The Rose of Old St. Louis | Page 9

Once on my own feet, though I still felt a little shaky, I was able, by availing myself of Yorke's arm, to climb the steep path leading up the bluff, and soon found myself in the main street of the village, which the habitans called the Rue Royale.
We had come out into a large square or marketplace, filled with the throng of people I had seen at the landing and many more, so that, as the people surged backward and forward to get a nearer view, the whole open space looked like a great posy-bed of many-hued flowers waving in a summer breeze. And if St. Louis had had a foreign look to me when viewed from a distance, still more did I feel as if I were in a strange town in a strange land as I heard the babble of strange tongues about me and saw the picturesque costumes of the habitans, so unlike anything I had ever seen in Philadelphia or Kentucky. Negroes were chattering their queer creole patois, and Indians of many nations were gathered into groups, some of them bedizened with the cheap finery of the stores, some of them wearing only bright-hued blankets, but with wonderful head-dresses of eagle feathers, and all of them looking gravely on with a curiosity as silent as that of the habitans was noisy and babbling. The presence of so many Indians and on such friendly terms struck me as strange, for in Kentucky there were no such friendly relations between Indians and whites, and the presence of so many of them would have betokened danger and caused much uneasiness.
It thrilled me much that our coming should have made so great excitement in the village, and doubtless my vanity would have taken fire again if I had not known that it was my captain these people had come to see, and not myself, of whom they had never heard. Even my captain I knew must shine in a reflected glory, as the brother of General George Rogers Clarke, whom the people of St. Louis worshiped as their savior in the affair of 1780, when the Osages surprised the men at work in the fields, and whom all the Indians of Illinois regarded with fear and reverence as the great "Captain of the Long Knives." Yet I could see that many of their curious glances fell on me also, and I let go of Yorke's arm and walked steadily with my head in the air, as befitted the friend of Captain Clarke.
We had stopped in front of a large stone building set inside a walled inclosure. My captain, who was in advance with the governor and his party, as he entered the inclosure turned and beckoned to Yorke and me to follow him. The throng parted to let us through, and as we entered the gates I saw that the governor had stopped on the wide gallery that ran round the four sides of the building, and with a stately flourish was bidding my captain welcome to Government House.
With Yorke close at my footsteps, I followed the governor's party through a wide door into a great room that extended through the house (as I could see by the open doors and windows at the rear), and that was almost as wide as it was long, with doors opening into rooms on both sides. Here I was presented to Governor Delassus, who received me cordially, and who, with his dark eyes and punctilious manners, was my idea of a Spanish don.
On either side of him stood two men who also greeted me cordially, but without the punctiliousness of the Spaniard. They were the two Chouteaus, Auguste and Jean Pierre. I had heard much of them, both in Philadelphia and in Kentucky, and I found it difficult to conceal the curiosity with which I regarded them. I had expected to find two rough frontiersmen, somewhat after the manner of Daniel Boone or Simon Kenyon, both of whom I had seen at General Clarke's; but they were very far from that. Auguste, the elder, and who, almost more than his step-father, Laclede, was the founder of St. Louis, was the graver of the two, with keen, shrewd eyes that betokened the successful man of business. Pierre (as everybody called the younger) looked not at all like his brother: taller and slenderer of build, his flashing dark eyes and gay manners must have been inherited from his father, Laclede, for Madame Chouteau (whom I came to know very well later) was even graver and sterner in manner than her eldest son, Auguste.
But interested as I was in meeting these men,--and there were many others of whom I had heard, Manuel Lisa, Gabriel Cerré, Francis Vigo, and Josef Marie Papin,--I could not resist casting many