In the morning, September 29, the expedition got an early start. The Partisan and two warriors called out to the boat from the bank. They indicated they wanted to hitch a ride up to their village, not far distant. Captain Lewis absolutely refused, “Stateing verry Sufficint reasons and was plain with them on the Subject.” Lewis said the party had already wasted two days with the Sioux and had to be getting on.
Given the hot tempers on both sides, it was just as well. No matter how long Lewis and Clark stayed with the Sioux, they were not going to make them into friends except by giving more than they could afford. Lewis and Clark had not initiated hostilities, but their insistence on standing their ground might well have led to bullets and arrows flying through the air.
Clark was defensive in writing his account; presumably Lewis also would have justified his actions. But to a superior officer looking over the report, he would have looked headstrong and rash. His orders to make every effort to establish good relations with the Sioux had been turned on their head. Lewis and Clark had managed to get past the Sioux, but the Sioux were still on the river, capable of blocking any later expeditions and in a rage at the Americans. And there was a good chance the expedition would have to pass the tribe again, on the return trip.
But for now, the Sioux were behind them. The wind was from the south. The men hoisted the sail and the boat made twenty miles that day. In the evening—once again on a sandbar island, the safest place to be—the captains refreshed the party with whiskey. It was a cold evening. Migrating geese flew downriver, honking, through the night. Fall was here. It was time to get on, as far north and west as possible, before winter set in.
* * *
I. One of the few times Lewis used Latin. The bird was the black-billed magpie. In a later field note, he described it in a thousand-word entry.
II. Lewis was right, according to Joe Van Wormer in The World of the Pronghorn, p. 101: “It is generally conceded that the pronghorn is the fastest mammal in North America and second only to the cheetah in the world.” Pronghorns can reach a speed of sixty miles per hour over a short distance; they can maintain fifty miles per hour for five miles; their cruising speed for long-distance running is between thirty and forty miles per hour.
III. Although the captains named it the Teton River, in honor of the tribe, on today’s maps it appears as the Bad River.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
To the Mandans
Fall 1804
If there ever was a time in which the Lewis and Clark Expedition bore some resemblance to a bunch of guys out on a long camping trip, it was in the first part of October 1804.
Fall on the Missouri River in the Dakotas was a delight. On a cloudless day—and many were, in the first three weeks that October—the Great Plains of North America stretched out beyond the horizon under an infinity of bright-blue sky. The sun had gone past the equinox and was dropping lower in the sky each day, so the shadows were growing longer. On the Plains, the hills and bluffs, their grasses turned a golden brown, gleamed in the sunlight, or threw off long shadows up and down the valleys, creating a masterpiece of light and shade.
Nights were coming on sooner and lasting longer. They brought frost, which meant no more mosquitoes. The men built the fires up a little higher than in September, and gathered closer around as they talked about what they had done and seen that day and what they expected tomorrow. In the first two weeks of the month, the days started off cool but by midmorning the temperature was perfect and stayed so until an hour before sunset.
The great mammals of the Plains were gathering into herds. Many of them, including elk, pronghorn, and buffalo, began their mass migration to their wintering grounds. Sooner or later on their trek, most of the herds had to cross the river, thereby creating one of nature’s greatest scenes.I Overhead, Canada geese, snow geese, brants, swans, mallards, and a variety of other ducks were on the move, honking and quacking as they descended the river. The fowl and mammals were in prime condition, which meant that the buffalo ribs, the venison haunches, the beaver tails, the mallard breasts all dripped fat into the fire as they were turned on the spit, causing a sizzle and a smell that sharpened already keen appetites.
For Meriwether Lewis it was a magical time. He spent most of it exploring, walking on shore, venturing out into the interior, catching up with the boat at night. Sometimes he went alone, save for his dog, Seaman; at other times he took a small party with him. He was a great walker, with long legs and a purposeful stride, capable of covering thirty miles in a day on the Plains. As he walked, he was constantly at full alert, his eyes sweeping across the horizon, then coming down with complete concentration on a stone or a plant or an animal den at his feet. He carried his field journal so that he could note down new plants, animals, minerals, the general lay of the land, the apparent fertility of the soil, the types and numbers of game animals around him, and more.
He wore moccasins of doubled-up buffalo hide, pants made of broadcloth, a fringed deerskin jacket, and a three-cornered leather hat. He carried a compass, a knife, a pistol, a powder horn and balls, some jerky, and his notebook in his knapsack. He had his rifle in one hand and his espontoon in the other. He was an excellent marksman, his skill even greater thanks to the espontoon—a sort of pike, about six feet in length, with a wooden shaft and a metal blade. It was a medieval weapon still in use as a symbol of authority for infantry officers in the U.S. Army, carried by Lewis because it was a most useful implement. Aside from being a walking stick and a weapon of last resort, the espontoon had a crosswise attachment at shoulder height that served as a rifle rest. Given the weight of his rifle, more than eight pounds, and the length of the barrel, more than four feet, he needed a support.
Lewis always had his rifle primed, with the bullet, wadding, and powder charge set in place, so that when he saw a target he had only to set his espontoon vertically on the ground, measure out the powder for the pan, swing his rifle up to the rifle rest, slip in his flint, bring the hammer to full cock, aim, and fire. If the target was within a hundred yards and bigger than a mouse, he usually got it.
He didn’t always have to shoot to collect a specimen. On October 16, he glanced down and saw at his feet a sleeping bird. He didn’t know the species but recorded that it was of the goatsucker family. He picked it up; it was alive but appeared to be in something approaching a dormant state. Lewis brought it back to the boat; two days later, when the morning temperature was thirty degrees, the bird could scarcely move. “I run my penknife into it’s body under the wing and completely distroyed it’s lungs and heart,” Lewis reported, “yet it lived upwards of two hours. This fanominon I could not accouunt for unless it proceeded from the want of circulation of the blood.II
A few days later, on October 20, in the vicinity of present Fort Lincoln State Park, across the river from Bismarck, North Dakota, Private Cruzatte was the first to encounter a grizzly bear, called a white bear by the Americans. They had heard about the grizzly, and knew the Indians were afraid of the bear, which according to rumor was gigantic in size (Clark had recently seen a footprint and pronounced it by far the biggest he had ever seen) and ferocious in behavior. The men of the expedition, naturally, were eager to get a look and a shot at it. Cruzatte was the lucky one—except, as Lewis dryly recorded in his field notes, “he wounded him, but being alarmed at the formidable appearance of the bear he left his tomahalk and gun.”
Cruzatte returned to the scene an hour or so later to retrieve his tomahawk and rifle. “Soon after he shot a buffaloe cow,” Lewis wrote, and “broke her thy, the cow pursued him he conceal himself in a small raviene.” The little incident highlighted a major problem for the hunters. After they had fired their rifles, they were nearly helpless until they reloaded.
•
Beginning in October, as the expedition made its way through present northern South Dakota, it passed numerous abandoned villages, composed of earth-lodge dwellings and cultivated fields. Some of the fields, although unattended, still had squash and
corn growing in them. These had once been home to the mighty Arikara tribe. About thirty thousand persons strong in the year the United States won its independence, the tribe had been reduced by smallpox epidemics in the 1780s to not much more than one-fifth that size. Another epidemic swept through in 1803–4, devastating the tribe. What had been eighteen villages the previous year had been reduced to three by the time Lewis arrived.2
On October 8, the keelboat passed a three-mile-long island, near the mouth of the Grand River, home to the three villages of living Arikaras, about two thousand Indians all together. The island was one large garden, growing beans, corn, and squash. Arikaras lined the banks, watching the boat progress to the head of the island and then watching the men make camp on the starboard side. Lewis selected two voyagers who spoke the Arikara language and two soldiers, took a pirogue, and paddled across to meet the Indians on the island. Clark stayed in camp, posting guards on shore and sentinels on the boat and canoes, with “all things arranged both for Peace or War.”
Lewis obviously did not know what kind of reception he was going to get, but he did have expectations. From what he knew, or thought he knew, the Arikaras were farmers oppressed by the Sioux. The reality was that the Sioux brought trade goods to exchange for Arikara crops in a mutually beneficial relationship. He knew the Arikaras were at war with the Mandans. He believed that they were the key to American diplomatic endeavors on the Missouri, because in Lewis’s view, if the Arikaras could be broken away from the Sioux and if they made peace with the Mandans, the whole balance of power on the river would shift. The Sioux would be isolated and then frozen out of the coming American trade empire.
James Ronda comments that Lewis and Clark shared “a naive optimism typical of so much Euro-American frontier diplomacy. [They] believed they could easily reshape upper Missouri realities to fit their expectations. . . . [But] to the surprise of the explorer-diplomats, virtually all Indian parties proved resistant to change and suspicious of American motives.”3
So Lewis had cause for high hope as well as for apprehension as he paddled across to the island, and, finally, cause for relief as he received a warm welcome from the Arikaras. Best of all was meeting Joseph Gravelines, a trader who had been living with the Arikaras for thirteen years. He was an invaluable source of information on the upper-Missouri country, and his command of English, French, Sioux, and Arikara made it possible for Lewis to communicate swiftly and accurately with the Arikara. A large part of the problems with the Sioux had been the result of inadequate, incomplete, incompetent translation. With Gravelines’s help, Lewis could expect to do much better with the Arikaras.
Lewis pumped Gravelines for two or three hours, then asked him to bring a delegation to the expedition’s camp in the morning for a council and hired him as interpreter.
In the morning, the wind was kicking up waves in the river higher than Clark had ever seen them. He was astonished to see bull boats brought to the bank—boats made each of a single buffalo hide stretched over a bowl-shaped willow frame—and five or six men get in, with three squaws to paddle them. The Indian women pushed off and despite the waves and wind crossed the river “quite uncomposed.” They brought with them some chiefs, some warriors, and Pierre-Antoine Tabeau, the trader with another of the island villages.
Tabeau had been born near Montreal and educated in Quebec. In 1776, he had gone west as an engagé in the fur trade. He had lived in Illinois, then Missouri, and finally with the Arikaras. He too was an outstanding translator (Arikara, English, French, Sioux) and source of information. But even the best translators could not overcome the difficulties of the wind, which was whipping up sand and making a roar. The council was put off till the next day.
On October 10, Tabeau came over first. He warned the captains that there was some jealousy among the chiefs of the three villages. Then the chiefs themselves, and some of their warriors, came to the council. After smoking and an exchange of small presents, Lewis stood and began speaking, with Gravelines interpreting. It was his basic Indian speech, according to Clark providing the Indians with “good counsel,” which was to accept American sovereignty, to make peace with the Mandans, to shun the Sioux, and to trade with American merchants. If they did as told, they would be protected by their new father, the chief of the seventeen great nations of America.
When Lewis finished, a detail fired three shots from the bow swivel gun. When the smoke cleared and the Indians recovered from their astonishment at the first cannon they had ever seen or heard, the captains brought out gift bale number fifteen, marked and prepared for the Arikaras’ use months before at Wood River. There was vermilion paint, pewter looking glasses, four hundred needles, broadcloth, beads, combs, razors, nine pairs of scissors, knives, tomahawks, and more. (It is something of a puzzle why they were not so generous with the Sioux.)
No whiskey. The captains offered it, but the Arikaras not only said no thanks, they shamed Lewis and Clark by remarking that “they were surprised that their father should present to them a liquor which would make them act like fools.”
For the chiefs there were military coats, cocked hats, medals, and American flags. Despite Tabeau’s warning, the captains made Crow at Rest the first chief, on their unshakable assumption that every tribe had to have a single leader. They made Hawk’s Feather and Chief Hay, leaders of the other two villages, as second chiefs. After the presents, Lewis shot off his air gun, to the by-now customary astonishment of the Indians. The council broke up, the chiefs promising to consult with their warriors and respond to Lewis’s words the following morning.
That afternoon, the men visited the villages. York was a sensation. His size was impressive enough, but the Arikaras had never seen a black man and couldn’t make out if he was man, beast, or spirit being. York played with the children, roaring at them, chasing them between lodges, bellowing that he was a wild beast caught and tamed by Captain Clark. The captains finally told him to stop, because “he Carried on the joke and made himself more turibal than we wished him to doe.”
The soldiers, meanwhile, enjoyed the favors of the Arikara women, often encouraged to do so by the husbands, who believed that they would catch some of the power of the white men from such intercourse, transmitted to them through their wives. One warrior invited York to his lodge, offered him his wife, and guarded the entrance during the act. York was said to be “the big Medison.” Whether the Indians got white or black power from the intercourse cannot be said, but what they had gotten for sure from their hospitality to previous white traders was venereal disease, which was rampant in the villages and passed on to the men of the expedition.
Still, Sergeant Gass pronounced the Arikara squaws to be “the most cleanly Indians I have ever seen . . . handsome . . . the best looking Indians I have ever seen.” Sergeant Ordway agreed, noting that “some of their women are very handsome and clean.”4 Clark called the Arikara “Durtey, Kind, pore, & extravigent pursessing national pride. Not beggarley.” They brought corn and squash and other welcome vegetables to the expedition, and quantities of a bean the Indians acquired by digging in the underground storage bins of the meadow mice. Clark called the bean “large and well flavoured and very nurishing.” It was said that the Indians always left some other food in the place of that they had robbed from the mice.
The following day, October 11, Crow at Rest arrived to make his answer to Lewis’s proposals. He said his heart was glad to have a new father, that the road was open to the expedition and would always be open. “Can you think any one Dare put their hands on your rope of your boat[?] No! Not one dare.” He asked the captains to make a peace between his people and the Mandans.
The other two chiefs had not come into council, apparently put off by not having been made first chief, so the next day the captains went looking for them. They found Chief Hay first, surrounded by his warriors. After Lewis reminded the chief of “the magnitude and power of our country,” Hay gave his own speech. He said his people had no hostility toward the whites, that he
hoped the captains would help make a peace with the Mandans, that he might be willing to go to Washington to meet with President Jefferson in the spring, and other welcome words. But he concluded with a request that the captains were in no position to grant: “After you Set out,” Hay said, “many nations in the open plains may Come to make war against us, we wish you to Stop their guns & provent it if possible. Finished.”
Then it was on foot to the third village, where Hawk’s Feather was chief. He too was ready with his reply to the American proposals. He too was thinking about a trip to Washington. He promised not to make war but said that he would believe a Mandan-Arikara peace only when he saw it with his own eyes. He gave two blunt warnings, “Mabie we [Arikara chiefs] will not tell the trooth,” and “the Indians above [the Mandans] will not believe your word” about peace with the Arikaras.
One of the chiefs—unnamed—was willing to find out. He agreed to go on board and make the trip to the Mandans, to talk in council sponsored by the American peacekeeping delegation.
•
On October 13, Clark and Lewis were confronted with a severe disciplinary problem. Former Private Moses Reed, the erstwhile deserter, was a grousing, malcontented soldier who wanted to poison the mind of at least one member of the expedition. Anyone who has ever been in the army knows Reed’s type. For some time past, he had been picking on Private John Newman, agitating him about those blankety-blank captains and how unfair they were and how arbitrary and worse.
Newman succumbed to the poison. He lashed out at the captains, who had him and Reed arrested. Reed was beyond their power to punish, but Newman was subject to the articles of war. The captains convened a court-martial, with Clark as president (“without giveing his opinion”) and Sgt. Ordway head of the court.
Lewis read the charge, that Newman had “uttered repeated expressions of a highly criminal and mutinous nature; the same having a tendency not only to distroy every principle of military discipline, but also to alienate the affections of the individuals composing this Detachment to their officers, and disaffect them to the service for which they have been so sacredly and solemnly engaged.”