246 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
tory of the United States in spite of the most determined efforts to 
exclude them. Among these, probably the most energetic and influ- 
ential was Robert Dickson, who had traded on the Mississippi and 
Missouri for twenty-five years, and had ascended the latter river to 
its source, unaccompanied by any white companion.t Among the Sioux, 
Pawnees, and Dakotas, his name was a household word. In the autumn 
of 1811 he had again succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the American 
officials, who had been instructed to enforce most rigidly the recent act 
of Congress prohibiting the importation of British goods, and reached 
his customary trading station at Prairie du Chien with a large supply 
of merchandise. He found that all the Indians there were in great 
distress in consequence of the failure of their crops from a prolonged 
drouth in the summer, which had also driven all the big game on the 
neighbouring prairies northward in search of pasture. During the 
winter Dickson generously distributed among them his whole stock of 
provisions and clothing, thus preserving the lives of many, and greatly 
strengthening his hold upon their affections. A great many of the 
people of the plains, however, had perished miserably from want. Red 
Thunder, a principal chief of the Sioux, living near the Missouri River, 
while on his way to Prairie du Chien early in the spring of 1812, dis- 
covered that six entire lodges of his nation had died from hunger and 
cold, and no trace could be found of forty-five others. The starving 
wretches had been subsisting upon roots, and had even attempted to 
prolong life by grinding up for food the dry bones of buffalo which had 
been lying upon the plains for years.? 
It was not until the 18th of June, when Dickson was at the portage 
between the Fox and‘ Wisconsin rivers on his return journey to Mont- 
real, that he was overtaken by two men employed as express messengers 
by Capt J. B. Glegg, Military Secretary to General Brock, who carried 
a letter from him, dated at York on the 27th of February, stating that 
war with the United States seemed inevitable, and desiring information 
as to the assistance he might be able to furnish in that event. Francis 
Rheaume, of Malden, and his companion, who had been entrusted with 
this important mission, had been upwards of three months on the road, 
during which they had travelled more than two thousand miles seeking 
him without success in many parts of the west. At Chicago they had 
been detained and searched by direction of the officer in command of 
the military post. They had taken the precaution to secrete their 
letters between the soles of their moccasins, and, as nothing was found 


? Bradbury, Travels, D. 25. 
* Dickson Memorial, 3rd December, 1812; Glegg to Prevost, 11th Novem- 
ber, 1812. 
