ideas of right and
wrong, he must have excited jealousies and made some enemies; but none
of these had the hardihood to speak against his integrity.

His best work was accomplished as Indian agent. In that position he was
in fact and in name the foster-father of all the tribes who lived in
the territory he had helped to explore. It devolved upon him to
acquaint the Indians with the nature and purposes of our government,
and to bring them into obedience to its laws. More than this, he had a
large task before him in endeavoring to reconcile the traditional
enmities of the tribes one against another. He succeeded well. He got
the confidence of the natives, and kept it; from fearing his power,
most of them came to revere the man. When all is said of the
Indians,--of their savage craft, their obliquity of moral vision, their
unsparing cruelty, and their utter remissness in most matters of
behavior, the fact remains that they know how to appreciate candor and
honor, and will respond to it as well as they are able. They are slow
to believe in wordy protestations: they must have signs more tangible.
They will not trust all men of white complexion merely because they
have found one trustworthy; each man must prove himself and stand for
himself. William Clark gave them a rare exhibition of upright,
downright manliness, and they learned to respect and love him. He was
soon celebrated from St. Louis to the Pacific, and was called by the
name "Red-Head." To this day, old men of the Rocky Mountain tribes
speak of him with fondness, saying that our government has never shown
another like him.

He was a man of iron; his was an iron rule. In that time, Indian
affairs were comparatively free from the modern bureaucratic control;
the agent devised and followed his own plans, unhampered by jealous
superiors. It has been said that Clark's office was that of an
autocrat, a condition too dangerous to be generally tolerated. Clark
was indeed an exception. The most absolute power could be intrusted to
him with implicit confidence that it would not be abused. The Indians
themselves, who were the most directly concerned, did not rebel against
his unbending authority. If he was stern, exacting the utmost, and
holding them to a strict accountability for violations of law, they
knew that his least word of promise was certain of fulfillment. They
did not find his rule too onerous under those conditions. While he held
sway, the Western Indian count