The crestfallen prisoners
humbly protested that they were only trying to find out if the French
were really friendly to Clark, and begged that they might be released.
He answered with haughty indifference, and refused to release them, even
when the chiefs of the other tribes came up to intercede. Indians and
whites alike were in the utmost confusion, every man distrusting what
the moment might bring forth. Clark continued seemingly wholly unmoved,
and did not even shift his lodgings to the fort, remaining in a house in
the town, but he took good care to secretly fill a large room adjoining
his own with armed men, while the guards were kept ready for instant
action. To make his show of indifference complete, he "assembled a
Number of Gentlemen and Ladies and danced nearly the whole Night." The
perplexed savages, on the other hand, spent the hours of darkness in a
series of councils among themselves.

Next morning he summoned all the tribes to a grand council, releasing
the captive chiefs, that he might speak to them in the presence of their
friends and allies. The preliminary ceremonies were carefully executed
in accordance with the rigid Indian etiquette. Then Clark stood up in
the midst of the rings of squatted warriors, while his riflemen
clustered behind him in their tasselled hunting-shirts, travel-torn and
weather-beaten. He produced the bloody war-belt of wampum, and handed it
to the chiefs whom he had taken captive, telling the assembled tribes
that he scorned alike their treachery and their hostility; that he would
be thoroughly justified in putting them to death, but that instead he
would have them escorted safely from the town, and after three days
would begin war upon them. He warned them that if they did not wish
their own women and children massacred, they must stop killing those of
the Americans. Pointing to the war-belt, he challenged them, on behalf
of his people, to see which would make it the most bloody; and he
finished by telling them that while they stayed in his camp they should
be given food and strong drink, [Footnote: "Provisions and Rum." Letter
to Mason. This is much the best authority for these proceedings. The
"Memoir," written by an old man who had squandered his energies and sunk
into deserved obscurity, is tedious and magniloquent, and sometimes
inaccurate. Moreover, Dillon has not always chosen the extracts
judiciously. Clark's decidedly prolix speeches to the Indians are given
with int