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 Polishattendant, who of all things was particular about his friend'sappearance. For Ruskosky never considered himself a servant, nor didClark. Ruskosky was an old soldier of Pulaski, a great swordsman, agentleman, of courtly address and well educated, the constantcompanion 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 clothcloak was brushed and the high broad-brim hat adjusted, the sword canewith buckhorn handle and rapier blade was grasped, and out theystarted.
Children stared at the ancient queue and small clothes. The oldestAmerican in St. Louis, Governor Clark had come to be regarded as a"gentleman of the old school." A sort of halo hung around hisadventures. Beloved, honoured, trusted, revered, his prominent noseand firm-set lips, his thin complexion in which the colour came andwent, seemed somehow to belong to the Revolution. He was locallyregarded as a great literary man, for had not the journals of hisexpedition been given to the world?
And now, too, delvers in historic lore began to realise what GeorgeRogers Clark had done. Eighteen different authors desired to write hislife, among them Madison, Chief Justice Marshall, and WashingtonIrving. But the facts could not be found. Irving sent his nephew toinquire 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 heseems to be as hardy and vigorous as ever, and speaks of his exposuresand hardships with a zest that shows that the spirit of the oldexplorer 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 theGovernor, and his eyes filled with tears.
"Children, that carriage belonged to Meriwether Lewis. In thesettlement of his estate, I bought it. Many a time have we ridden init together. That is the carriage that met Judy Hancock when shelanded at St. Louis, the first American bride, a quarter of a centuryago. Many a vicissitude has it encountered since, in journeyingsthrough 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, andDetroit.
"Hull?" said Clark at Detroit. "He was not a coward, but afraid forthe people's sake of the cruelty of the Indians."
One day Governor Clark came ashore from a steamer on the Ohio andstood at the mouth of the Hockhocking where Dunmore had his camp in1774. The battle of Point Pleasant? that was ancient history. Most ofthe residents in that region had never heard of it, and looked uponthe old gentleman in a queue as a relic of the mound-builders.
With wide-eyed wonder they listened again to the story of that daywhen civilisation set its first milestone beyond the Alleghanies.
When the thundering cannon in 1837 announced the return of a furconvoy from the Yellowstone, Governor Clark expected a messenger.
"They haf put the sand over him," explained a Frenchman. "Yes, he isdead 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 ofbones. Thirty years later ten thousand Pawnees, Otoes, and Missourisperished. And now, despite all precautions, it had broken out on theupper Missouri.
In six weeks the wigwams of the Mandans were desolate. Out of sixteenhundred souls but thirty-one remained. Arikara, Minnetaree, Ponca,Assiniboine, sank before the contagion. The Sioux survived onlybecause they lived not in fixed villages and were roaminguncontaminated.
Blackfeet along the Marias left their lodges standing with the dead inthem, and never returned. The Crows abandoned their stricken ones, andfled to the mountains. Across the border beseeching Indians carriedthe havoc to Hudson's Bay, to Athabasca, and the Yukon. Over half acontinent terrified tribes burnt their towns, slaughtered theirfamilies, pierced their own hearts or flung themselves fromprecipices.
Redmen yet unstricken poured into St. Louis imploring the white man'smagic. 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 thesuperstitious 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 andsound of the Mississippi."
When the summons came, September 1, 1838, in the sixty-eighth year ofhis age, Meriwether Lewis Clark and his wife were with him, thedeputy, James Kennerly and his wife, Elise, and old Ruskosky,inconsolable.
With great pomp and solemnity his funeral was celebrated, as had beenthat of his brother at Louisville twenty years before. Both wereburied as soldiers, with minute guns and honours of war. In sight ofthe Ohio, George Rogers Clark sleeps, and below the grave of WilliamClark sweeps the Mississippi, roaring, swirling, bearing thelife-blood of the land they were the first to explore.
The Sacs, with Keokuk at their head, marched in the long funeral trainof their Red Head Father and wept genuine tears of desolation. Nomore, dressed in their best, did the Indians sing and dance throughthe streets of St. Louis, receiving gifts from door to door. Thefriend of the redmen was dead. St. Louis ceased to be the Mecca oftheir 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 hislast in his lodge, and was buried like the Sac chieftains of old,sitting upright, in the uniform given him by President Jackson, withhis hand resting on the cane presented by Henry Clay.
He, too, said, "I like to look upon the Mississippi. I have lookedupon it from a child. I love that beautiful river. My home has alwaysbeen upon its banks." And there they buried him. Every day at sunsettravellers along that road heard the weird heart-broken wail ofSinging 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 WilliamLinn, the trusted lieutenant of George Rogers Clark, introduced a billin Congress offering six hundred and forty acres of land to everyfamily that would emigrate to Oregon. The Linns came to Missouri withDaniel Boone, and with the Boones they looked ever west! west!
"Six hundred and forty acres of land! A solid square mile of God'searth, clear down to the centre!" men exclaimed in amaze. While Ohiowas still new, and the Mississippi Valley billowed her carpets ofuntrodden bloom, an eagle's flight beyond, civilisation leaped toOregon.
From ferries where Kansas City and Omaha now stand they started,crossing the Platte by fords, by waggon-beds lashed together, and onrafts, darkening the stream for days. Before their buffalo hunters,innumerable herds made the earth tremble where Kansas-Nebraska citiesare to-day. In 1843 Marcus Whitman piloted the first waggon trainthrough to the Columbia.
"A thousand people? Starving did you say? Lord! Lord! They must havehelp to-night," exclaimed Dr. McLoughlin, the old white-hairedHudson's Bay trader at Fort Vancouver.
"Man the boats! People are starving at the Dalles!" and thenoble-hearted representative of a rival government sent out hisprovision-laden bateaux to rescue the perishing Americans, who inspite of storms a
nd tempests were gliding down the great Columbia assixty years before their fathers floated down the Indian-hauntedOhio.
And Indians were here, with tomahawks ready.
"Let us kill these Bostons!"
McLoughlin heard the word, and shook the speaker as a terrier shakes arat.
"Dogs, you shall be punished!"
In his anxiety lest harm should come to the approaching Americans, allnight long, his white hair wet in the rain, Dr. McLoughlin stoodwatching the boats coming down the Columbia, and building greatbonfires where Lewis and Clark had camped in 1806. Women and littlechildren and new-born babes slept in the British fur-trader's fort.Anglo-Saxon greeted Anglo-Saxon in the conquest of the world, to marchhenceforward hand in hand for ever.
Among the emigrants on the plains in 1846, was Alphonso Boone, the sonof 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 choicestBoone stock, from the old Kentucky blue-grass region. Mounted upon herhigh-stepping mare, Chloe and her sisters and other young people ofthe 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 brightmorning air.
Francis Parkman, the great historian, then a young man just out ofcollege, was on the plains that year, collecting material for hisbooks. Now and then they met parties of soldiers going to the MexicanWar, and many a boy in blue turned to catch a glimpse of the sweetgirl faces in Chloe's train.
Happily they rode in the Spring on the plains; more slowly when theheats of Summer came and the sides of the Rocky Mountains grew steepand rough; and slower still in the parched lands beyond, when thewoodwork of the waggons began to shrink, and the worn-out animals tofaint 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'sold compass, the one given him by Dunmore to bring in the surveyorsfrom the Falls of the Ohio seventy-two years before.
The Fall rains had set in. The Umpqua River was swollen,--eighteentimes 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 whereCorvallis now stands, and that Winter, in a little log cabin, ChloeBoone taught the first school ever conducted by a woman outside of themissions 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 oldcompass was gone for ever. Its work was done.
Alphonso Boone built a mansion near the present capital city of Salemand here Chloe married the Governor, George L. Curry, and for yearsbeside the old Boone fireside the Governor's wife extended thehospitalities of the rising State. Albert Gallatin Boone camped on thesite of Denver twenty years before Denver was, and negotiated the saleof Colorado from the Indians to the United States. John C. Boone, sonof Nathan Boone, explored a new cut-off and became a pioneer ofCalifornia. James Madison Boone drove stakes in Texas.
What years had passed since the expedition of Lewis and Clark! Itseemed like a bygone event, but one who had shared its fortunes stilllived on and on,--our old friend, Patrick Gass. In the War of 1812,above the roaring Falls of Niagara, Sergeant Gass spiked the enemy'scannon at the battle of Lundy's Lane. Years went on. A plainunpretentious citizen, Patrick worked at his trade in Wellsburg andraised his family.
In 1856 Patrick Gass headed a delegation of gray-haired veterans ofthe War of 1812 to Washington, and was everywhere lionised as the lastof 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 wasgathered 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 inblue he was brought in triumph to the platform.
"Speech! speech!"
And the speech of his life Patrick Gass made that day, for his countryand the Union. The simple, honest old hero brought tears to every eye,with a glimpse of the splendid drama of Lewis and Clark. Again theysaw those early soldier-boys bearing the flag across the Rockies,suffering starvation and danger and almost death, to carry theircountry 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' yercomrades 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 ofcannon.
"Stay! stay!" cried the people. "Sit up on the table and let us haveour banquet around you with the big flag floating over your head." Inan instant Pat was down.
"Far enough is far enough!" he cried, "and be the divil, will yez tryto make sport of mesilf?" Excitedly the modest old soldier slippedaway.
The war ended. A railroad crossed the plains. Oregon and Californiawere States. Alaska was bought. Still Pat lived on, until 1870, whenhe fell asleep, at the age of ninety-nine, the last of the heroic bandof Lewis and Clark.
William Walker, who gave to the world the story of the Nez Perces, ledhis Wyandots into Kansas, and, with the first white settlers,organising a Provisional Government after the plan of Oregon, becamehimself 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 thewhite settlers of Minnesota in one of the most frightful massacresrecorded 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 loveour Indians, now that we fear them no longer! No wild man ever socaptured the imagination of the world. With inherent nobility, courageto the border of destruction, patriotism to the death, absolutelyrefusing to be enslaved, he stands out the most perfect picture ofprimeval man. We might have tamed him but we had not time. Themovement was too swift, the pressure behind made the white men driversas the Indians had driven before. Civilisation demands repose, safety.And until repose and safety came we could do no effective work for theIndian. We of to-day have lived the longest lives, for we have seen acontinent transformed.
We have forgotten that a hundred years ago Briton and Spaniard andFrenchman were hammering at our gates; forgotten that the Indianbeleaguered our wooden castles; forgotten that wolves drummed withtheir paws on our cabin doors, snapping their teeth like steel traps,while the mother hushed the wheel within and children crouched beneaththe floor.
O mothers of a mighty past, thy sons are with us yet, fighting newbattles, 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 arisenin the very Multnomah where Clark took his last soundings. Northward,Seattle sits on her Puget sea, southward San Francisco smiles from hergolden gate, Spanish no more. Over the route where Lewis and Clarktoiled slowly a hundred years ago, lo! in three days the travellersits beside the sunset. Five transcontinental lines bear the rushingarmies westward, ever westward into the sea. Bewildered a moment theypause, then turn--to the Conquest of the Poles and the Tropics. Thefrontiersman? He is building Nome City under the Arctic: he is hewingthe forests of the Philippines.
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Transcriber's note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
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