"Alas!" sighed the old voyageurs with friendly pity. "De Kansas were plaintee brave people, but de Sac and de Sioux, dey drive 'em up de Kansas River."
Cæsar conquered Gaul, but the mercatores were there before him. Lewis and Clark ascended the Missouri, but everywhere the adventurous Frenchmen had gone before them, peddlers of the prairie, out with Indian goods buying skins.
But now Americans had come. The whippoorwill sang them to sleep, the wolf howled them awake. The owl inquired, "Who? Who? Who?" in the dark treetops at the mouth of the Kansas River.
On, on crept the boats, past grand old groves of oak and hickory, of walnut, ash, and buckeye, that had stood undisturbed for ages. Swift fawn flitted by, and strange and splendid birds that the great Audubon should come one day to study. On, on past the River-which-Cries, the Weeping Water, the home of the elk. Tall cottonwoods arose like Corinthian columns wreathed with ivy, and festoons of wild grape dipped over and into the wave.
The River-which-Cries marked the boundary of two nations, the Otoes and Omahas. Almost annually its waters were reddened with slaughter. Then came the old men and women and children from the Otoe villages on the south and from the Omahas on the north and wept and wept there, until it came to be known as Nehawka, the Weeping Water.
July came and the waters were falling. With a fair wind, on the 21st they sailed past the mouth of the great river Platte. In the summer evening Lewis and Clark in their pirogue paddled up the Platte.
"Here I spen' two winter wit' de Otoe," said Drouillard the hunter. "De Otoe were great nation, but de Sioux an' de 'Maha drove dem back on de Pawnee."
"And the Pawnees?"
"Dey built villages an' plant corn an' wage war wid de Osage."
Ten days later preparations were made to meet the Otoes at Council Bluffs. On a cottonwood pole the flag was flying. A great feast was ready, when afar off, Drouillard and Cruzatte were seen approaching with their friends.