white women to cross the Rocky Mountains.

"A famine threatens the Upper Missouri," was the news brought back by

that steamer _Yellowstone_ in 1832. "The buffaloes have disappeared!"

The herds, chased so relentlessly on the Missouri, were struggling

through the Bitter Root Mountains, to appear in vast throngs on the

plains of Idaho.

Even Europe read and commented on that wonderful first journey of a

steamer up the Missouri, as later the world hailed the ascent of the

Nile and the Yukon.

It was a great journey. Amazed Indians everywhere had watched the

monster, puffing and snorting, with steam and whistles, and a

continued roar of cannon for half an hour at every fur fort and every

Indian village.

"The thunder canoe!" Redmen fell on the ground and cried to the Great

Spirit. Some shot their dogs and horses as sacrifices.

At last, even the Blackfeet were reached. The British tried to woo

them back to the Saskatchewan at Fort Edmonton, but eventually they

tumbled over one another to trade with the Fire Boat that annually

climbed the Missouri staircase.

XX

_BLACK HAWK_

The Roman faces of Black Hawk and Keokuk were often seen in St. Louis,

where the chiefs came to consult Clark in regard to their country.

"Keokuk signed away my lands," said Black Hawk. He had never been

satisfied with that earliest treaty made while Lewis and Clark were

absent beyond the mountains.

For thirty years Black Hawk had paid friendly visits to Chouteau and

sold him furs. More often he was at Malden consulting his "British

Father." Schooled by Tecumseh, the disloyal Black Hawk was wholly

British.

Fort Armstrong had been built at Rock Island for the protection of the

border. Those whitewashed walls and that tower perched on a high cliff

over the Mississippi reminded the traveller up the Father of Waters

seventy years ago of some romantic castle on the Rhine. And it was

erected for the same reason that were the castles of the Rhine. Not

safe were the traders who went up and down the great river, not safe

were the emigrants seeking entrance to Rock River,--for Black Hawk

watched the land.

The white settlements had already come up to the edge of Black Hawk's

field.

"No power is vested in me to stop the progress of settlements on ceded

lands, and I have no means of inducing the Indians to move but

persuasion, which has little weight with those chiefs who have always

been under British influence," said Clark in 1829.

Again and again Clark wrote to the Secretary of War on this subject.

The policy of moving the tribes westward stirred the wrath of Black

Hawk.

"The Sacs never sold their country!"

But the leader of the "British band" had lost his voice in the

council.

"Who is Black Hawk?" asked General Gaines at Rock Island. "Is he a

chief? By what right does he speak?"

"My father, you ask who is Black Hawk. I will tell you who I am. I am

a Sac. My father was a Sac. I am a warrior. So was my father. Ask

those young men who have followed me to battle and they will tell you

who Black Hawk is. Provoke our people to war and you will learn who

Black Hawk is."

Haughtily gathering up his robes, the chief and his followers stalked

over to Canada for advice. In his absence Keokuk made the final

cession to the United States and prepared to move beyond the

Mississippi. Back like a whirlwind came the Hawk,--

"Sold the Sac village, sold your country!"

"Keokuk," he whispered fiercely in his ear, "give mines, give

everything, but keep our cornfields and our dead."

"Cross the Mississippi," begged Keokuk.

"I will stay by the graves of my fathers," reiterated the stubborn and

romantic Black Hawk.

The Indians left the silver rivers of Illinois, their sugar groves,

and bee trees with regret. No wonder the chief's heart clung to his

native village, among dim old woods of oak and walnut, and orchards of

plum and crab. For generations there had they tilled their Indian

gardens.

From his watchtower on Rock River the old chief scanned the country.

Early in the Spring of 1832 he discovered a scattering train of whites

moving into the beloved retreat.

"Quick, let us plant once more our cornfields."

In a body Black Hawk and his British band with their women and

children came pulling up Rock River in their canoes. The whites were

terrified.

"Black Hawk has invaded Illinois," was the word sent by Governor

Reynolds to Clark at St. Louis. Troops moved out from Jefferson

Barracks.

"Go," said Governor Clark to Felix St. Vrain, his Sac interpreter.

"Warn Black Hawk to withdraw across the Mississippi."

St. Vrain sped away,--to be shot delivering his message. Then

followed the war, the flight and chase and battle of Bad Axe, and the

capture of Black Hawk. Wabasha's Sioux fell upon the last fleeing

remnant, so that few of Black Hawk's band were left to tell the tale.

"Farewell, my nation!" the old chief cried. "Black Hawk tried to save

you and avenge your wrongs. He drank the blood of some of the whites.

He has been taken prisoner and his plans are stopped. He can do no

more. He is near his end. His sun is setting and he will rise no more.

Farewell to Black Hawk."

In chains Black Hawk and his prophet, Wabokeskiek, were brought by

Jefferson Davis to St. Louis. As his steamboat passed Rock Island, his

old home, Black Hawk wept like a child.

"It was our garden," he said, "such as the white people have near

their villages. I spent many happy days on this island. A good spirit

dwelt in a cave of rocks where your fort now stands. The noise of the

guns has driven him away."

It hurt Clark to see his old friend dragging a ball and chain at

Jefferson Barracks. He seldom went there. But the little Kennerly

children carried him presents and kinnikinick for his pipe.

There were guests at the house of Clark,--Maximilian, Prince of Wied,

and his artist,--when early in April of 1833 a deputation of Sacs and

Foxes headed by Keokuk came down in long double canoes to intercede

for Black Hawk, and with them, haggard and worn from long wanderings,

came Singing Bird, the wife of Black Hawk.

With scientific interest Maximilian looked at them, dressed in red,

white, and green blankets, with shaven heads except a tuft behind,

long and straight and black with a braided deer's tail at the end.

They were typical savages with prominent noses and eagle plumes,

wampum shells like tassels in their ears, and lances of sword-blades

fastened to poles in their hands.

"This is a great Chief from over the Big Water, come to see you," said

Clark introducing the Prince.

"Hah!" said the Indians, giving the Prince the right hand of

friendship and scanning him steadily.

Bodmer, the artist, brought out his palette. Keokuk in green blanket,

with a medal on his heart and a long calumet ornamented with eagle

feathers in his hand, was ready to pose.

"Hah!" laughed the Indians as stroke by stroke they saw their chief

stand forth on canvas, even to the brass necklace and bracelets on

throat and wrists. "Great Medicine!"

"I have chartered the _Warrior_ to go down to Jefferson Barracks,"

said Clark.

Striking their hands to their mouths, the Indians gave the war whoop,

and stepped on board the "big fire canoe." Intent, each animated,

fiery, dark-brown eye watched the engine hissing and roaring down to

the Barracks.

"If you will keep a watchful eye on Black Hawk I will intercede for

him," said Clark.

"I will watch him," promised Keokuk.

Clark left them for a moment, and then led in a little old man of

seventy years, with gray hair, light yellow face, and a curved Roman

nose.

It was an affecting sight when Keokuk stepped forward to embrace Black

Hawk. Keokuk, subtle, dignified, in splendid array of deer-skin and

bear-claws, grasped the hand of his fallen rival. Poor dethroned old

Black Hawk! In a plain suit of buckskin and a string of wampum in his

ears, he stood alone, fanning himself with the tail of a black hawk.

Keokuk tried to get him released. Often had he visited Clark on that

errand, but no,--Black Hawk was summoned to Washington and went.

Antoine Le Claire, son of old Antoine, was his interpreter.

Released, presently, he made a triumphal tour home, applauded by

thousands along the route, even as Lafayette had been a few years

before. Not so the Roman conquerors treated their captives! But Black

Hawk came home to Keokuk to die.

The defeat of Black Hawk opened Iowa to settlement, and a day later

prairie schooners overran the Black Hawk Purchase.

On the staff of General Atkinson when he marched out of Jefferson

Barracks for the Black Hawk War, was Meriwether Lewis Clark, now a

graduate of West Point, and his cousin Robert Anderson, grandson of

Clark's sister Eliza.

In the hurry and the heat of the march one day, Lieutenant Clark,

riding from the rear back to the General, became enclosed by the

troops of cavalry and had to ride slowly. By his side on a small horse

he noticed a long-legged, dark-skinned soldier, with black hair

hanging in clusters around his neck, a volunteer private. Admiringly

the private gazed at Clark's fine new uniform and splendidly accoutred

horse, a noble animal provided by his father at St. Louis.

Young Clark spoke to the soldier of awkward and unprepossessing

appearance, whose witticisms and gift for stories kept his comrades in

a state of merriment. He proved very inquisitive.

"The son of Governor Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition, did you

say?"

"Yes."

"And related to all those great people?"

"Yes," with a laugh.

They chatted until the ranks began to thin.

"I must ride on," but feeling an interest in the lank, long-haired

soldier, Lieutenant Clark turned again,--

"Where are you from and to what troop do you belong?"

"I am an Illinois volunteer."

"Well, now, tell me your name, and I will bid you good bye."

"My name is Abraham Lincoln, and I have not a relation in the world."

The next time they met, Meriwether Lewis Clark was marching through

the streets of Washington City with other prisoners in Lee's

surrendered army. And the President on the White House steps was

Abraham Lincoln. The cousin of Meriwether Lewis Clark, Robert

Anderson, hero of Fort Sumter, stood by Lincoln's side, with tears in

his eyes.

Weeks before, when the land was ringing with his valour, the

President had congratulated him and asked, "Do you remember me?"

"No, I never met you before."

"Yes," answered the President, "you are the officer that swore me in

as a volunteer private in the Black Hawk War."

The next day the assassin's bullet laid low the martyred Lincoln; none

mourned him more than Meriwether Lewis Clark, for in that President he

had known a friend.

XXI

_A GREAT LIFE ENDS_

"Ruskosky, man, you tie my queue so tight I cannot shut my eyes!"

With both hands up to his head Governor Clark rallied his Polish

attendant, who of all things was particular about his friend's

appearance. For Ruskosky never considered himself a servant, nor did

Clark. Ruskosky was an old soldier of Pulaski, a great swordsman, a

gentleman, of courtly address and well educated, the constant

companion of Governor Clark after the death of York.

"Come, let us walk, Ruskosky."

A narrow black ribbon was tied to the queue, the long black cloth

cloak was brushed and the high broad-brim hat adjusted, the sword cane

with buckhorn handle and rapier blade was grasped, and out they

started.

Children stared at the ancient queue and small clothes. The oldest

American in St. Louis, Governor Clark had come to be regarded as a

"gentleman of the old school." A sort of halo hung around his

adventures. Beloved, honoured, trusted, revered, his prominent nose

and firm-set lips, his thin complexion in which the colour came and

went, seemed somehow to belong to the Revolution. He was locally

regarded as a great literary man, for had not the journals of his

expedition been given to the world?

And now, too, delvers in historic lore began to realise what George

Rogers Clark had done. Eighteen different authors desired to write his

life, among them Madison, Chief Justice Marshall, and Washington

Irving. But the facts could not be found. Irving sent his nephew to

inquire of Governor Clark at St. Louis. But the papers were scattered,

to be collected only by the industry of historical students later.

"Governor Clark is a fine soldier-like looking man, tall and thin,"

Irving's nephew reported to his uncle. "His hair is white, but he

seems to be as hardy and vigorous as ever, and speaks of his exposures

and hardships with a zest that shows that the spirit of the old

explorer is not quenched."

Children danced on an old carriage in the orchard.

"Uncle Clark, when did you first have this carriage? When was it new?"

The chivalrous and romantic friendship of his youth came back to the

Governor, and his eyes filled with tears.

"Children, that carriage belonged to Meriwether Lewis. In the

settlement of his estate, I bought it. Many a time have we ridden in

it together. That is the carriage that met Judy Hancock when she

landed at St. Louis, the first American bride, a quarter of a century

ago. Many a vicissitude has it encountered since, in journeyings

through woods and prairies. It is old now, but it has a history."

In his later years Governor Clark travelled, made a tour of the Lakes,

and visited New York, Boston, Buffalo, Cleveland, Sandusky, and

Detroit.

"Hull?" said Clark at Detroit. "He was not a coward, but afraid for

the people's sake of the cruelty of the Indians."

One day Governor Clark came ashore from a steamer on the Ohio and

stood at the mouth of the Hockhocking where Dunmore had his camp in

1774. The battle of Point Pleasant? that was ancient history. Most of

the residents in that region had never heard of it, and looked upon

the old gentleman in a queue as a relic of the mound-builders.

With wide-eyed wonder they listened again to the story of that day

when civilisation set its first milestone beyond the Alleghanies.

When the thundering cannon in 1837 announced the return of a fur

convoy from the Yellowstone, Governor Clark expected a messenger.

"They haf put the sand over him," explained a Frenchman. "Yes, he is

dead and buried."

"And my Mandan?"

"There are no more Mandans."

Clark looked at the trader in surprise.

"Small-pox."

The cheek of the Red Head paled.

Small-pox! In 1800 it swept from Omaha to Clatsop leaving a trail of

bones. Thirty years later ten thousand Pawnees, Otoes, and Missouris

perished. And now, despite all precautions, it had broken out on the

upper Missouri.

In six weeks the wigwams of the Mandans were desolate. Out of sixteen

hundred souls but thirty-one remained. Arikara, Minnetaree, Ponca,

Assiniboine, sank before the contagion. The Sioux survived only

because they lived not in fixed villages and were roaming

uncontaminated.

Blackfeet along the Marias left their lodges standing with the dead in

them, and never returned. The Crows abandoned their stricken ones, and

fled to the mountains. Across the border beseeching Indians carried

the havoc to Hudson's Bay, to Athabasca, and the Yukon. Over half a

continent terrified tribes burnt their towns, slaughtered their

families, pierced their own hearts or flung themselves from

precipices.

Redmen yet unstricken poured into St. Louis imploring the white man's

magic. Clark engaged physicians. Day after day vaccinating,

vaccinating, they sat in their offices, saving the life of hundreds.

He sent out agents with vaccine to visit the tribes, but the

superstitious savages gathered up their baggage and scattered,----

"White men have come with small-pox in a bottle."

With this last great shock, the decimation of the tribes, upon him,

Clark visibly declined.

"My children," he said to his sons, "I want to sleep in sight and

sound of the Mississippi."

When the summons came, September 1, 1838, in the sixty-eighth year of

his age, Meriwether Lewis Clark and his wife were with him, the

deputy, James Kennerly and his wife, Elise, and old Ruskosky,

inconsolable.

With great pomp and solemnity his funeral was celebrated, as had been

that of his brother at Louisville twenty years before. Both were

buried as soldiers, with minute guns and honours of war. In sight of

the Ohio, George Rogers Clark sleeps, and below the grave of William

Clark sweeps the Mississippi, roaring, swirling, bearing the

life-blood of the land they were the first to explore.

The Sacs, with Keokuk at their head, marched in the long funeral train

of their Red Head Father and wept genuine tears of desolation. No

more, dressed in their best, did the Indians sing and dance through

the streets of St. Louis, receiving gifts from door to door. The

friend of the redmen was dead. St. Louis ceased to be the Mecca of

their pilgrimages; no more their gala costumes enlivened the market;

they disappeared.

For more than forty years William Clark had been identified with St.

Louis,--had become a part of its history and of the West.

October 3, 1838, a few days after Clark, Black Hawk, too, breathed his

last in his lodge, and was buried like the Sac chieftains of old,

sitting upright, in the uniform given him by President Jackson, with

his hand resting on the cane presented by Henry Clay.

He, too, said, "I like to look upon the Mississippi. I have looked

upon it from a child. I love that beautiful river. My home has always

been upon its banks." And there they buried him. Every day at sunset

travellers along that road heard the weird heart-broken wail of

Singing Bird, the widow of Black Hawk.

XXII

_THE NEW WEST_

Four years after the death of Governor Clark began the rush to Oregon.

Dr. Lewis F. Linn, Senator from Missouri, and grandson of William

Linn, the trusted lieutenant of George Rogers Clark, introduced a bill

in Congress offering six hundred and forty acres of land to every

family that would emigrate to Oregon. The Linns came to Missouri with

Daniel Boone, and with the Boones they looked ever west! west!

"Six hundred and forty acres of land! A solid square mile of God's

earth, clear down to the centre!" men exclaimed in amaze. While Ohio

was still new, and the Mississippi Valley billowed her carpets of

untrodden bloom, an eagle's flight beyond, civilisation leaped to

Oregon.

From ferries where Kansas City and Omaha now stand they started,

crossing the Platte by fords, by waggon-beds lashed together, and on

rafts, darkening the stream for days. Before their buffalo hunters,

innumerable herds made the earth tremble where Kansas-Nebraska cities

are to-day. In 1843 Marcus Whitman piloted the first waggon train

through to the Columbia.

"A thousand people? Starving did you say? Lord! Lord! They must have

help to-night," exclaimed Dr. McLoughlin, the old white-haired

Hudson's Bay trader at Fort Vancouver.

"Man the boats! People are starving at the Dalles!" and the

noble-hearted representative of a rival government sent out his

provision-laden bateaux to rescue the perishing Americans, who in

spite of storms and tempests were gliding down the great Columbia as

sixty years before their fathers floated down the Indian-haunted

Ohio.

And Indians were here, with tomahawks ready.

"Let us kill these Bostons!"

McLoughlin heard the word, and shook the speaker as a terrier shakes a

rat.

"Dogs, you shall be punished!"

In his anxiety lest harm should come to the approaching Americans, all

night long, his white hair wet in the rain, Dr. McLoughlin stood

watching the boats coming down the Columbia, and building great

bonfires where Lewis and Clark had camped in 1806. Women and little

children and new-born babes slept in the British fur-trader's fort.

Anglo-Saxon greeted Anglo-Saxon in the conquest of the world, to march

henceforward hand in hand for ever.

Among the emigrants on the plains in 1846, was Alphonso Boone, the son

of Jesse, the son of Daniel. Several grown-up Boone boys were there,

and the beautiful Chloe and her younger sisters.

Chloe Boone rode a thorough-bred mare, a descendant of the choicest

Boone stock, from the old Kentucky blue-grass region. Mounted upon her

high-stepping mare, Chloe and her sisters and other young people of

the train rode on ahead of the slow-going line of waggons and oxen.

Gay was the laughter, and merry the songs, that rang out on the bright

morning air.

Francis Parkman, the great historian, then a young man just out of

college, was on the plains that year, collecting material for his

books. Now and then they met parties of soldiers going to the Mexican

War, and many a boy in blue turned to catch a glimpse of the sweet

girl faces in Chloe's train.

Happily they rode in the Spring on the plains; more slowly when the

heats of Summer came and the sides of the Rocky Mountains grew steep

and rough; and slower still in the parched lands beyond, when the

woodwork of the waggons began to shrink, and the worn-out animals to

faint and fall.

"So long a journey!" said Chloe. Six months it took. Clothes wore out,

babes were born, and people died.

They came into Oregon by the southern route, guided by Daniel Boone's

old compass, the one given him by Dunmore to bring in the surveyors

from the Falls of the Ohio seventy-two years before.

The Fall rains had set in. The Umpqua River was swollen,--eighteen

times from bank to bank Chloe forded, in getting down Umpqua canyon.

"We shall have to leave the waggons and heavy baggage with a guard,"

said Colonel Boone, "and hurry on to the settlements."

They reached the Willamette Valley, pitched their tents where

Corvallis now stands, and that Winter, in a little log cabin, Chloe

Boone taught the first school ever conducted by a woman outside of the

missions in Oregon.

Leaving the girls, Colonel Boone went back after the waggons. Alas!

the guard was killed, the camp was looted, and Daniel Boone's old

compass was gone for ever. Its work was done.

Alphonso Boone built a mansion near the present capital city of Salem

and here Chloe married the Governor, George L. Curry, and for years

beside the old Boone fireside the Governor's wife extended the

hospitalities of the rising State. Albert Gallatin Boone camped on the

site of Denver twenty years before Denver was, and negotiated the sale

of Colorado from the Indians to the United States. John C. Boone, son

of Nathan Boone, explored a new cut-off and became a pioneer of

California. James Madison Boone drove stakes in Texas.

What years had passed since the expedition of Lewis and Clark! It

seemed like a bygone event, but one who had shared its fortunes still

lived on and on,--our old friend, Patrick Gass. In the War of 1812,

above the roaring Falls of Niagara, Sergeant Gass spiked the enemy's

cannon at the battle of Lundy's Lane. Years went on. A plain

unpretentious citizen, Patrick worked at his trade in Wellsburg and

raised his family.

In 1856 Patrick Gass headed a delegation of gray-haired veterans of

the War of 1812 to Washington, and was everywhere lionised as the last

of the men of Lewis and Clark.

On July 4, 1861, the land was aflame over the firing on Fort Sumter.

All Wellsburg with her newly enlisted regiments for the war was

gathered at Apple Pie Ridge to celebrate the day.

"Where is Patrick Gass?"

A grand carriage was sent for him, and on the shoulders of the boys in

blue he was brought in triumph to the platform.

"Speech! speech!"

And the speech of his life Patrick Gass made that day, for his country

and the Union. The simple, honest old hero brought tears to every eye,

with a glimpse of the splendid drama of Lewis and Clark. Again they

saw those early soldier-boys bearing the flag across the Rockies,

suffering starvation and danger and almost death, to carry their

country to the sea.

"But me byes, it's not a picnic ye're goin' to,--oh, far from it! No!

no! 'T will be hard fur ye when ye come marchin' back lavin' yer

comrades lyin' far from home and friends, but there is One to look to,

who has made and kept our country."

It seemed the applause would never cease, with cheering and firing of

cannon.

"Stay! stay!" cried the people. "Sit up on the table and let us have

our banquet around you with the big flag floating over your head." In

an instant Pat was down.

"Far enough is far enough!" he cried, "and be the divil, will yez try

to make sport of mesilf?" Excitedly the modest old soldier slipped

away.

The war ended. A railroad crossed the plains. Oregon and California

were States. Alaska was bought. Still Pat lived on, until 1870, when

he fell asleep, at the age of ninety-nine, the last of the heroic band

of Lewis and Clark.

William Walker, who gave to the world the story of the Nez Percés, led

his Wyandots into Kansas, and, with the first white settlers,

organising a Provisional Government after the plan of Oregon, became

himself the first Governor of Kansas-Nebraska.

Oh, Little Crow! Little Crow! what crimes were committed in thy name!

In the midst of the war, 1862, Little Crow the third arose against the

white settlers of Minnesota in one of the most frightful massacres

recorded in history. Then came Sibley's expedition sweeping on west,

opening the Dakotas and Montana.

The Indian? He fought and was vanquished. How we are beginning to love

our Indians, now that we fear them no longer! No wild man ever so

captured the imagination of the world. With inherent nobility, courage

to the border of destruction, patriotism to the death, absolutely

refusing to be enslaved, he stands out the most perfect picture of

primeval man. We might have tamed him but we had not time. The

movement was too swift, the pressure behind made the white men drivers

as the Indians had driven before. Civilisation demands repose, safety.

And until repose and safety came we could do no effective work for the

Indian. We of to-day have lived the longest lives, for we have seen a

continent transformed.

We have forgotten that a hundred years ago Briton and Spaniard and

Frenchman were hammering at our gates; forgotten that the Indian

beleaguered our wooden castles; forgotten that wolves drummed with

their paws on our cabin doors, snapping their teeth like steel traps,

while the mother hushed the wheel within and children crouched beneath

the floor.

O mothers of a mighty past, thy sons are with us yet, fighting new

battles, planning new conquests, for law, order, and justice.

Where rolls the Columbia and where the snow-peaks of Hood, Adams,

Jefferson, Rainier, and St. Helens look down, a metropolis has arisen

in the very Multnomah where Clark took his last soundings. Northward,

Seattle sits on her Puget sea, southward San Francisco smiles from her

golden gate, Spanish no more. Over the route where Lewis and Clark

toiled slowly a hundred years ago, lo! in three days the traveller

sits beside the sunset. Five transcontinental lines bear the rushing

armies westward, ever westward into the sea. Bewildered a moment they

pause, then turn--to the Conquest of the Poles and the Tropics. The

frontiersman? He is building Nome City under the Arctic: he is hewing

the forests of the Philippines.

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have

been preserved.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.