Content · February 2003 We Proceeded On! 3 The Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Inc. P.O.B. 3434, Great Falls, MT 59403 406-454-1234 / 1-888-701-3434 Fax: 406-771-9237

1!February 2003 We Proceeded On

ContentsLetters: York’s medicine; short-haired strangers; Missouri’s source 2

From the Directors: New endowment program 5

From the Bicentennial Council: Honoring Nez Perce envoys 6

Trail Notes: Trail managers cope with crowds 8

Reliving the Adventures of Meriwether Lewis 11The explorer’s biographer explains his special attachment to“the man with whom I’d most like to sit around the campfire”By Stephen E. Ambrose

The “Odyssey” of Lewis and Clark 14A look at the Corps of Discovery through the eyes of Homer

By Robert R. Hunt

The Big 10 22What were the essential events of the Lewis & Clark Expedition?By Arlen J. Large

Hunt on Corvus Creek 26A primer on the care and operation of flintlock riflesas practiced by the Corps of Discovery

By Gary Peterson

Reviews 32Jefferson’s maps; Eclipse; paperback MoultonIn Brief: Before Lewis and Clark; L&C in Illinois

Passages 37Stephen E. Ambrose; Edward C. Carter

L&C Roundup 38River Dubois center; Clark’s Mountain; Jefferson in space

Soundings 44From Julia’s KitchenBy James J. Holmberg

On the coverMichael Haynes’s portrait of Meriwether Lewis shows the captain holdinghis trusty espontoon, a symbol of rank that also appears in Charles Fritz’spainting on pages 22-23 of Lewis at the Great Falls. We also used Haynes’sportrait to help illustrate Robert R. Hunt’s article, beginning on page 14,about parallels between the L&C Expedition and Homer’s Odyssey. Black-billed magpie , p. 26

Clark meets the Shoshones, p. 24

Rabbit Skin Leggings, p. 6

2 !We Proceeded On February 2003

February 2003 • Volume 29, Number 1

We Proceeded On is the official publication ofthe Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation,Inc. Its name derives from a phrase that appearsrepeatedly in the collective journals of theexpedition. ¶ 2003

E. G. Chuinard, M.D., Founder

ISSN 02275-6706

EditorJ. I. Merritt51 N. Main StreetPennington, NJ [email protected]

Art DirectionMargaret Davis DesignPrinceton, New Jersey

Printed by James Printing & Design,West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania

Editorial Board

Gary E. Moulton, Leader Lincoln, Nebraska

Robert C. CarrikerSpokane, Washington

Robert K. Doerk, Jr.Fort Benton, Montana

Glen LindemanPullman, Washington

Membership InformationMembership in the Lewis and Clark TrailHeritage Foundation, Inc. is open to the public.Information and applications are available bywriting Membership Coordinator; Lewis andClark Trail Heritage Foundation, P.O. Box3434, Great Falls, MT 59403.

We Proceeded On, the quarterly magazine ofthe Foundation, is mailed to current membersin February, May, August, and November.

Annual Membership Categories

Student $30Individual/Library/Nonprofit $40Family/International/Business $55Heritage Club $75Explorer Club $150Jefferson Club $250Discovery Club $500Expedition Club $1,000Leadership Club $2,500

The Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Inc.is a tax-exempt nonprofit corporation. Individualmembership dues are not tax deductible. The portionof premium dues over $40 is tax deductible.

Letters

York’s big medicine among the Hidatsas

On page 78 of the late Stephen Ambrose’sbook Lewis & Clark: Voyage of Discov-ery, which he wrote in collaboration withthe National Geographic Society, the au-thor tells the story of hearing the Hidatsaversion of attempts to rub the color offYork. The casual telling of the story il-lustrates one of the great attractions ofthe Lewis and Clark adventure—that itcan be told today from other culturalperspectives.

The scene was the reconstructed cer-emonial lodge at On-a-Slant, once aMandan village south of present-day Bis-marck, North Dakota. The occasion wasthe publicity tour for the 1997 PBS pre-miere of the Lewis and Clark documen-tary by Ken Burns, Dayton Duncan, andAmbrose. North Dakota native GerardBaker, of Hidatsa lineage and now theLewis and Clark bicentennial coordina-tor for the National Park Service, wasstanding around a fire in the earth lodgewith Ken, Dayton, and Stephen. Gerardsaid his grandfather had told him of aHidatsa chief who had heard tales of ablack white man but wouldn’t believethem until he could see the man for him-self. Gerard said the chief walked to FortMandan solely for this purpose. Aftermeeting York, the chief wetted his fin-gers with spittle and rubbed York’s cheek.When his blackness failed to come off,the chief knew the stories were true aboutthe black white man and warmly em-braced York as good medicine. Gerard

said this story had been passed downthrough Hidatsa families for generations.He first heard it as a boy, and it becamehis personal entry into the Lewis andClark saga.

This episode was only partially re-corded in the journals for March 9, 1805.Clark, who was the journalist during thisperiod, was away most of the day check-ing on the progress of the dugout canoes.Lewis was left to welcome Le Borgne, thepowerful and haughty chief of the north-ernmost Hidatsa village. Always skepti-cal of the Americans, Le Borgne didn’tbelieve there could be a black white manand had said that the only worthwhileAmericans were the blacksmiths, whocould work magic with metal. The jour-nal entry notes that Le Borgne was re-ceived by Lewis and given some medalsand ribbons. Later, when Nicholas Biddlewas preparing the journals for publica-tion, Clark and George Shannon re-counted the story to him, which Biddleincluded as a footnote. So, this interest-ing encounter very nearly didn’t see print.Le Borgne’s visit eventually became thesource of a famous Charles M. Russellpainting, but Russell got some of itwrong. He painted the encounter in anearth lodge, although it actually occurredat Fort Mandan, and only Lewis waspresent, even though both captains areshown in the painting.

I was standing next to Ambrose whenBaker told his story and snapped several

Ken Burns, Gerard Baker, Dayton Duncan, and Stephen Ambrose at On-a-Slant Village, 1997.

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The Lewis and Clark TrailHeritage Foundation, Inc.

P.O.B. 3434, Great Falls, MT 59403406-454-1234 / 1-888-701-3434

Fax: 406-771-9237www.lewisandclark.org

The mission of the LCTHF is tostimulate public appreciation of the

Lewis and Clark Expedition’scontributions to America’s heritage and

to support education, research,development, and preservation of the

Lewis and Clark experience.

OfficersPresident

Larry EpsteinCut Bank, Mont.

President-ElectRon Laycock

Benson, Minn.

Vice-President Gordon Julich

Blue Springs, Mo.

SecretaryJane Schmoyer-Weber

Great Falls, Mont.

TreasurerSteven G. Lee

Clarkston, Wash.

Immediate Past PresidentJane HenleyKeswick, Va.

Executive DirectorCarol A. Bronson

Directors at largeCharles Cook, Billings, Mont. • Tom Davis,Ft. Washington, Penn. • James Gramentine,

Meguon, Wisc. • Sue Hottois, Clarkston,Wash. • Frank Muhly, Philadelphia, Penn. •

Jon Stealey, Findlay, Ohio • Hal Stearns,Wayne, Neb. • Dark Rain Thom,

Bloomington, Ind. • Roger Wendlick,Portland, Ore.

Active Past PresidentsDavid Borlaug, Washburn, N.D. • Robert K.

Doerk, Jr., Fort Benton, Mont. • James R.Fazio, Moscow, Id. • Robert E. Gatten, Jr.,

Greensboro, N.C. • Clyde G. “Sid” Huggins,Covington, La. • Barbara J. Kubik,

Vancouver, Wash. • H. John Montague,Portland, Ore. • Cynthia Orlando,Washington, D.C. • Donald F. Nell,

Bozeman, Mont. • James M. Peterson,Vermillion, S.D. • William P. Sherman,

Portland, Ore. • L. Edwin Wang, Minnea-polis, Minn. • Wilbur P. Werner, Mesa, Ariz.

• Stuart E. Knapp, Bozeman, Mont.

Incorporated in 1969 under Missouri General Not-For-Profit Corporation Act. IRS Exemption

Certificate No. 501(c)3, ldentification No. 510187715.

pictures of the group gathered aroundthat warm fire on a cool October after-noon. It is now my personal favorite ofall the Lewis and Clark stories.

SHELDON GREEN

Fargo, N.D.

First, I would like to thank the Lewisand Clark Trail Heritage Foundation forthe kind tribute to my father written byJeff Olson and included in the mailingof the November WPO. I will make surethat everyone in the family sees it.

Second, I read with interest “NeatnessMattered,” the article in the same issue byRobert J. Moore arguing that Lewis andClark and their men probably kept theirhair closely cropped, in accord with mili-tary regulations. Coincidentally, I had justread an account by Pierre Pichette, a Sal-ish oral historian, about seven strangers(members of the Corps of Discovery)who showed up in a Salish camp withpacks on their backs. He states that “all ofthe men had short hair. So our peoplethought they were in mourning for the restof the party who (we believed) had beenslaughtered. It was the custom for mourn-ers to cut their hair.” The story appearsin the booklet “The Salish People and theLewis and Clark Expedition,” publishedby the Salish–Pend d’Oreille CultureCommittee in 2000.

STEPHENIE AMBROSE TUBBS

Helena, Mont.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The writer is the daugh-ter of Stephen Ambrose. A book she hascoauthored with Clay Jenkinson, TheLewis and Clark Companion, will bepublished by Henry Holt in the spring.

Short-haired strangers

True source of the MissouriAs Donald Nell and Anthony Deme-triades point out in “The Utmost Reachesof the Missouri” (WPO, November 2002),Jacob Brower correctly identified theheadwaters of Hell Roaring Creek as thesource of the Mississippi-Missouri Basin.

While the spring the writers refer toas Brower’s Spring may have been thehighest water at the time of their visit,there is another source higher up thatflows seasonally if not year-round. Thisis described as follows on page 190 of my

Guide to the Continental Divide Trail,Vol. 2: Southern Montana and Idaho(1979): “Angle right to reach Hell Roar-ing Creek, a mere trickle when observed,and follow it upstream past a series ofledges of slick red and black rock, reach-ing a large clean spring at the base of aten foot wall. This might fittingly benamed ‘Mississippi Spring,’ for it is saidto be the remotest tributary in the entireMississippi River Basin.”

The coordinates as well as the differ-ent physical description show quiteclearly that Brower’s Spring and Missis-sippi Spring are not the same. Brower’sSpring is at an elevation of 8,500 feet, at44o 32’ 43.92” N, 111o 28’ 58.37” W. Mis-sissippi Spring, half a mile farther north-east, lies at an elevation of 8,800 feet, at44o 33’ 2.02” N, 111o 28’ 19.18” W. (Atable in my guide gives the elevation as8,800 feet and places the spring 0.3 milewest of the Montana-Idaho border.)

I hope other researchers will visit thearea to review the discrepancy and put torest the question of just where the “ut-most source” may be. The easiest accesspoint is the Sawtell Peak Road on theIdaho side.

JAMES R. WOLF

Director,Continental Divide Trail Society

Baltimore, Md.

Thank you for the article “The UtmostReaches of the Missouri,” by Donald F.Nell and Anthony Demetriades. It givesjustifiable attention to an important butheretofore slighted feature of the Mis-souri River.

In my opinion, however, the article ismisleading in one crucial respect: I don’tthink Jacob Brower ever made it to thesite of the rock cairn, described by theauthors, that today marks the Missouri’sutmost source.

Brower’s description in his book TheMissouri and Its Ultimate Source was notcompletely clear to me on first reading,thus prompting me to follow his path ona trip to the most distant source in 1997.With a local guide, a friend and I went onhorseback and followed the flow of HellRoaring Creek up through Hell RoaringCanyon. It was a difficult journey.

When we reached a small, flat, marshyarea just east of Lillian Lake (shown onthe map printed on page 33 of the WPO

Letters


article), I recognized the location from aphoto on page 112 of Brower’s book. Itis captioned “The Hole in the Moun-tains,” a place he mentions several timesin the text.

Nowhere does Brower indicate hewent farther up the canyon. Thus I be-lieve it was at the Hole in the Mountainsthat Brower marked a rock and left a cop-per plate. But this spot is still some twoor three miles west (downstream) of theutmost source. The only description inBrower’s book of the cairn site mentionedby Dell and Demetriades comes fromLillian Culver, the wife of William Cul-ver, who was with Brower at the Hole inthe Mountains.

Here is Brower’s text: “On the 26th ofSeptember Mrs. Lillian E. Culver and Mr.Allen made a visit to the Hole in theMountains, at the utmost limit of the Mis-souri Basin, crossing over Hanson Moun-tain and to the left of Horse Picket Hole,by which route they were able to ridemounted to the farthest limit of the basinwhere they marked the utmost spring ofthe Missouri up the side of the mountainvery near the Idaho state boundary.”

Brower then quotes directly from anaccount by Mrs. Culver: “We decided tosee just where the creek headed, so keptgoing for about three miles, and almostto the top of the divide. Suddenly thecreek turned quite abruptly and headedin the northeast at quite a pretty spring,which came from under a large black rockon the side of the mountain near somebalsam. It is a lonesome, wild place, anda dozen or more tiny springs higher uprun into this one. Marking the spot withmy name and the date on a tin plate, anddepositing a shoe that my horse had castupon the largest rock, we commenced toretrace our steps hurriedly. The rock ismarked ‘L.C., Sep., 1895.’ ”

Brower deserves credit for identifyingHell Roaring Creek as the utmost feederstream of the Missouri. But Lillian Cul-ver deserves credit for finding and mark-ing the spring at the head of the creek.

On our trip to the source in 1997 wefollowed Brower’s route, then Lillian’s;that is to say, once past The Hole in theMountains, we went along the northslope of the canyon, finally to arrive atthe cairn. Once there, I realized that itwould be easier to hike in from somepoint on the Continental Divide.

In September 1998 I did just that. Five

of us—Mike Mansur, a reporter for theKansas City Star; Dave Pulliam, a pho-tographer for the Star; writer WilliamLeast Heat-Moon; Robin Jenkins, a U.S.Forest Service ranger; and I—left fromthe Idaho side of Sawtell Peak, followedthe Continental Divide Trail, thendropped down into Hell Roaring Can-yon. We easily found the source underLillian Culver’s “large black rock,” witha large Engelmann spruce (probably Mrs.Culver’s “balsam”) near the cairn. Jenkinstook a core sample and declared the treeat least 250 years old. Lillian Culver’s de-scription of the site remains remarkablyaccurate. Heat-Moon called it “America’smost important unknown spot.”

I had copied in full all the notes in thejar at the cairn site, the earliest from 1972,during my previous visit. We wereamazed to find a dozen new names addedin the summer of 1998. We left our ownmessages in the jar, rebuilt the cairn, andenjoyed a clear, starry night around acampfire.

In August 2000, another friend hikedin from Sawtell Peak and found the jarempty. Gone were the traces of twodozen pilgrims dating back 30 years.

Nell and Demetriades have proposedcalling the utmost source Brower’sSpring. I believe it would be more fittingto call it Lillian’s Spring, or even MissouriSpring, but it doesn’t much matter. Whatdoes matter is the fact that this impor-tant spot is still unmarked on any USGSmap that I know of and that there is noUSGS marker in the area. This excep-tional site on relatively accessible publicland deserves official recognition.

JAMES WALLACE

Fayette, Missouri

Letters (cont.)

The caption accompanying the JohnClymer painting Up the Jefferson on page22 of the November WPO identifies Clark,York, Charbonneau, and Sacagawea butnot the bearded fellow cradling a rifle. Ibelieve he is Lewis. The same paintingappears on page 24 of Seven Trails West,by Arthur King Peters, and it identifiesthe man as Lewis.

RENE BERGERON

Laval, Quebec

EDITOR’S NOTE: You are right. We com-pared this figure (above left) with one ofLewis (above right) in another Clymerpainting, The Lewis Crossing, which weused on the cover of the August issue.They are obviously the same person.

In August 1999, the Clatsop CountyGenealogical Society, of Astoria, Oregon,began a project to identify descendantsof the permanent members of the Corpsof Discovery (those who completed thetrip to the Pacific). The society is offer-ing a Corps of Discovery DescendantCertificate to any person who can docu-ment his or her direct or collateral de-scent. We will also be hosting a reunionof documented descendants, to be heldAugust 12-15, 2004, at Fort Clatsop.

Genealogical data accepted by the so-

ciety will be kept on permanent file in thegenealogy archives of the library of theLewis and Clark Trail Heritage Founda-tion, in Great Falls, Montana. We willpublish a Lewis and Clark genealogy thatwill be available for purchase after May22, 2004, the 200th anniversary of theexplorers’ departure from St. Charles,Missouri. Our society is nonprofit, andany proceeds will be returned to the com-munity to further the advancement ofgenealogy in our area.

Questions should be directed to theLewis & Clark Descendant Project, POB372, Warrenton, OR 97146 ([email protected]). More information anddownloadable forms are available on ourWeb site, www.pacifier.com/karenl.

SANDRA HARGROVE

Ocean Park, Wash.

WPO welcomes letters. We may edit themfor length, accuracy, clarity, and civility.Send them to us c/o Editor, WPO, 51 N. MainSt., Pennington, NJ 08534 (e-mail: [email protected]).

Genealogy project

Bearded fellow is Lewis


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From the Directors

New endowment program; educating the publiche Lewis and Clark Trail Heri-

tage Foundation enjoyed a splen-did holiday season and an auspi-

cious beginning to the bicentennial ofthe greatest exploration in Americanhistory.

Just prior to the holi-day season we rolled outour endowment program,which establishes a much-needed long-term givingoption for our members.All donated money orproperty (think appreci-ated stocks or businessproperties) will be placedinto a trust fund. Incomederived from the trust will support fu-ture LCTHF activities and programs,including trail stewardship, education,and annual meetings.

Since the Foundation’s establishmentmore than 30 years ago, its members andofficers have dreamed of creating an en-dowed fund that would ensure the con-tinuation of its many good works onbehalf of the L&C Trail and story. Wewant to ensure that 100 years hence ourgrandchildren and great-grandchildrenwill be able to observe the Lewis andClark tricentennial in the same won-derful fashion that we are commemo-rating the bicentennial. This will be ourlegacy to those future generations.

As I have said on other occasions,ultimately everything we do as an or-ganization has to do with education. Itis the key to our entire enterprise, fromproviding trail stewardship to makingsure that the Lewis and Clark story istold with accuracy and due acknowledg-ment of the crucial role of Native Ameri-cans in the L&C saga. Education is atthe heart of our work with our tribalpartners and with government agenciesand officials at the local, state, and na-tional levels, and it underpins all that wedo as individuals at the chapter level.

Educating visitors is critical to suc-cessful trail stewardship. Now and inthe years ahead, we must work withvisitors to impress on them the impor-

tance of the Lewis and Clark Trail andits preservation to our historical senseof the L&C story. Visitors need our as-sistance finding sites along the trail andunderstanding the need to tread lightlyand to respect the rights of property

owners. Once they returnhome, we need to providethem with resources—in-cluding the Foundation’soutstanding curriculumguide (available by calling888-701-3434)—that fos-ter continued interest inthe story.

There is much that wecan do as individuals. I urge

you to become involved with your lo-cal schools and get the curriculum guideinto the hands of teachers. You can alsocirculate trail-stewardship brochuresand video messages to senior-citizenand history organizations and helpyour local LCTHF chapter recruit his-torians and Native Americans as speak-ers. The possibilities are endless.

I can’t say it enough: education is thekey. I know because I married an edu-cator. You don’t have to go that far, ofcourse, but please—resolve during thisfirst, critical year of the bicentennial topromote history education in yourcommunity. You will find that your ef-forts yield a real sense of accomplish-ment that will also be shared by theteachers you help.

Speaking of education, on behalf ofthe Foundation I want to pay specialtribute to two wonderful educators andgentlemen we recently lost: the eminenthistorian Stephen Ambrose and TedCarter, a member of the NationalCouncil of the L&C Bicentennial andlibrarian of the American Philosophi-cal Society, where many of the Lewisand Clark journals are housed. (Pleasesee their obituaries on page 37.) Bothwere great and true Keepers of theStory, and we extend our heartfelt sym-pathies to their families.

—Larry EpsteinPresident, LCTHF

HOW WILL THEFUTURE FIND US?

xcitement is highas we begin the

bicentennial thatwill dramaticallyshare the L&Cstory and trail withthousands who atthis time knowthem only vaguely.

The Lewis and Clark TrailHeritage Foundation has been keyto readiness for the Bicentennial,and the Foundation needs toremain on duty and on guard longafter the last Signature Event hasfollowed Corps I and II intohistory.

How well will we handle that task?Recent times have been hard, withincome barely adequate to coverthe basic programs. Our Library,with its rich resources for researchand study, has been particularlyhandicapped, understaffed, andoften closed.

But as we look ahead, we can see apath, a way that will take us overour Mountains! You read in theMay 2002, issue of WPO about thelate, longtime LCTHF member,Bob Shattuck, who made severalgenerous estate gifts to theFoundation: valuable, interestingbooks, and a monetary portion ofhis assets. What incredibleprovisions for the Foundation’sjourney forward!

To do this — and much like theCaptains before him — Mr.Shattuck had to look ahead, thinkahead, and act. He wanted to addstrength to an organization whosemission resonated with his owngoals and interests, and he knewthat financial stability is vital tothat mission. He saw that he couldhelp, and he did.

Thank you, Bob Shattuck! Thereare still mountains ahead, butfriends like you can help theFoundation over them and into astrong future of service to ournation’s heritage!

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his spring a long-overdue marker will

be placed at the gravesof two American Indianswhose connection to theLewis and Clark Expedi-tion is established but not,until now, publicly recog-nized. Here is their story, orrather what we know of it:

Twenty-five years afterLewis and Clark returnedto St. Louis, four Nez Percewarriors followed a similarroute to visit William Clark,by then superintendent ofIndian affairs for the Mis-souri River country and thePacific Northwest. These four men—Black Eagle, Man of the Morning, NoHorns on His Head, and Rabbit SkinLeggings—had likely met Clark duringthe Corps of Discovery’s journey be-yond the Rockies. It was their tribewho assisted the Corps of Discoverywhen it was near starvation, exhaustion,and failure at the foot of the BitterrootMountains. Without the hospitality andadvice of these people who, as Clarkwrote, “are among the most amiable wehave seen,” the expedition would nodoubt have perished in impassablemountain snows.

It is ironic that Black Eagle and Manof the Morning never returned to theirhomeland; exposed to new ailments andlacking immunization against the whiteman’s common diseases, they perishedin the town they had come to visit. ButNo Horns on His Head and RabbitSkin Leggings were aboard the Ameri-can Fur Company’s Yellowstone thefollowing spring, for we have their por-traits by George Catlin, who met andpainted them aboard that boat, and weknow that No Horns on His Head diedof an unrecorded illness later in 1832.Rabbit Skin Leggings found a group ofhis kin beyond the Montana plains butwas later killed in an encounter withBlackfeet.

The original intent of the Nez Perce

warriors’ trip from their distant home-land is not entirely clear. As with somuch of the past, we can only knowwhat has been brought, accidentally orwith purpose, into the present. Theymay have been on a mission for theirpeople; that meeting with the Corps ofDiscovery a quarter of a century beforehad marked the beginning of changesthat challenged the foundations of theway the Nez Perces had lived from timeimmemorial. They may have been in-terested, or at least curious, about whitepeople’s religion. Bishop Rosati of St.Louis wrote of their stay, “they cameto see our church and appeared to beexceedingly well pleased with it.” Sig-nificantly, the bishop added, “there wasnot one who understood their lan-guage.” Evidently, clergy baptizedBlack Eagle and Man of the Morning,for they were buried at the Cathedral,a prerogative reserved for Catholics.But their journey was not yet over.Later their remains were moved to an-other cemetery, then to the vaults of St.Bridget’s Church, and finally to an un-marked mass grave in St. Louis’s Cal-vary Cemetery.

Now, one hundred and seventy-eight years after they died so far fromhome, the Nez Perce voyagers will beappropriately recognized with amarker that acknowledges their

people’s contribution tothe historic journey of theexplorers from the east. Aneight-foot monument fea-turing two eagle featherscarved in granite will bededicated at the site of thewarriors’ final restingplace. A narrative will beincised around the base,compelling visitors tomake their own journeyaround the monument toexperience the whole story,to physically participateand thus make the storytheir own.

The monument—a col-laborative effort of the Nez Perces, theSt. Louis Warriors Organization, theMissouri Historical Society, andMissouri’s Lewis and Clark BicentennialCommission—is one more way we arebringing the story of the past into thepresent, offering from more than a singleperspective the adventure story that hasshaped the life and the peoples of whateventually became the United States.

Other mattersThe National Advertising Council(N.A.C.) has adopted the Lewis andClark Bicentennial as a pro bono pro-ject. Through the N.A.C. and the ad-vertising firm of Young and Ribicam wehave been developing themes and in-terpretations appropriate for the bicen-tennial. These include stories related toAmerican Indian cultures, trail stew-ardship, the 19th-century Enlighten-ment worldview, and the risks and re-sponsibilities inherent in the Lewis andClark Expedition.

The Bicentennial Council’s confer-ence this year will take place in GreatFalls, Montana, April 13-16. In addi-tion to the usual planning sessions, theconference will include meetings ofvarious organizations associated withthe Council, including the LCTHF.

—Robert R. ArchibaldPresident, Bicentennial Council

From the Bicentennial Council

New grave marker in St. Louis to honor Nez Perce envoys who died there

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Catlin’s portraits of No Horns on His Head (left) and Rabbit Skin Leggings

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St. Joseph, Missouri -1 page B&W

pickup from p. 7 ofNovember WPO


L&C Trail managers try to keep pace with increasing numbers of visitors

Trail Notes

m thinking today about LemhiPass and the Lolo (Nee Me Poo)

Trail, the Upper Missouri BreaksNational Monument, the Gates of theMountains, Cape Disappointment, andto a lesser extent places like Ponca StatePark, in Nebraska.

Why is my concern so much greaterfor Lemhi Pass than, say, Fourth of JulyCreek near Atchison, Kansas, FortPierre, South Dakota, or the MissouriRiver at Jefferson City, Missouri? I’mconcerned because today’s average visi-tor to the Lewis and Clark NationalHistoric Trail tries to cram a lot into ashort Lewis and Clark vacation. Thatdesire to “see everything” in a week ortwo means people reduce the L&C ex-perience to a relatively short list of whatour culture identifies as the “sexy” or“happening” places along the trail.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t in-teresting and exciting stories elsewhereon the trail. Daily life for members ofthe expedition ranged from boredomto exhilaration to near-death experi-ences: Lewis saves himself from fall-ing off a cliff a few days out of St.Charles; the keelboat is nearly lost inthe Devil’s Racetrack; the captainsbarely avert a fatal confrontation withthe Teton Sioux at present-day FortPierre, South Dakota; encounters withgrizzlies and stampeding buffalo onthe upper Missouri; etc. If we do ourjob as “Keepers of the Story,” moreand more visitors will come to knowthese and other adventures. And wher-ever visitors go along the trail to re-live such events, we need to share withthem the message of stewardship.

The number of visitors to the Wildand Scenic portion of the MissouriRiver, Lemhi Pass, and other populartrail sites is expected to increase dra-matically during the three-year Lewisand Clark Bicentennial, which officiallybegan last month. Our friends and part-ners in the National Park Service, For-est Service, Bureau of Land Manage-ment, Fish and Wildlife Service, Corpsof Engineers, and other land-manage-

ment agencies are preparing for theonslaught, which has already begun.Some of the strategies for dealing withthe crowds will inconvenience those ofus used to wandering alone or in smallgroups, but they are necessary for theprotection of the trail and the visitorsthemselves.

For example, if you plan to float theMissouri Breaks, the BLM now re-quires you to register beforehand andto tell officials where and when youplan to put in and take out. “It’s man-datory,” says DickFichtler, the BLM’sLewis and Clarkcoordinator forM o n t a n a .“You can reg-ister online,through theU.S. mail, or inperson at one of the launch points. Thisisn’t about Big Brother—we’re just try-ing to provide a better level of service.”That includes search-and-rescue opera-tions for people overdue at their ex-pected exit points.

No cap on numbersFichtler adds that there won’t be a capon the number of visitors allowed onthe river. “I think a bigger constraint isthat there will be no upstream travelinto the Breaks allowed between Me-morial Day and Labor Day.” Crowdedcamping areas may also discouragelarge crowds. “We are already seeingsome pretty big numbers at the EagleCreek camping area. That’s the start ofthe White Cliffs area and was a Lewisand Clark campsite. I’ve seen as manyas 60 people camping at Eagle Creek ina single evening and have heard reportsof 200 people there. That concerns us.”

In Idaho, visitors to the Lolo Motor-way may be subject to a Forest Servicepermit system designed to limit thenumber of people, vehicles, and horseson this rugged one-lane road, whichclosely follows the expedition’s route.In December, the Clearwater National

Forest began accepting permit appli-cations for group travel on themotorway. If demand proves highenough, the permit system will be putin place for the period from July 15 toOctober 1. The permit area lies be-tween the Wendover area and a pointabout 17 miles west. The western por-tal is easily accessed by a paved road30 miles east of Kamiah. Travelersalong this stretch can stay in developedcampgrounds and hike maintainedportions of the trail. (You can find outmore about the permit system bychecking the Web site www.fs.fed.us/r1/clearwater/LewisClark/LewisClark.htm.)

Lemhi road improvedIn anticipation of crowds, many facili-ties have been upgraded. The LemhiPass Road in Montana, for example,has been improved to county stan-dards. “It’s still a gravel road,” saysKatie Bump of the Forest Service of-fice in Dillon, “but it’s a lot better thanit used to be. It’s still narrow in thelast four or five miles on the Montanaside, but there now are turnouts formotorists.”

Construction crews will return toLemhi Pass this summer to continueupgrading visitor services such as pic-nic areas, foot trails, and restrooms.Bump says there are no visitor-controlplans under consideration for LemhiPass, although there will be a restric-tion on the length of vehicles allowedon the Lemhi Pass Road. There is a newrest area at the junction of the LemhiPass Road and Montana Highway 324,where people can stop at ShoshoneRidge and park their overlength ve-hicles. There’s also a picnic area atShoshone Ridge, and interpretive signswill soon be in place there as well.

—Jeff OlsonTrail Coordinator

Jeff Olson can be reached at [email protected] (P.O. Box 2376, Bis-marck, ND 58502; Tel.: 701-258-1809.

I’


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In the fall of 1975, I had just finished a comparativestudy of the lives of Sioux Indian Chief Crazy Horseand U.S. Army General George Armstrong Custer.

I had learned long ago, from my work in the Civil Warand World War II, never to write about a battle until I hadwalked the ground on which it was fought. So my researchon the two adversaries at the Battle of the Little Big Horn

had included two summers of camping with my family inthe area Crazy Horse and Custer had traveled and foughtover in South Dakota and Montana. My wife, Moira, andour five children had enjoyed the 10 weeks outdoors andhad loved the West, so I was looking for another west-ern subject to study. (As an associate professor, the onlyway I could afford to skip teaching summer school was

RELIVING THE

ADVENTURES OF

MERIWETHER LEWIS

Stephen E. Ambrose, the prize-winning historian, long-time friend of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heri-tage Foundation, and author of the 1996 bestselling biography of Meriwether Lewis, UndauntedCourage, died last October 13. An obituary appears on page 37. (A tribute to Ambrose was alsoincluded in the mailing of the November WPO.) The article below was published in The Chronicle ofHigher Education of June 7, 1996, and is reprinted by permission of the Ambrose family.—ED.

The explorer’s biographer explains his special attachment to“the man with whom I’d most like to sit around the campfire”

by STEPHEN E. AMBROSE

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to find a way to make our trips tax deductible.)That same year, an aunt gave me a set of the journals of

the explorers and soldiers Meriwether Lewis and WilliamClark. I read them and was entranced. So began the turn-ing of a private and family obsession with the AmericanWest into a scholarly project.

As an American historian, I wanted to go someplacespecial for our nation’s 200th birthday. On Christmas Dayin 1975, at dinner, I suggested to my family that we spendthe upcoming Fourth of July at Lemhi Pass on the Conti-nental Divide (today’s Montana-Idaho border), whereLewis had become the first U.S. citizen to step into thePacific Northwest. Moira and the children were enthusi-astic. So off we went, accompanied by some 25 students,for a summer on the Lewis and Clark Trail.

We canoed in the wake of the captains and their men,backpacked in their footsteps. We took along the journalsin which both men had made entries and read them aloudat night around the campfire at campsites they had used172 years before us. Part of what makes their expeditionso irresistible today is that we can retrace much of theroute, seeing what Lewis and Clark saw (except for thehuge herds of buffalo), since major sections of Montana,Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and the Dakotas are still pris-tine. Reading their words aloud, while traveling as theydid along the same route, made us feel as if we were mak-ing their discoveries right along with them.

We became so enthralled that we have returned to thetrail for at least some part of every summer since. Threeof our children graduated from the University of Mon-tana and now live in Helena and Missoula, along with ourthree grandchildren. Moira and I live half the year in Hel-ena (guess which half), the other half on the Gulf Coast.Throughout our two decades of visiting Montana, Iwanted to write about the Lewis and Clark Expedition,but other projects kept me busy. Finally, with my bookon D-Day finished in time for the 50th anniversary of thatinvasion on June 6, 1944, I was free. I turned full time toMeriwether Lewis.

I am a biographer, having written multivolume workson Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. The histo-rian James Ronda was already well into a biography ofWilliam Clark, so I felt inclined to write about Lewis, sinceno biography of him had been written since RichardDillon’s popular 1965 book, Meriwether Lewis: A Biog-raphy. The 30 years since then had produced a good dealof scholarship on Lewis, including Gary Moulton’s mag-isterial edition of The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Ex-pedition, Donald Jackson’s seminal edition of the Let-

ters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and scores of ar-ticles in We Proceeded On, the quarterly journal of theLewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, an organiza-tion of scholars and fans of the expedition. So a lot of newmaterial existed that someone needed to meld into an up-to-date biography.

The research I conducted on Lewis was much differentfrom my previous work on Eisenhower, Nixon, and WorldWar II. Mountains of documents exist on those subjects,and I have spent thousands of hours in libraries, readingand having copies made. Material on Lewis, on the otherhand, is scant. Only a handful of letters exist from hisyouth, and almost no material is available from two yearsof his adult life—1807 and 1808. Making up for the lackof documents, however, are his entries in the journals, asource unsurpassed for insights into his thinking, mood,and expectations, as well as one of our nation’s great liter-ary treasures.

Readers will have to judge for themselves how thor-oughly I understood him, but my feeling is that I got toknow Lewis better than I know Ike or Dick, thanks toLewis’s journals. Not even the Nixon tapes, not even thehundreds of hours that I spent interviewing Eisenhower,yielded so intimate a view of the man.

My previous studies had prepared me well for under-taking the task of writing Lewis’s biography. I knew a greatdeal about the U.S. Army during the Civil War and WorldWar II, and found that it hadn’t changed all that muchsince Lewis joined up in 1794. The qualities that a goodcompany commander needs—fairness, competence, a will-ingness to share the risks, a sense of being a father to afamily—have not changed. I also knew a lot about thepractice of politics in Washington in the second half ofthe 20th century; it hadn’t changed all that much eithersince the beginning of the 19th century—especially thepartisan excess.

I admire and love Eisenhower, as a leader and a humanbeing. But I adore Meriwether Lewis. He is above all oth-ers the man with whom I’d most like to sit around thecampfire at the end of a day of canoeing or backpacking,because he saw so much, was so excited by all the newthings he encountered, and could talk and write aboutthem with enthusiasm and insight. (While I find much inNixon to admire, he would be my last choice of a camp-ing companion.)

I also envy Lewis: Imagine being the first white man tosee the Rocky Mountains and the Great Falls of the Mis-souri River, or to catch and eat a cutthroat trout, or tocross the Continental Divide. Even more, imagine serv-


ing as Thomas Jefferson’s personal secretary, living in theWhite House for two years, dining with the President al-most every evening, and being tutored by him in the natu-ral sciences in preparation for a thrilling and dangerousexpedition. (Jefferson has to be everyone’s first choice ofa dinner companion.)

I hope that my passion enlivens my biography and bringsLewis to life. But it certainly made it difficult to write abouthis death. When it came time to write Eisenhower’s deathscene, I shed a tear or two, but he had enjoyed a long, fulllife and was ready when the end came. Indeed, his lastwords were, “I want to go. God take me.” I shed no tearsat all while finishing volume three of Nixon’s biography,although I did regret what might have been.

With Meriwether Lewis, I could scarcely see my com-puter screen for the tears. I bawled as I wrote, because hedied by his own hand at age 35, a broken man in everyway. He had become a drug addict, a heavy drinker, a bank-rupt land speculator, a rejected suitor. As governor of Up-per Louisiana, he could not resist the temptations of highoffice, and the government in Washington was question-ing his chits and expense accounts. He was an explorerwho felt that his expedition had been a failure, because ithad not discovered an all-water route to the Pacific.

I identified with Lewis in a way that I never could withIke or Dick: I could never be a general or a President, butI could have done at least some of what Lewis did. Not sowell, obviously, but still, I can spend a day in a canoe,backpack over mountains, describe a plant or animal. Thepain of Lewis’s suicide was particularly poignant for me,because my first wife had been a manic-depressive whodied by her own hand at age 28. Her year in a mental hos-pital before her death gave me some sense of what themen close to Lewis—most of all Clark and Jefferson—must have gone through trying to convince him that lifewas worth living.

For me, all research involves an emotional commitment.Without it, I couldn’t possibly spend so much time withthe people about whom I write. Of course, I cannot fullyunderstand what it is like to be a President or a five-stargeneral, any more than I can fully understand what com-bat is like. But after listening to hundreds of veterans talkabout their experiences in battle, I can come close. Andso, after 20 years on the trail with Lewis, and after readinghis journal entries over and over, my identification withhim has been almost total.

As Moira said, when we were hiking for the first timeon the Lolo Trail in his footsteps, “My feet tingle.” ■

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Stephen Ambrose in the summer of 1997, taking a nooner at theSmoking Place on the Lolo Trail, deep in the heart of the Lewisand Clark country he loved so much. Photo by Mike Venso.


THE “ODYSSEY” OFLEWIS & CLARK

by ROBERT R. HUNT

A look at the Corps of Discovery through the lens of Homer

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“Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns.”1


When Meriwether Lewis viewed “seens of vi-sionary inchantment” on his westward jour-ney, he was gazing at the White Cliffs of the

Missouri River Breaks, in present-day Chouteau County,Montana. “The hills and Clifts exhibit,” he wrote (May31, 1805) “a most romantic appearance … a thousand gro-tesque figures … elegant ranges of lofty freestone build-ings … statuary … collums of various sculptures … longgalleries … with pedestals and capitals.”2

His descriptions of this and other “curious scenery”found in the journals would, in later years, stir adventur-ers back in the “U. States” to see these faraway places forthemselves. Travelers, observers, and writers for nearly200 years have turned to the journals as a kind of travelguide. One such observer, Marius Bewley, writing in the1970s about Lewis and Clark, comments that “apart froma very few writers like Bernard DeVoto, [the] essentiallycreative and imaginary character [of the expedition] hasbeen missed, its essentially ‘heroic’ quality sacrificed.”3

But in more recent years the “visionary” and “mythic”elements have come to be better appreciated. HistorianBob Moore has written that “the story of Jason and theArgonauts closely resembles that of Lewis and Clark.”4

The journey of the Corps of Discovery, Moore writes,“parallels famous myths and hero tales, and I believe thisis the root of its popularity.” Another scholar, AlbertFurtwangler, has noted “abiding epic strains” in therecord—how the men of the corps, in crossing the conti-nent, “conquered obstacles worthy of Odysseus.”5

On a more prosaic level, Bil Gilbert, writing inAudubon magazine about the magpies, grouse, and prai-rie dogs sent from Fort Mandan back to Thomas Jeffer-son via the expedition’s keelboat in the spring of 1805,titled his story “The Incredible Odyssey of the President’sBeasts.”6 More graphically, Ingvard Eide, for his compre-hensive photographic essay illustrating the Lewis andClark Trail, titled his great work American Odyssey.7

Thus it seems almost by rote that the expedition is as-sociated with the word “Odyssey.” But this term and itsadjective “odyssean” have settled into the language sim-ply as references for “arduous lengthy travel.” So whenMarius Bewley claims that “Lewis turned out to be a veri-table Odysseus in the wilderness,” is he (and the othersnoted above) really comparing two personalities, i.e.,Lewis and Odysseus (and by implication their respectivevoyages) in terms of deeds, character, and literary inter-est? Or is he simply making a commonplace reference outof a generalized vocabulary? Can the Corps of Discoveryactually be said to evoke Homer’s story—what one writer

has called that “extraordinary journey 3000 years ago[which] has never been eclipsed”?8

To test this idea, put the narratives alongside each other,and proceed on. Open The Odyssey9 and start reading,page one:

This is the story of a man, one who was never at aloss. He had traveled far in the world, after the sackof Troy, the virgin fortress; he saw many cities ofmen and learnt their mind; he endured many troublesand hardships in the struggle to save his own lifeand to bring back his men safe to their homes.

Change only a phrase and a word or two above andyou have a picture of Meriwether Lewis and the Corps ofDiscovery. Reading further in Homer’s text, you will findscenes and events which stand out as strikingly parallel tosituations in the Lewis and Clark journals. An overallimpression emerges that both narratives evoke similarbasic issues: trust, loyalty, faith, friendship, bravery, kind-ness—universal personal themes, never out of date. Butin drawing this analogy, let it be said at the outset (with alldue respect for other members of the corps, particularlyWilliam Clark), that the focus here does not rest solely onMeriwether Lewis as a counterpart to Odysseus—eachone of these two personalities with his own respective“twists and turns”: In the Odyssey, “heroic” scenes in-volve not only Odysseus but also Telemachus (his son),and others. Likewise in the Corps of Discovery, Clarkand others stand out “heroically” as much in the action asLewis. With that in mind, read further to see howOdysseus and company offer ancient parallels to experi-ences of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. (NOTE: In thecomparisons below, edited excerpts from Homer’s storyare referenced by book and approximate line number inany line-numbered Homeric text. References to the Lewisand Clark journals are by date.)

PREPARATIONS

Remember first that Thomas Jefferson, Lewis’s mentor,had known and respected William Lewis (Meriwether’sfather) before William’s death; when appointing Meri-wether as his secretary, Jefferson said that Lewis wouldbe “one of my family.”10 His later instructions to Lewisfor the expedition11 thus evoke a message which Mentor,a character in Homer’s text, spoke to the son of Odysseus:

[T]he journey which you desire shall not be longdelayed, when you have with you such an old friendof your father as I am; for I will provide a swift ship… . [Y]ou must … get provisions ready, and put themall up in vessels, wine in jars, and barley-meal, whichis the marrow of men, in strong skins. (2:280)


Following instructions, Lewis went to Philadelphia inthe summer of 1803 to gather provisions, then afterwardsto Pittsburgh to oversee the building of his keelboat. Hesupervised his contractor,12 just as Odysseus cared forbuilding his boat—assuring that timbers were shaped

neatly … and made true to the line. … Calypsobrought him a boring tool, and he bored holes andfitted the spars together, making them fast with pegsand joints. He made his craft as wide as a skillfulshipwright would plan out the hull … . He fixedribs along the sides, and decking planks above, andfinished off with copings along the ribs. He set amast in her, and fitted a yard upon it, and he madealso a steering-oar to keep her straight … . ThenCalypso brought him cloth to use for a sail, and hemade that too. Stays and halyards and sheets he madefast in their places, and dragged her down to theshore on rollers. (5:245)

Meanwhile, before shoving the keelboat off from Pitts-burgh (August 30, 1803), Lewis proceeded (as Athena didfor Telemachus) to “go at once and collect volunteersamong the people.” (2:290) Clark likewise, by the timeLewis joined him near Louisville, had also collected vol-unteers. With a crew now assembled, including the nineyoung men from Kentucky, the boat was ready to moveon from Clarksville on October 26, 1803.13

The sun went down, and the streets were all dark-ened. Then Athena ran the boat down into the sea,and put in all the gear that ships carry for sailingand rowing; she moored her at the harbour point,and the crew assembled, fine young fellows all, andshe set them each to work. (2:385)

WATER TRAVEL

On storm-tossed rivers—the Ohio, the Missouri, and theColumbia—Lewis and Clark were figuratively in the sameboat with Odysseus on the sea:

The gods were all sorry for him, except Poseidon,god of the sea, who bore a lasting grudge againsthim all the time until he returned. (1:20)

All the way up the Missouri, the river would persist (likethe sea in Homer),

belching up terrific showers of spray which coveredthe cliffs in a mist; for there was no harbour for aship, and no roadstead, nothing but bluffs and cragsand headlands along that shore. (5:400)

The “grudge” of the sea god was like Lewis’s “evil genii”haunting the white pirogue: when Cruzatte was trying tosave that vessel on May 14, 1805, in a “sudon squawl ofwind,” he resembled Odysseus in the same predicament—

how all the winds come sweeping upon me! Nowmy destruction’s a safe thing! … a great wave rolledup towering above him, and drove his vessel round.He lost hold of the steering-oar, and fell out intothe water: the mast snapt in the middle as the fearfultempest of warring winds fell upon it; sail and yardwere thrown from the wreck. (5:313)

Farther on, the corps’s keelboat still had to deal with aPoseidon grudge. The boat was near destruction severaltimes on the Missouri in storms almost as terrible as theone in which Odysseus lost his steersman:

[S]uddenly came the west wind screeching and blow-ing with a furious tempest, the gale broke both theforestays, the mast fell aft, and all the tackle tumbledinto the hold, the mast hit the steerman’s head andcrushed the skull to splinters, he took a header fromhis deck and was drowned. Zeus at the same timethundered and struck our ship with his bolt; sheshivered in all her timbers at the blow, and the placewas full of sulphur. The men were cast out, they werebobbing up and down on the waves like so manycrows … . A rolling wave carried her along dis-mantled, and snapt off the mast close to the keel. Iused [stout oxhide] to lash together keel and mast,and I rode upon these drifting before those terriblewinds … But why go on with my story? I have toldit already, and no one cares for a twice-told tale.(12:400-455)

Twice-told indeed ! Clark too on several occasions hadto replace his mast (e.g., June 4, 1804). His crew also hadto cast into the water (e.g., June 9, 1804), and while notbobbing up and down like crows, they were a perfect team,saving the boat from capsizing.

MOURNING THE DEAD

Just as Odysseus suffered a loss and observed honors forhis dead, Lewis and Clark also mourned a loss—a keyman, Sergeant Floyd. The melancholy scene for Floyd’sfuneral and burial at present-day Sioux City, Iowa (Au-

Clark’s sketch of the Corps of Discovery’s keelboat

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gust 20, 1804), is strangely reminiscent of Odysseus’smourning one of his companions:

as soon as the next day dawned, I sent my compan-ions to Circe’s house to bring the body of Elpenor.We cut chunks of wood for a pyre, and buried himon the end of the foreland, mourning for our deardead friend. And when the body was burnt with hisarms, we raised a barrow with a large stone upon itand set up his own oar on the summit. (12:8)

ON SHORE

Proceeding on, there were times when some of the party(Lewis, Clark, Shannon, and others) were on shore alone,fighting weather, mosquitoes, and cold or hot nights (e.g.,Lewis July 30, 1805)—just as Odysseus did:

So he entered a coppice which he found close to theriver, with a clear space around it; there he crawledunder a couple of low trees which were growingclose together out of one root … . So thick and closethey grew that no damp wind could blow through,nor could the sun send down his blazing rays, norcould rain penetrate. Odysseus crept into thisthicket, and found there was plenty of room for abed, so he scraped up the leaves with his bare hands… . Down he lay in the middle, and heaped the leavesover his body. (5:474)

Confronting the elements ashore was not as demand-ing as when Clark, farther up river, found himself staringdown the hostile Teton Sioux on September 25, 1804—alone on shore, hundreds of warriors with drawn bowsaimed at him, Clark was threatened, (as was Mentor, theprotector of Odysseus’s household, by hostile taunts)—

one against many is done, a many’s too many forone, in fights for a supper. (2:242)

At last, beyond the Sioux, the expedition reached theMandan villages on October 26, 1804, there to spend thewinter waiting through cold and boredom. To pass thetime, the captains (and others of the party) could be imag-ined (as Homer pictured men idling time)

amusing themselves with a game of draughts in frontof the door, sitting on the skins of cattle which theyhad killed themselves. (1:105)

Temptations nonetheless lurked in those precincts, likethose facing Odysseus when passing through the Straitof Messina and the threat of Scylla and Charybdis. Warnedby Circe that irresistible songs of female Sirens could luresailors to their deaths, Odysseus plugged up the ears ofhis men with wax to block out the singing, then had him-self tied to the mast (12:153-183). The captains perhapsshould have taken similar precautions at Fort Mandan.

There the lures of young females caused the kind of mis-chief Odysseus feared while passing between Scylla andCharybdis. Sergeant Ordway, for one, should have hadmore stuffing in his ears; one siren song got him in deeptrouble on November 22, 1804. Again with the Shoshoneson the Continental Divide, those irresistible female strainsechoed, and were even more lilting later at Fort Clatsop.By then the captains gave further heed to Circe’s warningwhen an “Old Boud” [bawd], as the captains describedher, of the Chinnooks stood in the wings on March 15,1806, with six young sirens. Lewis admonished the mento take an oath of chastity—not exactly like plugging theirears, but apparently it caused enough tone-deafness, forawhile at least.

Back at the Mandan villages, the captains were likeTelemachus’s visitor:

I have come here now with ship and crew, voyagingover the dark face of the sea to places where theyspeak other languages than ours. (1:182)

For help with “other languages than ours” farther west,the captains hired Charbonneau, with Sacagawea, as in-terpreter on March 17, 1805, and were ready to proceedon. Some of the Mandans wished the men would staylonger and were sorry to see them leave. Lewis or Clarkcould be imagined speaking (with poetic license) to oneof the chiefs (as Telemachus spoke to Menelaus, wishingto delay a parting):

My Lord, do not keep me here long. It is true I couldstay here a whole year with you, idle, and I shouldnot miss home or parents; for I … love … your sto-ries and your conversation: but my compatriots arebored already … . [H]orses I will not take … . I willleave them for you to enjoy; for you are lord of abroad plain, in which is plenty of clover. (4:593)

A Greek sailing vessel of Homer’s era

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The Mandans watched the corps ship out. Lewis, in hisjournal entry of April 7, 1805, thought of Columbus andexulted in his fleet. The captains had to pay attention tothe surveying and navigation requirements of the voyage.Some sleepless nights, they were star gazers (likeOdysseus):

Calypso saw him off—No sleep fell on his eyes; buthe watched the Pleiades and the late-settling Wag-oner, and the Bear, or the Wagon, as some call it,which wheels round and round where it is, watch-ing Orion, and alone of them all never takes a bathin the Ocean … . Calypso had warned him to keepthe Bear on his left hand as he sailed over the sea.(5:273)

The captains occasionally walked alone on shore, car-rying an espontoon, a spearlikeweapon that also served as a walk-ing stick. On May 29, 1805, Clarkkilled a wolf with his. Odysseustoo carried a spear while walkingon shore—he spied

a stag with towering antlers righton my path … . I struck him onthe spine in the middle of theback, and the spear ran rightthrough; down he fell in the dustwith a moan, and died. I set myfoot on him and drew out thespear from the wound. Then Ilaid the body on the ground, andpulled a quantity of twigs andwithies, which I plaited across and twisted into astrong rope of a fathom’s length: with this rope Itied together the legs of the great creature, and strunghim over my neck, and so carried him down to theship, leaning upon my spear. (10:160)

Clark may not have carried his wolf quite in this manner,but it is certain that the hunters of the corps did indeedbring in their meat just as Odysseus did.

MONSTERS

The “spear” would prove a life-saver for Lewis on June14, 1805, when he unexpectedly encountered an onrush-ing grizzly; fortunately, he was carrying his espontoon,which he pointed at the charging bruin, thereby avertingan attack. Odysseus was not quite so lucky when he

was close upon the hounds , with a long spear in hishand … . There in a dense thicket lay a great boar:no damp wind was strong enough to blow throughthat thick scrub … . The boar was aroused by thetrampling of the men and dogs; out he came fromthe bushes … his neck bristling and his eyes flash-

ing fire … . Odysseus in front of the rest ran at him,pointing the spear to deal him a blow; but the boarcharged sideways and struck him first, above theknee. (19:437)

Lewis referred to the grizzlies as “these gentlemen.”In Homer’s story a comparable creature is called an “OldMan.” This is Proteus, a sea god constantly hostile toOdysseus’s kin and friends; he becomes a beast as elu-sive and terrifying as several of Lewis’s gentlemen nearthe Great Falls, particularly the one that treed PrivateMcNeal on July 15, 1806. In animal disguise the “OldMan” gets in a brawl with Menelaus, who tries to catchhim by trickery:

at once we rushed on him with yells, and seizedhim—the Old Man did not for-get his arts! First he turned intoa bearded lion, then into a ser-pent, then a leopard, then a greatboar; he turned into running wa-ter, and a tall tree in full leaf, butwe held fast patiently. (4:457)

This beast was as reluctant to giveup as Clark’s huge grizzly, whichtook eight bullets through its headand lungs and still came on charg-ing (May 14, 1805).

Harassed at the Great Falls, notonly by bears but by the toil of por-taging and the failure of the iron

boat (June 21-July 14, 1805), the corps lost valuable time.On June 25 the men had even tried sailing a crudely fash-ioned wagon over harsh terrain for the portage. Lewis’sdiscouragement and impatience is an echo of Menelaus,stuck in Egypt:

there the gods kept me back for twenty days; nevera good wind blew over the brine, none of thosewhich speed a ship over the broad back of the sea.All our provisions would have been used up, andthe spirit of the men gone, if a divine being had notpitied me and saved me … . I must have touched herheart, when she met me wandering alone withoutcompanions; for they used to go about fishing withhook and line, since famine tore at their bellies.(4:351-371)

Private Goodrich, the lead fisherman of the corps, wasexpert with hook and line and could help calm the belliesof his comrades (June 11, 1805).

Moving on to the Three Forks of the Missouri, Clarkon July 26, 1805, climbed the overlooking hill to see whathe could see, just as Odysseus did at the Island of theWinds:

Scylla, the three-headed female monster who seizedand ate three of Odysseus’s men. She lived in a caveopposite the whirlpool Charybdis, in the Strait ofMessina, where the Sirens also lurked.

at once we rushed on him withyells, and seized him—the OldMan did not forget his arts! Firsthe turned into a bearded lion,then into a serpent, then a leop-ard, then a great boar; he turnedinto running water, and a tall treein full leaf, but we held fast pa-tiently. (4:457)

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Then I climbed the cliff and stood still to get a goodview. There was no arable land or garden to be seen,but we saw smoke rising in the air. So I sent somemen to find out who the natives were, two pickedmen with a third as their spokesman. (9:90)

Proceeding on, Clark personally had no luck in turningup the much sought-after Shoshones. On August 1, 1805,Lewis relieved Clark in the search. He then did asMenelaus had done in a different kind of search:

when dawn showed the first streaks of red, I walkedalong the shore … earnestly praying to the gods; andI took three comrades, men whom I trusted mostfor every enterprise. (4:431)

Finally, Lewis (with three trusted comrades, Drouillard,Shields, and McNeal) found the Shoshones on the Conti-nental Divide and met their chief, Cameahwait, near LemhiPass on August 13, 1805.

There they spent the night, and their host gave themgifts as a host ought to do. (15:185)

Shoshone hospitality lasted long enough to permit pur-chase of horses for overland travel through the tortuousBitterroot Mountains. Near the summit of the Bitterroots,in the neighborhood of Lolo Pass on September 16, 1805,the corps passed in the shadow of what looked like theawesome creature in Homer’s story—the Cyclops, orPolyphemous, the one-eyed monster eager to devourOdysseus’s entire crew when they were trapped in his cave(9:216-461). This huge rock sentinel, remarkably resem-bling Homer’s monster, was photographed by IngvardEide, who labels it “Granitic Rock,” relating it to Sep-

tember 15, 1805—a terrible day in the life of the Corps ofDiscovery, a day when horses and men half-dazed,stumble, sick from fatigue, hunger and cold on the moun-tain side. A rock image of the Cyclops at this place on thisdate is weirdly evocative of such a grim day: starvation,sickness unto death—the party stayed alive only by eat-ing a “killed colt” and ingesting roots. They were like theexhausted Odysseus suppliant before Alcinoös:

[T]here is nothing in the world more shameless thanthis cursed belly! [It] forces a man to remember it,in spite of dire distress and sorrow of heart … ; yetthe belly commands me to eat and drink, and makesme forget all that I have suffered, and bids me fill itup. Do your best, I pray you, early tomorrow, thatan unhappy man may return to his own country af-ter so much suffering. Let me once set eyes on mylands and my men and my great house, and then letme die. (7:214)

Somehow they managed not to die and moved on tomake contact with the Nez Perces, with whom they wereable to recover their wits at Canoe Camp, reached Sep-tember 26, 1805. Their new friends were like Calypso, whosaid to Odysseus,

[C]ome along, cut down trees, hew them into shape,make a good broad raft; you can lay planks across itand it shall carry you over the misty sea! I will pro-vide you bread, water, red wine, as much as you like,you need not starve. I’ll give you plenty of clothesand send a fair wind behind you to bring you homesafe and sound. (5:160)

Strengthened by this interlude, the corps moved down theClearwater River to the Snake, then to the Columbia, and

Sirens luring sailors to their doom. Odysseus plugged the ears of his crewmen to block out their singing. Perhaps Lewis and Clark shouldhave taken similar precautions at Forts Mandan and Clatsop, where some of their men contracted venereal disease from native damsels.

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at last to the ocean. As with Menelaus on his return fromEgypt, Lewis and Clark noted on November 15, 1805,near the mouth of the Great River of the West,

a capital harbour, where voyagers take in fresh wa-ter before they push off again. (4:355)

HOMEWARD BOUND

It was a long and depressing winter before the party could“push off again.” At times the leaders felt a need for soli-tude. Like Telemachus who prayed by the shore, WilliamClark at least once, on December 10, 1805,

went by himself by the seashore. There he washedhis hands in the gray brine. (2:260)

and perhaps like Telemachus offered a prayer. (Clark didindeed later attribute ultimate success to the hand of Provi-dence.)14 Recall then how Homer has Zeus instruct hismessenger, Hermes:

Go and declare our unchangeable will, that Odysseusshall return after all his troubles. But no god shallgo with him, and no mortal man. He shall build araft, and a hard voyage he shall have, until aftertwenty days he shall come to land on Scheria, therich domain of our own kinsmen … . They shallhonour him like a god in the kindness of their hearts,and they shall escort him in one of their ships to hisnative land. (5:28)

It would take Lewis and Clark longer than 20 days to re-turn to their old friends, the Nez Perces, who would givethem respite and later an escort toward their native land.

While the men moved upriver seeking these friends,they were belabored by hostile natives, hunger, and theturbulent Columbia. But they were heartened when aneagle was seen with a salmon in its beak (a sign of theimpending annual salmon run)—just as Telemachus hadbeen heartened at least twice by good omens:

Zeus sent Telemachus a pair of eagles, flying fromlofty mountainpeak. On they flew down the windawhile … soaring on wide-stretched sails. (2:146)

Later, when Telemachus was departing from Menelaus,

a good omen came; a bird flew over to the right, aneagle carrying in his claws a huge white goose whichhe had caught up from a farmyard, and there werethe men and women following with shouts … . Atthat sight all felt a deep glow of satisfaction. (15:160)

To the corps the eagle omen proved good when, far-ther upriver, the men observed native celebrations of thereturn of the salmon on April 19, 1806. The day before,Clark had also observed and was intrigued by native handgames. Despite these diversions, all was not “fun and

games.” Lewis was enraged when, on April 11, 1806, In-dians briefly stole his Newfoundland dog, Seaman, anact that showed a certain disrespect. Odysseus too hadbeen galled by sneers of challengers:

You are all making fun of me. My mind is more seton troubles than on games. Suffering and sorrow iswhat I have had so far; I am here in your gatheringonly as a suppliant … and all I want is to get home… . Broadsea said to him: Ah well, sir, I would notwant to put you down as a fellow who goes in forgames, though that is the way of the world, youknow; skipper of a trading crew is what you looklike … thinking of cargo, keeping an eye on thegoods and grabbing what profits you can … .Odysseus said with a frown: You have made me an-gry by your bad manners … . Now I am tired andworn out with perils in battle and perils of the sea… . You have cut me to the quick, and I cannot sitstill any longer. (8:152-186)

These ugly episodes gave way to happier occasionswhen the corps reached the Walla Walla Indians on April27, 1806, and after them,the Nez Perces (May 8,1806). While spendingmore than a month withthese helpful people,waiting for the snow-bound mountain passesto open, the men gath-ered strength to resume travel. With a bit of leisure, therewas time for sports matches with the Nez Perces—the firstinternational olympic games on the North American con-tinent15—following Homer’s model when Odysseus waswith the Phaiacians:

Let us go and try our luck at games and sports,that our guest may report to his friends when hegets home how we beat the world at boxing andwrestling and jumping and running! … All madehaste to the ground, and a huge crowd followed … .Young champions were found in plenty: Topshipand Quicksea and Paddler, Seaman [emphasisadded] and Poopman … . The first contest was afoot-race. The running was fast from start to fin-ish. … Next came wrestling. … At jumping Seagirtwas first; … Paddler was easily first at putting theweight, and in the boxing Laodamus … . A manought to know about games. Game is the best wayto fame while you’re still alive—what you can dowith arms and legs. (8:98-146)

In the contests with the natives, Drouillard and ReubinField held up U.S. honors in running (June 8, 1806).

Although the journals don’t mention him as a partici-pant, we can assume that Private John Colter also took

Greeks playing a game of chance.

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part in these games with the Nez Perces. After the expe-dition, Colter returned to the mountains as a fur trapper.When captured by the Blackfeet at the Three Forks andordered to run for his life, Colter killed one of his pursu-ers and outraced the rest. In this deadly sport he provedthat “game is the best way to fame.” What he did with“arms and legs” kept him “still alive” and earned him aplace in the record (or at least history) books forever.16

From the Nez Perces on, over the mountains, downthe rivers, the rest is history—200 years and 3,000 yearsago. As they swept by St. Charles and arrived at St. Louison September 23, 1806, the explorers who had been to thePacific and back could echo what Odysseus said to Ca-lypso: “I tell you there is no sweeter sight any man cansee than his own country.”(9:32)

MORE MIRROR IMAGES

This story cannot be put to rest without noting the fol-lowing additional parallels:

The names of the two principal “heroes” are subject topun: Meriwether Lewis encountered anything but “merryweather”; a goddess says to our ancient voyager, “PoorOdysseus! You’re odd-I-see, true to your name.” (5:339;see translator Rouse’s note substantiating the pun inHomer’s Greek.)

Odysseus and crew, like Lewis and Clark (September17, 1806), were all taken as long lost and dead by their fami-lies and countrymen. Telemachus mourning his father:

But he is dead and gone in this miserable way, andthere is no comfort for us, even if there are people inthe world who say he will come back. (1:158)

Both Lewis and Odysseus carried scars from wounds in-curred on their voyages—Lewis, by gun shot, on his but-tock (August 11, 1806) and Odysseus, by the boar’s tusk,on his knee (19:450).

Lewis’s dog, Seaman, was as versatile and accomplishedas Odysseus’s 20-year-old hound, Argos:

If his looks and powers were now what they werewhen the master went away and left him, tha’d seehis big strength and speed! Never a beast could es-cape him in the deep forest when he was on the track,for he was a prime tracker. (17:290-324)

Finally, if you think that Lewis’s fight with the Blackfeetat the Two Medicine River site was breathtaking (July 27,1806), then turn to Homer and read for comparison “TheBattle in the Hall” with Penelope’s suitors (22:1-500).

These parallels in the two narratives—the Corps of Dis-covery reflected in the mirror of The Odyssey—help us,as one scholar has put it, “to experience the stories,” sto-

ries so good that “every generation has wanted to pre-serve them for the next.”17

Foundation member Robert R. Hunt lives in Seattle.

NOTES

1 The first lines of The Odyssey as translated by Robert Fagles(New York: Viking, 1996).

2 Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Ex-pedition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 13 volumes.,1983-2001) Vol. 4, pp. 225-226. All quotations or references tojournal entries in the ensuing text are from Moulton, Vols. 2-11,by date unless otherwise indicated.

3 Marius Bewley, Masks & Mirrors: Essays in Criticism (NewYork: Atheneum, 1970) p. 217.

4 Bob Moore, “The Mythic Lewis and Clark,” We ProceededOn, February 2000, pp. 36-35.

5 Albert Furtwangler, Acts of Discovery: Visions of America inthe Lewis and Clark Journals (Urbana and Chicago: Universityof Illinois Press, 1993), pp. 198-201.

6 Bil Gilbert, “The Incredible Odyssey of the President’s Beasts,”Audubon, January 1989, pp. 100-114.

7 Ingvard Henry Eide, American Odyssey: The Journey of Lewisand Clark (Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Rand McNally& Company, 1969)

8 Tim Severin, The Ulysses Voyage: Sea Search for the Odyssey(London, Melbourne, Auckland, Johannesburg: Hutchinson,1987), p. 15.

9 Homer, The Odyssey: The Story of Odysseus, as translated byW. H. D. Rouse (New York and Toronto: Mentor Books, 1937).All quotations from this translation are referenced by chapter(i.e., “book”) and approximate line number when compared withother translations (necessarily approximate, as line numbers varyin different translations—lines are not numbered in Rouse’stranslation).

10 Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedi-tion with Related Documents, 1783-1854, 2 volumes (Urbana:University of Illinois Press, 2nd ed., 1978) Vol. 1, p. 2.

11 Ibid., Vol. 1, pp. 61-66.

12 Moulton, Vol. 2, pp. 66-67, note 7.

13 Ibid., p. 85.

14 Jackson, Vol. 1, p. 359. The reference is to a letter written byClark on January 18, 1807.

15 Robert R. Hunt, “Fun and Games on the Lewis and ClarkExpedition,” We Proceeded On, August 1993, pp. 4-14.

16 L. Ruth Colter-Frick, Courageous Colter and Companions(Washington, Mo.: Video Proof, 1997), pp. 10-20.

17 John Barton, “Tantalus and Myth-Power and Timelessness,”from Barbara Mackay, ed., Introducing the World of Tantalus;Denver Center Theatre Company, Peter Hall’s Production ofTantalus; Denver, September-December 2000.


1August 12, 1805. Lewis reaches the crest of Lemhi Passon the Continental Divide, “from which I discovered

immence ranges of high mountains still to the West of uswith their tops partially covered with snow.”

The expedition’s single most important geographicaldiscovery was the width of the Rocky Mountain chain,rammed home by the vista greeting Lewis at Lemhi. Tho-mas Jefferson’s whole plan for a transcontinental waterroute was based on the assumption that the Rockiesamounted to a single narrow dividing ridge between theMissouri and Columbia Rivers. Instead, Lewis and Clarkfound several parallel mountain ranges, including some

west of the divide. Their discovery changed everyone’sconcept of the North American interior. More than an-other month passed before William Clark, on September18, 1805, looked west from Sherman Peak on the LoloTrail to see “an emence Plain and leavel Countrey”—theend of the Rockies at last.

2 June 20, 1803. Thomas Jefferson signs his detailed setof expedition instructions to Meriwether Lewis.

These orders broadened the expedition’s goals fromgeographic discovery alone to a whole cafeteria of En-lightenment inquiry: Who are the native residents and how

THE BIG

10EDITOR’S NOTE: Foundation member Jerry Garrett, of St.Louis, sent us the following. It was written by the late ArlenJ. “Jim” Large, a Foundation president and frequent WPO

contributor who died in 1996. Explains Garrett, “In the early1990s, as chair of the Bicentennial Committee, I asked com-mittee members to submit what they thought were the es-sential components of the Lewis and Clark story. This wasJim’s response.” We welcome readers’ comments and theirown contributions of other major events of the Lewis andClark Expedition.1

What were the essential events ofthe Lewis &Clark Expedition?

by ARLEN J. LARGE


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do they live? What do the plants and animals look like?How cold does it get? How hot? When do the flowersbloom? What are the minerals? Having to satisfy the breadthof Jefferson’s curiosity is what made the expedition uniquein the history of human exploration, at least to that time.Jefferson’s ambitious assignment became a model for laterU.S. government investigations of the West. In 1819, whenSecretary of War John C. Calhoun aimed Major StephenLong toward the Rockies, he said: “The instructions ofMr. Jefferson to Capt. Lewis, which are printed in his trav-els, will afford you many valuable suggestions, of whichas far as applicable, you will avail yourself.”

3 January-February, 1806. Following Lewis and Clark’sreturn, Jefferson fails to follow up his triumph.

Lewis and Clark were back in Washington, hailed as he-roes of western discovery. This was the time for their com-mander-in-chief to order the two officers to stay in the capi-tal and work on publication of their priceless maps and jour-nals. It was an event that should have happened, but didn’t.Instead, Jefferson gave them cushy patronage jobs in dis-tant St. Louis. As a result, the first ghost-written paraphraseof their journals, and only one map, didn’t see print until1814—too late to help the second wave of private fur trad-ers seeking to exploit the expedition’s findings.

Essential Event No. 7, June 13, 1805: After theindecision as to which branch to follow at thejunction of the Marias, Lewis reaches the GreatFalls — proof that the expedition was indeedon the main branch of the Missouri.


(The remaining events are listed in chronological order.)

4 November 11, 1803. At Ft. Massac, Illinois, Lewis andClark hire George Drouillard as a civilian interpreter.

The half-Shawnee was chosen because of his skill at In-dian sign-language, but he also blossomed into theexpedition’s best woodsman and hunter. Of Drouillard,Lewis later wrote: “It was his fate also to have encoun-tered, on various occasions, with either Capt. Clark ormyself, all the most dangerous and trying scenes of the voy-age, in which he uniformly acquitted himself with honor.”

5 September 28, 1804. Near present-day Pierre, SouthDakota, Lewis and Clark break an attempted block-

ade of the Missouri River by the Teton Sioux.St. Louis fur traders repeatedly warned the captains

about Sioux efforts to halt northbound traffic on the Mis-souri and thus protect their monopoly in British tradegoods. That was a factor in the American explorers’ deci-sion to take more men than originally planned. Sureenough, the Tetons tried to halt the expedition. Tensionsran high for two days until Friday, the 28th, when a Tetonchief “Sayed we might return back with what we had orremain with them, but we could not go up the Missouriany farther,” according to Sergeant John Ordway. “Boathof our Captains told him we did not mean to be trifledwith.” Lewis and Clark won the war of nerves, and theparty proceeded on.

6 April 7, 1805. The expedition leaves Fort Mandan withits final complement of people who would cross the

Rocky Mountains and reach the Pacific Ocean.Earlier in the trip there had been a whole series of pre-

liminary “departures”: Lewis from Washington and Pitts-burgh, Clark from Louisville, the keelboat and twopirogues from Camp River Dubois. Each time the expe-dition roster included different individuals joining anddropping away. Not until the end of the North Dakotawinter, with the keelboat’s return to St. Louis, was thepermanent party honed down to the 33 souls who wouldsee the Pacific beaches and return.

7 June 13, 1805. Lewis hears “a roaring too tremendiousto be mistaken for any cause short of the great falls of

the Missouri.”It was tangible proof that the expedition was on the

right course after doubt and indecision at the Marias 10days before. In North Dakota the Hidatsas had givenLewis and Clark a reality check for following the Mis-souri: you will come to a mighty falls. But the explorershadn’t been warned about a big river, the Marias, enteringthe Missouri from the north. At the junction of rivers thecaptains feared picking the wrong one, and then having tobacktrack: that “would not only loose us the whole ofthis season but would probably so dishearten the partythat it might defeat the expedition altogether,” wroteLewis. Leading a small advance party up the south branch,

Essential Event No. 8, August17, 1805: Lewis and the Sho-shones finally rendezvouswith Clark and the main partyon the Beaverhead River, put-ting to rest Indian fears thatLewis might betray them. TheShoshones’ renewed con-fidence in the white strang-ers led to their selling themthe horses needed to crossthe Rocky Mountains. I N

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Lewis knew he was on the true Missouri “whin my earswere saluted with the agreeable sound of a fall of water.”

8 August 17, 1805. Clark makes a nick-of-time appear-ance at Camp Fortunate on the upper Beaverhead.

A Shoshone of Cameahwait’s band “reported that thewhitemen were coming, that he had seen them just be-low,” said a much-relieved Lewis. Earlier that week Lewishad found the Shoshones on the west side of Lemhi Pass,and persuaded Cameahwait to re-cross it with him andmeet “my brother Chief” who was coming in canoes upthe Beaverhead River. But when Lewis and the Indiansreached the river on August 16, Clark wasn’t there. Lewisspent a sleepless night worrying that the Indians wouldtake alarm and vanish, ruining chances of buying theirhorses for continuing the trip. But he talked them intostaying until Clark was spotted coming upriver the nextmorning.

9 October 16, 1805. The expedition comes to the junc-tion of the Snake and Columbia rivers.

The British Navy had already mapped the Columbia’sPacific entrance and other Northwest coast features, sowhat Lewis and Clark would find there wasn’t new. How-ever, no literate investigators had previously explored theriver’s inland tributaries. Now the Americans understoodhow the Clearwater and Salmon combined with the Snake,which ran into the Columbia. They also would take back

10

the first reports on the main Columbia’s navigability eastof the Cascades (not good!).

July 27, 1806. Lewis and party fight the Blackfeet attheir campsite on Two Medicine River.

There is continuing controversy over whether this skir-mish, in which two Indians died, was the main cause oflater Blackfeet hostility to all Americans entering thenorthern Rockies. At any rate, some people at the timethought that was the case, and history changed accord-ingly. In 1811, an overland party headed for John JacobAstor’s new Columbia River trading post encounteredJohn Colter not far from St. Louis. Colter had returnedseveral times to Blackfeet country after his trip with Lewisand Clark. He warned them to stay away from the upperreaches of the Missouri, where he said the Indians werestill bitter about the fight with Lewis. The Astoriansdropped their plan to follow the Lewis and Clark routeand took a more southerly course on horseback. That helpsexplain why Lewis’s “most practicable rout” across themountains was never used again. ■

NOTES

1 Because the author did not write this article for publication,he did not reference his sources, and because he is deceased wecannot ask him to do so retroactively. Most of the quoted pas-sages are dated and can be easily found in Volumes 2-11 of GaryE. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition,13 volumes (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001).

Above: Thomas Jefferson,whose detailed instructionsto Lewis became the modelfor later government explora-tions of the West. (EssentialEvent No. 2, June 20, 1803).

Left: Fort Massac, where thecaptains recruited GeorgeDrouillard, whose role as in-terpreter and hunter was cru-cial to the expedition’s suc-cess. (Essential Event No. 4,November 11, 1803.)R

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On a bright, cool morning in the late summer of1804, privates John Colter and John Shields ofthe Corps of Discovery were hunting together

along Corvus Creek, a tributary of the Missouri in whatis now South Dakota. Both men carried Army-issue flint-lock rifles. With the sun at their back, they moved slowlyupwind into a faint breeze. The thick oak brush kept themout of sight of each other, but they remained in easy call-ing distance. When Colter noticed some movement in thebrush about 60 yards ahead, he knelt and brought the rifleto his shoulder while silently feathering the hammer fromhalf to full cock.1 The deer was feeding on acorns and re-mained unaware of his presence as Colter gently squeezedthe trigger.

From his position closer to the cottonwoods along theriver, Shields heard the familiar roar of the flintlock andsaw the white smoke wafting down the creek bottom.Wind’s perfect, he thought. I knew that big doe was gonnaget in front of him. He would give his partner some timeto follow up on his shot before going to assist him.

• • •It can easily be argued that the most important tool of

the Lewis and Clark Expedition was the flintlock rifle.Because the explorers lived mainly off the land, they de-pended on rifles for subsistence. From their departurefrom Camp Dubois in Illinois until their return more thantwo years later, rifles kept the party—which ranged in sizefrom 33 to more than 40—supplied with buffalo, elk, deer,antelope, and bear.

The Corps of Discovery carried a variety of weapons.Besides rifles they included blunderbusses (short, heavyscatterguns mounted on the two pirogues), a swivel can-non, an airgun, pistols, and muskets.2 Both muskets andrifles are shoulder arms, but the barrel interior, or bore, ofa musket is smooth, while a rifle’s is cut with spiral grooves.The grooving, or rifling, imparts spin to the ball, giving itmuch greater accuracy and range. Members of the expe-dition carried both the Kentucky long rifle and a shorterhalf-stock rifle, an early or possible prototype version ofthe Model 1803 produced at the government arsenal at

HUNT ON

CORVUS CREEK

A primer on the care and operation of flintlock rifles

as practiced by the Corps of Discovery

by GARY PETERSON

Drawings by the author


Harpers Ferry, Virginia.3 The Model 1803—referred to inthe journals as the “short” rifle—had a barrel length of 33or 34 inches (compared to the 42-48 inches of a typicalsmall-calibered Kentucky rifle) and fired a relatively large-caliber ball, which would have been more adequate forhunting larger game such as buffalo and elk.4

Like many other commonplace items and activities,rifles and hunting are often mentioned in the journals butare not discussed in detail. This brief, fictionalized accountis a narrative reconstruction of what might have occurredin the way of rifle handling and maintenance before, dur-ing, and after a typical hunt. It draws on the journals, sec-ondary sources, and my own experience as a sportsmanwho for many years has practiced “primitive” huntingwith a muzzle-loading rifle and black powder.

Our hypothetical hunt takes place in the vicinity ofCorvus Creek (now known as American Creek), a Mis-souri tributary near present-day Oacoma, South Dakota.5

The explorers camped above the mouth of the creek onSeptember 16, 1804, and remained there several days. They

named the creek, wrote Lewis, “in consequence of havingkiled a beatiful bird of that genus near it.” He is referringto the black-billed magpie.6 The wooded bottomland,added Lewis, was thick with wild plum, and in his journalentry of the next day Clark called this place “PlombCamp.” The timber gave way to rolling prairie, “pleasingand beatiful” and filled with “immence herds of Buffaloedeer Elk and Antelopes which we saw in every directionfeeding on the hills and plains.”7

John Colter was one of the ablest members of the Corpsof Discovery, and Shields was its trusted gunsmith. Bothmen were frequently assigned to hunting details.

• • •Preparations for the hunt on Corvus Creek had begun

the evening before, when Colter’s squad leader, SergeantJohn Ordway, approached him after dinner to tell him hewas one of six hunters who would go out with CaptainLewis in the morning.8 Colter and Shields would workthe creek together. Colter was prepared to use his per-sonal weapon, a Kentucky long rifle, but instead Ordway

Opposite: John James Audubon’s rendering of a magpie, a member of the corvus (crow) family. Above: a mule deer—a species first described byLewis and Clark—painted by either Audubon or his son, John Woodhouse Audubon, during their visit to the upper Missouri in the early 1840s.


issued him one of the short rifles, along with a sling, shoot-ing bag, powder horn, measure, powder, balls, a piece oflinen cloth, bear’s oil, and a new flannel shirt (complimentsof Captain Clark). He got his bullet pouch, vent pick,pan brush, small screw driver, short starter, and prim-ing horn from his shooting bag and transferred them tothe one supplied by Ordway. [Boldface indicates illus-trated items—ED.]

The 30 bullets issued by Ordway he placed in the bul-let pouch, which also went into the shooting bag.

Ball patches are essential items in any black-powderhunter’s kit, and Colter now turned to making a supplyof them. He took the linen cloth and ripped it into stripsabout an inch and a quarter wide. 9 With his hunting knifehe then cut the strips into squares, folded each square overtwice, and cut the open corner so that, unfolded, the patchwas octagonally shaped for a neater fit. The ball’s diam-eter is slightly less than the bore’s, and the patch fills thespace between them. Greased with bear’s oil and wrappedaround the ball before its insertion into the barrel, a patchkeeps the ball snug against the rifling, holding it in place

and imparting spin when the ball is fired. The greasedpatches were stowed in the patch box on the rifle’s stocknear the butt, along with a worm (patch puller), a ball screw(bullet puller), and spare flints.

A hunter normally loaded his rifle by pouring a mea-sure of powder down the barrel, followed by the patchedball rammed down on top of it. To save time he could alsopreload powder and ball into a paper cartridge. Ordwayhad a supply of cartridges and issued several to Colter.These too went into his shooting bag.10

(It is also possible that some of the expedition’s hunt-ers may have carried their cartridges in a leather cartridgebox with a shoulder strap and a wooden block bored tohold the cartridges. A hunter might also have carried,either around his neck or attached to his shooting bag, abullet block—a wooden board with holes drilled in itfor holding balls wrapped in greased patches for quickreloading.)

Colter completed his preparations by checking therifle’s front and rear sights to make sure they were tightand centered. He then went over the lock. This is the

Model 1803 rifle

stock

barrelmuzzleramrod

breech

lock

butt

patchbox

@

?

BA


mechanism that produces the spark that ignites the pow-der which propels the ball. Its main components are thefrizzen (also called a battery) and the hammer (or cock),which holds the flint. He drew back the hammer to thehalf-cock position and closed the frizzen over the prim-ing pan, then gently lowered the hammer against thefrizzen. The contact between flint and steel was good. Henoted too that the flint was tight in the jaws of the ham-mer and properly aligned. None of this surprised him, forShields always kept the guns in good working order.

• • •Before the smoke had rolled away in the breeze, Col-

ter knew the shot was good. Mentally, he marked the spotwhere the deer had stood. Shields would probably be alongshortly to help him with it. He reloaded immediately—always the first priority.

Getting up from his kneeling position, Colter set therifle’s butt on the ground and blew through the muzzle toclear the touch hole. This extinguished any lingering em-bers in the bore and softened the fouling, which eased re-loading. He took a cartridge from his shooting bag, then

bit off the twisted paper tail and dumped the powdercharge down the barrel. Stripping away the remaining pa-per exposed the ball wrapped in its greased patch. Hepressed ball and patch against the muzzle and with a coupleof sharp raps on his short starter inserted them a few inchesinto the bore. He used the ramrod to drive them all theway down into the breech.

The rest took just a few seconds. He half-cocked thehammer and with a thumb cleared the frizzen of powderfouling, then half-filled the pan with fine-grained powderfrom the priming horn and closed the frizzen over thepan. Finally, he checked to make sure the flint was stilltight. (Although he didn’t utilize them on this occasion,he also carried a set of specialized tools for field cleaningthe lock. These were the pan brush and vent pick. Theformer was used for removing powder fouling from thepan and the rest of the lock and breech area, and the latterkept the vent or touch hole—the opening between the panand powder chamber—clear of powder fouling.)

With the rifle now reloaded, primed, and ready, Colterapproached the kill. He found the first sign, a smear of


blood on the leaves of a little oak, just a few paces fromwhere he’d last seen the deer standing. The blood wasfrothy and a pinkish color, telling him that he’d hit thedoe in the “lights,” or lungs. A few more paces and bloodseemed to be everywhere. The air was so crisp that hecaught the musky odor before actually seeing the doe,which lay stone dead in the brush. She was one of the bigblack-tailed deer with the big, mule-like ears they’d beenseeing of late, not the smaller white-tailed deer commonto eastern woods. The Cap’ns will be pleased to finally getone of these, he thought.

With his hunting knife he quickly field-dressed hiskill—slitting it open from anus to throat and splitting thebreastbone. After spilling the guts he wedged a tree branchinto the chest cavity to keep it open so it would cool outproperly. He was done by the time Shields arrived.

“Seen ya afore I heard ya,” he said.“Got one myself out on the edge of the cottonwoods,”

Shields told him.“Heard ya shoot,” said Colter.Together they dragged the doe a short distance from

the entrails and covered her with brush to keep away anyscavenging birds. They had more hunting to do and theywould return later for the carcasses.

• • •That evening, Clark recorded the hunt’s tally in his jour-

nal: 13 deer, three buffalo, and a “goat,” or pronghornantelope, taken by Colter later in the day. Clark com-

mented on the “curious kind of deer” Colter had shot,noting its dark gray color, unusually long, fine hair, largeears, and black-tufted tail. He was describing what Lewiswould later designate the mule deer, a species previouslyunknown to science.11

• • •His weapon is always a hunter’s primary concern, and

once back in camp Colter took care to clean and oil theshort rifle he’d been issued before returning it to Ordway.

First the rifle had to be unloaded. Removing the car-tridge from a modern breech-loading firearm is relativelysimple, but extracting the ball and powder from a muzzle-loader is a good deal more complicated. The tip of a flint-lock rifle’s ramrod was threaded to accommodate theball puller, an accessory with a short, sharp, screwlikesteel point. With the puller in place, Colter rammed awater-soaked flannel patch down the bore to soften thepowder fouling the breech. This would make the ball easierto extract. A few twists of the ramrod at the end of thedownward stroke secured the flannel to the puller. Hepulled out the ramrod and removed the flannel, then rein-serted the ramrod and gave it a few good twists when hefelt it against the ball. The threaded steel point bit into thesoft lead, and the ramrod came out with the ball attached.(The ball now had a hole in it, so it would no longer shoottrue. It would go into the lead pot, to be melted down formolding into a new bullet.)

With the puller still in place, Colter reinserted the ram-


rod and gave it a few more twists to loosen the powdercharge. He removed the rod and tipped the muzzle to-ward the ground, dumping the powder onto a piece ofbuckskin and returning what he could of it to his pow-der horn.

Now it was time to clean the barrel with boiling water.With the screwdriver from his shooting bag, Colter re-moved the lock and set it aside. He then placed a sharp-ened twig into the touch hole in the rifle’s breech to plugit. The water was heating in a tin cup at the edge of thefire. Colter held the gun upright with a piece of buckskinlooped around the barrel to protect his hand from scald-ing and used another piece to grasp the tin cup. He pouredthe boiling water into the muzzle, let it stand a few mo-ments, and poured it out. He repeated this several times.After unplugging the touch hole, he finished the job byremoving the ball puller from the end of the ramrod andscrewing in the worm, an attachment resembling a smallcorkscrew. He impaled a piece of dry flannel onto theworm and thrust it down the barrel several times to re-move any remaining water. When the barrel was thor-oughly dry, he greased a fresh piece of flannel with bear’soil and ran it throughout the bore. The flannel patches,like the pulled bullet, would be saved for reuse.

Finally, he turned his attention to the lock. After thor-oughly wiping all the powder fouling off the lock, hechecked the flint to see if it needed knapping (re-sharpening) or tightening. All looked well. He thenchecked the camming action of the frizzen against thefrizzen spring and with a twig placed a drop of oil on thespring where the stud (or heel) of the frizzen rode backand forth. He screwed the lock back onto the stock, re-turned the ball puller and worm to the patch box, rein-serted the ram rod into its pipe along the base of the bar-rel, and rubbed down the entire weapon—lock, stock, andbarrel—with oil. He removed his personal gear from theshooting bag Ordway had issued him and returned it andthe rifle to the sergeant.

Foundation member Gary Peterson lives in Buffalo, Wyo-ming. His hobby for 25 years has been western history andthe firearms used in opening the West. He has built and usedboth flintlock and percussion traditional rifles.

NOTES

1 “Feathering” the hammer—noiselessly cocking it so as not toalert game—is accomplished by drawing back the hammer whilesimultaneously applying some pressure to the trigger, whichdisengages the connection between them. Once the hammer isat full cock, the pressure on the trigger is released, reengagingthe hammer and holding it in place.

2 Carl P. Russell, Firearms, Traps, & Tools of the MountainMan (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1977),pp. 34-48.3 Lewis spent much of March and April 1803 outfitting the ex-pedition at the Harpers Ferry armory. Firearms historians de-bate whether the 15 rifles Lewis acquired there were actual pro-duction models or prototypes based on specifications drawn upby Secretary of War Henry Dearborn. Lewis also drew 15 gunslings from the armory. Because no existing 1803 Rifle isequipped with a sling, it is reasonable to assume that Lewis hadhis rifles modified with sling attachments.4 The Model 1803 had a bore diameter of .54 caliber and fired a.525-caliber ball. Russell, pp. 37, 73. Stephen E. Ambrose, Un-daunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and theOpening of the American West (New York: Simon & Schuster,1996), p. 85.5 Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Ex-pedition, 13 volumes (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,1984-2001), Vol. 3, p. 79, note 2. All quotations or references tojournal entries in the ensuing text are from Moulton, by date,unless otherwise indicated. See also Missouri River Commis-sion Map no. 37.6 Ibid.7 Lewis, September 17.8 The enlisted men were divided among three squads, eachheaded by a sergeant. Moulton, Vol. 2, pp. 188-189.9 Linen and buckskin were the materials commonly used forpatching the ball. Lewis’s list of weapons and accoutrements in-cludes powder, flints, lead, and other items but fails to mentionlinen, at least for ammunition purposes. (Donald Jackson, Lettersof the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783-1854, 2 volumes (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2nd ed.,1978), Vol. 1, pp. 69-99). Still, we may reasonably assume thatsuch an essential item was carried on the expedition.10 Clark’s journal entry of May 13, 1804, written on the eve ofthe expedition’s departure from Camp Dubois, mentions thatthe men’s outfits were complete (“Compe.”) with cartridges(“Powder Cartragies”) and “100 Balls each.” Moulton, Vol. 2,p. 214.11 The mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) is about a third largerthan the eastern white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) andprefers open country to the wooded bottomland favored bywhite-tails. Paul Russell Cutright, Lewis & Clark: PioneeringNaturalists (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969), pp.83-84.The captains first observed mule deer on September 5,1804. Lewis first recorded the name mule deer in his journalentry of May 10, 1805.


Reviews

L ike all armchair explorers, ThomasJefferson was fascinated by maps.

They play on our imagination in a waythat paintings or photographs of physi-cal places cannot. Notes ge-ographer and historian JohnLogan Allen in the forewordto Lewis and Clark: Maps ofExploration 1507-1814, maps“remain when nearly every-thing else in our visual imag-ery has been erased by thepassage of time or buriedunder the accretions of newinformation. … Almost noone assumes that the HudsonValley looks exactly like itwas portrayed by the earlyromanticists of the mid-nine-teenth century or that theGrand Canyon is preciselydepicted in the paintings ofThomas Moran. But maps—even those that contain ob-viously apocryphal information—aredifferent: the images obtained frommaps persist beyond the boundaries oftime and, often, beyond the bounds ofrational thought as well.”

Surely no one believed in rationalthought—in the power of reason—more than Jefferson. Yet this son of theEnlightenment was also a dreamer anda romantic who could see what hewanted in the maps of North Americahe assiduously collected. Maps that ap-peared to confirm his views about sym-metrical geography, a notion suggest-ing that the Rocky Mountains, like theAppalachians, were a narrow chain thatcould be easily portaged, and that theMissouri and Columbia rivers headedin the same region and were easily navi-gable to their sources. Such wishful

thinking was at the core of his decisionto send an expedition to the Pacificunder the leadership of his secretary,Meriwether Lewis, and Lewis’s oldarmy friend William Clark—an expe-dition that more than any other in thethe history of the United States filledin the blank spaces of North Americancartography, replaced geographic con-jecture with fact, and dispelled foreverthe myth of the Northwest Passage.

Lewis and Clark: The Maps of Ex-

ploration 1507-1814 began as an exhi-bition at the University of Virginia’sAlderman Library in the summer of1995. The exhibition, which coincidedwith the Lewis and Clark Trail Heri-tage Foundation’s annual meeting thatyear, in Charlottesville, was the brain-child of Foundation member GuyMeriwether Benson. Most of the mapsin the exhibition and in this handsomevolume came from university’s collec-tion. Thomas Jefferson was familiarwith all the maps on display, and manyof them had once been in his personalpossession. Of particular interest toWPO readers is the section devoted tothe maps by Aaron Arrowsmith andNicholas King which were actuallyused by Jefferson and Lewis in plan-ning the expedition.

The exhibition catalogue was pub-lished as a paperback volume, Explor-ing the West from Monticello. The newvolume reviewed here is based on thatearlier title. It has the same text (withthe notable addition of Allen’s fore-word) and includes all of the maps inthe first volume, along with several oth-ers absent from the first. The design andlayout have been improved: each mapnow appears on the righthand side of aspread with accompanying text on the

opposite page. More sig-nificantly, the maps are re-produced in color and arethe products of digital tech-nology that renders them inmuch greater detail than the1995 volume’s black-and-white photographs. (Miss-ing from the current vol-ume is a section in the origi-nal on the navigational in-struments of Lewis andClark.)

The 30 maps are arrangedchronologically, from thefirst crude renderings of theWestern Hemisphere toClark’s astonishingly de-tailed map of the trans-Mis-sissippi West, completed in

1810 and published four years later inthe first (Biddle) edition of the Lewisand Clark journals. Clark’s map in-cluded geographic information fromthe expedition itself and from subse-quent explorations by expedition mem-bers John Colter and George Drouil-lard, as well as findings from the expe-ditions of Zebulon Pike and other gov-ernment-sponsored explorers.

Readers will happily note that themaps in this volume are again on dis-play at the University of Virginia andcan be viewed by the public throughthe end of May. They can also be ac-cessed online at www.lib.virginia.edu/special/exhibits/lewis_clark. To orderLewis and Clark: Maps of Exploration1507-1864, call 1-800-868-4512.

—J.I.M.

Lewis and Clark: The Mapsof Exploration 1507-1814University of Virginia LibraryHowell Press88 pages/$24.95 hardcover

Jefferson’s maps reveal a landscape of geographic fact and fancy


L&C Roundup

EclipseRichard S. WheelerForge Books / Tom Doherty Associates380 pages / $27.95 hardcover

A ttempts to synopsize the Lewis andClark Expedition or offer a post-

script invariably suffer by comparisonwith the gold standard of expedition his-tory and artistry—the journals them-selves. No equal exists in print or on cel-luloid for their rich cinematic color andfactual intricacy, their awe and bemuse-ment, their drama and suspense.

Undeterred, Richard Wheeler in hishistorical novel Eclipse wades into anissue as murky as the Missouri, themuch-mooted cause of MeriwetherLewis’s presumed suicide. His thesis isthat Lewis suffered psychologicallyfrom advanced syphilis contractedfrom a Shoshone woman of Cameah-wait’s band.

Lewis and Clark, we say. Like scotchand soda. James Ronda, among others,notes the indelible linkage. Eclipse,however, reads more like Lewis orClark. The captains’ disjunctive diary-like accounts, mimicking the journals,document steadily diverging life paths.Without the unifying spine of sharedexpedition experience, this literary de-vice simply doesn’t resonate as well.

Occasionally lyrical, Eclipse gets offto a brisk start, opening with theCorps of Discovery’s triumphant re-turn to the St. Louis docks. The saga-like pace is not sustained, however, andthe novel quickly settles into a tediouschronicle of domestic routines, bu-reaucratic infighting, tallies of Lewis’sunpaid bills, and clinical descriptionsof his symptoms.

Wheeler’s warm narrative of Clark’smarital and domestic bliss with the win-some Julia and their young familystands in stark contrast to his renditionof York’s abysmal treatment by hismaster. The mildest show of individu-ality by York seems to enrage Clark,who remains resolutely insensitive to

York’s pining for his absent wife; Clarkeven contemplates beating his boyhoodcompanion. York’s complaint of slavescrammed into a small attic raises an ee-rie echo of the “tight packing” of hu-man cargo on the middle passage.

Clark offers a tardy manumission inthe most patronizing manner conceiv-able, admonishing York that the realworld will quickly make him appreci-ate his life of servile dependency. Theminstrel-show “Yas, mastuhr” dialect

in which York’s dialogue is rendered isbound to grate on the sensibilities ofreaders.

York’s degradation is as disturbingas Lewis’s decline. In an era that seeksto atone for past omissions of non-whites from the American historicalrecord, York has become an obligatorypart of expedition iconography. TheYork of Eclipse, peevish but submissive,is not the York of the Charles M. Rus-sell painting of a man of sinewy mas-culinity and austere dignity being ex-amined by the wondering Mandans.

As to Lewis’s reaction to his malady,it is difficult to fathom the novel’s por-trayal of his scathing judgment of him-self for the unremarkable decision tospend one night in the Bitterroots in thesolacing arms of a woman. After all,Clark refers early to women of the“Rickores” who, after polite rebuffs,“pursisted in their civilities.”

Lewis in the journals also records hismen being “very polite to these tawneydamsels.” Offers of favors for hire onthe Columbia are characterized moreas a nuisance or hygiene issue than amoral affront. Amorously frustrated,Lewis was forever in pursuit of some“damsel” of his own and never saw apretty face or an expanse of flesh hedidn’t like.

The captains recognized that liai-

Arriving just in time for the L&C Bicen-tennial is a paperback edition of the Lewis

and Clark journals edited by Gary E. Moulton.Published by the University of Nebraska Pressin a slightly smaller format and retitled TheDefinitive Journals of Lewis & Clark, thisscholarly landmark comes in a seven-volumeset for $149.95, or $24.95 for individual titles(versus $75 for the hardback versions). The setcovers the captains’ journals (volumes 2-8), andthe enlisted men’s journals (volumes 9-11) arealso available. For more information, see the Website http://nebraskapress.unl.edu. ■

“Eclipse” casts a brooding shadow on the bright adventure of Lewis and Clark

At last, a paperback Moulton


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sons with Indian women reflected ro-mance, hospitality, and overtureslinked to diplomacy and trade. Theinevitable “frolicking” by members ofthe corps seemed to provoke littlemore than a “boys will be boys” reac-tion. Treatment of venereal diseaseamong the corps is generally men-tioned with the equanimity used forother maladies, from boils to gas-trointestinal afflictions.

Lewis’s “undaunted courage” in-spired a Jeffersonian encomium and thetitle of a bestseller. In Wheeler’s tale,however, it fails in the face of an insidi-ous invasion by a spirochete that un-dermines not only Lewis’s flesh but alsohis noble soul.

In Wheeler’s novel as in life, Clarkemerges as the big winner of the expe-dition postlude. Too many others, likeLewis and Sacagawea, died young,while others, like Potts and Drouillard,came to a bad end at the hands of theBlackfeet. Somber in title and tone,Eclipse bares the uncomfortable truththat on one level the Lewis and ClarkExpedition is a sad story. It is soberingfor contemporary Americans, gloryingin the past, to remember the sorrowthat was often alloyed to the splendorof bygone heroism.

—Dennis M. O’Connell

Reviews (cont.)

• Before Lewis & Clark: DocumentsIllustrating the History of the Missouri,1785-1804, edited by A.P. Nasatir, withan introduction by James P. Ronda.Originally published in 1952 as a two-volume work by the St. Louis Histori-cal Documents Foundation and reis-sued in 1990 by Bison Books, a subsid-iary of the University of NebraskaPress, this scholarly trove is once againavailable, this time in a single-volumeedition of 853 pages and five foldoutmaps that were part of the original edi-

In Brief: Before Lewisand Clark; Biddle reprint;L&C in Illinois country


Reviews (cont.)

tion but missing from the Bison ver-sion. Nasatir (1904-1991), a professorof history at San Diego State Univer-sity, assembled, and when necessarytranslated from the Spanish and French,239 documents relating to the explora-tion of the Missouri River in the 20years preceding the Lewis and ClarkExpedition. Nasatir’s 115-page histori-cal narrative offers a comprehensiveoverview of efforts by Spanish, French,and British fur traders to establishthemselves on the upper Missouri. AsRonda points out in his introduction,some of these entrepreneurs recog-nized, along with Thomas Jefferson, thepotential of the Missouri as a river routeto the Pacific. (University of OklahomaPress, $49.95 paper.)

• History of the Expedition of CaptainsLewis and Clark, with an introductionby James K. Hosmer. This two-volumework is a reissue of a 1903 edition ofthe original 1814 edition of the para-phrase of the L&C journals written byNicholas Biddle in collaboration withWilliam Clark. What might be thoughtof as the Hosmer edition was first pub-lished in the fall of 1902 by the Chi-cago-based A.C. McClurg & Co.,doubtless in time for the centennial ofthe Lewis and Clark Expedition; thisreprint is of the second edition, pub-lished a year later. Hosmer’s edition wasthe second reissue of the Biddle narra-tive. The first, published in 1893 in fourvolumes, was edited and extensivelyannotated by the irascible polymathElliott Coues, who sprinkled the nar-rative with long footnotes filled withsharp opinions and occasional invec-tive. Unlike Coues, Hosmer limitedhimself to writing an introduction andcompiling an index. Not much appearsto be known about Hosmer—neitherhe nor this edition is even mentionedin Paul Russell Cutright’s History of theLewis and Clark Journals (Oklahoma,1976)—but according to the biographi-cal précis on the reprinted title page hewas president of the American LibraryAssociation and the author of books onthe Louisiana Purchase and the explo-

ration and colonization of the Missis-sippi Valley, subjects that are also thefocus of his introduction. For more in-formation, see the Web site www.digitalscanning.com. (Digital Scanning,Inc.; 2 volumes, each $39.95 hardback,$27.95 paper.)

• Lewis and Clark in the Illinois Coun-try: The Little-Told Story, by Robert E.Hartley. The author, a veteran journal-ist who has written about Illinois his-tory and politics for more than 40 years,makes the case that the six months—November 1803 to May 1804—spentby Lewis and Clark in what is todaysouthern Indiana and Illinois were cru-cial to the success of their expeditionto the Pacific and back. It was an in-tense period of preparation. Many ofthe most important members of theCorps of Discovery, including the NineYoung Men from Kentucky (WilliamBratton, John Colter, Charles Floyd,George Gibbon, Joseph and ReubenField, Nathaniel Pryor, and JohnShields) and the indispensable hunterand interpreter George Drouillard,were recruited during this period, andit was during the explorer’s first winterencampment, at the confluence of theRiver Dubois and the Mississippi, thatthe captains whipped their men into acohesive unit. Other authors who havetold the story of Lewis and Clark havegiven this period its due, but Hartleyprovides an extra measure of contextabout the region’s geography and his-tory and the important but generallyoverlooked roles played in that saga bymen such as landowner and entrepre-neur John Edgar, trader NicholasJarrot, and John Hay, a Cahokia-based

local official and a confidant of the cap-tains who translated documents forthem, interpreted maps, and advisedthem on Indian relations. (Sniktau/XLibris; $34 hardcover, $22 paper,postpaid. Order from Sniktau Publica-tions, POB 350368, Westminster, CO800350-0368 or through bookstores orfrom www.xlibris.com.)

• Only Two Came Back: The UntoldStory of the Lewis and Clark Expedi-tion, by Gregg E. Moutoux. This what-if historical novel asks what might havehappened if the British, like the Span-ish, had sent a military force to stopLewis and Clark. The narrative takesthe form of an official report from thecolonel leading a Royal Marines unitsent to keep track of the Corps of Dis-covery and if possible to prevent it fromreaching the Pacific. The author resiststhe temptation to rewrite history—themission fails despite several efforts at“engineered catastrophes,” includingdriving a herd of bison into the explor-ers’ camp and conniving with theBlackfeet to impede their journey.(Xlibris; $18.69 paper, $28.79 hardback,$8 e-book. Order through bookstoresor from www.xlibris.com.)

• Bitterroot Crossing: Lewis & ClarkAcross the Lolo Trail, by Gene andMollie Eastman. The 150-mile-longLolo Trail is one of the most storiedroutes of the American West—famousnot just for Lewis and Clark’s use of itbut as the path of Chief Joseph and hisNez Perces in their heroic retreat of1877. A National Historic Landmarksince 1960, the Lolo Trail is actually a

Reconstructed Fort Massac, a Lewis & Clarklandmark on the Ohio, in southern Illinois

Indian vs. Forest Service trails


system of trails that includes the routesof Lewis and Clark and the Nez Percesas well as the Bird-Truax Trail (an oldwagon road), a primitive truck road,and other trails made by domestic cattleand wild animals.

Few people probably know the LoloTrail better than Idahoans Gene andMollie Eastman, and they argue con-vincingly that the Lewis and Clarkroutes designated by the National For-est Service do not, in fact, trace the ex-plorers’ actual steps. They point out thatLewis and Clark kept mostly to ridgelines and followed Indian trails, “whichfollowed the best ground in a directmanner” and did not employ switch-backs. Bitterroot Crossing reviews thelong history of the Lolo system and themany attempts to locate the actual routetaken by Lewis and Clark, beginningwith Olin D. Wheeler in 1902.

The Eastmans believe that a carefulreading of Clark’s field notes, coupledwith an understanding of how Indiansmade trails and a recognition that a“mile” on horseback over rough terrainis different from a “mile” as determinedby modern surveying instruments, canyield a truer tracing of Lewis andClark’s routes: “The keys to locatingthe Lewis and Clark Trail are recogniz-ing Indian trail characteristics using thestraight-line concept, discoveringwhere the Indian trail is located in re-lation to the landscape as described inthe Lewis and Clark journals, andknowing the difference between a For-est Service Trail and an Indian trail. Theresearcher also needs to know how anOld Indian trail differs from the mod-ern trail, understand mountain horses,and understand how the old mountainhorse from the 1800s differs from themodern horse, and more specifically,how the Spanish mustang differs fromthe other breeds of horses in his abilityto travel over steep, rough ground anddo it without tiring.” (Northwest His-torical Manuscript Series, University ofIdaho Library; $10, paper, postage paid.Place orders with Dennis Baird, Uni-versity of Idaho Library, POB 44235,Moscow, ID 83844-2351.) ■

Reviews (cont.) Passages

The Lewis and Clark Trail HeritageFoundation lost two good friends last

fall with the passing of StephenAmbrose and Ted Carter.

Stephen E. Ambrose, the author ofa best-selling biogra-phy of MeriwetherLewis and one of theFoundation’s mostgenerous benefactors,died October 13 in BaySt. Louis, Mississippi,at age 66. The causewas lung cancer.

Published in 1996 by Simon &Schuster, Undaunted Courage: Meri-wether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, andthe Opening of the American West in-troduced millions of Americans to thestory of Lewis and Clark. Ambrose alsocollaborated with author DaytonDuncan and filmmaker Ken Burns ona National Geographic Society bookbased on Burns’s 1997 PBS documen-tary Lewis & Clark: The Journey of theCorps of Discovery, another work thathelped popularize the L&C saga.

A prolific author best known for hispopular histories of World War II,Ambrose was also the author of a two-volume biography of Dwight D.Eisenhower and the founder of the Na-tional D-Day Museum, in New Or-leans. In all, he wrote or edited some35 books. In 1998 he was awarded theNational Humanities Medal.

A college professor for most of hisadult life, Ambrose retired from theUniversity of New Orleans in 1995to devote full time to writing, advis-ing on film projects, and variouscauses, including environmental pres-ervation of the Lewis and Clark Na-tional Historic Trail and the MissouriRiver. He supported trail stewardshipefforts of the LCTHF and for manyyears provided a subvention to WPO

that enabled it to increase the num-ber of pages per issue. He also con-tributed to local L&C projects alongthe trail and to the National Councilof the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial.

He was born on January 10, 1936,in Decatur, Illinois, and earned hisB.A. and Ph.D. at the University ofWisconsin. He is survived by his wife,Moira; brothers Harry and Bill; chil-dren Andrew, Barry, Grace, Hugh, andStephenie; and five grandchildren.

•Edward C. “Ted” Carter, a scholar

and a former member of the NationalCouncil of the Lewis and Clark Bicen-tennial, died of a heart attack on Octo-ber 2 in Philadelphia. He was 74.

As librarian at the American Philo-sophical Society, Carter was respon-sible for the Lewis and Clark journalshoused there. He oversaw the produc-tion of facsimiles of three of Lewis’s 18red morocco-bound journals. Heserved on the L&C Bicentennial Coun-cil from 1994 to 2001.

“From my first contact with him in1991, Ted Carter was very supportiveof all things Lewis and Clark,” recallsFrank Muhly, a LCTHF director andfounder of the Philadelphia chapter.“He loaned the chapter use of theA.P.S.’s libraries for our meetings andoffered the help of his staff.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer calledhim “a respected history scholar”whose acquisitions for the A.P.S. rangedfrom the sketches of19th-century naturalistTitian Ramsey Peale tothe papers of NobelPrize-winning geneti-cist Barbara McClin-tock. During his 21-year tenure with theA.P.S., use of the li-brary more than doubled. He alsotaught seminars at the University ofPennsylvania and edited a 10-volumeedition of the writings of BenjaminHenry Latrobe, the early American ar-chitect and engineer.

Carter earned a B.A. and M.A. fromthe University of Pennsylvania and aPh.D. from Bryn Mawr College. He issurvived by his wife, Louise, a brother,and four stepdaughters. ■

Scholars Stephen Ambrose and Ted Carter

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L&C Roundup

River Dubois interpretive center; L&C sail on; Clark on the map; T.J. in space

A new visitor center at Camp RiverDubois, where the Corps of Dis-

covery spent the winter of 1803-04, be-fore ascending the Missouri River,opened December 12. The centerpieceof the 14,000-square-feet center, whichis located on the 300-acre grounds ofthe Camp River Dubois Lewis andClark State Historic Site, south ofHartford, Illinois, is a full-size cut-away replica of the expedition’s keel-boat (pictured above). Other exhibitsinclude replica log cabins, tents, fire-arms, tools, and other implements car-ried by the explorers. The center’s 100-seat theater shows “At Journey’sEdge,” a multimedia presentationabout the expedition.

Operated by the Illinois HistoricPreservation Agency and designed bythe Chicago architectural firm of NagleHartray Daner Kagan and McKay, thecenter is the brainchild of GeorgeArnold, a member of the LCTHFCamp River Dubois Chapter. The ex-hibits were designed by Hilfery & As-sociates, of Athens, Ohio. The centeris open 9-5, Wednesday through Sun-day. Admission is free. For more infor-mation, check the Web site www.greatriverroad.com/lewclark/lewhome.htm?fplewclark.

COLD WAR MEMORIALThe U.S.S. Lewis and Clark (SSBN644), a submarine scrapped some years

ago, lives again—or at least parts of it.According to Jane Henley, the Foun-dation’s immediate past president, thesubmarine’s sail, sail planes, and rud-der were saved and are now installed ina full-sized mock-up of a Polaris sub-marine on display at the Cold War Sub-marine Memorial, located at PatriotsPoint, South Carolina. The memorialis part of the Patriots Point Naval andMaritime Museum, in Charleston Har-bor. (See www.cwsmf.org.)

MOUNTAIN NAMED FOR CLARKFollowing a recommendation by theOregon Chapter of the LCTHF andthe Oregon Geographic Names Board,the highest point on Tillamook Head,a rocky cliff overlooking the Pacificsouth of Seaside, Oregon, has beennamed Clark’s Mountain by the U.S.Board of Geographic Names.

Rising 1,250 feet above sea level,Tillamook Head was climbed by Clarkand other members of the Corps ofDiscovery on January 8, 1806, while onthe way to see a beached whale. In hisjournal Clark declared the view “thegrandest and most pleasing prospectswhich my eyes ever surveyed.” Lewisnamed the peak “Clark’s Mountain andPoint of View,” but like many geo-graphic names penned by the captainsit did not survive.

According to an article in The Or-egonian of November 13, 2002, the ex-ecutive secretary of the Board of Geo-graphic Names, Roger Payne, said thename Clark’s Mountain will retain itsapostrophe, something that almostnever happens, “because board mem-bers were convinced of the site’s his-torical significance.” This is only thefifth exception to the rule since 1890.

JEFFERSON IN ORBITThanks to Foundation member BobPhillips of Fort Collins, Colorado, whoworks with NASA, a replica Jeffersonpeace medal of the type carried byLewis and Clark will fly on the SpaceShuttle Endeavor when it goes into

space next November 10 or 11. Themedal will spend time aboard the In-ternational Space Station before beingbrought back to earth. Phillips hopesit will then be placed on display or be-come part of a traveling exhibit duringthe L&C Bicentennial.

CLARK’S DAUGHTER HONOREDMembers of the Ohio River Chaptergathered last July 26 to pay tribute to adaughter of William and Julia HancockClark who died young and is buried inCave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Ken-tucky. With help from the cemetery andthe Kentucky Historical Society, thechapter purchased and installed a gravemarker for Mary Margaret Clark (1814-21). Above, standing next to the markerat its dedication, are from left, JimMallory, Lloyd Randall, ThomasMcCulloch, Jim Holmberg, the Rever-end Richard Humke, Margaret HoltChapman, Chuck Parrish, and Mat-thew Randall. The Randalls are Clarkfamily descendants.

PHILADELPHIA BROCHUREThe PhiladelphiaChapter, whichwill host theFoundation’s an-nual meeting nextAugust 10-13, hasproduced a newbrochure, “Lewisand Clark in His-toric Philadelphia.” It details the Cityof Brotherly Love’s pre- and post-ex-pedition roles with vintage cityscapes

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Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Inc.thanks the following individuals and organizations for contributions to Foundation programming at

the inaugural Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Signature Event in Charlottesville, Virginia:

Hon. Gale Norton, Secretary, Department of the Interior; Lt. Gen. Robert Flowers, US Army Corps of Engineers;Hon. Kathleen Clarke, Director, Director, Bureau of Land Management; Hon. Fran Mainella, Director, National Park

Service; Mr. Dale Bosworth, Chief, USDA Forest Service; Hon. Steve Williams, US Fish and Wildlife Service;Dan Jordan, Monticello and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation; Gerard Baker and Dick Williams, National Park

Service; Lewis and Clark Trail State Bicentennial Commissions of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, Ohio,Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania;

Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Missoula, Montana; Virginia Committee for the Humanities and Public Policy.

Bluffton College, Bluffton, Ohio; Carolinas Chapter, LCTHF; Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport; Charlottesville Press;DoubleTree Hotel, Charlottesville, VA; Far Country Press, Helena, MT; Home Front Chapter, LCTHF; Makoche

Recording Co., Bismarck, ND; Mazza Museum, Findlay, Ohio; David Peck, D.O., San Diego, CA; Rob Quist and JackGladstone, Kalispell, MT; School of Continuing and Professional Studies, University of Virginia; Tony James, Allen

Printing & Design, Conshohocken, PA.

United States Army Old Guard; Robert Anderson; Peyton C. “Bud” Clark; Ron Laycock; Jon Stealey; Wm. P.Sherman Library & Archives, Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Inc.; Robert Weir; Jim Baker; Vicki Dixon;

Larry Epstein;Jane Henley; Page Henley; Kat Imhoff;Beth King; Nancy King; Laura Krom; Barb Kubik; WayneMogielnicki; Joe Mussulman; Keith Peterson; Kathy Pond; Michelle Dawson Powell; Millie Travis; Krista Weih;

Robbie Wilbur; Terri Dean, Marketing Director, Charlottesville Airport; Bridget LaPorta, DoubleTree Hotel,Charlottesville, VA; The People of Charlottesville, VA; Major Meredith Bucher, U.S. Army, Washington, D.C.;

Joe Stark, Stray Moose Productions, Great Falls, MT; Jerry Viemeister, Charlottesville Performing Arts Center.


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L&C Roundup (cont.)

and maps showing the cites visited byLewis, Clark and others. (See www.lewisandclarkphila.org.)

REENACTORS AWARDED GRANTThe four nationally recognized Lewisand Clark living history groups havereceived a National Park Service grantto share information and research thatwill help them develop consistent poli-cies of historical interpretation for theL&C Bicentennial.

The recipients are the DiscoveryGroup, Inc., of Council Bluffs, Iowa;the South Dakota Chapter of theLCTHF, of Bushnell, South Dakota;the Brigade of Discovery, of Washburn,North Dakota; and the Lewis andClark Honor Guard, of Great Falls,Montana.

In the first phase of the project, thegroups met last October in an encamp-ment at Fort Atkinson, Nebraska, todiscuss common issues relating to his-torical dress, period-correct drill, pub-lic safety, recruitment of new members,and other matters. Still in the planningstage is a second reenactment and—eventually—a resource guide for cur-rent and future L&C reenactors.

More information is available fromMike Lamphier or Ron Ukrainetz,Lewis and Clark Honor Guard ofGreat Falls, P.O. Box 125, Great Falls,MT 59403.

LEWIS IN BRONZEThe Stevensville (Montana)Main Street Associationhas unveiled a 16-inch-high bronze of MeriwetherLewis—the first in a seriesof five such works it hascommissioned to com-memorate the Corps ofDiscovery. The artist forall the bronzes is JimBrousseau, a sculptor in Libby, Mon-tana. The four other statues will be ofWilliam Clark, York, Sacagawea, andLewis’s Newfoundland dog, Seaman.Each bronze will be limited to 35 piecesand will cost $1,500. Net proceeds willbe used by the nonprofit association for


L&C Roundup (cont.)

LEWIS & CLARKTRAIL ADVENTURES

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THE MYSTERY OF LOST TRAIL PASS

A Quest for Lewis and Clark’sCampsite of September 3, 1805

WPO Supplementary Publication$12, plus $3 shipping

Lost Trail Book / P.O. Box 3434Great Falls, MT 59403

1-888-701-3434

WPO DISPLAY ADSInside front or back cover:Black & white, $650; color, $750Outside back cover:Black & white, $800; color, $900

Inside pages (black & white only):Full page: 71/4 X 91/2 $6002/3rd vertical: 43/4 X 91/2 $4001/2 horizontal: 45/8 X 71/4 $3001/3rd square: 43/4 X 45/8 $2001/3rd vertical: 21/4 X 91/2 $2001/6th vertical: 21/4 X 45/8 $1001/12th: 21/4 X 23/16 $50

Address inquiries to Rebecca Young,P.O. Box 3434, Great Falls, MT59403. 406-454-1234/fax: [email protected].

historic preservation and education.For more information, contact JoanPrather, Stevensville Main Street Asso-ciation, P.O. Box 18, Stevensville, MT59870 (406-777-3773).

MISSOURI RIVER GUIDESThe Omaha District of the U.S. ArmyCorps of Engineers has established aMissouri River Information Center atthe Gavins Point power plant nearYankton, South Dakota. The centerprovides Corps of Engineers maps ofthe river as well as a boaters’ and trav-elers’ river guides covering such topicsas endangered and exotic species, cul-tural resources, and water safety. Formore information, call 888-285-3219 orvisit the Web site [email protected].

CONGRESSIONAL TEAMThe U.S. Department of Interior hascreated and filled two new positions re-lated to the L&C Bicentennial. TomFulton, a Montana native who until re-cently was the department’s deputy as-sistant secretary for lands and mineralsmanagement, has been named directorof the Congressional Lewis and ClarkCaucus. Bob Reynolds, a retired Na-tional Park Service officer, has beennamed the department’s new coordina-tor of bicentennial activities.

L&C IN OTHER PUBLICATIONSThe Fall/Winter 2002-03 Continuance,a publication of the Illinois Board ofHigher Education, has eight articles re-lated to the teaching of Lewis and Clarkin secondary schools, including a list ofimportant sources and a roundup ofL&C Bicentennial signature events.(www.siu.edu/offices/iii)

The Historical Journal of WyandotteCounty (Kansas) features articles aboutthe Corps of Discovery in its Winterand Spring 2002 issues. They are, re-spectively, “The Court Martial at Kaw’sPoint,” by Loren L. Taylor, and“Simple Medicine with UndauntedCourage,” by Pete Cuppage, M.D.(Contact: Loren L. Taylor, 913-321-6195; ltaylor@i dir.net.) ■


of Juice add 3 quarts of Water, and forevery gallon of this Mixture add 3 lbsof Brown Sugur, put it in a clean caskleave it open 6 weeks, then carefullydraw it off into another cask. then Bringit up and dont have it opened untilNovember when it will be fit ferwne__The Cask must not be Shakenuntil the wine has fermented[.]

Green Corn CakesGrate Green Corn fine, add Cream &Yelk of Eggs to the thickness of fritterbatter, and fryed in Butter & formed inround cakes is excellent[.]

Vinager PuddingTake the Yelks of ten Eggs, Three-quar-ters of a pound of Sugar, Half a poundof Butter, about three table Spoon fulsof flour, nutmeg, mace, orangpeel, andvenigar to your taste[.]

James J. Holmberg is curator of spe-cial collections at The Filson Histori-cal Society and editor of Dear Brother:Letters of William Clark to JonathanClark (Yale University Press, 2002).

NOTES

1 Caroline Hancock Preston, Recipebook, ca. 1808-1827, The Filson Histori-cal Society, Louisville, Ky.2 Edna Talbott Whitley, Kentucky Ante-bellum Portraiture (The National Soci-ety of the Colonial Dames of Americain the Commonwealth of Kentucky,1956), p. 429; William Clark to JonathanClark, October 5, 1808, in James J.Holmberg, ed., Dear Brother: Letters ofWilliam Clark to Jonathan Clark (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 2002), p.156.3 All three manuscript recipes bear simi-larities to William Clark’s handwriting,especially that for the wine, but a defi-nite determination has not been made ifhe in fact transcribed them. It seems un-likely that he would have devoted timeto writing down recipes, but perhaps thewonders of the kitchen, desires of the pal-ate, or a request by his Julia moved himto do so.

Soundings continued from page 44Julia’s kitchen

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From Julia’s KitchenWe can assume these recipes — even the one for vinegar pudding — were favorites of William Clark

by JAMES J. HOLMBERG

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There resides among the PrestonFamily Papers at The Filson His-

torical Society, in Louisiville, Ken-tucky, the recipe book of CarolineHancock Preston, the sister of JuliaHancock Clark. It is a wonderfulrecord of cooking practices and tastesin early 19th-century America. Therecipes for crackling pone, pickledbeef, stewed oysters, ginger beer, rasp-berry wine, orange marmalade, bacon,and other food and drink reveal the fa-vorites to be found on the Major Wil-liam Preston family table.1 By all ac-counts, the Prestons enjoyed theirfood. Not only does the Joseph Bushportrait of Preston portray him to berather portly, but a letter of brother-in-law William Clark remarks that hewished his old army comrade had broughthis “fat sides” to St. Louis for a visit.2

Caroline Hancock married WilliamPreston in March 1802. In January 1808,Julia Hancock married William Clark. Therecipe book reveals that both women hadbeen prepared in the cooking arts. Someinstruction most likely would have beenreceived before their marriages from theirmother, Margaret Strother Hancock, andfamily cooks. After their marriage theywould have undoubtedly learned more,suffered through failures, and relied upon their owncooks—almost definitely African-American slavewomen—to put meals on the table. When Caroline be-gan her recipe book is not known. She most likely be-gan it soon after her marriage. It definitely was beingcompiled by 1808 and the marriage of Julia to WilliamClark. The last dated entry is from 1827 (although

Caroline lived another 20 years).Caroline, as almost every cook does,

collected favorite recipes from familyand friends. Either copied into herbook or glued in as sent to her, shenoted who the contributor was. Thuswe have an idea of the favorite dishesof not only the Prestons but contem-poraries as well.

This includes Julia Hancock Clarkand her husband. William no doubt en-joyed a good meal and undoubtedlyhad his favorite dishes and beverages.(Dog certainly wasn’t among them!)Julia contributed three recipes to hersister’s book. From Julia’s kitchen came“Currant Wine,” “Green Corn Cakes,”and “Vinager Pudding.” One can sur-mise that they were favorites of Will-

iam Clark. All three are written on paper thatwas clipped and glued into the book.3 Otherrecipes in the book also may have been fareenjoyed by the famous explorer and his fam-ily. Whether it was “Currant Wine” fromJulia’s kitchen or “Calf’s Head Soup” fromCaroline’s, her recipe book provides an ex-cellent insight into the foodways of the early19th century.

Would today’s tastes make these favoritesin our kitchens? Perhaps or perhaps not, butin case you’re game to try them, here, from

Julia’s kitchen, are her recipes for currant wine, green corncakes, and vinegar pudding.

Currant WineGather the Currants Clean of Stems & Leaves, mash them,and strain the Juice through a flanele Bagg__for every quart

Julia Hancock Clark made a type of fortifiedwine from the juice of wild currants (below).

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