More About Astorians 347 and Clark, former comrades and friends, returning from their famous expedition. 14 The following year (1807) he entered into partner- ship with Ramsay Crooks, an adventurous Scotchman, and in the fall of that year they set out on an expedition to the upper Missouri. On the way they met Ensign Nathaniel Pryor returning, after his defeat by the Arikaras, to St. Louis with the Mandan Chief. The re- port which Pryor gave them of the hostile attitude of the Sioux and Arikaras, made them decide to turn back. When they got back nearly to Council Bluffs they set up an establishment and remained there until the Spring of 1809. Then, following the expedition of the Missouri Fur Company, they again tried to ascend the river, but before proceeding very far were stopped by six hundred Sioux, who forced them to land and erect a fort in their country. 15 McClellan always accused Manuel Lisa of inciting the Sioux against him and Crooks, and threatened that if ever he fell in with Lisa in the Indian country he would shoot him. If it had not been for the interference of Mr. Hunt, on several occasions, he would have carried out his threat. 16 In 1810 Crooks and McClellan dissolved partnership and McClellan continued the business alone. He estab- lished a trading post on the Missouri two hundred miles above the Nodaway, erecting a cabin and store room for his goods and furs. Again his old enemies, the Sioux, frustrated his plans. They surrounded his cabin one day, disarmed his men, and plundered his store room of its contents, amounting to about three thousand dollars. McClellan was absent from his cabin at the time, and when he returned and learned what had happened he i^Thwaites' edition Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expe- dition, vol. 5, p. 373. . . , 010 ^Bradbury, John— Travels in the Interior of America. London, my. isBrackenridge, H. M. — Journal of a Voyage Up the River Missouri. Pittsburgh, 1814.
