XVI
_THE RED HEAD CHIEF_
"Hasten, Ruskosky, rebraid my queue. Kings and half kings are in thereas plenty as blackberries in the woods, and I must see what is thematter."
Hurriedly the Polish valet, who dressed Clark in his later years,knelt to button the knees of his small clothes and fasten on a bigsilk bow in place of a buckle. Directly the tall figure wrapped in acloak entered the council chamber connected with his study.
The walls of the council chamber were covered with portraits ofdistinguished chiefs, and with Indian arms and dresses, the handsomestthe West afforded. Nothing pleased the redmen better than to behonoured by the acceptance of some treasure for this museum.
Against this wall the Indians sat, and the little gray-hairedinterpreter, Antony Le Claire, lit the tomahawk pipe. As the fumesrolled upward the Red Head Chief took his seat at the table beforehim. The Indians lifted their heads. Justice would now be done.
It was a sultry day and the council doors were open. But sultrierstill was the debate within.
"Our Father," said the Great and Little Osages, "we have come to meetour enemies, the Delawares and Shawnees and Kickapoos and Peorias, inyour 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 thedebate, 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 ourfields of corn and cut up our gardens," cried the angry Shawnees, whoalways 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, Icannot have you injured. The Delawares are my children, and theOsages, the Shawnees, the Kickapoos, and the Peorias. I cannot permitany one to injure my children. Whoever does that is no longer child ofmine. You must bury the sharp hatchet underground."
He calmed the heated tribes and effected peace. Like little childrenthey gave each other strings of beads, pipes, and tobacco, anddeparted reconciled.
"Bring all your difficulties to me or to Paul Louise and we will judgefor you," said the Red Head Chief, as one by one they filed in plumedarray down the steps of the Council House.
Scarce had the reconciled tribes departed before officers of the lawbrought in seven chiefs, hostages of the Iowas,--"Accused by the Sacs,Your Honour, of killing cattle; accused by the whites of killingsettlers."
"My father." The mournful appealing tone of the Indian speaker alwaysaffected Clark. He was singularly fitted to be their judge andfriend. "My son." There was an air of sympathy and paternal kindnessas the Red Head Chief listened. His heart was stirred by their wrongs,and his face would redden with indignation as he listened to thepitiful tales of his children.
With bodies uncovered to the waist, with blanket on the left arm andthe right arm and breast bare, a chief stepped forth to be examinedconcerning a border fray with the backwoodsmen.
Drawing himself to his full height, and extending his arm towardClark, the Iowa began:
"Red Head, if I had done that of which my white brother accuses me, Iwould not stand here now. The words of my red head father have passedthrough both my ears and I have remembered them. I am accused. I amnot guilty.
"I thought I would come down to see my red head father to hold a talkwith him.
"I come across the line. I see the cattle of my white brother dead. Isee the Sauk kill them in great numbers. I said there would betrouble. I thought to go to my village. I find I have no provisions. Isay, 'Let us go down to our white brother and trade for a little.' Ido 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, 'TheIoway has killed your cattle.'
"When the lie has talked thus to my white brother, he comes up to myvillage. We hear our white brother coming. We are glad and leave ourcabins to tell him he is welcome. While I shake hands with my whitebrother, my white brother shoots my best chief through thehead,--shoots three my young men, a squaw, and her children.
"My young men hear, they rush out, they fire,--four of my whitebrothers fall. My people fly to the woods, and die of cold andhunger."
Dropping his head and his arm, in tragic attitude he stands, thepicture of despair. The lip of the savage quivers. He lifts hiseyes,--
"While I shake hands my white brother shoots my chief, my son, my onlyson."
Only by consummate tact can Clark handle these distressing conflictsof the border. Who is right and who is wrong? The settlers hate theIndians, the Indians dread and fear the settlers.
"Governor Clark," said the Shawnees and Delawares, "since three orfour years we are crowded by the whites who steal our horses. Wemoved. 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 lithebodies, the tigers of their kind, shaken by irrepressible emotion.
And again in the Autumn,--
"What is it?" inquired the stranger as pennons came glittering downthe Missouri.
"Oh, nothing, only another lot of Indians coming down to see theirred-headed daddy," was the irreverent response, as the solemn,calm-featured braves glided into view, gazing as only savages can gazeat the wonders of civilisation.
"What! going to war?" cried Clark, in a tone of thunder, as they madeknown their errand at the Council House. "Your Great Father, thePresident, forbids it. He counsels his children to live in peace. Ifyou insist on listening to bad men I shall come out there and make youdesist."
The stormy excitement subsided. They shrank from his reproofs, andfelt and feared his power.
"Go home. Take these gifts to my children, and tell them they weresent by the Red Head Chief."
Viewed with admiration, the presents were carefully wrapped in skinsto be laid away and treasured on many a weary march and through many asad vicissitude. A few days in St. Louis, then away go the willowycopper-skin paddlers to dissuade their braves from incurring theawful displeasure of the Red Head Chief. The West of that day was sownwith his medals that disappeared only with the tribes.
In time they came to know Clark's signature, and preserved it as asacred talisman. Could the influence of one man have availed againstarmies of westward pressing trappers, traders, and pioneers, thetribes would have been civilised.
"Shall we accept the missionaries? Shall we hearken to theirteaching?"
"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 Percesbeyond the Rocky Mountains.
In days of friction and excitement Clark did more than regiments topreserve peace on the frontier. He was a buffer, a perpetualbreak-water between the conflicting races.
As United States superintendent of Indian affairs the Red Head Chiefgrew venerable. The stately old officer lived in style in St. Louis,and as in the colonial time Sir William Johnson ruled from theAtlantic to the Mississippi, so now Clark's word was Indian law fromthe Mississippi to the Pacific. His voice was raised in continualadvantage to the Indian. While civilisatio
n was pushing west and west,and crowding them out of their old domains, he was softening as muchas possible the rigour of their contact with whites.
"Our position with regard to the Indians has entirely changed," heused to say. "Before Wayne's campaigns in 1794 and events of 1818, thetribes 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. Whilestrong and hostile, it has been our obvious duty to weaken them; nowthat they are weak and harmless, and most of their lands fallen intoour hands, justice and humanity require us to cherish and befriendthem. To teach them to live in houses, to raise grain and stock, toplant orchards, to set up landmarks, to divide their possessions, toestablish laws for their government, to get the rudiments of commonlearning, such as reading, writing, and ciphering, are the first stepstoward improving their condition."
This was the policy of Jefferson, reaffirmed by Clark. It was the keyto 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 removedwest 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 themwith provisions and ammunition. A constant tide is now going on fromOhio, Indiana, Illinois. They cross at St. Louis and St. Genevieve,and my accounts show the aid which is given them. Many leading chiefsare zealous in this work, and are labouring hard to collect theirdispersed 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 atemporary supply of game.
"It is in vain for us to talk about learning and religion; theseIndians want food. The Sioux, the Osages, are powerful tribes,--theyare near our border, and my official station enables me to know theexact truth. They are distressed by famine; many die for want of food;the living child is buried with the dead mother because no one canspare it food through its helpless infancy.
"Grain, stock, fences are the first things. Property alone can keep upthe 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 hunterand before he gets the means of living from flocks and agriculture. Inthe transit from a hunter to a farmer, he degenerates from a proud andindependent savage to a beggar, drunkard, thief. To counteract thedanger, property in horses, hogs, and cattle is indispensable. Theyshould be assisted in making fences and planting orchards, and beinstructed in raising cotton and making cloth. Small mills should beerected to save the women the labour of pounding corn, and mechanicsshould 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 thewhite race the Indians degenerate. They are a dangerous neighbourwithin our borders. They prevent the expansion of the white race, andthe States will not be satisfied until all their soil is open tosettlement."
And so, to remove the Indians to a home of their own became the greatwork of Clark's life.
"A home where the whites shall never come!" the Indians weredelighted. "We will look at these lands."
"I recommend that the government send special agents to collect thescattered bands and families and pay their expenses to the landsassigned them," said Clark, estimating the cost at one hundredthousand dollars. But not all of the tribes would listen.
In November, 1826, Clark drove from St. Louis in his carriage to theChoctaw nation in Alabama, to persuade them to move west of theMississippi.
"After many years spent in reflection," said the Commissioners, "yourGreat Father, the President, has determined upon a plan for yourhappiness. The United States has a large unsettled country on the westside of the great river Mississippi into which they do not intendtheir white settlements shall enter. This is the country in which ourGreat Father intends to settle his red children.
"Many of the tribes are now preparing to remove and are makingapplication for land. The Cherokees and Muscogees have procured lands,and your people can have five times as much land in that fine countryas they are now living on in this."
Never before in the conquest of nations had the weaker race beenoffered such advantageous terms. Two days passed while the Indiansconsidered and argued among themselves.
"What shall we give to you?" asked the Commissioners. "These lands andtitles to them, provisions and clothing, a cow and corn and farmingimplements to each family, and blacksmiths and ploughmakers andannuities."
"Friends and brothers of the Choctaw nation," said Clark in thecouncil, "I have spent half the period of an accustomed life amongyou. Thirty-six years ago I passed through your country and saw yourdistressed condition. Now I see part of your nation much improved inprosperity and civilisation. This affords me much happiness. But I aminformed that a very large majority of the Choctaw nation are seekingfood 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 movedwithout delay to their lands west of the Mississippi. There will Itake pleasure in advancing their interests. In my declining years itwould 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 yourfather and your friend. You shall be protected and peaceful andhappy."
The Choctaws were touched, but they answered,--
"We cannot part with our country. It is the land of our birth,--thehills and streams of our youth."