e sources of the Mississippi? But those sources were as hidden as the fountain of the Nile. No white man yet had seen Itasca.
Since before the Revolution the Chaboillez family had traded at Michilimackinac. They were there in the days when Wabasha descended on St. Louis, and had a hand in all the border story.
While Lewis was negotiating with the Indians, Captain Clark set out with Black Cat to select a point where timber was plenty to build a winter camp.
"Hey, there! are ye going to run aff and leave me all to mesilf?" exclaimed Patrick Gass, head carpenter, busy selecting his tools and equipments. "Niver moind, I can outwalk the bist o' thim."
Strong, compact, broad-chested, heavy-limbed, but lean, sprightly, and quick of motion, Pat was soon at the side of his Captain. "I can show ye a pint or two about cabins, I'm thinkin'."
Clark smiled. He knew something about cabins himself.
The day was fine and crowds of Indians came to watch proceedings as Clark's men began to cut the tall cottonwoods and roll up the cabins.
Every day the Indians came in crowds to watch the wonderful building of the white men's fort, the deer-skin windows and mud-plastered chimneys. Turning loose their horses, all day long the red men lay on the grass watching the details of this curious architecture. At night, gathering an armful of cottonwood boughs stripped from the fort timber, each fed his horse and meandered thoughtfully homeward in the red sunset.
One day two squaws came, a leathery old dame and a captive Indian girl from the Rocky Mountains,—the handsome young Sacajawea, the Bird-Woman.
"She my slave," said Charboneau, a Frenchman in blanket capote and kerchief around his head. "I buy her from de Rock Mountain. I make her my wife." Charboneau lived with the Minnetarees, friends and neighbours of the Mandans.
Shahaka, the Big White Head Chief, came,
