William Walker was the son of a white man, stolen as a child from Kentucky and brought up by the Indians. His mother was also the descendant of a stolen white girl. Young William, educated at the Upper Sandusky mission, became a chief.
The semi-Christian Wyandots desired to follow their friends to the West. Sitting there in the office, transacting business, Governor Clark spoke of the Flathead Nez Percés.
"I have never seen a Flathead, but have often heard of them," answered William Walker. Curiosity prompted him to step into the next room. Small in size, delicately formed, and of exact symmetry except the flattened head, they lay there parched with fever.
"Their diet at home consists chiefly of vegetables and fish," said the Governor. "As a nation they have the fewest vices of any tribe on the continent of America."
November 10, ten days after the burial of Black Eagle, Colonel Audrain of St. Charles, a member of the Legislature, died also at Governor Clark's house. His body was conveyed to St. Charles in the first hearse ever seen there. On December 25, Christmas Day, 1831, Mrs. Clark herself died after a brief illness.
There was sickness all over St. Louis. Was it a beginning of that strange new malady that by the next Spring had grown into a devouring plague,—the dreaded Asiatic cholera?
At the bedside of his dead wife, Governor Clark sat, holding her waxen hand, with their little six-year-old son, Jefferson, in his lap. "My child, you have no mother now," said the father with streaming tears. After the funeral, nothing was recorded in Clark's letter-books for some days, and when he began again, the handwriting was that of an aged man.
None mourned this sad event more than the tender-hearted Nez Percés, who remained until Spring.
When the new steamer Yellowstone of the American Fur Company, set out for its first great trip up the Missouri, Governor Clark made arrangements to send the chiefs home to their country. A day later, the other old Indian, The-Man-of-the-Morning, died and was buried near St. Charles.
Among other passengers on that steamer were Pierre Chouteau the younger and George Catlin, the Indian artist, who was setting out to visit the Mandans.