Chapter XVII: Book III: The Red Head Chief (1)

I

_THE SHADOW OF NAPOLEON_

"Thank God for the safety of our country!" ejaculated Jefferson, in one of his long talks with Lewis regarding the upheaval across the sea.

In 1802 Napoleon had been declared Consul for life; May 18, 1804, four days after Lewis and Clark started, he had been saluted Emperor of France. Then came Jena. When Lewis and Clark reached the Mandan towns, Napoleon was entering Berlin with the Prussian monarchy at his feet.

While they camped at Clatsop in those December days of 1805, and while Baranof prayed for ships in his lonely Sitkan outpost, across seas "the sun of Austerlitz" had risen. Against Russian and Austrian, Napoleon had closed a war with a clap of thunder.

Every breeze bore news that overawed the world.

"Napoleon has taken Italy."

"Napoleon has conquered Austria."

"Napoleon has defeated Russia."

"Napoleon has ruined Prussia."

"Napoleon has taken Spain."

While Lewis and Clark were at Washington came the battles of Eylau and Dantzic. In December Napoleon annexed Portugal, and the Court of Lisbon fled to Brazil, to escape his arms and to rear anew the House of Braganza.

How much more remained to conquer? How soon might the theatre of action come over the sea? Still there was England.

For a time the Napoleonic wars had thrown the carrying trade of the ocean into American hands. American farmers could not reach the coast fast enough with their fleets of grain, the food for armies. Cotton went up to a fabulous price. Enterprise fired the young republic. Ships were building two thousand miles inland to carry her products to the ocean. She grew, she throve, and an ever-increasing inland fleet carried to and fro the red life of a growing nation.

On the other hand, the torch of liberty, lit in America and burning there still with calm and splendid lustre, carried by French soldiers to France had kindled a continent, sweeping like a firebrand through a conflagration of abuses. All tradition was overturning. America alone was quiet, the refuge of the world. Every ship that touched our shores brought fugitives fleeing from battle-scarred fields where Europe groaned in sobs and blood.

Napoleon was now master of almost the entire coast of Europe. Did he cast regretful eyes this way? America feared it. Nothing but fear of England ever made Napoleon give us Louisiana.

In May, 1806, England blockaded the French coast. Napoleon retaliated by the Berlin Decrees, shutting up all England, interdicting the commerce of the world.

And so, when Lewis and Clark returned, the giants were locked in struggle, like Titans of old, tearing up kingdoms, palatinates, and whole empires to hurl at each other.

And we had Louisiana.

When Captain Lewis went to Washington he was the bearer of a mass of papers on land claims sent by Auguste Chouteau.

"I have had some disturbing news from Louisiana," said Jefferson. "In the first place, Monsieur Auguste Chouteau writes requesting self-government, and that Louisiana remain for ever undivided. Now the day may come when we shall desire to cut Louisiana up into sovereign states,--not now, I grant, but in time, in time.

"Then the French people of New Orleans protest against American rule. Such is the dissatisfaction, it is said, that the people of Louisiana are only waiting for Bonaparte's victory in his war with the allies to return to their allegiance with France.

"St. Louis asks for a Governor 'who must reside in the territory,' hence I propose to put you there."

So it came about that Meriwether Lewis wrote back in February, "I shall probably come on to St. Louis for the purpose of residing among you."

There was trouble with Spain. In July, 1806, everybody thought there would be a war with her. But Napoleon was Spain's protector. It would never do to declare war against Napoleon. Napoleon!--the very word meant subjugation.

"Why are we safe from Bonaparte?" exclaimed Jefferson. "Only because he has not the British fleet at his command."

Even while Congress was at its busiest, devising a government for New Orleans, not at all was Jefferson sure of the loyalty of the French of Louisiana.

"If they are not making overtures to Napoleon, they are implicated in the treason of Aaron Burr."

All Washington was aflame over Aaron Burr. Only two years before Captain Lewis had left him in the seat of honour at Washington. The greatest lawyers in the country now were prosecuting his trial at Richmond, Randolph of Roanoke foreman of the jury and John Marshall presiding.

Borne with the throng, Lewis went over to Richmond. Washington Irving was there, Winfield Scott, and Andrew Jackson, "stamping up and down, damning Jefferson and extolling Burr."

Burr's friends, outcrying against Jefferson, caught sight of Meriwether Lewis; his popularity in a degree counteracted their vituperation. William Wirt of Maryland came down after making his great speech, to present a gold watch to his friend Meriwether Lewis.

With saddened heart Captain Lewis left Richmond. The beautiful Theodosia had come to stay with her father at the penitentiary. Lewis always liked Aaron Burr. What was he trying to do? The Mississippi was ours and Louisiana. But even the Ursuline nuns welcomed Burr to New Orleans, and the Creoles quite lost their heads over his winning address. All seemed to confirm the suspicions of Jefferson, who nightly tossed on his couch of worry.

It was necessary for Captain, now Governor, Lewis, to go to Philadelphia, to place his zoölogical and botanical collections in the hands of Dr. Barton. Scarce had the now famous explorer reached the city before he was beset by artists. Charles Willson Peale, who had painted the portraits of the most prominent officers of the Revolution, who had followed Washington and painted him as a Virginia colonel, as commander-in-chief, and as president, who had sat with him at Valley Forge and limned his features, cocked hat and all, on a piece of bed-ticking,--Peale now wanted to paint Lewis and Clark.

Of course such a flattering invitation was not to be resisted, and so, while Peale's assistants were mounting Lewis's antelopes, the first known to naturalists, and preparing for Jefferson the head and horns of a Rocky Mountain ram, Governor Lewis was sitting daily for his portrait.

This detained him in Philadelphia, when suddenly, on the 27th of June, the great upheaval of Europe cast breakers on our shores that made the country rock.

It seemed as if in spite of herself the United States would be drawn into the Napoleonic wars. England needed sailors, she must have sailors, she claimed and demanded them from American ships on the high seas.

"You _shall not search_ my ship," said the Captain of the American frigate _Chesapeake_ off the Virginian capes. Instantly and unexpectedly, the British frigate _Leopard_ rounded to and poured broadsides into the unprepared _Chesapeake_.

"Never," said Jefferson, "has this country been in such a state of excitement since Lexington."

"Fired on our ship!" The land was aflame. By such white heat are nations welded.

It was a bold thing for England to disavow. But no apologies could now conceal the fact, that not Napoleon, but England, was destined to be our foe, England, who claimed the commerce of the world.

Meriwether Lewis came home to hear Virginia ringing for war; not yet had she forgotten Yorktown.

The mountains of Albemarle were clothed in all the brilliancy of summer beauty when Lewis kissed his mother good-bye, and set out to assume the governorship of Louisiana.

II

_AMERICAN RULE IN ST. LOUIS_

Immediately after his appointment in charge of Indian affairs, Clark left Washington, with Pryor and Shannon, Big White and Jussaume and their Indian families. The Ohio, swollen to the highest notch, bore them racing into the Mississippi.

"Manuel Lisa haf gone up de Meessouri," was the news at St. Louis. All winter Manuel Lisa had been flying around St. Louis with Pierre Menard and George Drouillard, preparing for an early ascent into the fur country. So also had been the Chouteaus, intending to escort Big White back to the Mandans.

At any time an Indian trader was a great man in St. Louis. He could command fabulous prices for his skill, and still more now could Drouillard, fresh from the unexploited land beyond the Mandans. All his money Drouillard put into the business, and with the earliest opening of 1807, Lisa, Menard and Drouillard set out for the upper Missouri with an outfit of sixteen thousand dollars.

"Wait for the Mandan chief," said Frederick Bates, the new Territorial Secretary.

Manuel Lisa was not a man to wait. "While others consider whether they will start, I am on my way," he answered.

Dark, secret, unfathomable, restless, enterprising, a very Spaniard for pride, distrusted and trusted, a judge of men, Manuel Lisa had in him the spirit of De Soto and Coronado.

For twenty years Lisa had traded with Indians. Of late the Spanish government had given him exclusive rights on the Osage, a privilege once held by the Chouteaus, but alas for Lisa! a right now tumbled by the cession. For the United States gave no exclusive privileges.

He reached the ear of Drouillard; they went away together. No one better than Lisa saw the meaning of that great exploration.

Coincidently with the arrival of Clark and Big White out of the Ohio, came down a deputation of Yankton Sioux with old Dorion from the Missouri. With that encampment of Indians, around, behind, before the Government House, began the reign of the Red Head chief over the nations of the West that was to last for thirty years. St. Louis became the Red Head's town, and the Red Head's signature came to be known to the utmost border of Louisiana.

"We want arms and traders," said the Yankton Sioux.

Both were granted, and laden with presents, before the close of May they were dispatched again to their own country. And with them went Big White in charge of Ensign Pryor, Sergeant George Shannon, and Pierre Chouteau, with thirty-two men for the Mandan trade.

Even the Kansas knew that Big White had gone down the river, and were waiting to see him go by.

"The whites are as the grasses of the prairie," said Big White.

In July the new Governor, Meriwether Lewis, arrived and assumed the Government. With difficulty the officers had endeavoured to harmonise the old and the new. All was in feud, faction, disorder.

St. Louis was a foreign village before the cession. Nor was this changed in a day.

"Deed not de great Napoleon guarantee our leebertee?" said the French. "We want self-government."

But Lewis and Clark, these two had met the French ideal of chivalry in facing the Shining Mountains and the Ocean. Pretty girls sat in the verandas to see them pass. Fur magnates set out their choicest viands. The conquest of St. Louis was largely social. With less tact and less winning personalities we might have had discord.

Whatever Lewis wanted, Clark seconded as a sort of Lieutenant Governor. It seemed as if the two might go on forever as they had done in the great expedition. Ever busy, carving districts that became future States, laying out roads, dispensing justice and treating with Indians, all went well until the 16th of October, when a wave of sensation swept over St. Louis.

"Big White, the Mandan chief, is back. The American flag at the bow of his boat has been fired on and he is compelled to fall back on St. Louis."

All summer the vengeful Arikaras had been watching.

"They killed our chief, the Brave Raven."

The Teton Sioux plotted. "They will give the Mandans arms and make our enemies stronger than we are." So in great bands, Sioux and Arikaras had camped along the river to intercept the returning brave.

"These are the machinations of the British," said Americans in St. Louis.

"This is a trick of Manuel Lisa," said the fur traders. "His boats passed in safety, why not ours?"

In fact, there had been a battle. Not with impunity should trade be carried into the land of anarchy. Three men were killed and several wounded, including Shannon and René Jussaume. And they in turn had killed Black Buffalo, the Teton chief that led the onslaught.

All the way down the Missouri George Shannon had writhed with his wounded knee. Blood poisoning set in. They left him at Bellefontaine.

"Dees leg must come off," said Dr. Saugrain, the army surgeon.

He sent for Dr. Farrar, a young American physician who had lately located in St. Louis. Together, without anesthetics, they performed the first operation in thigh amputation ever known in that region.

"Woonderful! woonderful!" exclaimed the Creoles. "Dees Dogtors can cut une man all up." Great already was the reputation of Dr. Saugrain; to young Farrar it gave a prestige that made him the Father of St. Louis surgery.

Shannon lay at the point of death for eighteen months, but youth rallied, and he regained sufficient strength to journey to Lexington, where he took up the study of law. He lived to become an eminent jurist and judge, and the honoured progenitor of many distinguished bearers of his name.

III

_FAREWELL TO FINCASTLE_

General Clark had had a busy summer, travelling up and down the river, assisting the Governor at St. Louis in reducing his tumultuous domain to order, treating with Indians, conferring with Governor Harrison in his brick palace at Old Vincennes, consulting with his brothers, General Jonathan and General George Rogers Clark at the Point of Rock. Now, in mid-autumn, he was again on his way to Fincastle.

Never through the tropic summer had Julia been absent from his thoughts. A little house in St. Louis had been selected that should shelter his bride; and now, as fast as hoof and horse could speed him, he was hastening back to fix the day for his wedding.

October shed glory on the burnished forests. Here and there along the way shone primitive farmhouses, the homes of people. The explorer's heart beat high. He had come to that time in his life when he, too, should have a home. Those old Virginia farmhouses, steep of roof and sloping at the eaves, four rooms below and two in the attic, with great chimneys smoking at either end, seemed to speak of other fond and happy hearts.

The valley of Virginia extends from the Potomac to the Carolina line. The Blue Ridge bounds it on one side, the Kittatinnys on the other, and in the trough-like valley between flows the historic Shenandoah.

From the north, by Winchester, scene of many a border fray and destined for action more heroic yet, Clark sped on his way to Fincastle. Some changes had taken place since that eventful morning when Governor Spotswood looked over the Blue Ridge. A dozen miles from Winchester stood Lord Fairfax's Greenway Court, overshadowed by ancient locusts, slowly mouldering to its fall. Here George Washington came in his boyhood, surveying for the gaunt, raw-boned, near-sighted old nobleman who led him hard chases at the fox hunt.

From the head spring of the Rappahannock to the head spring of the Potomac, twenty-one counties of old Virginia once belonged to the Fairfax manor, now broken and subdivided into a thousand homes. Hither had come tides of Quakers, and Scotch-Presbyterians, penetrating farther and farther its green recesses, cutting up the fruitful acres into colonial plantations.

"The Shenandoah, it is the very centre of the United States," said the emigrants.

The valley was said to be greener than any other, its waters were more transparent, its soil more fruitful. At any rate German-Pennsylvanians pushed up here, rearing barns as big as fortresses, flanked round with haystacks and granaries. Now and then Clark met them, in loose leather galligaskins and pointed hats, sunning in wide porches, smoking pipes three feet long, while their stout little children tumbled among the white clover.

Here and there negroes were whistling with notes as clear as a fife, and huge Conestoga waggons loaded with produce rumbled along to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond. Every year thousands of waggons went to market, camping at night and making the morning ring with Robin Hood songs and jingling bells.

Yonder lived Patrick Henry in his last years, at picturesque Red Hill on the Staunton. Here in his old age he might have been seen under the trees in his lawn, buried in revery, or on the floor, with grandchildren clambering over him or dancing to his violin.

But Clark was not thinking of Patrick Henry, or Fairfax,--in fact he scarcely remembered their existence, so intent was his thought on his maid of the mountains, Julia Hancock.

The leaves were falling from elm and maple, strewing the path with gold and crimson. The pines grew taller in the twilight, until he could scarcely see the bypaths chipped and blazed by settlers' tomahawks.

Sunset was gilding the Peaks of Otter as Clark drew rein at the little tavern near Fincastle.

"I was rented to the King of England by my Prince of Hesse Cassel," the Hessian proprietor was saying. "I was rented out to cut the throats of people who had never done me any harm. Four pence three farthings a day I got, and one penny farthing went to His Royal Highness, the Prince. I fought you, then I fell in love with you, and when the war was over I stayed in America."

Clark listened. It was a voice out of the Revolution.

After a hurried luncheon the tireless traveller was again in his saddle; and late that night in the moonlight he opened the gate at Colonel Hancock's.

York had followed silently through all the journey,--York, no longer a slave, for in consideration of his services on the expedition the General had given him his freedom. But as a voluntary body-guard he would not be parted from his master.

"For sho'! who cud tek cah o' Mars Clahk so well as old Yawk?"

"What if love-lorn swains from a dozen plantations have tried to woo and win my pretty cousin! The bronzed face of Lochinvar is bleaching," said the teasing Harriet when she heard that the wedding date was really set. "One day, who knows, his skin may be white as yours."

Sudden as a flood in the Roanoke came Julia's tears. Relenting, the lively, light-hearted Harriet covered her cousin's curls with kisses.

"The carriage and horses are at your service. Hunt, fish, lounge as you please," said Colonel Hancock, "for I must be at the courthouse to try an important case."

With thousands of acres and hundreds of negroes, it was the dream of Colonel Hancock to one day drop these official cares and retire altogether into the privacy of his plantation. Already, forty miles away, at the very head spring of the Roanoke river, he was building a country seat to be called "Fotheringay," after Fotheringay Castle.

Back and forth in the gorgeous October weather rode Clark and Julia, watching the workmen at Fotheringay.

Now and then the carriage stopped at an orchard. Passers were always at liberty to help themselves to the fruit. Peaches so abundant that they fed the hogs with them, apples rosy and mellow, grapes for the vintage, were in the first flush of abundance. What a contrast to that autumn in the Bitter Root Mountains!

Then late in November to Fincastle came Governor Lewis and his brother Reuben, on their way to the west. He, too, had been to Washington on business concerning St. Louis.

"The great success of York among the Mandans has decided Reuben to take Tom along," laughed Lewis, as Reuben's black driver dismounted from the carriage--the same family chariot in which Meriwether had brought his mother from Georgia, now on the way to become the state coach of Louisiana.

Black Tom beamed, expansively happy, on York who had been "tuh th' Injun country" where black men were "Great Medicine."

"Ha, Your Excellency," laughed the teasing Harriet, "the beauty of Fincastle dines with us to-night,--Miss Letitia Breckenridge."

"Wait and the Governor will court you," some one whispered to the charming Letitia.

"I have contemplated accompanying my father to Richmond for some time," replied Letitia. "If I stay now it will look like a challenge, therefore I determine to go."

Governor Lewis underwent not a little chafing when two days after his arrival the lovely Letitia was gone,--to become the wife of the Secretary of War in John Quincy Adams's cabinet.

"Miss Breckenridge is a very sweet-looking girl," wrote Reuben to his sister, "and I should like to have her for a sister. General Clark's intended is a charming woman. When I tell you that she is much like my sweetheart you will believe I think so."

"What are you doing?" Clark asked of Julia, as she sat industriously stitching beside the hickory fire in the great parlour at Fincastle.

"Working a little screen to keep the fire from burning my face," answered the maiden, rosy as the glow itself. Much more beautiful than the little Sacajawea, stitching moccasins beside the fire at Clatsop, she seemed to Clark; and yet the feminine intuition was the same, to sew, to stitch, to be an artist with the needle.

"The mistletoe hung in Fincastle hall,
The holly branch shone on the old oak wall,
And the planter's retainers were blithe and gay,
A-keeping their Christmas holiday."

There was sleighing at Fincastle when the wedding day came, just after New Year's, 1808. The guests came in sleighs from as far away as Greenway Court, for all the country-side knew and loved Judy Hancock.

Weeping, soft-hearted Black Granny tied again the sunny curls and looped the satin ribbons of her beloved "Miss Judy." The slaves vied with one another, strewing the snow with winter greens that no foot might touch the chill.

The wainscoted and panelled walls glowed with greenery. Holly hung over the carved oaken chimneys, and around the fowling pieces and antlers of the chase that betokened the hunting habits of Colonel Hancock. Silver tankards marked with the family arms sparkled on the damask table cloth, and silver candlesticks and snuffers and silver plate. Myrtleberry wax candles gave out an incense that mingled with the odour of hickory snapping in the fireplace.

"Exactly as her mother looked," whispered the grandmother when Judy came down,--grandmother, a brisk little white-capped old lady in quilted satin, who remembered very well the mother of Washington.

The stars hung blazing on the rim of the Blue Ridge and the snow glistened, when out of the great house came the sound of music and dancing. There were wedding gifts after the old Virginia fashion, and when all had been inspected Clark handed his bride a small jewel case marked with her name.

The cover flew open, revealing a set of topaz and pearls, "A gift from the President."

Out into the snow went these wedding guests of a hundred years ago, to scatter and be forgotten.

IV

_THE BOAT HORN_

All the romance of the old boating time was in Clark's wedding trip down the Ohio. It was on a May morning when, stepping on board a flatboat at Louisville, he contrasted the daintiness of Julia with that of any other travelling companion he had ever known.

The river, foaming over its rocky bed, the boatmen blowing their long conical bugles from shore to shore, the keelboats, flat-bottoms, and arks loaded with emigrants all intent on "picking guineas from gooseberry bushes," spoke of youth, life, action. Again the boatman blew his bugle, echoes of other trumpets answered, "Farewell, farewell, fare--we-ll." Soon they were into the full sweep of the pellucid Ohio, mirroring skies and shores dressed in the livery of Robin Hood.

Frowning precipices and green islets arose, and projecting headlands indenting the Ohio with promontories like a chain of shining lakes. Hills clothed in ancient timber, hoary whitened sycamores draped in green clusters of mistletoe, and magnificent groves of the dark green sugar tree reflected from the water below. Shut in to the water's edge, a woody wilderness still, the river glided between its umbrageous shores.

Now and then the crowing of cocks announced a clearing where the axe of the settler had made headway, or some old Indian mound blossomed with a peach orchard. Flocks of screaming paroquets alighted in the treetops, humming birds whizzed into the honeysuckle vines and flashed away with dewdrops on their jewelled throats.

On the water with them, now near, now far, were other boats,--ferry flats and Alleghany skiffs, pirogues hollowed from prodigious sycamores, dug-outs and canoes, stately barges with masts and sails and lifted decks like schooners, keel boats, slim and trim for low waters, Kentucky arks, broadhorns, roomy and comfortable, filled up with chairs, beds, stoves, tables, bound for the Sangamon, Cape Girardeau, Arkansas.

Floating caravans of men, women, children, servants, cattle, hogs, horses, sheep, and fowl were travelling down the great river. Some boats fitted up for stores dropped off at the settlements, blowing the bugle, calling the inhabitants down to trade.

Here a tinner with his tinshop, with tools and iron, a floating factory, there a blacksmith shop with bellows and anvil, dry-goods boats with shelves for cutlery and cottons, produce boats with Kentucky flour and hemp, Ohio apples, cider, maple sugar, nuts, cheese, and fruit, and farther down, Tennessee cotton, Illinois corn, and cattle, Missouri lead and furs, all bound for New Orleans, a panorama of endless interest to Julia. Here white-winged schooners were laden entirely with turkeys, tobacco, hogs, horses, potatoes, or lumber. Nature pouring forth perennial produce from a hundred tributary streams.

A bateau could descend from the mouth of the Ohio to New Orleans in three weeks; three months of toil could barely bring it back. How could boats be made to go against the current? Everywhere and everywhere inventive minds were puzzling over motors, paddles--duck-foot, goose-foot, and elliptical,--wings and sails, side-wheels, stern-wheels, and screws,--and steam was in the air.

As the sun went down in lengthening shadows a purple haze suffused the waters. Adown La Belle Rivière, "the loveliest stream that ever glistened to the moon," arose the evening cadence of the boatmen,--

"Some row up, but we row down,
All the way to Shawnee Town,
Pull away! Pull away!
Pull away to Shawnee Town."

The crescent moon shone brightly on crag and stream and floating forest, the air was mild and moist, the boat glided as in a dream, and the mocking bird enchanted the listening silence.

To Clark no Spring had ever seemed so beautiful. Sitting on deck with Julia he could not forget that turbulent time when as a boy he first plunged down these waters. Symbolic of his whole life it seemed, until now the storm and stress of youth had calmed into the placid current of to-day. The past,--the rough toil-hardened past of William Clark,--fell away, and as under a lifted silken curtain he floated into repose. The rough old life of camps and forts was gone forever.

And to Julia, everything was new and strange,--La Belle Rivière itself whispered of Louisiana. Like an Alpine horn the bugle echoed the dreamlife of the waters.

The fiddles scraping, boatmen dancing, the smooth stream rolling calmly through the forest, the girls who gathered on shore to see the pageant pass, the river itself, momentarily lost to view, then leaping again in Hogarth's line of beauty,--all murmured perpetual music.

Then slumber fell upon the dancers, but still Clark and Julia sat watching. From clouds of owls arose voices of the night, cries of wolves reverberated on shore, the plaintive whippoorwill in the foliage lamented to the moon, meteors rose from the horizon to sweep majestically aloft and burst in a showering spray of gems below.

The very heavens were unfamiliar. Awed, impressed, by the mysteries around them, they slept.

Before sun-up the mocking-bird called from the highest treetop and continued singing until after breakfast, imitating the jay, the cardinal, and the lapwing, then sailing away into a strain of his own wild music.

At the mouth of the Wabash arks were turning in to old Vincennes. Below, broader grew the Ohio, unbroken forests still and twinkling stars. Here and there arose the graceful catalpa in full flower, and groves of cottonwoods so tall that at a distance one could fancy some planter's mansion hidden in their depths. Amid these Eden scenes appeared here and there the deserted cabin of some murdered woodman whose secret only the Shawnee knew.

Wild deer, crossing the Ohio, heard the bugle call, and throwing their long branching antlers on their shoulders sank out of sight, swimming under the water until the shore opened into the sheltering forest.

At times the heavens were darkened with the flights of pigeons; there was a song of the thrush and the echoing bellow of the big horned owl. Wild turkeys crossed their path and wild geese screamed on their journey to the lakes.

One day the boats stopped, and before her Julia beheld the Mississippi sweeping with irresistible pomp and wrath, tearing at the shores, bearing upon its tawny bosom the huge drift of mount and meadow, whole herds of drowned buffalo, trunks of forest trees and caved-in banks of silt, leaping, sweeping seaward in the sun. Without a pause the bridegroom river reached forth his brawny arm, and gathered in the starry-eyed Ohio. Over his Herculean shoulders waved her silver tresses, deep into his bosom passed her gentle transparency as the twain made one swept to the honeymoon.

All night Clark's bateau lay in a bend while York and the men kept off the drift that seemed to set toward them in their little cove as toward a magnet.

On the 26th of May Governor Lewis received a letter from Clark asking for help up the river. Without delay the Governor engaged a barge to take their things to Bellefontaine and another barge to accommodate the General, his family and baggage.

Dispatching a courier over the Bellefontaine road, Governor Lewis sent to Colonel Hunt a message, asking him to send Ensign Pryor to meet the party.

With what delight Clark and his bride saw the barges with Ensign Pryor in charge, coming down from St. Louis. Then came the struggle up the turbulent river. Clark was used to such things, but never before had he looked on them with a bride at his side. With sails and oars and cordelles all at once, skilled hands paddled and poled and stemmed the torrent, up, up to the rock of the new levee.

Thus the great explorer brought home his bride to St. Louis in that never-to-be-forgotten May-time one hundred years ago.

V

_A BRIDE IN ST. LOUIS_

"An _Américaine_ bride, General Clark haf brought! She haf beeutiful eyes! She haf golden hair!" The Creole ladies were in a flutter.

"_Merci!_ She haf a carriage!" they cried, peeping from their lattices. Governor Lewis himself had met the party at the shore, and now in the first state coach St. Louis had ever seen, was driving along the Rue de l'Église to Auguste Chouteau's.

"_Merci!_ She haf maids enough!" whispered the gazers, as Rachel, Rhody, Chloe, Sarah, brought up the rear with their mistress's belongings. Then followed York, looking neither to the right nor the left. He knew St. Louis was watching, and he delighted in the stir.

The fame of the beauty of General Clark's American bride spread like wild-fire. For months wherever she rode or walked admiring crowds followed, eager to catch a glimpse of her face. Thickly swathed in veils, Julia concealed her features from the public gaze, but that only increased the interest.

"She shall haf a party, une grande réception," said Pierre Chouteau, and the demi-fortress was opened to a greater banquet than even at the return of Lewis and Clark.

Social St. Louis abandoned itself to gaiety. Dancing slippers were at a premium, and all the gay silks that ever came up from New Orleans were refurbished with lace and jewels.

"They are beautiful women," said Julia that night. "I thought you told me there were only Indians here."

Clark laughed. "Wait until you walk in the streets."

And sure enough, with the arrival of the beautiful Julia came also certain Sacs and Iowas who had been scalping settlers within their borders. With bolted handcuffs and leg shackles they were shut up in the old Spanish martello tower. From the Chouteau house Julia could see their cell windows covered with iron gratings and the guard pacing to and fro.

At the trial in the old Spanish garrison house on the hill the streets swarmed with red warriors.

"How far away St. Louis is from civilisation," remarked Julia. "We seem in the very heart of the Indian country."

"The Governor has organised the militia, and our good friend Auguste Chouteau is their colonel," answered her husband, reassuringly.

"Why these fortifications, these bastions and stone towers?" inquired Julia, as they walked along the Rue.

"They were built a long time ago for defences against the Indians. In fact my brother defended St. Louis once against an Indian raid."

"Tell me the story," cried Julia. And walking along the narrow streets under the honey-scented locusts, Clark told Julia of the fight and fright of 1780.

"And was that when the Spanish lady was here?"

"Yes."

"And what became of her finally?"

"She fled with the nuns to Cuba at the cession of New Orleans."

Trilliums red and white, anemones holding up their shell-pink cups, and in damp spots adder's tongues and delicate Dutchman's breeches, were thick around them as they walked down by the old Chouteau Pond. Primeval forests surrounded it, white-armed sycamores and thickets of crab-apple.

"This is the mill that makes bread for St. Louis. Everybody comes down to Chouteau's mill for flour. It is so small I am not surprised that they call St. Louis 'Pain Court'--'short of bread.' To-morrow the washerwomen will be at the pond, boiling clothes in iron pots and drying them on the hazel bushes."

As they came back in the flush of evening all St. Louis had moved out of doors. The wide galleries were filled with settees and tables and chairs, and the neighbourly Creoles were visiting one another, and greeting the passers-by.

Sometimes the walk led over the hill to the Grand Prairie west of town. The greensward waved in the breezes like a wheatfield in May. Cabanné's wind-mill could be seen in the distance across the prairie near the timber with its great wings fifty and sixty feet long flying in the air like things of life.

Cabanné the Swiss had married Gratiot's daughter.

St. Louis weddings generally took place at Easter, so other brides and grooms were walking there in those May days a hundred years ago. Night and morning, as in Acadia, the rural population still went to and from the fields with their cattle and carts and old-style wheel ploughs.

In November Clark and his bride moved into the René Kiersereau cottage on the Rue Royale. The old French House of René Kiersereau dated back to the beginning of St. Louis. Built of heavy timbers and plastered with rubble and mortar, it bade fair still to withstand the wear and tear of generations. With a long low porch in front and rear, and a fence of cedar pickets like a miniature stockade, it differed in no respect from the other modest cottages of St. Louis. Back of the house rushed the river; before it, locusts and lightning bugs flitted in the summer garden. Beside the Kiersereau house Clark had his Indian office in the small stone store of Alexis Marie.

Into this little house almost daily came Meriwether Lewis, and every moment that could be spared from pressing duties was engrossed in work on the journals of the expedition. Sometimes Julia brought her harp and sang. But into this home quiet were coming constant echoes of the Indian world.

"Settlers are encroaching on the Osage lands. We shall have trouble," said Governor Lewis. Under an escort of a troop of cavalry Clark rode out into the Indian country to make a treaty with the Osages. The Shawnees and Delawares had been invited to settle near St. Louis to act as a shield against the barbarous Osages. The Shawnees and Delawares were opening little farms and gardens near Cape Girardeau, building houses and trying to become civilised. But settlers had gone on around them into the Osage wilderness.

"I will establish a fort to regulate these difficulties," said the General, and on his return Fort Osage was built.

"Settlers are encroaching on our lands," came the cry from Sacs, Foxes, and Iowas. Governor Lewis himself held a council with the discontented tribes and established Fort Madison, the first United States post up the Mississippi.

But there were still Big White and his people not yet returned to the Mandan country, and this was the most perplexing problem of all.

VI

_THE FIRST FORT IN MONTANA_

Manuel Lisa had enemies and ambition. These always go together.

Scarcely had Clark and his bride settled at St. Louis before down from the north came Manuel Lisa's boats, piled, heaped, and laden to the gunwale edge with furs out of the Yellowstone. His triumphant guns saluted Charette, St. Charles, St. Louis. He had run the gauntlet of Sioux, Arikara, and Assiniboine. He had penetrated the Yellowstone and established Fort Lisa at the mouth of the Bighorn in the very heart of the Crow-land,--the first building in what is now Montana.

"Dey say you cause de attack on Big White," buzzed a Frenchman in his ear. Angry at such an imputation, the Spaniard hastened to Governor Lewis.

"I disclaim all responsibility for that disaster. The Arikaras fired across my bow. I stopped. But I had my men-at-arms, my swivels ready. I understood presents. I smoked the pipe of peace, with a musket in my hand. Of course I passed. Even the Mandans fired on me, and the Assiniboines. Should that dismay a trader?"

Manuel Lisa, the successful, was now monarch of the fur trade. Even his enemies capitulated.

"If he is stern in discipline, the service demands it. He has gone farther, dared more, accomplished more, and brought home more, than any other. What a future for St. Louis! We must unite our forces."

And so the city on the border reached out toward her destiny. Pierre and Auguste Chouteau, William Clark and Reuben Lewis, locked fortunes with the daring, indomitable Manuel Lisa. Pierre Menard, Andrew Henry, and others, a dozen altogether, put in forty thousand dollars, incorporating the Missouri Fur Company. Into the very heart of the Rocky Mountains it was resolved to push, into those primeval beaver meadows whither Lewis and Clark had led the way.

"Abandon the timid methods of former trade,--plunge at once deep into the wilderness," said Lisa; "ascend the Missouri to its utmost navigable waters, and by establishing posts monopolise the trade of the entire region."

Already had Lisa dreamed of the Santa Fé,--now he looked toward the Pacific.

And now, too, was the time to send Big White back to the Mandans. Under the convoy of two hundred and fifty people,--enlisted soldiers and _engagés_, American hunters, Creoles, and Canadian voyageurs,--the fur flotilla set sail with tons of traps and merchandise.

As the flotilla pulled out, a tall gaunt frontiersman with two white men and an Indian came pulling into St. Louis. Clark turned a second time,--"Why, Daniel Boone!"

"First rate! first rate!" Furrowed as a sage and tanned as a hunter, with a firm hand-grasp, the old man stepped ashore. Two summers now had Daniel Boone and his two sons brought down to St. Louis a cargo of salt, manufactured by themselves at Boone's Lick, a discovery of the old pioneer.

"Any settlers comin'? We air prepared to tote 'em up."

Ever a welcome guest to the home of General Clark, Daniel Boone strode along to the cottage on the Rue. At sight of Julia he closed his eyes, dazzled.

"'Pears to me she looks like Rebecca."

Never, since that day when young Boone went hunting deer in the Yadkin forest and found Rebecca Bryan, a ruddy, flax-haired girl, had he ceased to be her lover. And though years had passed and Rebecca had faded, to him she was ever the gold-haired girl of the Yadkin. Poor Rebecca! Hers had been a hard life in camp and cabin, with pigs and chickens in the front yard and rain dripping through the roof.

"Daniel!" she sometimes said, severely.

"Wa-al, now Rebecca, thee knows I didn't have time to mend that air leak in the ruff last summer; I war gone too long at the beaver. But thee shall have a new house." And again the faithful Rebecca stuffed a rag in the ceiling with her mop-handle and meekly went on baking hoe-cake before the blazing forelog.

Daniel had long promised a new house, but now, at last, he was really going to build. For this he was studying St. Louis.

A day looking at houses and disposing of his salt and beaver-skins, and back he went, with a boatload of emigrants and a cargo of school-books. Mere trappers came and went,--Boone brought settlers. Pathfinder, judge, statesman, physician to the border, he now carried equipments for the first school up the Missouri.

VII

_A MYSTERY_

Furs were piled everywhere, the furs that had been wont to go to Europe,--otter, beaver, deer, and bear and buffalo. American ships, that had sped like eagles on every sea, were threatened now by England if they sailed to France, by France if they sailed to England.

"If our ships, our sailors, our goods are to be seized, it is better to keep them at home," said Jefferson.

"War itself would be better than that," pled Gallatin.

The whole world was taking sides in the cataclysm over the sea. Napoleon recognised no neutrals. England recognised none. Denmark tried it, and the British fleet burned Copenhagen. Ominously the conflagration glimmered,--such might be the fate of any American seaport.

"If we must fight let us go with France," said some. "Napoleon will guarantee us the cession of Canada and Nova Scotia."

But Jefferson, carrying all before him, on Tuesday, December 22, 1807, signed an embargo act, shutting up our ships in our own harbours. In six months commercial life-blood ceased to flow. Ships rotted at the wharfs. Grass grew in the streets of Baltimore and Boston.

St. Louis traders tried to go over to Canada, but were stopped at Detroit--"by that evil embargo."

St. Louis withered. "De Meeseppi ees closed. Tees worse dan de Spaniard!"

This unpopularity of Jefferson cast Governor Lewis into deepest gloom. The benevolent President's system of peaceable coercion was bringing the country to the verge of rebellion. England cared not nor France, and America was stifling with wheat, corn, and cattle, without a market.

Fur, fur,--the currency and standard of value in St. Louis was valueless. Taxes even could no longer be paid in shaved deerskins. Peltry bonds, once worth their weight in gold, had dropped to nothing. Moths and mildew crept into the Chouteau warehouses. A few weeks more and the fruits of Lisa's adventure would perish.

Into the Clark home there had come an infant boy, "named Meriwether Lewis," said the General, when the Governor came to look at the child. Every day now he came to the cradle, for, weary with cares, the quiet domestic atmosphere rested him. He moved his books and clothes, and the modest little home on the Rue became the home of the Governor. Beside the fire Julia stitched, stitched at dainty garments while the General and the Governor worked on their journals. Now and then their eyes strayed toward the sleeping infant.

"This child is fairer than Sacajawea's at Clatsop," remarked Lewis. "But it cries the same, and is liable to the same ills."

"And did you name a river for Sacajawea, too?" laughed Julia.

"Certainly, certainly, but the Governor's favourite river was named Maria," slyly interposed Clark.

A quick flush passed over the Governor's cheek. He had lately purchased a three-and-a-half arpent piece of land north of St. Louis for a home for his mother,--or was it for Maria? However, in June Clark took Julia and the baby with him on a trip to Louisville, and the same month Maria was married to somebody else.

But on the Ohio the joyous activity had ceased. No longer the boatman's horn rang over cliff and scar. Jefferson's embargo had stagnated the waters.

When General Clark returned to St. Louis in July he found his friend still more embarrassed and depressed.

"My bills are protested," said the Governor. "Here is one for eighteen dollars rejected by the Secretary of the Treasury. This has given me infinite concern, as the fate of others drawn for similar purposes cannot be in doubt. Their rejection cannot fail to impress the public mind unfavourably with respect to me."

"And what are these bills for?" inquired Clark.

"Expenses incurred in governing the territory," answered Lewis.

General Clark did not have to look back many years to recall the wreck of his brother on this same snag of protested bills, and exactly as with George Rogers Clark the proud and sensitive heart of Meriwether Lewis was cut to the core.

"More painful than the rejection, is the displeasure which must arise in the mind of the executive from my having drawn for public moneys without authority. A third and not less embarrassing circumstance is that my private funds are entirely incompetent to meet these bills if protested."

With the generosity of his nature Clark gave Lewis one hundred dollars, and Lewis arranged as soon as possible to go to Washington with his vouchers to see the President.

With the courage of upright convictions, Governor Lewis contended with the difficulties of his office, and in due course received the rest of his protested bills. If he raged at heart he said little. If he spent sleepless nights tossing, and communing with himself, he spoke no word to those around him. Though the dagger pierced he made no sign. Borrowing money of his friends as George Rogers Clark had done, he met his bills as best he might. But his haggard face and evident illness alarmed his friends.

"You had better take a trip to the east," they urged. "You have malarial fever."

He decided to act on this suggestion, and with the journals of the western expedition and his vouchers the Governor bade his friends farewell and dropped down the river, intending to take a coasting vessel to New Orleans and pass around to Washington by sea.

But at the Chickasaw Bluffs, now Memphis, Lewis was ill. Moreover, rumours of war were in the air.

"These precious manuscripts that I have carried now for so many miles, must not be lost," thought Lewis, "nor the vouchers of my public accounts on which my honour rests. I will go by land through the Chickasaw country."

The United States agent with the Chickasaw Indians, Major Neely, arriving there two days later, found Lewis still detained by illness. "I must accompany and watch over him," he said, when he found that the Governor was resolved to press on at all hazards. "He is very ill."

One hundred years ago the Natchez trace was a new military road that had been cut through the wilderness of Tennessee to the Spanish country. Over this road the pony express galloped day and night and pioneer caravans paused at nightfall at lonely wayside inns. Brigands infested the forest, hard on the trail of the trader returning from New Orleans with a pouch of Spanish silver in his saddlebags.

Over that road Aaron Burr had travelled on his visit to Andrew Jackson at Nashville, and on it Tecumseh was even now journeying to the tribes of the south.

"Two of the horses have strayed," was the servant's report at the end of one day's journey. But even that could not delay the Governor.

"I will wait for you at the house of the first white inhabitant on the road," said Lewis, as Neely turned back for the lost roadsters.

It was evening when the Governor arrived at Grinder's stand, the last cabin on the borders of the Chickasaw country.

"May I stay for the night?" he inquired of the woman at the door.

"Come you alone?" she asked.

"My servants are behind. Bring me some wine."

Alighting and bringing in his saddle, the Governor touched the wine and turned away. Pulling off his loose white blue-striped travelling gown, he waited for his servants.

The woman scanned her guest,--of elegant manners and courtly bearing, he was evidently a gentleman. But a troubled look on his face, an impatient walk to and fro, denoted something wrong. She listened,--he was talking to himself. His sudden wheels and turns and strides startled her.

"Where is my powder? I am sure there was some powder in my canister," he said to the servants at the door.

After a mouthful of supper, he suddenly started up, speaking in a violent manner, flushed and excited. Then, lighting his pipe, he sat down by the cabin door.

"Madame, this is a very pleasant evening."

Mrs. Grinder noted the kindly tone, the handsome, haggard face, the air of abstraction. Quietly he smoked for a time, then again he flushed, arose excitedly, and stepped into the yard. There he began pacing angrily to and fro.

But again he sat down to his pipe, and again seemed composed. He cast his eyes toward the west, that West, the scene of his toils and triumphs.

"What a sweet evening it is!" He had seen that same sun silvering the northern rivers, gilding the peaks of the Rockies, and sinking into the Pacific. It all came over him now, like a soothing dream, calming the fevered soul and stilling its tumult.

The woman was preparing the usual feather-bed for her guest.

"I beg you, Madame, do not trouble yourself. Pernia, bring my bearskins and buffalo robe."

The skins and robe were spread on the floor and the woman went away to her kitchen. The house was a double log cabin with a covered way between. Such houses abound still in the Cumberland Mountains.

"I am afraid of that man," said the woman in the kitchen, putting her children in their beds. "Something is wrong. I cannot sleep."

The servants slept in the barn. Neely had not come. Night came down with its mysterious veil upon the frontier cabin.

But still that heavy pace was heard in the other cabin. Now and then a voice spoke rapidly and incoherently.

"He must be a lawyer," said the woman in the kitchen. Suddenly she heard the report of a pistol, and something dropped heavily to the floor. There was a voice,--"O Lord!"

Excited, peering into the night, the trembling woman listened. Another pistol, and then a voice at her door,--"Oh, madame, give me some water and heal my wounds!"

Peering into the moonlight between the open unplastered logs, she saw her guest stagger and fall. Presently he crawled back into the room. Then again he came to the kitchen door, but did not speak. An empty pail stood there with a gourd,--he was searching for water. Cowering, terrified, there in the kitchen with her children the woman waited for the light.

At the first break of day she sent two of the children to the barn to arouse the servants. And there, on his bearskins on the cabin floor, they found the shattered frame of Meriwether Lewis, a bullet in his side, a shot under his chin, and a ghastly wound in his forehead.

"Take my rifle and kill me!" he begged. "I will give you all the money in my trunk. I am no coward, but I am so strong,--so hard to die! Do not be afraid of me, Pernia, I will not hurt you."

And as the sun rose over the Tennessee trees, Meriwether Lewis was dead, on the 11th of October, 1809.

VIII

_A LONELY GRAVE IN TENNESSEE_

A hero of his country was dead, the Governor of its largest Territory,--dead, on his way to Washington, where fresh honours awaited him,--dead, far from friends and kindred in a wild and boundless forest.

Did he commit suicide in a moment of aberration, or was he foully murdered by an unknown hand on that 11th of October, 1809? President Jefferson, who had observed signs of melancholy in him in early life, favoured the idea of suicide, but in the immediate neighbourhood the theory of murder took instant shape. Where was Joshua Grinder? Where were those servants? Where was Neely himself?

"I never for a moment entertained the thought of suicide," said his mother, when she heard the news. "His last letter was full of hope. I was to live with him in St. Louis."

Of all men in the world why should Meriwether Lewis commit suicide? The question has been argued for a hundred years and is to-day no nearer solution than ever.

"Old Grinder killed him and got his money," said the neighbours. "He saw he was well dressed and evidently a person of distinction and wealth." Grinder was arrested and tried but no proof could be secured.

"Alarmed by his groans the robbers hid his pouch of gold coins in the earth, with the intention of securing it later," said others. "They never ventured to return,--it lies there, buried, to this day." And the superstitions of the neighbourhood have invested the spot with the weird fascination of Captain Kidd's treasure, or the buried box of gold on Neacarney.

"He was killed by his French servant," said the Lewis family. Later, when Pernia visited Charlottesville and sent word to Locust Hill, Meriwether's mother refused to see him.