In the Footsteps of Lewis and Clark (9 page)

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S DESCRIBED IN
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HAPTER
1, monuments and statues—once the traditional means of commemorating individuals idolized by the public—were eventually erected to honor William Clark and Meriwether Lewis. But the fascination that cast its spell over an increasing number of history buffs was inspired at least as much by the land and the routes taken through that land as it was by the people who made up the Corps of Discovery, in part because of the written records of the expedition. Without those records there would be no Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail today, since virtually no material trace remains of the group's journey. The journals provide a unique glimpse of the western regions through which the expedition passed—a description of the appearance of the land in the early years of the nineteenth century. The landscape has often changed dramatically since then. The Lewis and Clark trail—the combination of routes from Wood River to the Pacific Ocean and back to St. Louis, as described in the journals—became for Americans in the second half of the twentieth century the most genuine memorial to the explorers' names.

Map 2.1
Expedition routes, St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean and return, 1804–1806. Large dots indicate locations of natural and historic sites and of Lewis and Clark interpretive centers.

Since much of this book discusses events and commemorations held at various times and in various locations along Lewis and Clark's route, it seems helpful to offer a linear and chronological description of the country and the Native American groups encountered, as well as the route's relation to present-day communities and other locations. Furthermore, the summary here relates the path of Lewis and Clark to present-day highways, which provide access to the expedition's historical sites and play a major role in the development of the National Historic Trail—the book's central theme.
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During the summer of 1803, Meriwether Lewis took a specially constructed keelboat loaded with supplies down the Ohio River and picked up William Clark at his home in Clarksville, Indiana Territory. At Camp Wood on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River and near the mouth of the Missouri, the men of the expedition prepared for their journey and spent the winter. President Thomas Jefferson had informed Lewis that his main objective was “to explore the Missouri river, & such principal stream of it, as, by its course & communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, may offer the most direct & practicable water communication across this continent, for the purposes of commerce.” In addition to finding portage between the headwaters of the Missouri and Columbia rivers, the explorers were to observe and note topographical, botanical, mineralogical,
meteorological, and zoological characteristics of the country they passed through.
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Lewis and Clark were particularly assiduous in this respect, filling their records of the journey with hundreds of descriptions of new plants and animals and landforms they encountered. Jefferson's instructions also called for conferences and peacemaking among the tribes of the upper Missouri and included a list of social and cultural topics on which he wanted the explorers to collect information. Nearly fifty men comprised the initial party, although there would be some changes as a result of military discipline. A third of those who set out—some soldiers and river boatmen—returned from the Mandan Villages in North Dakota following the winter of 1804–1805 and did not continue to the Pacific Coast. For the first segment of the journey, the Corps of Discovery traveled in a fifty-five-foot keelboat equipped with oars and a sail and two pirogues or dugout canoes, one painted white and one red.
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On May 14, 1804, the Corps of Discovery left its winter quarters to join Captain Lewis—who had ridden overland from St. Louis—at the small village of St. Charles, where Interstate 70 now crosses the Missouri River just west of St. Louis. A few days later the expedition continued in a westerly direction. At La Charette, located near Marthasville, Missouri, at a site since washed away by the river, the men left behind the last Euro-American settlement they would see for nearly thirty months. [II, 253n5] For almost 400 miles (by river) they moved westward across the present state of Missouri, past the future sites of Jefferson City, Boonville, Lexington, and Independence and the mouths of the Osage, Moreau, and Chariton rivers and other tributaries. It was, and still is, lush country, described in the journals as fertile prairie interspersed with woodlands. At a point about halfway between Columbia and Boonville, where I-70 crosses the Missouri, William Clark first reported seeing a “buffalo Sign,” although another eleven weeks would pass before the group dined on a bison. [II, 282]

West of Boonville and the Lamine River, the Missouri curves north and then southwest before continuing its generally westward course to Kansas City. In this bend the expedition passed a narrow elbow in the river at which a prominent bluff jutted out, now the site of Arrow Rock State Park, downstream from Saline City. Journal
entries are replete with descriptions of the natural bounty found in the heavy vegetation along the banks of the Missouri River, which included wild grapes, black raspberries, plums, and crabapples. The bottomlands through which the river shifted and meandered were dominated by large, often even huge cottonwood trees throughout the prairie and high plains regions of Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, the Dakotas, and Montana. Sharing this floodplain were shrubs, willows, and other vegetation characteristic of wetlands created when the river had abandoned and cut off oxbow bends as it changed channels. Away from the floodplain, the terraces and bluffs were thick with upland forests of walnut, ash, hackberry, oak, and sycamore trees.
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The currents of the river, “a moody beast,” constantly changed speed. The men often had to jump into the shallows near the bank and pull on cordelles (long ropes) attached to the keelboat or push the pirogues when the current was too strong to make headway by poling or rowing. If the wind was favorable, sails could be hoisted to take advantage of it. When the wind blew against them, however, even pulling was ineffective, and the expedition had to put in to shore to wait it out. As if shifting currents and wind were not enough, the Missouri ate away at its banks, causing large chunks to break away without warning and threaten to swamp any nearby craft. Floating obstacles were also a common menace. Enormous cottonwoods that had fallen into the river often became “sawyers,” dead tree trunks that floated vertically with their tops just below the surface of the water. With little warning, the bobbing sawyers could rip open the hull of a keelboat or pirogue with tremendous power.
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At the mouth of the Kansas River in present-day Kansas City, which it reached on June 26, the expedition paused for several days. On the 28th the men saw their first buffalo but did not kill one. The respite was used to discipline John Collins and Hugh Hall, charged in a court-martial proceeding with drunkenness while on guard duty and with pilfering the whiskey supply. The punishment was harsh: Collins received 100 lashes and Hall 50. This was one of several courts-martial and disciplinary inflictions carried out on the lower Missouri segment of the outward journey. The men celebrated their first Fourth of July near Atchison, Kansas, firing the keelboat bow gun and examining a long-deserted site of a “Kanzas” Indian town in
Donophan County. [II, 349n4] Moving past St. Joseph, they worked their way between present-day Missouri and Nebraska to the mouth of the Platte River, about ten miles south of Omaha.

Today, Interstate 29 follows the river closely on the Missouri and Iowa side. The wild grapes, berries, and wild roses of midsummer could still be seen in profusion along the river's banks, but the prairie land back from the eastern (or northern) bluffs was becoming more open, with fewer signs of timber or vegetation other than grasses. Although the grass became shorter as they moved further west into the interior of South Dakota, the riverine zone of Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa was dominated by “big bluestem,” which could grow as high as twelve feet. Moving out of the prairie region into the Great Plains, the land became progressively drier and higher in elevation. The Platte River, pouring into the Missouri near Bellevue, Nebraska, was known to be a major tributary flowing almost directly from the western mountains. Although not practically navigable, within forty years the Platte would guide and sustain emigrants passing over the great river roads to Oregon, California, and Utah.
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Clark commented on the Platte: “This Great river being much more rapid than the Missouri forces its current against the opposite Shore . . . with great Velocity roleing its Sands into the Missouri, filling up its Bend & Compelling it to incroach on the . . . shore—we found great dificuelty in passing around the Sand at the mouth of [t]his River.” [II, 402]

Concerned about not having encountered any of the Ponca, Oto, Omaha, or Missouri Indians they had expected to see, the captains dispatched hunters George Drouillard and Pierre Cruzatte to look for them and invite them to parley. The Corps of Discovery's first council with Indians was held at a place on the west side of the Missouri River near Blair, Nebraska. Clark referred to this site, south of a large oxbow lake where the DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge is now located, as the “Council Bluffs,” but it should not be confused with the Iowa town of the same name across the river from Omaha. There, on August 2, the men addressed a group of Otos and Missouris and handed out Jefferson “friendship” medals to the chiefs. Remnants of the Missouri band, depleted by a smallpox pandemic in 1801, lived among the Otos. Lewis and Clark hoped to negotiate peace between the Otos and their bitter enemies, the Omahas. The once powerful
Omahas, who had not yet been located, had also suffered severe losses from the disease.

In a procedure that would be repeated with other tribes as the Corps of Discovery moved upriver toward the Mandan Villages, Clark spoke to the Missouris and Otos about forging an agreement that would end the raiding and enmity among the river tribes, and he promised trade for all under the sovereignty of the United States. Neither Clark nor Lewis appeared to appreciate the nature of intertribal warfare on the Missouri frontier—what historian James P. Ronda calls “the river realities of raid and truce”—the social role of warfare in the region, or the dynamics of power as related to trade. Hostilities, often rooted in the desire for revenge for insults or for someone having killed a member of the revenger's tribe, would suddenly give way to temporary truces between bands so they could trade horses or food. Once the need for peace had lapsed, warfare could erupt just as suddenly.
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Still, the Otos accepted the speeches and the gifts and seemed to agree to the plan. The Omahas failed to appear, however. Several days after the council (August 11), Clark, Lewis, and ten other men climbed a high bluff above the river near Macey, Nebraska, to get a good view of the river northward and to visit the grave of the renowned Omaha chief Blackbird. Not far upstream, near present-day Sioux City, Iowa, Sergeant Charles Floyd became the expedition's only fatality, likely a victim of appendicitis. He was buried on a hill above the river bluffs.