The call rang like a trumpet summons through the churches. The next year, 1834, the Methodists sent Jason Lee and three others to Oregon. Two years later followed Whitman and Spalding and their brides, the first white women to cross the Rocky Mountains.
"A famine threatens the Upper Missouri," was the news brought back by that steamer Yellowstone in 1832. "The buffaloes have disappeared!"
The herds, chased so relentlessly on the Missouri, were struggling through the Bitter Root Mountains, to appear in vast throngs on the plains of Idaho.
Even Europe read and commented on that wonderful first journey of a steamer up the Missouri, as later the world hailed the ascent of the Nile and the Yukon.
It was a great journey. Amazed Indians everywhere had watched the monster, puffing and snorting, with steam and whistles, and a continued roar of cannon for half an hour at every fur fort and every Indian village.
"The thunder canoe!" Redmen fell on the ground and cried to the Great Spirit. Some shot their dogs and horses as sacrifices.
At last, even the Blackfeet were reached. The British tried to woo them back to the Saskatchewan at Fort Edmonton, but eventually they tumbled over one another to trade with the Fire Boat that annually climbed the Missouri staircase.
XX
BLACK HAWK
The Roman faces of Black Hawk and Keokuk were often seen in St. Louis, where the chiefs came to consult Clark in regard to their country.
"Keokuk signed away my lands," said Black Hawk. He had never been satisfied with that earliest treaty made while Lewis and Clark were absent beyond the mountains.