"
Clark was one of those men who are perforce listened to when they begin
to speak.
"Captain de Leyba," said he, "I know not what may be the present policy
of his Spanish Majesty with McGillivray and his Creeks in the south, but
this I do believe," and he brought down his fist among the papers, "that
the old French and Spanish treaties were right in principle. Here are
copies of the English treaties that I have secured, and in them thousands
of sovereigns have been thrown away. They are so much waste paper.
Gentlemen, the Indians are children. If you give them presents, they
believe you to be afraid of them. I will deal with them without
presents; and if I had the gold of the Bank of England stored in the
garrison there, they should not touch a piece of it."
But Captain de Leyba, incredulous, raised his eyebrows and shrugged.
"Por Dios," he cried, "whoever hear of one man and fifty militia subduing
the northern tribes without a piastre?"
After a while the Colonel called me in, and sent me speeding across the
little river with a note to a certain Mr. Brady, whose house was not far
away. Like many another citizen of Cahokia, Mr. Brady was terror-ridden.
A party of young Puan bucks had decreed it to be their pleasure to encamp
in Mr. Brady's yard, to peer through the shutters into Mr.
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