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 forvisiting Indians, an armory for repairs of Indian guns andblacksmiths' shops for Indian work, extending from Main Street to theriver.
Daily he sat in his office reading reports from his agents of Indianoccurrences.
Four muskrats or two raccoon skins the Indians paid for a quart ofwhiskey.
"Whiskey!" Clark stamped his foot. "A drunken Indian is more to bedreaded than a tiger in the jungle! An Indian cannot be found among athousand who would not, after a first drink, sell his horse, his gun,or his last blanket for another drink, or even commit a murder togratify 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 tothe officers of the American Fur Company. "Can you refute the charge?"
And the great Company, with Chouteau and Astor at its head, hastenedto explain and extenuate.
There was trouble with Indian agents who insisted on leaving theirposts and coming to St. Louis, troubles with Indians who wanted to seethe President, enough of them to have kept the President for ever busywith Indian affairs.
The Sacs and the Sioux were fighting again.
"Why not let us fight?" said Black Hawk. "White men fight,--they arefighting now."
Twice in the month of May, 1830, Sacs and Foxes came down to tell oftheir war with the Sioux. "We might sell our Illinois lands and movewest," hinted the Sacs and Foxes. Instantly Clark approved and wroteto Washington.
"I shall have to go up there and quiet those tribes," said Clark. InJuly, 1830, again he set out for Prairie du Chien. Indian runners wentahead announcing, "The Red Head Chief! the Red Head Chief!"
Seventy-eight Sacs and Foxes crowded into his boats and went up. Thistime in earnest, Clark began buying lands, giving thousands of dollarsin annuities, provisions, clothing, lands, stock, agriculturalimplements. Many of these Indians came on with him down to St. Louisto 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'sstate. The Government would have them settled and self-supporting."
Funds ran out, but Clark on his own credit again and again went aheadwith his work of humanity, moving families, tribes, nations.Assistance in provisions and stock was constantly called for. Thegreat western migration of tribes from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, wassweeping on, the movement of a race. The Peorias were crossing, theWeas, Piankeshaws, and others forgotten to-day.
"Those miserable bands of Illinois rovers, those wretched nations inwant of clothes and blankets!" Clark wrote to Washington, begging theDepartment for help. Their annuities, a thousand dollars a year fortwelve years, had expired.
"Exchange your lands for those in the West," he urged the Indians. Tothe Government he recommended an additional annuity to be used inbreaking 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 onour 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 freedus from so serious a grievance. If it declines acting with effect, itwill soon learn that these Indians _will_ be removed, and that verypromptly."
Clark himself was personally using every exertion to prevail on theIndians to move as the best means of preserving tranquillity, and didall he could without actual coercion. The Indians continued to promiseto go, but they still remained.
"More time," said the Indians. "Another year."
The combustible train was laid,--only a spark was needed, only a moveof hostility, to fire the country. Will Black Hawk apply that spark?
"We cannot go," said the Pottawattamies. "The sale of our lands wasmade by a few young men without our consent."
Five hundred Indians determined to hold all the northern part ofIllinois for ever.
Sacs, Foxes, Pottawattamies, sent daily letters and complaints. "OurFather! our Father! our Father!"--it was a plea and a prayer, andtrouble, 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. TheIndians were becoming as interested in migration as the whites hadbeen; the same causes were pushing them on.
Clark was busily making contracts for saw-mills and corn-mills on thePlatte and Kansas, arranging for means of transportation, forprovisions for use on the way and after they settled, for oxen andcarts and stock,--when one day four strange Indians, worn andbewildered, arrived at St. Louis, out of that West. Some kind handguided them to the Indian office.
That tunic, that bandeau of fox skins,--Clark recalled it as thetribal dress of a nation beyond the Rocky Mountains. With anexpression of exquisite joy, old Tunnachemootoolt, for it was he, theBlack Eagle, recognised the Red Head of a quarter of a century before.Clark could scarcely believe that those Indians had travelled on footnearly two thousand miles to see him at St. Louis.
As but yesterday came back the memory of Camp Chopunnish among the NezPerces of Oregon. Over Tunnachemootoolt's camp the American flag wasflying when they arrived from the Walla Walla.
It did not take long to discover their story. Some winters before anAmerican trapper (in Oregon tradition reputed to have been JedediahSmith), watched the Nez Perces dance around the sun-pole on thepresent site of Walla Walla.
"It is not good," said the trapper, "such worship is not acceptable tothe Great Spirit. You should get the white man's Book of Heaven."
Voyageurs and Iroquois trappers from the Jesuit schools of Canada saidthe same. Then Ellice, a chief's son, came back from the Red Rivercountry whither the Hudson's Bay Company had sent him to be educated.From several sources at once they learned that the white men had aBook that taught of God.
"If this be true it is certainly high time that we had the Book." Thechiefs called a national council. "If our mode of worship is wrong wemust 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 usthe truth."
"Yes, Lewis and Clark always pointed upward. They must have beentrying to tell us."
So, benighted, bewildered, the Nez Perces talked around their councilfires. Over in the buffalo country Black Eagle's band met the whitetraders.
"They come from the land of Lewis and Clark," said the Eagle. "Let usfollow them."
And so, four chiefs were deputed for that wonderful journey, two oldmen who had known Lewis and Clark,--Black Eagle and theMan-of-the-Morning, whose mother was a Flathead,--and two youngmen,--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 braveof 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 Perce-Flathead friends.His silver locks were shaken by roars of laughter at their remindersof his youth, the bear hunts, the sale of buttons for camas and forkouse. The hospitality of those chiefs who said, "The horses on thesehills are ours, take what you need," should now be rewarded.
With gratitude and with the winsomeness for which he was noted, heinvited them into his own house and to his own table. Mrs. Clarkdevoted herself to their entertainment.
Black Eagle insisted on an early council. "We have hear
d of the Book.We have come for the Book."
"What you have heard is true," answered Clark, puzzled and sensible ofhis responsibility. Then in simple language, that they mightunderstand, he related the Bible stories of the Creation, of thecommandments, of the advent of Christ and his crucifixion.
"Yes," answered Clark to their interrogatories, "a teacher shall besent with the Book."
Just as change of diet and climate had prostrated Lewis and Clark withsickness among the Nez Perces twenty-five years before, so now the NezPerces fell sick in St. Louis. The Summer was hotter than any they hadknown in their cool northland. Dr. Farrar was called. Mrs. Clark herselfbrought them water and medicine as they lay burning with fever in theCouncil House. They were very grateful for her attentions,--"thebeautiful 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 thatday, "was when those three Indians followed their dead companion tothe grave."
His name is recorded at the St. Louis cathedral as "Keepeelele, buriedOctober 31, 1831," a "ne Perce de la tribu des Choponeek, nationappellee Tete Plate." "Keepeelele," the Nez Perces of to-day say "wasthe old man, the Black Eagle." Sometimes they called him the "SpeakingEagle," as the orator on occasions.
Still the other Indians remained ill.
"I have been sent by my nation to examine lands for removal to theWest," said William Walker, chief of the Wyandots.
William Walker was the son of a white man, stolen as a child fromKentucky and brought up by the Indians. His mother was also thedescendant of a stolen white girl. Young William, educated at theUpper Sandusky mission, became a chief.
The semi-Christian Wyandots desired to follow their friends to theWest. Sitting there in the office, transacting business, GovernorClark spoke of the Flathead Nez Perces.
"I have never seen a Flathead, but have often heard of them," answeredWilliam Walker. Curiosity prompted him to step into the next room.Small in size, delicately formed, and of exact symmetry except theflattened head, they lay there parched with fever.
"Their diet at home consists chiefly of vegetables and fish," said theGovernor. "As a nation they have the fewest vices of any tribe on thecontinent of America."
November 10, ten days after the burial of Black Eagle, Colonel Audrainof St. Charles, a member of the Legislature, died also at GovernorClark's house. His body was conveyed to St. Charles in the firsthearse 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 thatstrange new malady that by the next Spring had grown into a devouringplague,--the dreaded Asiatic cholera?
At the bedside of his dead wife, Governor Clark sat, holding her waxenhand, with their little six-year-old son, Jefferson, in his lap. "Mychild, you have no mother now," said the father with streaming tears.After the funeral, nothing was recorded in Clark's letter-books forsome days, and when he began again, the handwriting was that of anaged man.
None mourned this sad event more than the tender-hearted Nez Perces,who remained until Spring.
When the new steamer _Yellowstone_ of the American Fur Company, setout for its first great trip up the Missouri, Governor Clark madearrangements to send the chiefs home to their country. A day later,the other old Indian, The-Man-of-the-Morning, died and was buried nearSt. Charles.
Among other passengers on that steamer were Pierre Chouteau theyounger and George Catlin, the Indian artist, who was setting out tovisit the Mandans.
"You will find the Mandans a strange people and half white," saidGovernor Clark to his friend the artist, as he gave him his passportinto the Indian country.
On the way up the river Catlin noticed the two young Nez Perces, andpainted their pictures.
As if pursued by a strange fatality, at the mouth of the YellowstoneNo-Horns-On-His-Head died,--Rabbit-Skin-Leggings alone was left tocarry the word from St. Louis.
Earlier than ever that year the Nez Perces had crossed the snowytrails of the Bitter Root to the buffalo country in the Yellowstoneand 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 besent with the Book."
Back over the hills and the mountains the message flew,--"A man shallbe sent with the Book."
Every year after that the Nez Perces went over to the east, lookingfor the man with the Book.
Nearly a year elapsed before William Walker got back from hisexplorations and wrote a public letter giving an account of the NezPerces in their search for the Book. His account of meeting them inGeneral Clark's office, and of the object of their errand, created atremendous sensation.
Religious committees called upon General Clark, letters were written,and to one and all he said, "That was the sole object of theirjourney,--to obtain the white man's Book of Heaven."
The call rang like a trumpet summons through the churches. The nextyear, 1834, the Methodists sent Jason Lee and three others to Oregon.Two years later followed Whitman and Spalding and their brides, thefirst white women to cross the Rocky Mountains.
"A famine threatens the Upper Missouri," was the news brought back bythat steamer _Yellowstone_ in 1832. "The buffaloes have disappeared!"
The herds, chased so relentlessly on the Missouri, were strugglingthrough the Bitter Root Mountains, to appear in vast throngs on theplains of Idaho.
Even Europe read and commented on that wonderful first journey of asteamer up the Missouri, as later the world hailed the ascent of theNile and the Yukon.
It was a great journey. Amazed Indians everywhere had watched themonster, puffing and snorting, with steam and whistles, and acontinued roar of cannon for half an hour at every fur fort and everyIndian village.
"The thunder canoe!" Redmen fell on the ground and cried to the GreatSpirit. Some shot their dogs and horses as sacrifices.
At last, even the Blackfeet were reached. The British tried to woothem back to the Saskatchewan at Fort Edmonton, but eventually theytumbled over one another to trade with the Fire Boat that annuallyclimbed the Missouri staircase.