From Sea to Shining Sea by James Alexander Thom

Author:James Alexander Thom
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9781417707911
Publisher: San Val
Published: 1984-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

24

MOUTH OF THE MIAMI RIVER

January, 1786

WILLIAM CLARK STOOD SWEATING, ARMS FOLDED, WATCHING the furious Shawnee and listening to his hissing and snarling and shouting. The tension in the council house was like a finger on a hair-trigger. William eased his hands secretly over the butts of the pistols in his belt, his father’s fancy pistols. He was aware that he was in greater danger than he had ever been in before and probably ever would be in the future—as there very well might be no future. William had talked his father into letting him come with George to the council with the Shawnees here at Fort Finney, and now he was almost wishing his father had not let him come.

The large council room smelled of new wood, tobacco, and the body musk of seventy Indians, Delawares and Wyandots as well as Shawnees. Brother George and two other Indian Commissioners, General Butler and Mr. Parsons, sat behind a table at the end of the room, and a dozen white soldiers and officers stood along the side walls, all drawn tight as fiddle strings, their eyes darting over the crowd of seated savages.

The shouting Indian, a tall, sinewy Shawnee chieftain, was standing in front of the treaty table, practically on tiptoe, his nostrils distended and his eyes sparking, holding in one hand a peace belt of white beads and a war belt of red beads. Under a breastplate made of rows of colored quills, his chest was rising and falling rapidly. He was talking so fast and so hatefully that spittle was bubbling in his mouth-corners. The translator was having trouble keeping up with him, but the gist of his tirade was plain enough to William and to everybody: He was telling the Commissioners in effect that they could take the terms of their treaty and go bury them where the dog buries his waste. This outburst was stunning; it was the first breach of ceremony in all the days of the council. The negotiations heretofore had been serious and tough, but amiable. The Delaware and Wyandot chiefs, and the old toothless Moluntha, chief of the Maykujay Shawnees, had listened respectfully to the Indian Commissioners, and had kept the younger hotbloods, such as this one, under control. They had acknowledged that their warriors’ raids into Cain-tuck-ee were causing distress not just to the whites, but to their brothers in the peaceable tribes. They had professed a yearning to lay down the tomahawk. They had agreed that many white women and children they held captive were guilty of nothing and should be returned to their families. It had all been amiable, and William had met and learned to respect many of the Indian chiefs and chieftains, and had even joined with braves and squaws in the incredible excitement and abandon of one of the evening entertainments, a kind of copulation dance, in the Indian village near the fort. But just this morning George had cautioned: “It’s going too well. They’d be fools to swallow the damned terms we’re offering.

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