Eva Emery Dye - The Conquest - The True Story of Lewis & Clark

Fascinated by the rush of waves, fourteen-year-old William poled like a man. Could he dream what destruction lay in their course? "L'année des grandes eaux," 1785, is famous in the annals of the West as the year of great waters. The floods came down and drowned out old Ste. Genevieve and drove the inhabitants back to the higher terrace on which that village stands to-day. Above, the whole American Bottom was a swift running sea, Kaskaskia and Cahokia were submerged by the simultaneous melting of the snows, and nothing but its high bold shore of limestone rock saved St. Louis itself. Paddling around in his boat, Auguste Chouteau ate breakfast on the roofs of Ste. Genevieve.

At Louisville barely could boats be pulled in to the Bear Grass. Below, waves foamed and whirled among the rocks, that to-day have been smoothed by the hand of man into a shallow channel.

Guided by skilful hands, many a trader's boat that year took the chute of the Falls like an arrow; over the ledges that dammed the water back, down, down they slid out of sight into that unknown West, where William knew not that his brother had paved the way to Louisiana.

"Have you found us a tract?" inquired the anxious mother.

"Land, mother? I own a dukedom, my soldiers and I, one hundred and fifty thousand acres, on the Indian side of the river. We have incorporated a town there, Clarksville they call it. It will be a great city,—but Louisville is safer at present."

That Spring they lived at Fort Nelson, with watchmen on the ramparts.

"But we saw no Indians in coming down!"

"True enough, the flood was a surprise so early in the year. Wait a little, and you will hear more of this terrifying river-route, where in low water it takes seven weeks to run from Redstone to the Bear Grass. Then the murderous clutches of the Indians have free play among the helpless emigrants. Let us be thankful for what you escaped."

Almost while they were speaking a band of Indians glided out of the woods not far away, snatched a boy from a fence, and shot his father in the field.

"Don't kill me, just take me prisoner," said little Tommy, looking up into the warrior's face.

At that instant an elder brother's rifle felled the Indian, and the boy was saved to become the father of Abraham Lincoln.

On a beautiful eminence three miles south of Louisville, John Clark built his pioneer Kentucky home. Louisville itself consisted of but a few log cabins around a fortification built by George Rogers Clark.

This family home, so far from the centre, was stockaded by itself, a double log house, two and a half stories high, with hall through the middle.

Every night a negro stood sentinel, there were portholes in the pickets, and Indians hid in the canebrakes. Once while the young ladies were out walking an Indian shot a little negro girl and they carried her back wounded, behind the pickets at Mulberry Hill.

The floor of the long dining-room was of wood, hard as a bone, and over the seven-foot mantel stag-horns and swords of the Revolution were lit by the light of the cavernous fireplace.

Rigid economy and untiring industry had been the rule at the old Clark home in Caroline, and not less was it here. There were no pianos, but until midnight the hum of the wheel made music.

Enchanted the young people listened to tale and song and hum of wheel, while down the great chimney top calmly smiled the pensive stars.

Little thought they of bare walls, low rafters, or small windows. After the boys hauled in the logs on a hand-sled, and built up a great flame, the whole world seemed illuminated. The pewter basins shone like mirrors, and while their fingers flew in the light of the fire, stories were told of Kaskaskia, Vincennes, St. Louis. But the Donna? Clark never spoke of her. It was a hidden grief that made him ever lonely. When he saw the lovelight all around him and sometimes left the room, the mother wondered why sudden silence came upon the group.

At Mulberry Hill Lucy was married to Major Croghan, who, on a farm five miles out, built Locust Grove, an English mansion of the olden style, in its day the handsomest in Louisville. And Fanny? She was the belle of Kentucky. In powdered wig and ruffles many a grave Virginian tripped with her the minuet and contra dances of the Revolution.

More and more young William became enamoured of the Indian dress, and went about gaily singing the songs of Robin Hood and hacking the meat with his hunting knife.

Out over the game-trails of Kentucky, like the beaten streets of Fredericksburg, the only city he ever knew, young William went with the Boones, Kenton, and his own famous brother, George Rogers Clark, in peltry cap and buckskin hunting-shirt girded with a leathern belt.

Led by them, with what eagerness he shot his first buffalo, deep in the woods of Kentucky. Not much longer could bears, deer, and buffalo retreat to the cane. With the coming of the Clarks an emigration set in that was to last for a hundred years.

Even amusements partook of sportive adventure. Now it was the hunter's horn summoning the neighbours to a bear chase in the adjoining hills. William surpassed the Indian himself in imitating the bark of the wolf, the hoot of the owl, the whistle of the whippoorwill.

Daniel Boone came often to Mulberry Hill in leggings and moccasins, ever hunting, hunting, hunting beaver, bear and coon, wolves and wild-cats, deer and foxes, and going back to trade their skins in Maryland for frontier furniture, knives and buttons, scissors, nails, and tea.

Upon his shot-pouch strap Boone fastened his moccasin awl with a buckhorn handle made out of an old clasp-knife, and carried along with him a roll of buckskin to mend his mocassins. While the grizzled hunter stitched deftly at his moccasins, William and York sat by, engaged in the same pastime, for wherever William went, York was his shadow.

"Since poor Richard's uncertain fate I can never trust the boy alone," said his mother. "York, it is your business to guard your young master." And he did, to the ends of the earth.

When "Uncle Daniel," rolled in a blanket, threw himself down on a bed of leaves and slept with his feet to the fire to prevent rheumatism, York and William lay down too, sleeping by turns and listening for Indians.

At daylight, loosely belting their fringed hunting shirts into wallets for carrying bread, a chunk of jerked beef, or tow for the gun, with tomahawk on the right side and scalping knife on the left, each in a leathern case, again they set off under the reddening forest.

Skilled in the lore of woodcraft, watchful of clouds and stars and sun, an intimate student of insect life and own brother to the wily beaver, bear, and buffalo, William Clark was becoming a scientist.

Returning from the chase with the same sort of game that graced the Saxon board before the Norman conquest, he sat down to hear the talk of statesmen. For when Clark's commission was revoked, Kentucky, unprotected, called a convention to form a State.

Affairs that in European lands are left to kings and their ministers, were discussed in the firelight of every cabin. Public safety demanded action. Exposed on three sides to savage inroads, with their Virginia capital hundreds of miles beyond forest, mountains, and rivers, no wonder Kentucky pleaded for statehood.

In a despotic country the people sleep. Here every nerve was awake. Discussion, discussion, discussion, made every fireside a school of politics; even boys in buckskin considered the nation's welfare.

Before he was seventeen William Clark was made an ensign and proudly donned the eagle and blue ribbon of the Cincinnati, a society of the soldiers of the Revolution of which Washington himself was president. Educated in the backwoods and by the cabin firelight, young William was already developing the striking bearing and bold unwavering character of his brother.