Louis. These men foregathered with the _voyageurs_ and told only too
true stories of the dangers ahead. Fires kindled on the banks of the
river called neighboring Indians to council. Council Bluffs commemorates
one conference, of which there were many with Iowas and Omahas and
Ricarees and Sioux. Pause was made on the south side of the Missouri to
visit the high mound where Blackbird, chief of the Omahas, was buried
astride his war horse that his spirit might forever watch the French
_voyageurs_ passing up and down the river.
[Illustration: Captain William Clark.]
By October the explorers were sixteen hundred miles north of St. Louis,
at the Mandan villages near where Bismarck stands to-day. The Mandans
welcomed the white men; but the neighboring tribes of Ricarees were
insolent. "Had I these white warriors on the upper plains," boasted a
chief to Charles Mackenzie, one of the Northwest Fur Company men from
Canada, "my young men on horseback would finish them as they would so
many wolves; for there are only two sensible men among them, the worker
of iron [blacksmith] and the mender of guns." Four Canadian traders had
already been massacred by this chief. Captain Lewis knew that his
company must winter on the east side of the mountains, and there were a
dozen traders--Hudson Bay and Nor'westers--on the ground practising all
the unscrupulous tricks of rivals, Nor'westers driving off Hudson Bay
horses, Hudson Bay men driving off Nor'-westers', to defeat trade; so
Captain Lewis at once had a fort constructed.
Pages:
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287