In the Footsteps of Lewis and Clark (8 page)

Fig 1.9
End of the Trail
: Seaside, Oregon's, heroic-sized statue of the explorers, locate inside the street turnaround at the Pacific Ocean beach. Photo by Jeffrey Phillip Curry. Courtesy, Jeffrey Phillip Curry.

Fig 1.10
Plaque at the base of the
End of the Trail
statue. Photo by Jeffrey Phillip Curry. Courtesy, Jeffrey Phillip Curry.

A Montana Governor's Commission, appointed in 1926 to propose means of honoring the explorers, also called for a substantial monument and considered several cities for the site—including Great Falls, Three Forks, Helena, Butte, Bozeman, and Livingston. “During the next two years a series of public meetings were held at which seven communities presented proposals for the new memorial: Armstead, Bozeman, Butte, Great Falls, Helena, Livingston, and Three Forks.” The proposals included “monuments with sculptured figures” or “buildings.” Bozeman proposed “a building and museum,” which the commission liked but did not feel the state could afford at the time. Further, they did not think Bozeman was the appropriate site. Nothing was done, possibly because of the intense municipal rivalry and the commission's apparent inability to decide whether to have several monuments in different places or just one in one location. The commission ultimately recommended monuments in both Great Falls and Three Forks; if only one were approved, however, it should be located in Great Falls.
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The competition among the towns continued. In addition to the commercial advantages of luring tourism, community pride and perhaps a sense of local historical identity were at stake. A heroic-sized sculpture, which Montana residents agreed would be
the
symbol of the Corps of Discovery's sojourn in the state, would significantly recognize the historical primacy of the town in which it was located. The winning community would become the official site for both state and national shrines. In 1928 a committee from the Three Forks Chamber of Commerce published an elaborate pamphlet arguing in favor of that town's claim because it was practically on the site of the expedition's “first and most important goal” (the headwaters of the Missouri River) as well as the point where the “great Yellowstone Trail, the National Parks Highway and the Geysers to Glacier Trail” all came together, among other reasons. Montana senator Burton K. Wheeler introduced—fruitlessly, as it turned out—a bill in the U.S. Congress that would have appropriated $50,000 to erect a memorial at Three Forks.
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In 1929, the same year the regional Lewis and Clark Memorial Association was formed to address the public neglect of the explorers, the Montana Legislature passed a resolution designating Fort Benton as the sole site for a Lewis and Clark monument, using an earlier design created for Great Falls by artist Charles M. Russell.
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According to a special 1976 Lewis and Clark edition of Fort Benton's
The River Press
, sculptor Henry Lion of Los Angeles was enlisted to develop Russell's design into a heroic-sized bronze statue. The city of Fort Benton donated the proposed site, a circular turnaround at the north end of Front Street next to the river embankment. However, as the Great Depression deepened in 1930, Montana's state government shied away from appropriating the anticipated cost of nearly $18,000. Nothing came of the design or the resolution, although the legislative act apparently was not rescinded. These attempts by the state of Montana to establish a Lewis and Clark monument during the 1920s—and the attendant squabbling over where it should be located—temporarily raised public consciousness of the expedition's history; however, it is difficult to tell whether this reflected changing public views of Lewis and Clark themselves. The emphasis on the creation and placement of a statuary monument suggests
that the “folk” image still dominated public attention paid to the explorers.
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Neglect of Lewis and Clark, at least in terms of traditional statuary, proved something of an embarrassment in Montana. While numerous activities were planned for the expedition's sesquicentennial in the 1950s, Fort Benton did not receive its larger-than-life-size sculpture commemorating the explorers until 1976—the year of the nation's bicentennial—when the community unveiled a composite statue of Clark, Lewis, and Sacagawea created by Bob Scriver of Browning, Montana. In 1973 the Fort Benton Community Improvement Association received state approval to revive the 1929 project and raise funds, whereupon a Lewis and Clark Memorial Committee was named to oversee the project. But it is fair to say that Scriver's participation was essential to reviving the Lewis and Clark statue project and that the community supported it with little outside help. Financing came from the sale of small replicas of Scriver's design. The state of Montana contributed no funds. The empty turnaround circle, reserved for the statue since the early 1930s, remains empty to this day. For some reason, the committee ignored it and selected a spot near the embankment, a few feet to the north.
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The statue is fairly traditional. It depicts the two captains standing, with Lewis looking through a telescope, while Sacagawea is seated with the baby Baptiste beside her. The pattern is similar to that of the 1919 Keck sculpture in Virginia, but without the elaborate frieze.

Scriver's subsequent endeavors to monumentalize the expedition are more original, even audacious. His ambitious project to carve a limestone monolith on Clark's Lookout, the point near Dillon where Clark climbed to view the valley, did not come to fruition. He did complete the fourteen-foot-high bronze group in Great Falls, entitled
Lewis and Clark at the Portage
, however, which was unveiled at ceremonies for Montana's State Centennial in 1989. The monument portrays Lewis, Clark, York (Clark's African American slave), and the dog Seaman.
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The figure of York—who traveled with the Corps of Discovery all the way to the Pacific Ocean and who, along with Sacagawea, took part in a vote held near the mouth of the Columbia River in the fall of 1805 to decide on a location for the winter camp—is central to one of Charles M. Russell's paintings depicting scenes from the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In the painting, a somewhat romanticized York is shown impressing his audience in a Mandan lodge. Recently, more attention has been paid to York as a member of the expedition. Writer and historian Steven Ambrose has discussed York's request that Clark free him after the return in 1806 and speculated about York's subsequent life.
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Historian Robert Betts has devoted a book to York, the most recent edition of which offers newly discovered evidence about post-expedition York in an epilogue by James J. Holmberg. The figure of York in the Great Falls sculptural group reflects the growth of sensitivity in the 1970s toward African American history, as well as a more generally inclusive interpretation of the nation's past.
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Fig 1.11
In the 1970s Montana finally got a heroic-sized statue commemorating Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea, thanks to the community of Fort Benton and sculptor Bob Scriver of Browning, Montana. The statue is located near the turnaround on Front Street in Fort Benton. Photo by Donnie Sexton. Courtesy, Travel Montana.

It is difficult to measure the significance of larger-than-life statues to the public view of Lewis and Clark. There are too few examples to solidly indicate changes over time, although the inclusion of York demonstrates a change in sensibility by the 1970s. However, the history of Lewis and Clark statuary does reveal a curious lack of public regard for the explorers—especially when contrasted with the near idolatry of Sacagawea—at a time when heroic-sized statues were most in vogue. That neglect is remarkable because statues became conventional means for commemorating the exploits of revered individuals in the past. Yet the neglect was fairly general at the national level, even in states through which the expedition's trail runs. Pageants, another means of commemoration, were also popular between 1900 and 1930, although they dramatized group tableaux and actions. While featuring historical figures in the principal roles, pageants tend to mythologize events rather than individuals. As we shall see in
Chapter 5
, pageants became the preferred method of commemorating the Corps of Discovery during the 150th anniversary of its expedition, which suggests that by the 1950s events described in the journals had become more significant as subjects of commemoration than were the individual personages of Clark, Lewis, or Sacagawea. Those events are closely tied to the route of the Corps of Discovery and, in turn, to the landscape and the modern highways that provide access to the Lewis and Clark trail.