Traffic moved with unusual force. It was the custom for outdwelling men
who had something to sell or to trade to reserve it until they came to a
convention in Kasky, when they were certain to meet the best buyers. All
the up-river towns sent lines of vehicles and fleets of boats to the
capital. Kickapoo, Pottawatomie, and Kaskaskia Indians were there to see
the white-man council, scattered immovably along the streets, their
copper faces glistening in the sun, the buckskin fringes on their
leggins scarcely stirring as the hours crept by. Squaws stood in the
full heat, erect and silent, in yellow or dark red garments woven of
silky buffalo wool, and seamed with roebuck sinews. Few of them had
taken to civilized finery. Their barbaric and simple splendor was a
rebuke to poor white women.
Many ease-loving old Frenchmen denied themselves the pleasure of
following the day's pageant from point to point, and chose the best of
the vacant seats fronting the empty platform in the common meadow. There
they waited for speech-making to begin, smoking New Orleans tobacco, and
stretching their wooden-shod feet in front of them.
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