V The Cession of St. Louis
“Glass we must have, and quicksilver. Wife, let me have the mirror.”
The Madame threw up her hands. “The precious pier glass my dead mother brought over from France? What shall we have left?”
“But Rosalie, this is an emergency for the government. The men must have thermometers, and barometers, and I have no glass.”
“The President will pay for the glass, Madame; he would consider it the highest use to which it could be put,” said Captain Lewis.
“And you shall have a better one by the next ship that sails around from France.”
So as usual to everything the Doctor wished, the good woman consented. None had more unbounded faith in Dr. Saugrain’s gift of miracles than his own wife.
The huge glass, that had reflected Parisian scenes for a generation before coming to the wilds of America, was now lifted from its gilt frame and every particle of quicksilver carefully scraped from the back. Then the pier plate was shattered and the fragments gathered, bit by bit, into the Doctor’s mysterious crucible, making the country people watch and wonder.
So long had Meriwether Lewis been with Jefferson, that he had imbibed the same eager desire to know, to understand. When he met with Doctor Saugrain it was like a union of kindred spirits. Saugrain, the pupil, friend, and disciple of the great Franklin, was often with the American scientist when he experimented with his kites, and drew down lightning to charge his Leyden jars. Three times Dr. Saugrain came to America, twice as guest of Dr. Franklin, before he settled down as physician to the Spanish garrison at St. Louis in 1800. With him he brought all his scientific lore, the latest of the most advanced city in the world. When all the world depended on flint and steel, Paris and Dr. Saugrain made matches. He made matches for Lewis and Clark that were struck on the Columbia a generation before Boston or London made use of the secret.
Bitterly the cheerful, sprightly little Royalist in curls lamented the French Revolution. “Oh, the guillotine! the guillotine! My own uncle, Dr. Guillotine, invented that instrument to save pain, not to waste life. But when he saw his own friends led up to the knife, distressed at its abuse he died in despair!”
Sufficient reason had Dr. Saugrain to be loyal to Louis XVI. For more than two hundred years his people had been librarians, book-binders, and printers for the King. Litterateurs and authors were the Saugrains for six continuous generations, and out of their scientific and historical publications came the bent of Dr. Antoine François Saugrain of St. Louis. But when the Bastile was stormed, Saugrain left France for ever. An emigré, a royalist, with others of the King’s friends he came to the land that honoured Louis XVI.
Between the Rue de l’Église and the Rue des Granges, at the extreme southwestern limit of the old village of St. Louis, stood Dr. Saugrain’s modest residence of cement with a six-foot stone wall around it and extensive gardens. In his “arboretum” Dr. Saugrain was making a collection of the most attractive native trees he found around St. Louis, and some there, imported from Paris, cast their green shadows on the swans of his swimming pond, an old French fancy for his park.
In this happy home with its great library, Captain Lewis became a welcome guest in that winter of 1803-4 while waiting for the cession. Under the Doctor he pursued his scientific studies, medicine, surgery, electricity, for not even Dr. Barton in Philadelphia could surpass the bright little Frenchman so strangely transplanted here in this uttermost border.
The Doctor’s taper fingers were always stained with acids and sulphur; busy ever with blowpipe and crucible, he fashioned tubes, filled in quicksilver, graduated cases, and handed out barometers and thermometers that amazed the frontier.
“Great Medicine!” cried the Indians when he gave them a shock of electricity. How Dr. Saugrain loved to turn his battery and electrify the door-knobs when those bothersome Indians tried to enter! Or, “Here, White Hair, is a shilling. You can have it if you will take it out.” The Osage chieftain plunges his arm into a crock of electrified water to dash off howling with affright.
With intense interest Captain Lewis stood by while the chemist-physician dipped sulphur-tipped splints of wood into phosphorus, and lo! his little matches glowed like Lucifer’s own. “You can make the sticks yourself,” he said. “I will seal the phosphorus in these small tin boxes for safety.”
“And have you any kine-pox? You must surely carry kine-pox, for I hear those Omahas have died like cattle in a plague.”
“President Jefferson particularly directed me to carry some kine-pox virus,” replied Captain Lewis, “but really, what he gave me seems to have lost its virtue. I wrote him so from Cincinnati, but fear it will be too late to supply the deficiency.”
Out of his medicine chest in the corner, the little Doctor brought the tiny vials. “Sent me from Paris. Carry it, explain it to the Indians, use it whenever you can,—it will save the life of hundreds.” And other medicines, simple remedies, the good savant prescribed, making up a chest that became invaluable in after days.
Other friends were Gratiot and the Chouteaus, Auguste and Pierre. It was Auguste that had planned the fortifications of St. Louis, towers and bastions, palisades, demilunes, scarps, counter-scarps, and sally ports, only finished in part when the city was handed over.
Long since had Carondelet offered rewards to the traders of St. Louis to penetrate to the Pacific. Already the Chouteau boats had reached the Mandan towns, but freely they gave every information to the American Captain.
“I send you herewith enclosed,” wrote Lewis to the President, “some slips of the Osage plum and apple. Mr. Charles Gratiot, a gentleman of this place, has promised that he would with pleasure attend to the orders of yourself, or any of my acquaintances who may think proper to write him on the subject. I obtained the cuttings now sent you from the gardens of Mr. Peter Chouteau, who resided the greater portion of his time for many years with the Osage nation.
“The Osage might with a little attention be made to form an ornamental and useful hedge. The fruit is a large oval plum, of a pale yellow colour and exquisite flavour. An opinion prevails among the Osages that the fruit is poisonous, though they acknowledge they have never tasted it.”
The leaders of all the French colonies on the Mississippi were gentlemen of education and talent. They saw what the cession meant, and hailed it with welcome. But the masses, peaceable, illiterate, with little property and less enterprise, contented, unambitious, saw not the future of that great valley where their fathers had camped in the days of La Salle. Frank, open, joyous, unsuspecting, wrapped in the pleasures of the passing hour, they cared little for wealth and less for government provided they were not worried with its cares. Their children, their fruits and flowers, the dance—happy always were the Creole habitants provided only they heard the fiddle string. Retaining all the suavity of his race, the roughest hunter could grace a ballroom with the carriage and manners of a gentleman.
Meanwhile Captain Clark was drilling the men at camp after the fashion of Wayne. Other soldiers had been engaged at Fort Massac and elsewhere,—Silas Goodrich, Richard Windsor, Hugh Hall, Alexander Willard, and John B. Thompson, a surveyor of Vincennes.
Never had St. Louis such days! Hurry, hurry and bustle in the staid and quiet town that had never before known any greater excitement than a church festival or a wedding,—never, that is, since those days of war when George Rogers Clark saved and when he threatened.
But now Lewis and Clark made a deep impression on the villagers of the power and dignity of the United States Government. Out of their purchases every merchant hoped to make a fortune; the eager Frenchmen displayed their wares,—coffee, gunpowder, and blankets, tea at prices fabulous in deerskin currency and sugar two dollars a pound.
But Lewis already had made up his outfit,—richly laced coats, medals and flags from Jefferson himself, knives, tomahawks, and ornaments for chiefs, barrels of beads, paints and looking-glasses, bright-coloured three-point Mackinaw blankets, a vision to dazzle a child or an Indian, who is also a child.
George Drouillard was found, the skilled hunter. There was a trace of Indian in Drouillard; his French fathers and grandfathers had trapped along the streams of Ohio and Canada since before the days of Pontiac, in fact, with Cadillac they had helped to build Detroit.
Every part of America was represented in that first exploring expedition,—Lewis, the kinsman of Washington, and Clark from the tidewater cavaliers of old Virginia, foremost of the fighting stock that won Kentucky and Illinois, Puritan Yankees from New England, Quaker Pennsylvanians from Carlisle, descendants of landholders in the days of Penn, French interpreters and adventurers whose barkentines had flashed along our inland lakes and streams for a hundred years, and finally, York, the negro, forerunner of his people.
Cruzatte and Labiche, canoemen, were of old Kaskaskia. Pierre Cruzatte was near-sighted and one-eyed, but what of that? A trusted trader of the Chouteaus, he had camped with the Omahas, and knew their tongue and their country. Could such a prize be foregone for any defect of eyesight?
Accustomed to roving with their long rifles and well-filled bullet pouches, nowhere in the world could more suitable heroes have been found for this Homeric journey.
News of the sale had reached St. Louis while Captain Lewis was struggling with those builders at Pittsburg.
“Sacre! Diable!” exclaimed the French. Some loved France, some clung to Spain, some shook their heads. “De country? We never discuss its affaires. Dat ees de business of de Commandante.”
The winter of 1803-4 was very severe. In November the ice began running and no one could cross until February. Then Captain Amos Stoddard, at Kaskaskia with his troops, sent a letter to Don Carlos De Hault De Lassus by a sergeant going on business to Captain Lewis.
On top of the hill a double stockade of logs set vertically, the space between filled with dirt, a two-story log building with small windows and a round stone tower with a pointed cap of stone,—that was the fort where the Spanish soldiers waited.
Down below, inhabitants in blue blanket capotes and blue kerchiefs on their heads, now and then in red toque or a red scarf to tie up their trousers, wandered in the three narrow lanes that were the streets of St. Louis, waiting. Before them flowed the yellow-stained, eddy-spotted Mississippi, behind waved a sea of prairie grass uninterrupted by farm or village to the Rockies.
Spring blossomed. Thickets of wild plum, cherry, wild crab-apples, covered the prairie. Vanilla-scented locust blooms were shaking honey-dew on the wide verandas of the old St. Louis houses, when early in the morning of May 9, American troops crossed the river from Cahokia, and Clark’s men from the camp formed in line with fife and drum, and colours flying. At their head Major Amos Stoddard of Boston and Captain Meriwether Lewis of Virginia led up to the Government House.
Black Hawk was there to see his Spanish Father. He looked out.
“Here comes your American Father,” said the Commandant De Lassus.
“I do not want two Fathers!” responded Black Hawk.
Dubiously shaking his head as the Americans approached, Black Hawk and his retinue flapped their blankets out of one door as Stoddard and Captain Lewis entered the other.
Away to his boats Black Hawk sped, pulling for dear life up stream to his village at Rock Island. And with him went Singing Bird, the bride of Black Hawk.
“Strange people have taken St. Louis,” said the Hawk to his Sacs. “We shall never see our Spanish Father again.”
A flotilla of Frenchmen came up from Kaskaskia,—Menard, Edgar, Francis Vigo, and their friends. Villagers left their work in the fields; all St. Louis flocked to La Place d’Armes in front of the Government House to see the transfer.
In splendid, showy uniforms, every officer of the Spanish garrison stood at arms, intently watching the parade winding up the limestone footway from the boats below.
With its public archives and the property of a vast demesne, Don Carlos De Hault De Lassus handed over to Major Stoddard the keys of the Government House in behalf of France. A salvo of cannonry shook St. Louis.
“People of Upper Louisiana,” began De Lassus in a choked and broken voice, “by order of the King, I am now about to surrender this post and its dependencies. The flag which has protected you during nearly thirty-six years will no longer be seen. The oath you took now ceases to bind. Your faithfulness and courage in upholding it will be remembered for ever. From the bottom of my heart I wish you all prosperity.”
De Lassus, Stoddard, Lewis, Clark, and the soldiers filed up the yellow path, past the log church, to the fort on the hill. The Spanish flag was lowered; De Lassus wept as he took the fallen banner in his hand, but as the Lilies of France flashed in the sun the Creoles burst into tumultuous cheers. Not for forty years had they seen that flag, the emblem of their native land. Cannon roared, swords waved, and shouts were heard, but not in combat.
The gates were thrown open; out came the Spanish troops with knapsacks on their backs, ready to sail away to New Orleans. The old brass cannon and munitions of war were transported down the hill, while the American soldiers in sombre uniforms filed into the dingy old fort of Spain.
Major Stoddard sent for the French flag to be taken down at sunset.
“No, no, let it fly! Let it fly all night!” begged the Creoles, and a guard of honour went up to watch the flickering emblem of their country’s brief possession.
All night long that French flag kissed the sky, all night the guard of honour watched, and the little log church of St. Louis was filled with worshippers. All the romance of Brittany and Normandy rose to memory. René Kiercereau the singer led in ballads of La Belle France, and the glories of fields where their fathers fought were rehearsed with swelling hearts. Not the real France but an ideal was in their hearts, the tradition of Louis XIV.
That was the last day of France in North America. As the beloved banner sank the drums gave a long funeral roll, but when, instead, the red, white, and blue burst on the breeze, the fifes struck into lively music and the drums rained a cataract.
“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.