Mackay was living in St. Louis in 1803, and Lewis had profitable talks with him. As historian Roy Appleman puts it, from Mackay and the maps Lewis had available to him, Lewis knew “virtually everything that was known to white men of the Missouri country as far as the Mandan villages and some Indian information about the lands to their west.”6
•
The most powerful and prominent St. Louis citizens were the French fur traders Auguste Chouteau, Sr., a founder of the city, his half-brother Pierre Chouteau, Sr., and their brother-in-law Charles Gratiot, who had established the first trading post at Cahokia, in 1777. Gratiot had helped supply George Rogers Clark during the revolution. William Clark had stayed at Gratiot’s house during a September 1797 business trip to St. Louis, where he also hobnobbed with Auguste Chouteau and “all the fine girls and buckish Gentlemen.”7
The Chouteaus had prospered in St. Louis, thanks to a license that gave them exclusive rights on trade, but much of their wealth was in land, taken in payment for goods. Their need was the need of those on the frontier everywhere: fluid capital, long-term credit, and cash. Money was so scarce in St. Louis that beaver skins were the coin of the land.
The Chouteaus had a nice setup—a monopoly, in fact, of every imported item needed, and many of those desired, on the frontier, from nails to glass beads, from ironwork to ladies’ dresses, from powder and lead to imported wine. But it was too good to last. In 1798, Manuel Lisa arrived in St. Louis and began to muscle his way into the fur trade. He was as quick and sharp as the Chouteaus, having grown up in New Orleans, where he had hustled a living on the teeming waterfront. He moved upstream to St. Louis, where as a Spaniard he got preferential treatment, including some generous land grants. But he had no intention of becoming a farmer; he could see that the real opportunity in St. Louis was in trade. He began agitating for economic liberty; his biographer, Richard Oglesby, says his attack on monopolies “made him sound as if he was one of Adam Smith’s most ardent disciples.” To shut him up, the Spanish gave him a license to trade.8
From these merchants, Lewis began making his purchases. Corn, flour, biscuits, barrels of salt, kegs of pork, boxes of candles, kegs of hogs’ lard, “600 lb Grees,” twenty-one bales of Indian goods, tools of every description.9 He bought from the Chouteaus, he bought from Lisa. He asked questions and got more information for Jefferson. He studied his maps.
On December 16, Drouillard reported in. He had brought the eight soldiers from Tennessee with him. Delighted, Lewis quickly examined them. Disappointed, he wrote Clark he found them “not possessed of more of the requisite qualifications; there is not a hunter among them.” Still, there were possibilities: one of the soldiers was a blacksmith and another was a house-joiner. Lewis sent them on to Clark at Wood River. Eventually, four of the eight passed muster.10
•
Through the winter, Lewis kept up an active correspondence with Jefferson. Many letters recorded by Jefferson as received from Lewis, and many letters Jefferson wrote and noted, are missing. Still, what is available is informative and suggestive. On January 13, 1804, Jefferson wrote Lewis, saying he had been able to follow Lewis’s progress by newspaper accounts. He reported that the transfer of Louisiana to the United States had been scheduled for December 20, and he had no doubt it had occurred.
“The acquisition of the country through which you are to pass has inspired the public generally with a great deal of interest in your enterprize,” Jefferson wrote. “The enquiries are perpetual as to your progress. The Feds, alone still treat it as philosophism, and would rejoice in it’s failure. Their bitterness increases with the diminution of their numbers and despair of a resurrection. I hope you will take care of yourself, and be the living witness of their malice and folly.”11
To put it another way, those misguided Federalists who had criticized the Purchase and derided the expedition were committing political suicide, so the president’s aide need not worry about pleasing them by making a ride to Santa Fe. Avoiding unnecessary risks was the way Lewis could confound the Feds.
On January 22, Jefferson wrote Lewis to confirm that the transfer had happened in New Orleans on December 20, and to give him instructions on how to deal with the Indians now that the United States was sovereign throughout Louisiana. The instructions came down to: tell them they have a new father. Jefferson also wanted Lewis to offer the Osage chief a free trip to Washington, to meet the new father—and to be impressed by the power and numbers of the Americans.
Jefferson closed with the welcome news that the American Philosophical Society had elected Lewis to membership.12
He had earned it. Two years of study under Thomas Jefferson, followed by his crash course in Philadelphia, had made Lewis into exactly what Jefferson had hoped for in an explorer—a botanist with a good sense of what was known and what was unknown, a working vocabulary for description of flora and fauna, a mapmaker who could use celestial instruments properly, a scientist with keen powers of observation, all combined in a woodsman and an officer who could lead a party to the Pacific.
Now the payoff for the American Philosophical Society savants began. In March, and again in May, Lewis sent boxes of specimens to Jefferson. They constituted the first shipment of natural-history specimens by Lewis to Jefferson from west of the Mississippi, and thus the first ever. He included slips, or cuttings, from trees owned by Pierre Chouteau, who had gotten them from the Osage Indian village three hundred miles to the west. Lewis wrote three long paragraphs of detailed description. As a man of the Enlightenment, now officially signified by his membership in the APS, Lewis was interested in practical uses of the tree, which he named the “Osage apple” (now the “Osage orange”). The fruit was never eaten, but the wood was perfect for making bows: “So much do the savages esteem the wood of this tree for the purpose of making their bows, that they travel many hundred miles in quest of it.” That was Lewis’s first description of a plant unknown to science. He could anticipate making many more.13
There are trees growing in Philadelphia (at Fourth and Spruce Streets) and the University of Virginia (at Morea, a guest house) today that grew from the cuttings Lewis sent.14 And as historian Michael Brodhead notes, this was the beginning of “a rich, almost uniquely American phenomenon: the military naturalist.”15
•
Among Lewis’s worries that winter was Clark’s commission. Clark had been on active service since the previous summer, but by February 1804 his commission had still not arrived. On February 10, Lewis wrote Dearborn, and Jefferson, about the matter. Through to the end of April, he got no reply, nor did the commission arrive in the meantime. The matter continued to nag.16
The missing commission had no practical effect. Lewis called Clark “captain” and their relationship was one of a genuine joint command. Indeed, through the second part of December and all of January, Clark was the officer with the troops in the field. He planned and oversaw the construction of the huts. He made a number of improvements to the keelboat, including some cleverly devised lockers running along the sides of the boat, with lids that could be raised to form a breastwork, or shield. When the lids were down, they provided catwalks, or “passe-avants,” for men with poles pushing the boat. Crosswise between the lockers, Clark had eleven benches built, each three feet long for use by two oarsmen. He added center poles, to support an awning.
Clark worried about the Indians. The word among the Americans living near the mouth of the Missouri was that upriver the Sioux were hostile, numerous, well armed, and certain to demand a ransom for passage. Clark added a bronze cannon, probably purchased by Lewis in St. Louis. Mounted on a swivel that allowed it to be turned and fired in any direction, it was the expedition’s heaviest armament and in 1804 would be the largest weapon to that date ever taken up the Missouri. It could fire a solid lead ball weighing about one pound, or sixteen musket balls with sufficient velocity to go through a man. At close range, a highly effective antipersonnel weapon.
Flintlock blunderbuss, of the type t
he captains mounted on swivels, two on the keelboat and one on each pirogue. (National Park Service)
In addition to the swivel cannon, Clark asked Lewis to get four smaller weapons, called blunderbusses—heavy shotguns that used buckshot. Lewis found them in St. Louis. Clark mounted them on swivels, two for the stern of the keelboat and one on each pirogue. They could be loaded with musket balls, scrap iron, or buckshot.17 At close range, devastating.
In early February, Lewis crossed over to the camp at Wood River. He looked over the men—there were nearly forty of them—and listened as Clark explained what he had done to the keelboat. Clark then left to spend a few days in St. Louis, to make purchases and to attend a ball at the Chouteaus’. Lewis had intended to join him at the ball, but was obliged to stay in camp to meet with some visiting Kickapoo Indians. Having missed the ball, he wrote Clark, “and finding more to do when I began to look about me than I had previously thought of I determined it would be as well to go to work [here, at Wood River] and pospone my return to St. Louis a few days.” He wanted Clark to talk to Pierre Chouteau about the possibility of his leading an expedition of Osage chiefs to Washington.
Clark’s tasks in St. Louis included picking a crew of voyagers to paddle the canoes—the captains by now having decided to keep the permanent detachment, the Corps of Discovery, together as a unit on the keelboat. Clark, who had once descended the Mississippi to Memphis, and who had lived on the Ohio River for many years, was the better waterman of the two captains, and thus probably the better judge of the voyagers.
Clark talked to Manuel Lisa, who was ready to contract out a crew that he would select and organize. Lewis wrote Clark, “Engage them immediately, if you think from their appearance and characters they will answer the purpose.”
Lisa was doing quite a lot of business with the expedition. He paid a visit to Wood River to see what the captains didn’t have that he did. Lewis dined in his home, although he most often stayed with Auguste Chouteau in the finest house in town.18
On February 20, Lewis prepared to shove off for St. Louis. He issued his first detachment orders, putting Sergeant John Ordway in command during his and Clark’s absence, and directing the sawyers to continue their work, the blacksmiths to continue their work (with an extra gill, or four ounces, of whiskeyI and exemption from guard duty), the men making sugar to continue to do so, and so forth. To save powder and lead, he ordered only one round per man per day for target practice. Sergeant Ordway would give instructions in shooting off hand at a distance of fifty yards. There was a prize of an extra gill of whiskey for the winner each day. Except for hunters, no man was to absent himself from camp without Sergeant Ordway’s knowledge and permission. Finally, no whiskey beyond the legal ration.
Lewis went off to St. Louis, conducted business, and returned a week later. Sergeant Ordway reported to him that Privates Reubin Field and John Shields had refused to mount guard duty as ordered because they would be damned if they would take orders from anyone other than the captains. Privates John Colter, John Boley, Peter Weiser, and John Robinson had gone off “hunting”—or so they had told Ordway, who had tried to stop them. In fact, they went to a neighboring whiskey shop on the edge of the nearby American settlement and got drunk.
To deal with these disciplinary matters, Lewis wrote another detachment order, dated March 3 in the journal: “The Commanding officer feels himself mortifyed and disappointed at the disorderly conduct” of Field and Shields, especially since he had thought of them as excellent soldiers and men of judgment. He went on: “A moments reflection must convince every man of our party” that the captains had to be in St. Louis, to gather the necessary supplies and equipment for the voyage. When they were gone, Sergeant Ordway was in command. Period. Lewis confined Colter, Boley, Weiser, and Robinson to quarters for ten days.
•
On March 7, Lewis returned to St. Louis, to be present at the ceremonies marking the formal transfer of Upper Louisiana to the United States. Captain Stoddard, the official American representative, invited Lewis to serve as the chief official witness. There was a detachment from the First Infantry Regiment out of Fort Kaskaskia on hand.
The ceremony took place on March 9, in front of Government House, Spanish headquarters in the city. First a transfer was made from Spain to France. Colonel Delassus presided for Spain, while Stoddard acted as agent for the French. When the Spanish flag was struck, Delassus presented it to Stoddard, who then ran up the French Tricolor. The crowd, composed of nearly all the residents of St. Louis, most of them French, cheered. With tears in their eyes, Frenchmen asked Stoddard to let the Tricolor wave over St. Louis for one night. Stoddard agreed.
The next day, to the salute of guns and cheers from the soldiers, the Tricolor was lowered and the Stars and Stripes was raised, the documents were signed, and appropriate speeches were made. Stoddard assumed the post of military-civil governor of Upper Louisiana, pending the establishment of territorial government. After the ceremonies, Lewis and Clark accompanied Stoddard on an inspection of Spanish defenses.19
•
A few days later, Clark returned to Wood River to continue preparations. The days were getting noticeably longer, the first hints of opening buds were on the tree limbs, the great duck and geese migrations were just starting, the ice no longer ran in the river, spring was coming. And with the first warm days came an ominously unwelcome visitor. On March 25, Clark wrote in his journal, “The musquetors are verry bad this evening.”
On March 28, Lewis drew three drafts, or checks, of five hundred dollars each on the secretary of war. He had already drawn $1,669, and drew an additional $159 a few days later. He was also drawing money to provide for the Osage chief and Pierre Chouteau on their trip to Washington. And he was signing chits for supplies. Altogether, signing his name to a draft on the government was becoming a commonplace experience for Lewis. Indeed, it was threatening to become habit-forming.
On the afternoon of the 29th, Lewis crossed over to Wood River. Clark had alarming news. There had been fights between the men. John Shields had opposed an order and had threatened Sergeant Ordway’s life, and wished to return to Kentucky. John Colter had disobeyed orders and had loaded his gun, threatening to shoot Ordway.
The men had been at Wood River for the better part of four months. They never got to go to St. Louis. The only women they saw were the pioneers at the nearby settlements, and there weren’t many of them, and mostly they were married. There was a whiskey seller around but he was expensive and hard to get to. Once the huts were completed and the keelboat’s alterations were finished, the men had almost nothing to do. A little drilling on the parade ground, which they hated, a little target practice, which they loved but only got to do once a day, was about it.
These young heroes were in great shape, strong as bulls, eager to get going, full of energy and testosterone—and bored. So they fought, and drank—and drank, and fought. Clark recorded various serious fistfights, sometimes with delightful comment: “R. Field was in a mistake & repents.” “Frazer. has don bad.”
But fighting among themselves was one thing, threatening the sergeant quite another. On March 29, the captains put Shields and Colter on trial for mutiny. The privates “asked the forgivness &c & promised to doe better in future.” The captains relented; no punishment was noted. And two days later, Shields and Colter were welcomed into the permanent party.
On March 31, after a full exchange of views between themselves, the captains held a ceremony in order to enlist the twenty-five men they had selected to be members of “the Detachment destined for the Expedition though the interior of the Continent of North America.” Another group of five soldiers was designated to accompany the expedition to its winter quarters, then to return to St. Louis with communiqués and specimens. Corporal Richard Warfington would be its leader. The main detachment was divided into three squads. Charles Floyd and Nathaniel Pryor joined Ordway as sergeants commanding the squads.
Warfington, Floyd, and Pryor were no
t the only soldiers who had impressed the captains. Pryor was sick. In the Detachment Order recording the selections, Clark wrote: “Dureing the indisposition of Sergeant Pryor, George Shannon is appointed (protempor) to discharge his the Said Pryor’s duty in his Squad.” Since Shannon was not yet twenty years old, the youngest man in the party, that appointment was a genuine compliment.
The permanent party was now in place. Besides the twenty-two men and three sergeants, it included Lewis and Clark, Clark’s slave, York; Drouillard; and Lewis’s dog, Seaman. It was straining to get going. Every morning, the men looked across the Mississippi and saw the Missouri pouring into the main stream, so powerful its muddy waters drove clear across three-quarters of the width of the mighty Mississippi, the Missouri being the more powerful of the two.
Clark also recorded, “I send to the Missouries water for drinking water, it being much Cooler than the Mississippi.”
In the evening, the men could watch the sun go down over the Missouri. Surely, as they sipped their whiskey ration at the end of the day, they stared at that river, and talked about it, and thought about it. They were not daunted by it. Rather, they were drawn to it. What adventures awaited, what sights they would see, they knew they couldn’t even guess, which only made them all the more eager to get going—so they could find out.
Sergeant Gass wrote in his journal that the local inhabitants had warned that the party was “to pass through a country possessed by numerous, powerful and warlike nations of savages, of gigantic stature, fierce, treacherous and cruel; and particularly hostile to white men.” But, he insisted, “the determined and resolute character” of the men and the confidence pervading all ranks “dispelled every emotion of fear.”20
A week after the ceremony of enlistment, Ordway wrote his parents. He expressed determination and confidence:
We are to ascend the Missouri River with a boat as far as it is navigable and then to go by land, to the western ocean, if nothing prevents, &c.
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