Captain Clark Then Repeated His Intention
In Giving The Medal, Which Was The Medicine His Great Father Had
Directed Him
To deliver to all chiefs who listened to his word and.
followed his counsels; and that as he [the chief]
Had done so,
the medal was given as a proof that we believed him sincere.
He now appeared satisfied and received the medal, in return for which
he gave double the quantity of buffalo-meat he had offered before.
He seemed now quite reconciled to the whites, and requested that some
traders might be sent among the Chayennes, who lived, he said, in a
country full of beaver, but did not understand well how to catch them,
and were discouraged from it by having no sale for them when caught.
Captain Clark promised that they should be soon supplied with goods
and taught the best mode of catching beaver.
"Big White, the chief of the Mandans, now addressed them at some length,
explaining the pacific intentions of his nation; the Chayennes
observed that both the Ricaras and Mandans seemed to be in fault;
but at the end of the council the Mandan chief was treated with
great civility, and the greatest harmony prevailed among them.
The great chief, however, informed us that none of the Ricaras could
be prevailed on to go with us till the return of the other chief;
and that the Chayennes were a wild people, afraid to go.
He invited Captain Clark to his house, and gave him two carrots
of tobacco, two beaver-skins, and a trencher of boiled corn and beans.
It is the custom of all the nations on the Missouri to offer to every
white man food and refreshment when he first enters their tents."
Resuming their voyage, the party reached Tyler's River, where they camped,
on the twenty-seventh of August.
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