With gratitude and with the winsomeness for which he was noted, he invited them into his own house and to his own table. Mrs. Clark devoted herself to their entertainment.
Black Eagle insisted on an early council. "We have heard of the Book. We have come for the Book."
"What you have heard is true," answered Clark, puzzled and sensible of his responsibility. Then in simple language, that they might understand, he related the Bible stories of the Creation, of the commandments, of the advent of Christ and his crucifixion.
"Yes," answered Clark to their interrogatories, "a teacher shall be sent with the Book."
Just as change of diet and climate had prostrated Lewis and Clark with sickness among the Nez Percés twenty-five years before, so now the Nez Percés fell sick in St. Louis. The Summer was hotter than any they had known in their cool northland. Dr. Farrar was called. Mrs. Clark herself brought them water and medicine as they lay burning with fever in the Council House. They were very grateful for her attentions,—"the beautiful squaw of the Red Head Chief."
But neither medicine nor nursing could save the aged Black Eagle.
"The most mournful procession I ever saw," said a young woman of that day, "was when those three Indians followed their dead companion to the grave."
His name is recorded at the St. Louis cathedral as "Keepeelele, buried October 31, 1831," a "ne Percé de la tribu des Choponeek, nation appellée Tête Plate." "Keepeelele," the Nez Percés of to-day say "was the old man, the Black Eagle." Sometimes they called him the "Speaking Eagle," as the orator on occasions.
Still the other Indians remained ill.
"I have been sent by my nation to examine lands for removal to the West," said William Walker, chief of the Wyandots.