XVI The Red Head Chief
“Hasten, Ruskosky, rebraid my queue. Kings and half kings are in there as plenty as blackberries in the woods, and I must see what is the matter.”
Hurriedly the Polish valet, who dressed Clark in his later years, knelt to button the knees of his small clothes and fasten on a big silk bow in place of a buckle. Directly the tall figure wrapped in a cloak entered the council chamber connected with his study.
The walls of the council chamber were covered with portraits of distinguished chiefs, and with Indian arms and dresses, the handsomest the West afforded. Nothing pleased the redmen better than to be honoured by the acceptance of some treasure for this museum.
Against this wall the Indians sat, and the little gray-haired interpreter, Antony Le Claire, lit the tomahawk pipe. As the fumes rolled upward the Red Head Chief took his seat at the table before him. The Indians lifted their heads. Justice would now be done.
It was a sultry day and the council doors were open. But sultrier still was the debate within.
“Our Father,” said the Great and Little Osages, “we have come to meet our enemies, the Delawares and Shawnees and Kickapoos and Peorias, in your Council Hall. We ourselves can effect a peace.”
And so the Red Head listened. “Make your peace.”
Six days they argued, Paul Louise interpreter. Hot and hotter grew the debate, and mutual recriminations.
“White Hair’s warriors shot at one of my young men.”
“But you, Delawares, robbed our relations,” cried the Osage chiefs.
“You stole our otter-skins,” retorted the Delawares.
“And you hunted on our lands.”
“Last Summer when we were absent, you bad-hearted Osages destroyed our fields of corn and cut up our gardens,” cried the angry Shawnees, who always sided with the Delawares.
“You speak with double tongues—”
Clark stepped in and hushed the controversy.
“Who gave you leave to hunt on Osage lands?”
“White Hair and his principal braves,” answered the Delawares.
“When did they shoot at your man?”
“At the Big Bend of the Arkansas.”
“Who owned the peltries the Osages took?”
“All of us.”
“Very well then, restitution must be made.”
Soothing as a summer breeze was his gentle voice, “My children, I cannot have you injured. The Delawares are my children, and the Osages, the Shawnees, the Kickapoos, and the Peorias. I cannot permit any one to injure my children. Whoever does that is no longer child of mine. You must bury the sharp hatchet underground.”
He calmed the heated tribes and effected peace. Like little children they gave each other strings of beads, pipes, and tobacco, and departed reconciled.
“Bring all your difficulties to me or to Paul Louise and we will judge for you,” said the Red Head Chief, as one by one they filed in plumed array down the steps of the Council House.
Scarce had the reconciled tribes departed before officers of the law brought in seven chiefs, hostages of the Iowas,—“Accused by the Sacs, Your Honour, of killing cattle; accused by the whites of killing settlers.”
“My father.” The mournful appealing tone of the Indian speaker always affected Clark. He was singularly fitted to be their judge and friend. “My son.” There was an air of sympathy and paternal kindness as the Red Head Chief listened. His heart was stirred by their wrongs, and his face would redden with indignation as he listened to the pitiful tales of his children.
With bodies uncovered to the waist, with blanket on the left arm and the right arm and breast bare, a chief stepped forth to be examined concerning a border fray with the backwoodsmen.
Drawing himself to his full height, and extending his arm toward Clark, the Iowa began:
“Red Head, if I had done that of which my white brother accuses me, I would not stand here now. The words of my red head father have passed through both my ears and I have remembered them. I am accused. I am not guilty.
“I thought I would come down to see my red head father to hold a talk with him.
“I come across the line. I see the cattle of my white brother dead. I see the Sauk kill them in great numbers. I said there would be trouble. I thought to go to my village. I find I have no provisions. I say, ‘Let us go down to our white brother and trade for a little.’ I do not turn on my track to my village.”
Then turning to the Sacs and pointing,—
“The Sauk who tells lies of me goes to my white brother and says, ‘The Ioway has killed your cattle.’
“When the lie has talked thus to my white brother, he comes up to my village. We hear our white brother coming. We are glad and leave our cabins to tell him he is welcome. While I shake hands with my white brother, my white brother shoots my best chief through the head,—shoots three my young men, a squaw, and her children.
“My young men hear, they rush out, they fire,—four of my white brothers fall. My people fly to the woods, and die of cold and hunger.”
Dropping his head and his arm, in tragic attitude he stands, the picture of despair. The lip of the savage quivers. He lifts his eyes,—
“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 incurring the awful displeasure of the Red Head Chief. The West of that day was sown with his medals that disappeared only with the tribes.
In time they came to know Clark’s signature, and preserved it as a sacred talisman. Could the influence of one man have availed against armies of westward pressing trappers, traders, and pioneers, the tribes would have been civilised.
“Shall we accept the missionaries? Shall we hearken to their teaching?”
“Yes,” he said to the Osages. “Yes,” to the Pawnees, to the Shawnees, and “Yes,” to a delegation that came from the far-off Nez Percés beyond the Rocky Mountains.
In days of friction and excitement Clark did more than regiments to preserve peace on the frontier. He was a buffer, a perpetual break-water between the conflicting races.
As United States superintendent of Indian affairs the Red Head Chief grew venerable. The stately old officer lived in style in St. Louis, and as in the colonial time Sir William Johnson ruled from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, so now Clark’s word was Indian law from the Mississippi to the Pacific. His voice was raised in continual advantage to the Indian. While civilisation was pushing west and west, and crowding them out of their old domains, he was softening as much as possible the rigour of their contact with whites.
“Our position with regard to the Indians has entirely changed,” he used to say. “Before Wayne’s campaigns in 1794 and events of 1818, the tribes nearest our settlements were a formidable and terrible enemy. Since then their power has been broken, their warlike spirit subdued, and themselves sunk into objects of pity and commiseration. While strong and hostile, it has been our obvious duty to weaken them; now that they are weak and harmless, and most of their lands fallen into our hands, justice and humanity require us to cherish and befriend them. To teach them to live in houses, to raise grain and stock, to plant orchards, to set up landmarks, to divide their possessions, to establish laws for their government, to get the rudiments of common learning, such as reading, writing, and ciphering, are the first steps toward improving their condition.”
This was the policy of Jefferson, reaffirmed by Clark. It was the key to all Clark’s endeavours.
At Washington City he discussed the question with President Monroe.
“But to take these steps with effect the Indians should be removed west of the Mississippi and north of the Missouri.”
“Let them move singly or in families as they please,” said Clark. “Place agents where the Indians cross the Mississippi, to supply them with provisions and ammunition. A constant tide is now going on from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois. They cross at St. Louis and St. Genevieve, and my accounts show the aid which is given them. Many leading chiefs are zealous in this work, and are labouring hard to collect their dispersed and broken tribes at their new and permanent homes.”
“And the land?” inquired the President.
“It is well watered with numerous streams and some large rivers, abounds with grass, contains prairies, land for farms, and affords a temporary supply of game.
“It is in vain for us to talk about learning and religion; these Indians want food. The Sioux, the Osages, are powerful tribes,—they are near our border, and my official station enables me to know the exact truth. They are distressed by famine; many die for want of food; the living child is buried with the dead mother because no one can spare it food through its helpless infancy.
“Grain, stock, fences are the first things. Property alone can keep up the pride of the Indian and make him ashamed of drunkenness, lying, and stealing.
“The period of danger with an Indian is when he ceases to be a hunter and before he gets the means of living from flocks and agriculture. In the transit from a hunter to a farmer, he degenerates from a proud and independent savage to a beggar, drunkard, thief. To counteract the danger, property in horses, hogs, and cattle is indispensable. They should be assisted in making fences and planting orchards, and be instructed in raising cotton and making cloth. Small mills should be erected to save the women the labour of pounding corn, and mechanics should be employed to teach the young Indians how to make ploughs, carts, wheels, hoes, and axes.”
Benton and other great men argued in the Senate. “In contact with the white race the Indians degenerate. They are a dangerous neighbour within our borders. They prevent the expansion of the white race, and the States will not be satisfied until all their soil is open to settlement.”
And so, to remove the Indians to a home of their own became the great work of Clark’s life.
“A home where the whites shall never come!” the Indians were delighted. “We will look at these lands.”
“I recommend that the government send special agents to collect the scattered bands and families and pay their expenses to the lands assigned them,” said Clark, estimating the cost at one hundred thousand dollars. But not all of the tribes would listen.
In November, 1826, Clark drove from St. Louis in his carriage to the Choctaw nation in Alabama, to persuade them to move west of the Mississippi.
“After many years spent in reflection,” said the Commissioners, “your Great Father, the President, has determined upon a plan for your happiness. The United States has a large unsettled country on the west side of the great river Mississippi into which they do not intend their white settlements shall enter. This is the country in which our Great Father intends to settle his red children.
“Many of the tribes are now preparing to remove and are making application for land. The Cherokees and Muscogees have procured lands, and your people can have five times as much land in that fine country as they are now living on in this.”
Never before in the conquest of nations had the weaker race been offered such advantageous terms. Two days passed while the Indians considered and argued among themselves.
“What shall we give to you?” asked the Commissioners. “These lands and titles to them, provisions and clothing, a cow and corn and farming implements to each family, and blacksmiths and ploughmakers and annuities.”
“Friends and brothers of the Choctaw nation,” said Clark in the council, “I have spent half the period of an accustomed life among you. Thirty-six years ago I passed through your country and saw your distressed condition. Now I see part of your nation much improved in prosperity and civilisation. This affords me much happiness. But I am informed that a very large majority of the Choctaw nation are seeking food among the swamps by picking cotton for white planters.
“Cannot provision be made to better their condition?
“Let me recommend that the poorer and less enlightened be moved without delay to their lands west of the Mississippi. There will I take pleasure in advancing their interests. In my declining years it would be a great consolation to me to see them prosper in agriculture.
“Come to my country where I can have it in my power to act as your father and your friend. You shall be protected and peaceful and happy.”
The Choctaws were touched, but they answered,—
“We cannot part with our country. It is the land of our birth,—the hills and streams of our youth.”