Lewis and Clark / Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

insolent, inspired by the inferior numbers of the traders who had visited them in the past, and by the subservient attitude which these had assumed. From such tribes there was good reason to a

rairie, intending that the smoke should notify the Indians of their approach and summon them to the river. Shortly before this they had encountered upon the river one Pierre Dorion, a half-breed son of the notable Old Dorion, whose fame

tched with Dorion to a village twelve miles distant from the camp, taking presents of tobacco, corn, and cooking utensils. In view of the later history

d to carry their visitors,-an honor which they declined, informing the Indians that they were not the commanders of the boats. As a grea

pum; to which we added a chief's coat-that is, a richly laced uniform of the United States Artillery corps, with a cocked hat and red feather. One second chief and three inferior ones were made or recognized by medals, a suitable present of tobacco, and articles of clothing. We smoked the pipe of peace, and the chiefs retired to a bower formed of bushes by their young men, where they divided among one another the p

Father's two sons. You see me and the rest of our chiefs and warriors. We are very poor; we have neither powder, nor ball, nor knives; and our women and children at the village have no clothes. I wish that as my brothers have given me a flag and a medal, they would give something to those poor people, or let them stop and trade with the first boat which comes up the river. I will bring chiefs of the Pawnees and Mahas together, and make peace between them; but it is better that I

uded by describing the distress of the nation; they begged us to have pity on them; to send them traders; they wanted powder and ball, a

ere vain of their prestige amongst their inferior neighbors; nor did they really acknowledge the superiority of the whites. Their speeches must be taken as declarations of momentary policy, and not of fixed principles. Further, they did not express the thought of the tribe as a whole, b

the natural history and physical geography of the land, about which nothing had as yet been written. Under the date of September 7th there occurs a go

of the Sioux,-the Tetons. This was the first occasion for an exhibition of the fighting temper of

en to us, as soon as I landed the Perogue three of their young men seased the cable of the Perogue, the chiefs soldr. Huged the mast, and the 2d chief was verry insolent both in words & justures declareing I should not go on, stateing he had not received presents sufficient from us, his justures were of such a personal nature I felt myself compeled to Draw my sword, at this motion Capt. Lewis ordered all under arms in the boa

s for the n

ng us well, and also suffer their squaws and children to see us and our boat, which would be perfectly new to them. Accordingly ... we came to on the south side, where a crowd of men, women and children were wait

. There the pipe of peace was smoked, a ceremonious dog-feast was prepared; the chieftains delivered themselves of speeches, divided between fawning adula

impulse, murderous by strongest inclination, thievish according to opportunity, combining the effrontery of Italian beggars with the boldn

to harass the advance. No doubt they had already repented of their brief show of decency, and would have made an open demonstration had they dared. Through those days the m

all domestic and foreign relations, was in striking contrast to that of the Si

"affected the Indian chief very sensibly, for he cried aloud during the punishment." When the matter was explained to him, "he acknowledged that examples were necessary, and that he himself had giv

rned by the calendar and by cold, they prepared to take up winter quarters. Their first care was to find a suitable place for buildin

sh confidence and bring them into sympathy with the new conditions of government. So far as

o an insignificant number, and compelled them to remove out of easy reach of their strongest enemies. When Lewis and Clark came upon them, they formed only a trifling souvenir of their

would have changed the history of the Upper Missouri. As it was, he spent most of his villainous instincts for his own private amusement,-occasionally slaughtering one of his warriors who had given him displeasure, or butchering a couple of his wives whose society had grown irksome; and between times he leered with his solitary evil eye upon the traders, contriving ways for getting whiskey with which to bait his passions. The British traders of the Hudson Bay and Northwest companies had long before secured a st

were powerless in trying to reconcile these people to the Sioux, who were the bogie-men of the plains, and who conducted themselves in every affair of peace or war

quaws was named Sacajawea, the "Bird Woman"; she had been but a child at the time of her capture, when she had been taken to the Mandan villages and there sold to a Frenchman, known as Chaboneau, who

he party, who was a good amateur blacksmith, set up a small forge, where he turned out a variety of tools, implements, and trinkets, which w

itory and in regulating trade. To make the Indian mind ready to receive this lesson, it was first necessary to correct the evils bred by the earlier short-sighted rule of the Spanish, and to uproot a strong predispo

length in the journals; and a fair copy of these was made, for transmittal to Washington in the spring. There were maps to be drawn, too; and a mass of interesting objects was gathered to illustrate the natural history of the route. This material had to be cleaned, prepared, assorted and catalogued, and packed for shipment, to accompany the report and illuminate its story, so that Mr. Jefferson might have a full under

nd caprices,-bending, twisting, cracking like brown paper, so as to be wholly unfit for ordinary carpentry; but there was no other material available. Six canoes were made to hang together somehow; and in these ramshackle structures, together with the two periogues, the party covered more than a thous