In 1822 the Sioux and Cheyennes combined against the Crows and fell upon their villages. In the slaughter of that day five thousand defenceless men, women, and children were butchered on the prairie. All their lodges and herds of horses and hundreds of captive girls were carried away. As a people the Crows never recovered.
Drunk with victory the triumphant Sioux rolled back on the Chippewas, Sacs, Foxes, and Iowas.
"If continued, these wars will embroil all the tribes of the West," said Clark. "We must do something more to promote peace. They must become civilised."
President Monroe was working up a new Indian policy, with Clark as a chief adviser.
"Go, Paul Louise, take this talk to my Osages. I am coming up to their country. Tell them to meet me on the first of June."
In his canoe, with his squaw and his babies, the wizened little Frenchman set out. He could not read, he could not write, he could only make his mark, but the Indians loved and trusted Paul Louise.
"And you, Baronet Vasquez, take this to the Kansas nation."
Vasquez belonged to the old Spanish régime. As a youth he had gone out with the Spanish garrison at the cession of St. Louis, to return a fur trader.
Then came Lafayette from the memories of Monticello. Escorted by a troop of horse, he had ascended that historic mountain. The alert lithe figure of the little Marquis leaped from the carriage; at the same moment the door opened, revealing the tall, bent, wasted figure of Jefferson in the pillared portico. The music ceased, and every head uncovered. Slowly the aged Jefferson descended the steps, slowly the little Marquis approached his friend, then crying, with outstretched arms, "Ah, Jefferson!" "Ah, Lafayette!" each fell upon the other's bosom. The gentlemen of the cavalcade turned away with tears, and the two were left to solitude and recollection.
Long and often had Jefferson and Lafayette laboured together in anxious and critical periods of the past. It was in chasing "the boy" Lafayette that the British came to Charlottesville. When Jefferson was minister in Paris, the young and popular nobleman assisted the unaccustomed American at the Court of France. Together they had seen the opening of the French Revolution. What memories came back as they sat in the parlour at Monticello, discussing the momentous events of two continents in which they had been actors!