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VI

THE FIRST FORT IN MONTANA

Manuel Lisa had enemies and ambition. These always go together.

Scarcely had Clark and his bride settled at St. Louis before down from the north came Manuel Lisa's boats, piled, heaped, and laden to the gunwale edge with furs out of the Yellowstone. His triumphant guns saluted Charette, St. Charles, St. Louis. He had run the gauntlet of Sioux, Arikara, and Assiniboine. He had penetrated the Yellowstone and established Fort Lisa at the mouth of the Bighorn in the very heart of the Crow-land,—the first building in what is now Montana.

"Dey say you cause de attack on Big White," buzzed a Frenchman in his ear. Angry at such an imputation, the Spaniard hastened to Governor Lewis.

"I disclaim all responsibility for that disaster. The Arikaras fired across my bow. I stopped. But I had my men-at-arms, my swivels ready. I understood presents. I smoked the pipe of peace, with a musket in my hand. Of course I passed. Even the Mandans fired on me, and the Assiniboines. Should that dismay a trader?"

Manuel Lisa, the successful, was now monarch of the fur trade. Even his enemies capitulated.

"If he is stern in discipline, the service demands it. He has gone farther, dared more, accomplished more, and brought home more, than any other. What a future for St. Louis! We must unite our forces."

And so the city on the border reached out toward her destiny. Pierre and Auguste Chouteau, William Clark and Reuben Lewis, locked fortunes with the daring, indomitable Manuel Lisa. Pierre Menard, Andrew Henry, and others, a dozen altogether, put in forty thousand dollars, incorporating the Missouri Fur Company. Into the very heart of the Rocky Mountains it was resolved to