"Cannot provision be made to better their condition?
"Let me recommend that the poorer and less enlightened be moved without delay to their lands west of the Mississippi. There will I take pleasure in advancing their interests. In my declining years it would be a great consolation to me to see them prosper in agriculture.
"Come to my country where I can have it in my power to act as your father and your friend. You shall be protected and peaceful and happy."
The Choctaws were touched, but they answered,—
"We cannot part with our country. It is the land of our birth,—the hills and streams of our youth."
XVII
THE GREAT COUNCIL AT PRAIRIE DU CHIEN
St. Louis was a cold place in those prairie years; a great deal of snow fell, and sleighbells rang beside the Great River. No Indians came during the cold weather, but with the springing grass and blossoming trees, each year the Indians camped around the twin lakes at Maracasta, Clark's farm west of St. Louis.
There were wigwams all over Maracasta. James Kennerly, Clark's Indian deputy, busy ever with the ruddy aborigines, dealing out annuities, arranging for treaties and instructing the tribes, kept open house for the chiefs at Côte Plaquemine, the Persimmon Hill. Clark's boys shot bows and arrows with the little Indians, Kennerly's little girls made them presents of "kinnikinick," dried leaves of the sumac and red osier dogwood, to smoke in their long pipes.
Every delegation came down laden with gifts for the Red Head,—costly furs, buffalo robes, bows, arrows, pipes, moccasins.
Tragedies of the plains came daily to the ears of General Clark, far, far beyond the reach of government in the wild battle-ground of the West.