XV Too Good to the Indians
Manuel Lisa had out-distanced all his competitors in the fur trade. But the voice of envy whispered, “Manuel must cheat the Government, and Manuel must cheat the Indians, otherwise Manuel could not bring down every summer so many boats loaded with rich furs.”
“Good!” exclaimed Lisa to Governor Clark, when the fleets were tying up at St. Louis in 1817. “My accounts with the Government will show whether I receive anything out of which to cheat it.”
“I have not blamed you, Manuel,” explained the Governor. “On the contrary I have conveyed to the Government my high appreciation of your very great services in quieting the Indians of the Missouri. It is not necessary to worry yourself with the talk of babblers who do not understand.”
“Cheat the Indians!” The Spaniard stamped the floor. “The respect and friendship which they have for me, the security of my possessions in the heart of their country, respond to this charge, and declare with voices louder than the tongues of men that it cannot be true.
“‘But Manuel gets so much rich fur.’” Lisa ground out the words with scorn.
“Well, I will explain how I get it. First I put into my operations great activity,—I go a great distance, while some are considering whether they will start to-day or to-morrow. I impose upon myself great privations,—ten months in a year I am buried in the forest, at a vast distance from my own house. I appear as the benefactor, and not as the pillager, of the Indians. I carried among them the seed of the large pumpkin, from which I have seen in their possession the fruit weighing one hundred and sixty pounds. Also the large bean, the potato, the turnip, and these vegetables now make a great part of their subsistence. This year I have promised to carry the plough. Besides, my blacksmiths work incessantly for them, charging nothing. I lend them traps, only demanding preference in their trade. My establishments are the refuge of the weak and of the old men no longer able to follow their lodges; and by these means I have acquired the confidence and friendship of these nations, and the consequent choice of their trade. These things I have done, and I propose to do more.”
In short, Manuel Lisa laid down his commission as sub-agent to embark yet more deeply in the fur trade.
“What is that noise at the river?”
Ten thousand shrieking eagles and puffs of smoke arose from the yellow-brown Mississippi below. The entire population of St. Louis was flocking to the river brink to greet the General Pike, the first steamboat that ever came up to St. Louis. People rushed to the landing but the Indians drew back in terror lest the monster should climb the bank and pursue them inland. Pell-mell into Clark’s Council House they tumbled imploring protection.
Never had St. Louis appeared so beautiful as when Julia and the children came into their new home in 1819. Clark, the Governor, had built a mansion, one of the finest in St. Louis. Wide verandas gave a view of the river, gardens of fruit and flowers bloomed.
But Julia was ill.
“Take her back to the Virginia mountains,” said Dr. Farrar, the family physician. “St. Louis heats are too much for her.”
In dress suit, silk hat, and sword cane, Farrar was a notable figure in old St. Louis, riding night and day as far out as Boone’s Lick, establishing a reputation that remains proverbial yet. He had married Anne Thruston, the daughter of Fanny.
“Let her try a trip on the new steamboat,” said the Doctor.
So after her picture was painted by Chester Harding in that Spring of 1819, Clark and Julia and the little boys, Meriwether Lewis, William Preston, and George Rogers Hancock, set out for New Orleans in the “new-fangled steamboat.”
It was a long and dangerous trip; the river was encumbered with snags; every night they tied up to a tree.
“Travel by night? Couldn’t think of it! We’d be aground before morning!” said the Captain.
Around by sea the Governor and his wife sailed by ship to Washington.
“I will join you at the Sweet Springs,” said President Monroe to the Governor and his wife in Washington.
“The Sweet Springs cure all my ills,” said Dolly Madison at Montpelier.
“She will recover at the Sweet Springs,” said Jefferson at Monticello.
But at the Sweet Springs Julia grew so ill they had to carry her on a bed to Fotheringay.
“Miss Judy done come home sick!” The servants wept.
Something of a physician himself, Clark began the use of fumes of tar through a tube, and to the surprise of all “Miss Judy” rallied again.
“As soon as I can leave her in safety I shall return to St. Louis,” wrote the Governor to friends at the Missouri capital.
“If I should die,” said Julia sweetly one day, “and you ever think of marrying again, consider my cousin Harriet.”
“Ah, but you will be well, my darling, when Spring comes.”
And she was better in the Spring, thinking of the new house at St. Louis. Julia was a very neat and careful housekeeper. Everything was kept under lock and key, she directed the servants herself, and was the light of a houseful of company. For the Governor’s house was the centre of hospitality,—never a noted man came that way, but, “I must pay my respects to the Governor.” Savants from over the sea came to look at his Indian museum. General Clark had made the greatest collection in the world, and had become an authority on Indian archæology.
Governor Clark, too, was worried about affairs in St. Louis. Missouri was just coming in as a State, and a new executive must be elected under the Constitution.
“Go,” said Julia, “I shall be recovered soon now.” Indeed, deceptive roses were blooming in her cheeks.
With many regrets and promises of a speedy return, Clark hastened back to his official duties. He found Missouri in the midst of a heated campaign, coming in as a State and electing a Governor. For seven years he had held the territorial office with honour.
But a new candidate was before the people.
“Governor Clark is too good to the Indians!” That was the chief argument of the opposing faction. “He looks after their interests to the disadvantage of the whites.”
“To the disadvantage of the whites? How can that be?” inquired his friends. “Did he not in the late war deal severely with the hostile tribes? And what do you say of the Osage lands? When hostilities began President Madison ordered the settlers out of the Boone’s Lick country as invaders of Indian lands. What did the Governor do? He remonstrated, he delayed the execution of those orders until they were rescinded, and the settlers were allowed to remain.”
“How could he do that?”
“How? Why, he simply told the Indians those lands were included in the Osage treaty of 1808. He made that treaty, and he knew. No Indian objected. They trusted Clark; his explanation was sufficient. And his maps proved it.”
“Too good to the Indians! Too good to the Indians!” What Governor before ever lost his head on such a charge?
At that moment, flying down the Ohio, came a swift messenger,—“Mrs. Clark is dead at Fotheringay.”
With the shock upon him, General Clark sent a card to the papers, notifying his fellow citizens of his loss, and of his necessary absence until the election was over. And with mingled dignity and sorrow he went back to Fotheringay to bury the beloved dead.
Granny Molly, “Black Granny,” who had laced “Miss Judy’s” shoes and tied up her curls with a ribbon in the old Philadelphia days, never left her beloved mistress.
A few days before “Miss Judy” went away, little Meriwether Lewis, then eleven years of age, came to her bedside with his curly hair dishevelled and his broad shirt collar tumbled.
“Aunt Molly,” said the mother, “watch my boy and keep him neat. He is so beautiful, Granny!”
After her body was placed on two of the parlour chairs, Granny Molly noticed a little dust on the waxed floor. “Miss Judy would be ’stressed if she could see it.” Away she ran, brought a mop, and had it all right by the time the coffin came.
Down on her knees scrubbing, scrubbing for the last time the floor for “Miss Judy,” tears trickled down the ebony cheeks.
“Po’, po’ Miss Judy. You’s done gwine wid de angels.”
They laid her in the family tomb, overlooking the green valley of the Roanoke. Two weeks after her death, Colonel Hancock himself also succumbed.
To a double funeral the Governor came back. High on the hillside they laid them, in a mausoleum excavated out of the solid rock.
“De Cunnel, he done watch us out ob dat iron window up dah,” said the darkies. “He sits up dah in a stone chair so he can look down de valley and see his slaves at deir work.”
To this day the superstitious darkies will not pass his tomb.
On his way to Washington, Governor Clark stopped again at Monticello.
“Ah, the joyous activity of my grandfather!” exclaimed Thomas Jefferson Randolph. “He mounts his horse early in the morning, canters down the mountain and across country to the site of the university. All day long he assists at the work. He has planned it, engaged workmen, selected timber, bought bricks. He has sent to Italy for carvers of stone.”
Out of those students flocking to consult Jefferson had grown the University of Virginia. Books and professors were brought from England, and the institution opened in 1825.
Martha Jefferson’s husband, Thomas Mann Randolph, was Governor of Virginia now, but the sage of Monticello paid little attention. All his talk was of schools,—schools and colleges for Virginia.
“Slavery in Missouri?” Clark broached the discussion that was raging at the West.
Instantly the sage of Monticello was attentive.
“This momentous question, like a firebell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. It is the knell of the Union. Since Bunker Hill we have never had so ominous a question.” He who had said, “Pensacola and Florida will come in good time,” and, “I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could be made to our system of States,” had corresponded with the Spanish minister concerning a canal through the isthmus, and sent Lewis and Clark to open up a road to Asia,—Jefferson, more than any other, had the vision of to-day.
Governor Clark went on to Washington.
Ramsay Crooks and Russell Farnham of the Astor expedition were quartered at the same hotel with Floyd of Virginia and Benton of Missouri.
Beside their whale-oil lamps they talked of Oregon. Benton was writing for Oregon,—he made a noise in all the papers. John Floyd framed a bill, the first for Oregon occupancy.
Missouri was just coming in as a State. The moment Benton, her first Senator, was seated, he flew to Floyd’s support.
“We must occupy the Columbia,” said Benton. “Mere adventurers may enter upon it as Æneas entered upon the Tiber, and as our forefathers came upon the Potomac, the Delaware, and the Hudson, and renew the phenomenon of individuals laying the foundation of future empire. Upon the people of eastern Asia the establishment of a civilised power upon the opposite coast of America cannot fail to produce great and wonderful results. Science, liberal principles, government, and the true religion, may cast their lights across the intervening sea. The valley of the Columbia may become the granary of China and Japan, and an outlet for their imprisoned and exuberant population.”
Staid Senators smiled and called Benton a dreamer, but he and Floyd were the prophets of to-day.
For thirty years after Astor had been driven out, England and her fur companies enriched themselves in Oregon waters. For thirty years Benton stood in his place and fought to save us Oregon. From the bedside of the dying Jefferson, and from the lips of the living Clark, he took up the great enterprise of an overland highway to India.
When Governor Clark came sorrowing back to St. Louis with the little boys, Missouri was a State and a new Governor sat in the chair, but though governors came and governors went, the officer that had held the position through all the territorial days was always called “Governor” Clark. As United States superintendent of Indian affairs for the West, Governor Clark now became practically autocrat of the redmen for life.
“If you ever think of marrying again, consider my cousin Harriet.”
More than a year Governor Clark “considered,” and then the most noted citizen of St. Louis married the handsome widow Radford.
“From Philadelphia she haf a wedding trousseau,” said the vivacious Creole girls, drinking tea in their wide verandas. “She haf de majesty look, like one queen.”
From the home of her brother, James Kennerly, the fun-loving Harriet of other years went to become the grave and dignified hostess in the home of the ex-governor.