"Three cheers for the American flag!" cried Charles Gratiot in the spirit of the Swiss republic, but there were no cheers. The Creoles were weeping. Sobs, lamentations arose, but the grief was mostly from old Frenchmen and their wives who so long had prayed that the Fleur de Lis might wave above San Loui'. Their sons and daughters, truly, as Lucien Bonaparte had warned Napoleon, "went to bed good Frenchmen, to awake and find themselves Americans."
The huge iron cock in the belfry of the old log church spun round and round, as if it knew not which way the wind was blowing. In three days three flags over St. Louis! No wonder the iron cock lost its head and spun and spun like any fickle weather vane.
In the same square with the Government House stood one of the Chouteau mansions. Auguste Chouteau had been there from the beginning, when as a fearless youth with Laclede he had penetrated to the site of the future San Loui' in 1764. He was a diplomat who met Indians and made alliances. He had seen the territory pass under Spain's flag, and in spite of that had made it more and more a place of Gallic refuge for his scattered countrymen. He had welcomed Saugrain, Cerré, Gratiot, in fact,—he and his brother Pierre remembered the day when there was no San Loui'.
A band of Osage chiefs had come in to see their great Spanish father. With wondering eyes they watched the cession, and were handed over to Captain Lewis to deal with in behalf of the United States. A French messenger was sent ahead with a letter to the tribe.
"The Americans taken San Loui'?"
Manuel Lisa, the Spaniard, was disgusted,—it broke up his monopoly of the Osage trade. "We will not haf the Americans!"
The Osages burnt the letter.
