Without waiting for troops from St. Louis, forty-eight hours after the news of peace the British had evacuated Prairie du Chien. A day or two later they returned, took the cannon, and set fire to the fort with the American flag flying.
Into the burning fort went Rising Moose, secured the flag and an American medal, and brought them down to St. Louis.
While interpreters were speeding by horse and boat over half a hundred trails, Manuel Lisa, sleepless warden of the plains, arrived with forty-three chiefs and head men of the Missouri Sioux. Wild Indians who never before had tasted bread, brought down in barges camped on the margin of the Mississippi, the great council chiefs of their tribes, moody, unjoyous, from the Stony Mountains. For weeks other deputations followed, to the number of two thousand, to make treaties and settle troubles arising out of the War of 1812.
Whether even yet a council could be held was a query in Governor Clark's mind. Across the neighbouring Mississippi, Sacs, Foxes, Iowas were raiding still, capturing horses and attacking people. That was Black Hawk.
The eyes of the Missouri Sioux flashed. "Let us go and fight those Sacs and Iowas. They shall trouble us no more." With difficulty were they held to the council.
There was a steady and unalterable gloom of countenance, a melancholy, sullen musing among the gathered tribes, as they camped on the council ground at Portage des Sioux on the neck of land between the two rivers at St. Charles. Over this neck crossed Sioux war parties in times past, avoiding a long detour, bringing home their scalps.
Resplendent with oriental colour were the bluffs and the prairies. Chiefs and warriors had brought their squaws and children,—Sioux from the Lakes and the high points of the Mississippi in canoes of white birch, light and bounding as cork upon the water; Sioux of the Missouri in clumsy pirogues; Mandans in skin coracles, barges, dug-outs, and cinnamon-brown fleets of last year's bark.
The panorama of forest and prairie was there,—Sioux of the Leaf, Sioux of the Broad Leaf, and Sioux Who Shoot in the Pine Tops, in hoods of feathers, Chinese featured Sioux, of smooth skins and Roman noses, the ideal Indian stalking to and fro with forehead banded in green and scarlet and eagle plumes.
For Wabasha, Little Crow, and Red Wing had come, great sachems of the Sioux nation. The British officers at Drummond's Island in Lake Huron had sent for Little Crow and Wabasha.
"I would thank you in the name of George III. for your services in the war."