ans, the best then to be had, and I
suppose made up from the fur traders' stories. But it was incomplete.
Even to-day few maps are anywhere near exactly accurate. For instance,
when they came to the Cheyenne River--which, of course, the traders
called the Chien, or Dog, River--Clark said that nothing was known of it
till a certain Jean Valle told them that it headed in the Black Hills.

"Of course, it's all easy now. We know the Black Hills are in the
southwest corner of South Dakota, and that the Belle Fourche River of
the old cow country runs into the Cheyenne, which flows almost east,
into the Missouri. But if Mr. Valle had not been out to the Black Hills,
Lewis and Clark would not have been able to give this information. Then,
again, while they were at the Ree village, on October 10th, two more
Frenchmen came to breakfast, 'Mr. Tabo and Mr. Gravolin,' who were
already in this country.

"To me, one of the most interesting things is to see the overlapping and
blending of all these things--how the turkey once overlapped the
antelope and prairie dog; how the Rees, who were only scattered branches
of the Pawnees, properly at home away down in Kansas--overlapped the
Sioux, who sometimes raided the Pawnees below the Platte.

"And these French traders said the Spaniards sometimes came to the mouth
of the Kaw River, and even on the Platte. So there we were, overlapping
Spain to the west. And up above, Great Britain was overlapping our
claims to the valley of the Columbia and even part of this Missouri
Valley. You can see how important this journey was.

"You'll remember the lower Brule Sioux Reservation, below us and west
of the river. The Cheyenne Reservation is in above here, below the
mouth of the Cheyenne River. From there the river takes a pretty
straight shoot up into North Dakota. A great game country, a wild cow
country, and now a quiet farming country. A bleak, snow-covered,
wind-swept waste it then was. And it was winter that first stopped
that long, slow, steady, tireless advance of the 'Corps of
Vollenteers.'"

"I see they broke one more private before they got to the Mandans,"
said John, running ahead in the pages of the book.

"Yes, that was Newman, who had been found guilty of mutinous
expressions. Seventy-five lashes and expulsion from the Volunteers was
what the court of nine men gave him. They always were dignified, and
they enforced respect from whites and Indians alike."

"Well," grumbled Jesse, "