General Clark had been in many hard Indian fights, and was of a family of famous Indian fighters, but he learned in that far western expedition to respect the hospitality, the courage, the heroism, and manliness of the Indian. He resolved to leave nothing undone to express his gratitude to his old Oregon friends, and he charged his young men to see to it personally that they had every comfort. He knew Indian character and stoicism, and when his aids told him they "could make nothing out of the Indians, or learn what they wanted," he replied, "Don't hurry them, give them time, and they will make known their mission to this far-away place." General Clark was an earnest and devoted Catholic, and he ordered that the Indians be taken to all the services in the cathedral, and also to all places of amusement likely to entertain them. Week after week passed, and the Indian stoicism continued; but finally in an audience with the General they told him all. The Indians all spoke "the Chinook," a pleasing word language invented by the Hudson Bay Company, and was to all the Indian tribes, from Hudson's Bay to the Columbia, what the classic languages are to the learned world. It was their trading language. The General had a good interpreter, and knew something of the Chinook himself, so that he soon fully understood the meaning of their long journey, and wondered at it. They said, "Our people have heard of the white man's book of heaven, and we have been sent the long journey over mountains and wide rivers, and among strange people, to find it and carry it back with us." In that far-away period there were few newspapers in the West, to print the news, and General Clark, with his many duties and cares, left no written account of these interviews or of his advice to the Indians, but we can rest assured that, as a soldier, a friend, and Christian gentleman, it was the most kindly he could give.