So down in a flotilla of canoes had come Davenport with thirteen chiefs, all wreathed in turkey feathers, emblems of the Pottawattamies. No more they narrated their heroic exploits in fighting with Tecumseh.
Grave, morose, brooding over his wrongs, Black Partridge was seventy now, his long coarse unkempt hair in matted clusters on his shoulders, but figure still erect and firm. "I would be a friend to the whites," he said. "I was compelled to go with my tribe." The silver medallion of George Washington was gone from his breast. Many and sad had been the vicissitudes since that day, when, in a flood of tears, he had thrown it down at the feet of the commander at Fort Dearborn. Tall, slim, with a high forehead, large nose and piercing black eyes, with hoops of gold in his ears, Black Partridge was a typical savage,—asking for civilisation. But it rolled over him. Here and there a missionary tarried to talk, but commerce, commerce, the great civiliser, arose like a flood, drowning the redmen.
"The settlements are crowding our border," Black Partridge spoke for his people on their fairy lake, Peoria. "And whom shall we call Father, the British at Malden or the Americans at St. Louis? Who shall relieve our distresses?"
"Put it in your mind," said Auguste Chouteau, the shrewd old French founder of St. Louis, "put it in your mind, that when de British made peace with us, dey left you in de middle of de prairie without a shade against sun or rain. Left you in de middle of de prairie, a sight to pity. We Americans have a large umbrella; keeps off de sun and rain. You come under our umbrella."
And they did.
The Indian has a fine sense of justice. The situation was evident. Abandoned by the British who had led him into the war, he stood ready at last to return to the friends on whom he was most dependent.
One by one the chiefs came forward and put their mark to the treaty of peace and friendship. Clark brought the peace pipes,—every neck was craned to scan them.
Sioux pipes sometimes cost as much as forty horses,—finely wrought pipes of variegated red and white from the Minnesota quarries, Shoshone pipes of green, and pipes of purple from Queen Charlottes, were sold for skins and slaves,—but these, Clark's pipes of silver bowls and decorated stems, these were worth a hundred horses!
Puffing its fragrant aroma, the fierce wild eye of the savage softened. Twenty thousand dollars' worth of goods was distributed in presents, flags, blankets, and rifles, ornaments and clothing.
"Ah, ha! Great Medicine!" whispered the Indians as the beautiful gifts came one by one into their hands.