The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark
III
_RECRUITING FOR OREGON_
"Now that I have accepted President Jefferson's proposal to beassociated with Captain Lewis in this expedition, it will oblige me toaccept brother Jonathan's offer of ten thousand dollars cash forMulberry Hill," William Clark was saying at Louisville. "That willhelp out brother George on his military debts, satisfy his claimants,and save him from ruin."
At the time of sale the old home was occupied by General Clark andWilliam Clark, and their sister Fanny and her children. The departureof William for the Pacific broke up and dispersed the happy family.
The General went back to the Point of Rock, fifty feet above thedashing Ohio. That water was the lowest ever known now, men could walkacross on the rocks. Three or four locust trees shaded the cabin, nowpainted white, and an orchard of peach and cherry blossomed below.Negro Ben and his wife Venus, and Carson and Cupid, lived back of thehouse and cultivated a few acres of grain and garden.
All of Clark's old soldiers remained loyal and visited the Point ofRock, and every year an encampment of braves, Indian chiefs whom hehad subdued, came for advice and to partake of his hospitality.
Grand and lonely, prematurely aged at fifty-one when he should havebeen in his prime, General Clark sat overlooking the Falls whenCaptain Lewis pulled his bateaux into the Bear Grass.
Captain Clark and nine young men of Kentucky were waiting for theboat,--William Bratton, a blacksmith, formerly of Virginia, and JohnShields, gunsmith, the Tubal Cain of the expedition, John Coalter, whohad been a ranger with Kenton, the famous Shields brothers, Reuben andJames, William Warner and Joseph Whitehouse, all experts with therifle, Charles Floyd, son of that Charles Floyd that rode with hisbrother from the death-stroke of Big Foot, and Nathaniel Pryor, hiscousin.
Twenty years had passed since that fatal April morning when John Floydwas laid a corpse at the feet of Jane Buchanan. That posthumous child,ushered so sadly into the world, John Floyd the younger, now ahandsome youth, was eager to go with his cousins--but an unexpectedillness held him back--to become a member of Congress and Governor ofVirginia.
And York, of course York. Had he not from childhood obeyed JohnClark's command, "Look after your young master"? With highest elationYork assisted in the preparation, furbished up his gun, and preparedto "slay dem buffaloes."
"An interpreter is my problem now," said Captain Lewis, "a manfamiliar with Indians, trustworthy, and skilled in tongues."
"I think my brother will know the man,--he has had wide experience inthat line," said William; and so down to the Point of Rock theCaptains betook themselves to visit George Rogers Clark.
"Dignity sat still upon his countenance and the commanding look ofWashington," wrote a chronicler of that day.
"An interpreter?" mused General Clark. Then turning to his brother,"Do you remember Pierre Drouillard, the Frenchman that saved Kenton?He was a man of tact and influence with the Indians, and, although hewore the red coat, a man of humanity. He interpreted for me at FortMcIntosh and at the Great Miami. He comes with Buckongahelas."
William Clark remembered.
"That old Frenchman has a son, George, chip of the old block, broughtup with the Indians and educated at a mission. He is your man,--at St.Louis, I think."
"Always demand of the Indians what you want, William, that is thesecret. Never let them think you fear them. Great things have beeneffected by a few men well conducted. Who knows what fortune may dofor you?" It was the self-same saying with which twenty-four yearsbefore he had started to Vincennes. "Here are letters to some of myold friends at St. Louis and Kaskaskia," added the General.
All the negroes were out to weep over York, whom they feared to see nomore,--old York and Rose, Nancy and Julia, Jane, Cupid and Harry, fromthe scattered home at Mulberry Hill.
General Jonathan Clark and Major Croghan were there, the richest menin Kentucky, and General Jonathan's daughters who stitched theirsamplers now at Mulberry Hill; and Lucy, from Locust Grove, the imageof William, "with face almost too strong for a woman," some said. Allthe city knew her, a miracle of benevolence and duty, and by her sidethe little son, George Croghan, destined to hand on the renown of hisfathers.
William Clark's last word was for Fanny, a widow with children. "It ismy desire that she should stay with Lucy at Locust Grove until myreturn," said the paternal brother, kissing her pale cheek.
"And I want Johnny with me at the Point of Rock," added the lonelyGeneral, who, if he loved any one, it was little John O'Fallon, theson of his sister Fanny.
"Bring on your plunder!"
The Kentuckians could be recognised by their call as they helped thebateaux over the rapids and launched them below. George Rogers Clarkstood on the Point of Rock, waving a last farewell, watching them downthe river.
While Captain Clark went on down the Ohio, and engaged a few men atFort Massac, Captain Lewis followed the old Vincennes "trace" toKaskaskia.
In that very September, Sergeant John Ordway, in Russell Bissell'scompany, was writing home to New Hampshire:
"Kaskaskia is a very old town of about two hundred houses and ruins ofmany more. We lie on the hill in sight of the town, and have built agarrison here.--If Betty Crosby will wait for my return I may perhapsjoin hands with her yet. We have a company of troops from Portsmouth,New Hampshire, here."
Captain Lewis came up to the garrison. Out of twenty volunteers onlythree possessed the requisite qualifications. But Sergeant Ordway wasone, Robert Frazer of Vermont, another, and Thomas P. Howard, ofMassachusetts, the third.
Oppressed and anxious in mind over the difficulty of finding suitablemen, Captain Lewis was one morning riding along when into the highroad there ran out a short, strong, compact, broad-chested andheavy-limbed man, lean, sprightly, and quick of motion, in the dressof a soldier. His lively eye instantly caught that of Captain Lewis.Perceiving that the soldier was evidently bent on seeing him, Lewischecked his horse and paused.
With military salute the man began: "Me name is Patrick Gass, sorr,and I want to go with you to the Stony Mountings, but my Commander,sorr, here at the barracks, will not consint. He siz, siz he, 'You aretoo good a carpenter, Pat, and I need you here.'"
His build, his manner, and the fact that Pat was a soldier and acarpenter, was enough. Men must be had, and here was a droll one, thepredestined wit of the expedition.
"I knew you, sorr, when I saw your horse ferninst the trees. Irecognised a gintleman and an officer. I saw you whin I met GineralWashington at Carlisle out with throops to suppriss the WhiskeyRebillion. I met Gineral Washington that day, and I sid, siz I,'Gineral, I'm a pathriot mesilf and I'll niver risist me gover'm'nt,but I love ould Bourbon too well to inlist agin the whiskey byes.'"
"And have you never served in the field?" roared Lewis, almostimpatient.
"Ah, yis; whin Adams was Prisident, I threw down me jackplane andinlisted under Gineral Alexander Hamilton, but there was no war, sothin I inlisted under Major Cass."
Patrick glanced back and saw his Captain. "Hist ye! shoulder-sthrapsare comin'!"
Lewis laughed. "Go and get ready, Patrick; I'll settle with yourCaptain." And Patrick, bent on a new "inlistment" and new adventures,hied him away to pack his belongings. For days in dreams he wasalready navigating the Missouri, already he saw the blue Pacific. Ashe told the boys afterward, "And I, siz I to mesilf, 'Patrick, let usto the Pecific!' Me Captain objicted, but I found out where CaptainLewis was sthopping and sthole away and inlisted annyhow."
Captain Lewis had made no mistake. Patrick Gass, cheerful, ever brave,was a typical frontiersman. His had been a life of constant roving.Starting from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, when he was five years old,the family crossed the Alleghanies on packhorses. On the first horsewas the mother, with the baby and all the table furniture and cookingutensils; on another were packed the provisions, the plough-irons andfarming utensils; the third was rigged with a packsaddle and two largecradles of hickory withes. In the centre of these sat little Pat onone side and his sister on the othe
r, well laced in with bed-clothesso that only their heads stuck out.
Along the edges of precipices they went,--if a horse stumbled he wouldhave thrown them hundreds of feet below. On these horses they fordedmountain streams, swollen with melting snows and spring rains. Dailywere hairbreadth escapes, the horses falling, or carried down with thecurrent and the family barely snatched from drowning.
The journey was made in April when the nights were cold and the mothercould not sleep. There was so much to do for the children. As thetireless father kept guard under the glow of the campfire, littlePatrick's unfailing good-night was, "Hist, child! the Injuns will comeand take you to Detroit!"
There were several of these moves in his childhood. Here and there hecaught glimpses of well-housed, well-fed hirelings of the British armywatching like eagles the land of the patriot army. At last they turnedup at what is now Wellsburg in West Virginia. While yet a boy Gass wasapprenticed to a carpenter and worked on a house for a man by the nameof Buchanan, while around him played "little Jimmy," thepresident-to-be. "Little Jimmy was like his mother," said Gass.
In December Lewis and Clark dropped down before the white-washed wallsand gray stone parapets of the old French town of St. Louis. Withfierce consequential air a Spanish soldier flourished his swordindicating the place to land.
"We will spend the winter at Charette, the farthest point ofsettlement." That was the town of Daniel Boone.
But the Governor, Don Carlos De Hault De Lassus, barred the way.
"By the general policy of my government I am obliged to preventstrangers from passing through Spanish territory until I have receivedofficial notice of its transfer."
Nothing could be done but to go into winter camp opposite the mouth ofthe Missouri, just outside of his jurisdiction, and discipline themen, making ready for an early spring start.
Beyond the big river was foreign land. Did the Spaniard still hope tostay?