"While I shake hands my white brother shoots my chief, my son, my only son."
Only by consummate tact can Clark handle these distressing conflicts of the border. Who is right and who is wrong? The settlers hate the Indians, the Indians dread and fear the settlers.
"Governor Clark," said the Shawnees and Delawares, "since three or four years we are crowded by the whites who steal our horses. We moved. You recommended us to raise stock and cultivate our ground. That advice we have followed, but again white men have come."
The Cherokees complained, "White people settle without our consent. They destroy our game and produce discord and confusion."
Clark could see the heaving of their naked breasts and their lithe bodies, the tigers of their kind, shaken by irrepressible emotion.
And again in the Autumn,—
"What is it?" inquired the stranger as pennons came glittering down the Missouri.
"Oh, nothing, only another lot of Indians coming down to see their red-headed daddy," was the irreverent response, as the solemn, calm-featured braves glided into view, gazing as only savages can gaze at the wonders of civilisation.
"What! going to war?" cried Clark, in a tone of thunder, as they made known their errand at the Council House. "Your Great Father, the President, forbids it. He counsels his children to live in peace. If you insist on listening to bad men I shall come out there and make you desist."
The stormy excitement subsided. They shrank from his reproofs, and felt and feared his power.
"Go home. Take these gifts to my children, and tell them they were sent by the Red Head Chief."
Viewed with admiration, the presents were carefully wrapped in skins to be laid away and treasured on many a weary march and through many a sad vicissitude. A few days in St. Louis, then away go the willowy copper-skin paddlers to dissuade their braves from incu
