f St. Louis.
There were wigwams all over Maracasta. James Kennerly,
Clark's Indian deputy, busy ever with the ruddy
aborigines, dealing out annuities, arranging for treaties
and instructing the tribes, kept open house for the chiefs
at Côte Plaquemine, the Persimmon Hill. Clark's boys
shot bows and arrows with the little Indians, Kennerly's
little girls made them presents of "kinnikinick," dried
leaves of the sumac and red osier dogwood, to smoke in
their long pipes.
Every delegation came down laden with gifts for the Red Head,—costly furs, buffalo robes, bows, arrows, pipes, moccasins.
Tragedies of the plains came daily to the ears of General Clark, far, far beyond the reach of government in the wild battle-ground of the West.
In 1822 the Sioux and Cheyennes combined against the Crows and fell upon their villages. In the slaughter of that day five thousand defenceless men, women, and children were butchered on the prairie. All their lodges and herds of horses and hundreds of captive girls were carried away. As a people the Crows never recovered.
Drunk with victory the triumphant Sioux rolled back on the Chippewas, Sacs, Foxes, and Iowas.
"If continued, these wars will embroil all the tribes of the West," said Clark. "We must do something more to promote peace. They must become civilised."
President Monroe was working up a new Indian policy, with Clark as a chief adviser.
"Go, Paul Louise, take this talk to my Osages. I am coming up to their country. Tell them to meet me on the first of June."
In his canoe, with his squaw and his babies, the wizened little Frenchman set out. He could not read, he could not write, he could only make his mark, but the Indians loved and trusted Paul Louise.
"And you, Baronet Vasquez, take this to the Kansas nation."
Vasquez belonged to the old Spanish régime. As a youth he had gone out with the Spanish garrison at the cession of St. Louis, to return a fu
