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.
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 theWarriorto 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 outof 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 hisvalour, 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.
"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. Hewas 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 lookedupon 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.
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-hairedveterans 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, withthe 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 yearsago, 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:Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved.
Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved.