"We must have protection," said the traders to Governor Clark at the Council House. At Council Grove, a buffalo haunt in a thickly wooded bottom at the headwaters of the Neosho in the present Kansas, Clark's agents met the Osage Indians and secured permission for the caravans to pass through their country. But the dreaded Pawnees and Comanches were as yet unapproachable.
In spite of the inhumanity of Spaniards, in spite of murderous Pawnees, in spite of desert dust and red-brown grass and cacti, year by year the caravans grew, the people became more friendly and solicitous of each other's trade, until one day New Mexico was ready to step over into the ranks of the States.
And one day Kit Carson, whose mother was a Boone, only sixteen and small of his age, ran away from a hard task-master to join the Santa Fé caravan and grow up on the plains.
Daniel Boone was dead, at eighty-six, just as Missouri came in as a State. Jesse, the youngest of the Boone boys to come out from Kentucky, was in the Constitutional Convention that adjourned in his honour, and Jesse's son, Albert Gallatin Boone, in 1825, joined as private secretary that wonderful Ashley expedition that keel-boated up the Platte, crossed from its head-waters over to Green River, kept on west, discovered the Great South Pass of the Rockies, the overland route of future emigration, and set up its tents on the borders of Utah Lake.
Overwhelmed with debt Ashley set out,—he came back a millionaire with the greatest collection of furs ever known up to that time. Everything was Ashley then, "Ashley boats" and "Ashley beaver,"—he was the greatest man in St. Louis, and was sent to Congress.
Sixty years ago the Lords of the Rivers ruled St. Louis.
The Rocky Mountain Fur Company went out and camped on the site of a dozen future capitals. From the Green River Valley under the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, from the Tetons of Colorado, the Uintahs of Utah, and the Bitter Roots of Idaho, from the shining Absarokas and the Bighorn Alps, they came home with mink and otter, beaver, bear, and buffalo.
The American Fur Company came to St. Louis, and the Chouteaus, at first the rivals, became the partners of John Jacob Astor. Born in the atmosphere of furs, for forty years Pierre Chouteau the younger had no rival in the Valley except Clark. The two stood side by side, one representing commerce, the other the Government.
Pierre Chouteau, the largest fur trader west of the Alleghanies, sent his boats to Itasca, the headwaters of the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Yellowstone, the Osage, the Kansas, and the Platte, employing a thousand men and paying skilled pilots five thousand dollars for a single expedition. With Chouteau's convoys came down Clark's chiefs, going back in the same vessels. To their untutored minds the trader's capital and the Red Head Town were synonymous.
If there was a necessary conflict between the policy of the government and that of the fur trade, no one could have softened it more than the Red Head diplomat. With infinite tact and unfailing good sense, he harmonised, reconciled, and pushed for the best interest of the Indian.