Page:McLoughlin and Old Oregon.djvu/22

 After a long and weary wandering two Indians entered the frontier city of St. Louis and asked for General Clark. There was much wa-wa (talk-talk) and inquiry for the book. The people gathered and curiously eyed these representatives of a tribe a thousand miles beyond the farthest that had ever appeared in the streets of St. Louis. Shawnees, Pawnees, Arapahoes, Sioux, had come, but never before a Flathead, never before anybody inquiring for a book of the Great Spirit.

General Clark was interested in Indians, in furs, in lands, in wars, and treaties. He banqueted these Indian ambassadors. He sent them with his servant to see the lions of the city. They visited cathedrals and shops and shows, but found no book. At last, tired and disappointed, they turned back and sought the way to their own country.

"Is it true that those Indians came all that distance for a book of the Great Spirit?" said Catlin, the Indian artist.

"They came for that and nothing else," said General Clark.

A young clerk in one of the St. Louis fur-rooms wrote to his friends in the East. It found its way into the papers. The Macedonian cry swept like a trumpet summons through the churches.

"Who will carry the book of the Great Spirit to the Flatheads?"

The chief luminary of the Methodist conference answered: "I know but one man—Jason Lee."

Like the voice of God, Jason Lee heard the Nez Percé" call—he thrilled. In a day he tore himself from the entreaty of friends to enter upon a journey that was not ended in a year. With his nephew, Daniel Lee,