Page:Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition (1905).djvu/18



treat the Indians with kindness and consideration and to attach them, by all means possible, to the United States to whom they now owed allegiance.

All this was scrupulously done. At the mouths of large streams like the Osage, Kansas, Platte, Grand, and Yellowstone rivers, some of them the sites of future cities, they halted to make astronomical observations.

Important discoveries in natural history were made and councils of the utmost gravity were held with the Indian tribes encountered. All their experiences were set down in their journals with great fidelity, and their narrative gains in interest and value with advancing years even as wine improves with age.

The Lewis and Clark Exposition to be held at Portland, Oregon, June 1 to October 15, 1905, draws attention to the remarkable contrast between the West and the Northwest of 1804-6 and that of the present day. Then St. Louis was a mere village with but one or two French settlements lying above it on the Missouri river. No steamboat had