Page:The Conquest.djvu/350

 the wear and tear of generations. With a long low porch in front and rear, and a fence of cedar pickets like a miniature stockade, it differed in no respect from the other modest cottages of St. Louis. Back of the house rushed the river; before it, locusts and lightning bugs flitted in the summer garden. Beside the Kiersereau house Clark had his Indian office in the small stone store of Alexis Marie.

Into this little house almost daily came Meriwether Lewis, and every moment that could be spared from pressing duties was engrossed in work on the journals of the expedition. Sometimes Julia brought her harp and sang. But into this home quiet were coming constant echoes of the Indian world.

"Settlers are encroaching on the Osage lands. We shall have trouble," said Governor Lewis. Under an escort of a troop of cavalry Clark rode out into the Indian country to make a treaty with the Osages. The Shawnees and Delawares had been invited to settle near St. Louis to act as a shield against the barbarous Osages. The Shawnees and Delawares were opening little farms and gardens near Cape Girardeau, building houses and trying to become civilised. But settlers had gone on around them into the Osage wilderness.

"I will establish a fort to regulate these difficulties," said the General, and on his return Fort Osage was built.

"Settlers are encroaching on our lands," came the cry from Sacs, Foxes, and Iowas. Governor Lewis himself held a council with the discontented tribes and established Fort Madison, the first United States post up the Mississippi.

But there were still Big White and his people not yet returned to the Mandan country, and this was the most perplexing problem of all.