[II]
THE GREAT JOURNEY OF LEWIS AND CLARK
French is still spoken in Quebec and New Orleans, reminders that the land of the lilies had much to do with the settlement of North America. Many of the greatest explorers of the continent were Frenchmen. Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence River in 1534, and Champlain in 1603 founded New France, and from his small fortress at Quebec planned an empire that should reach to Florida. In 1666 Robert Cavalier, the Sieur de La Salle, came to Canada, and set out from his seigneurie near the rapids of Montreal to find the long-sought road to China. Instead of doing that he discovered the Ohio River, first of white men he voyaged across the Great Lakes and sailed down the Mississippi to its mouth. Great explorer, he mapped the country from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Mississippi to the Atlantic Ocean, and built frontier-posts in the wilderness. He traveled thousands of miles, and in 1682 he raised the lilies of France near the mouth of the Mississippi and named the whole territory he had covered Louisiana, in honor of King Louis XIV of France.
The first colony on the Gulf was established seventeen years later at Biloxi by a Canadian seigneur named Iberville. Soon afterward this seigneur's brother, Bienville, founded New Orleans and attracted many French pioneers there. The French proved to be better explorers than farmers or settlers. In the south they hunted the sources of the Arkansas and Red Rivers, and discovered the little-known Pawnee and Comanche Indians. In the north they pressed westward and came in sight of the Rocky Mountains. At that time it seemed as if France was to own at least two-thirds of the continent. The English general, Braddock, was defeated at Fort Duquesne in 1755, and the French commanded the Ohio as well as the Mississippi; but four years later the English general, Wolfe, won the victory of the Plains of Abraham near Quebec; and France's chance was over. Men in Paris who knew little concerning the new world did not scruple to give away their country's title to vast lands. The French ceded Canada and all of La Salle's old province of Louisiana east of the Mississippi, except New Orleans, to England. Soon afterward France, to outwit England, gave Spain New Orleans and her claim to the half of the Mississippi Valley west of the river to which the name Louisiana now came to be restricted.
The French, however, were great adventurers by nature, and Napoleon, changing the map of Europe, could not keep his fingers from North America. He planned to win back the New France that had been given away. Spain was weak, and Napoleon traded a small province in Italy for the great tract of Louisiana. He meant to colonize and fortify this splendid empire, but before it could be done enemies gathered against his eagles at home, and to save his European throne he had to forsake his western colony.
When Thomas Jefferson became President in 1801, he found the people of the South and West disturbed at France's repossessing herself of so much territory. He sent Robert R. Livingston and James Monroe to Paris to try to buy New Orleans and the country known as the Floridas for $2,000,000. Instead Napoleon offered to sell not only New Orleans, but the whole of Louisiana Territory extending as far west as the Rocky Mountains for $15,000,000. Napoleon insisted on the sale, and the envoys agreed. Jefferson and the people in the eastern United States were dismayed at the price paid for what they considered almost worthless land, but the West was delighted, owning the mouth of the great Mississippi and with the country beyond it free to them to explore. In time this purchase of Louisiana, or the territory stretching to the Rocky Mountains, forming the larger part of what are now thirteen of the states of the Union, was to be considered one of the greatest pieces of good fortune in the country's history.
Scarcely anything was known of Louisiana, except the stories told by a few hunters. Jefferson decided that the region must be explored, and asked his young secretary, Meriwether Lewis, who had shown great interest in the new country, to make a path through the wilderness. Lewis chose his friend William Clark to accompany him, and picked thirty-two experienced men for their party. May 14, 1804, the expedition set out in a barge with sails and two smaller boats from a point on the Missouri River near St. Louis.
The nearer part of this country had already been well explored by hunters and trappers, and especially by that race of adventurous Frenchmen who were rovers by nature. These men could not endure the confining life of towns, and were continually pushing into the wilderness, driving their light canoes over the waters of the great rivers, and often sharing the tents of friendly Indians they met. Many had become almost more Indian than white man,—had married Indian wives and lived the wandering life of the native. Such a man Captain Lewis found at the start of his journey, and took with him to act as interpreter among the Sioux and tribes who spoke a similar language.
The party traveled rapidly at the outset of their journey, meeting small bands of Indians, and passing one or two widely-separated frontier settlements. They had to pass many difficult rapids in the river, but as they were for the most part expert boatmen they met with no mishaps. The last white town on the Missouri was a little hamlet called La Charrette, consisting of seven houses, with as many families located there to hunt and trade for skins and furs. As they went up the river they frequently met canoes loaded with furs coming down. Day by day they took careful observations, and made maps of the country through which they were traveling, and when they met Indians tried to learn the history and customs of the tribe. Captain Lewis wrote down many of their curious traditions. The Osage tribe had given their name to a river that flowed into the Missouri a little more than a hundred miles from its mouth. There were three tribes of this nation: the Great Osages, numbering about five hundred warriors; the Little Osages, who lived some six miles distant from the others, and numbered half as many men; and the Arkansas band, six hundred strong, who had left the others some time before, and settled on the Vermillion River. The Osages lived in villages and were good farmers, usually peaceful, although naturally strong and tireless. Captain Lewis found a curious tradition as to the origin of their tribe. The story was that the founder of the nation was a snail, who lived quietly on the banks of the Osage until a high flood swept him down to the Missouri, and left him exposed on the shore. The heat of the sun at length ripened him into a man, but with the change in his nature he did not forget his native haunts on the Osage, but immediately bent his way in that direction. He was, however, soon overtaken by hunger and fatigue, when happily the Great Spirit appeared, and giving him a bow and arrow showed him how to kill and cook deer, and cover himself with the skins. He then pushed on to his home, but as he neared it he was met by a beaver, who inquired haughtily who he was, and by what authority he came to disturb his possession. The Osage answered that the river was his own, for he had once lived on its borders. As they stood disputing, the daughter of the beaver came, and having by her entreaties made peace between her father and the young stranger, it was proposed that the Osage should marry the young beaver, and share the banks of the river with her family. The Osage readily consented, and from this happy marriage there came the village and the nation of the Wasbasha, or Osages, who kept a reverence for their ancestors, never hunting the beaver, because in killing that animal they would kill a brother of the Osage. The explorers found, however, that since the value of beaver skins had risen in trade with the white men, these Indians were not so particular in their reverence for their relatives.