Page:The Conquest.djvu/435

. With infinite tact and unfailing good sense, he harmonised, reconciled, and pushed for the best interest of the Indian.

"Give up the chase and settle into agricultural life," said Clark's agents to the Indians.

"Go to the chase," said the trader.

Clark sent up hoes to supersede the shoulder-blade of the buffalo. The trader sent up fusils and ammunition. The two combined in the evolution of the savage. The squaw took the hoe, the brave the gun.

Winter expresses came down to St. Louis from the far-off Powder and the Wind River Mountains. "Send us merchandise." With the first breaking ice of Spring the boats were launched, the caravans ready.

Deck-piled, swan-like upon the water the Missouri steamboat started. Pierre Chouteau was there to see her off, Governor Clark was there to bid farewell to his chiefs. Engagés of the Company, fiercely picturesque, with leg knives in their garters, jumped to store away the cargo.

Up as far as St. Charles Clark and the Chouteaus sometimes went with the ladies of their families to escort the up-bound steamer, and with a last departing, "Bon voyage! bon voyage, mes voyageurs!" disembarked to return to St. Louis.

On, on steamed the messenger of commerce and civilisation, touching later at Fort Pierre Chouteau in the centre of the great Sioux country, the capital of South Dakota to-day, at Fort Union at the Yellowstone, where McKenzie lived in state like the Hudson's Bay magnates at the north, at Fort Benton at the foot of the Great Falls of the Missouri. Traders from St. Louis laid the foundations of Kansas City and Topeka, built the first forts at Council Bluffs and Omaha, pre-empted the future sites of Yankton and Bismarck.

"A boat! a boat!"

For a hundred miles Indian runners brought word.

Barely had the steamer touched the wharf before the solitude became populous with colour and with sound. Night and day went on the loading and unloading of furs and merchandise. A touch of the hand, a farewell,—before the June rise falls, back a hundred miles a day she