•
On the evening of June 28, the party made ready to push back into the river at dawn. But that night there was a raid on the whiskey supply, serious enough to cause a delay.
Alcohol in any form has always been a curse and a necessity to military leaders. Drunkenness causes more discipline and personnel problems than any other cause, but soldiers must have their alcohol. Frederick the Great put it best: “If you contemplate some enterprise against the enemy, the commissary must scrape together all of the beer and brandy that can be found so that the Army does not lack either, at least during the first few days.”3
In other words, don’t run out of booze until there is no turning back.
Lewis had bought all the whiskey he felt could be carried without making an unacceptable sacrifice somewhere else—for example, in trade goods. The total figure is disputed, but about 120 gallons is generally accepted. The daily ration was one gill. Used at that rate, the whiskey would be gone in 104 days. That could be stretched by watering down the whiskey but it was still obvious that there was not enough to make it to the Pacific and back.4
No doubt every man in the party knew exactly how much whiskey was available, and how much of it was his by rights. They knew they would run out; it had happened to them before; they could handle it as long as everyone ran out at the same time and no man got a half-ounce more than his fair share.
Just after midnight, June 28–29, Private John Collins was on guard duty. He tapped a barrel. Just one little sip wouldn’t hurt. Just one more. Another. Soon he was drunk. Private Hugh Hall came up; Collins offered him a drink; Hall accepted. Soon they were drunk together. At dawn, the sergeant-of-the-guard put them under arrest, and shortly thereafter Clark began drawing up court-martial papers.
While Clark prepared for the trial, Lewis took advantage of a clear sky and a morning moon. He measured the distance between the sun and the moon’s nearest limb forty-eight times between 7:06 and 8:57 a.m. He faithfully recorded whatever he could whenever he could, leaving up to experts back east to work out the meaning of the figures.
At 11:00 a.m., the court convened agreeable to order. Sergeant Pryor presided, Private John Potts acted as judge advocate, and four privates were members.
Sergeant Ordway charged Collins with “getting drunk on his post this morning out of whiskey put under his Charge as a Sentinal and for Suffering Hugh Hall to draw whiskey out of the Said Barrel intended for the party.”
Collins plead “Not guilty!”
The court deliberated, then concluded, “Guilty,” and sentenced Collins to one hundred lashes on his bare back.
Hall was charged with “takeing whiskey out of a Keg this morning which was contrary to all order, rule or regulation.”
Having seen what happened to Collins, Hall tried a bit of plea-bargaining: “Guilty!”
He was sentenced to receive fifty lashes well laid on.
Lewis and Clark approved the sentence and ordered it carried out at 3:30 p.m. It was, with vigor. Clark noted that “we have always found the men verry ready to punish Such Crimes.”
Flogging was cruel, but not unusual. Slaveholders had seen it all their lives. Officers in the army saw it done on a regular basis to their own men. In this case, it fit the need perfectly. It allowed the men to let out their anger in a direct, physical way. It caused Collins and Hall great pain. But the expedition didn’t lose their services; both men were at the oars—groaning, but at the oars—that afternoon. After a couple of sleepless nights of tossing and turning, they would be all right. Besides, there was no guardhouse on the boat to lock them up in.5
•
“Deer to be Seen in every direction and their tracks ar as plenty as Hogs about a farm,” Clark wrote on June 30. Now headed north, the expedition was entering a near-paradise. Clark noted “rasberreis perple, ripe and abundant.”
On July 4, the men ushered in the day with a firing of the cannon. Private Joseph Field got bitten by a snake. Captain Lewis treated him with a poultice, probably of Peruvian bark, that drew the poison. At noon, the party pulled ashore at the mouth of a creek of some fifteen yards wide, “coming out of an extensive Prarie” on the left (west) side. As they ate, the captains questioned the voyagers. No, they knew no name for the creek.
The captains thereupon named it, their second experience in bestowing a name.I They called it Independence Creek.
The expedition pulled over for the night at the site of an old Kansas Indian town. “We Camped in the plain,” Clark wrote, “one of the most butifull Plains I ever Saw, open & butifully diversified with hills & vallies all presenting themselves to the river covered with grass and a few scattering trees, a handsom Creek meandering thro.”
The captains ordered an extra gill distributed. As they sipped their portions, they took in their surroundings and were quite overwhelmed. The country was covered with a sweet and nourishing grass, interspersed with copses of trees “Spreding ther lofty branchs over Pools Springs or Brooks of fine water. Groops of Shrubs covered with the most delicious froot is to be seen in every direction, and nature appears to have exerted herself to butify the Senery by the variety of flours Delicately and highly flavered raised above the Grass, which Strikes and profumes the Sensation, and amuses the mind.”
At sunset, the men again fired the cannon. It was the first-ever Fourth of July celebration west of the Mississippi River.
Perhaps the captains grew philosophical under the influence of the whiskey, as happens to earnest young men carrying heavy responsibilities who find themselves in the Garden of Eden as full dark comes on and the campfire burns down on their nation’s birthday. Clark’s last journal entry that day: “So magnificent a Senerey [here follow several words that Clark later crossed out] in a Contry thus Situated far removed from the Sivilised world to be enjoyed by nothing but the Buffalo Elk Deer & Bear in which it abounds & Savage Indians.” Possibly the captains puzzled over why God had created such a place and failed to put Virginians in it, or put it in Virginia.
•
On July 8, there was an Indian scare—a fire on the east bank. All hands went on alert, but nothing came of it. On the night of July 11–12, Private Alexander Willard went to sleep on his post. Ordway found him and turned him in. The offense was one of the most serious possible—punishable by death, according to the regulations. The captains themselves constituted the court—rather than privates, as in Collins’s case.
Ordway charged Willard with “Lying down and Sleeping on his post whilst a Sentinal.”
Willard pled, “Guilty of Ly Down, and not Guilty, of Going to Sleep.”
The captains conferred. After considering the evidence, they found Willard guilty on both counts. They sentenced him to one hundred lashes, each day for four days, beginning that evening at sunset. One shudders at the thought of Willard’s back after the fourth day; one shudders at the thought of what might have happened had a roving band of Sioux come up while Willard was sleeping on guard duty.
•
On July 21, some six hundred miles and sixty-eight days upstream from Wood River, the expedition reached the mouth of the Platte River. This was a milestone. To go past the mouth of the Platte was the Missouri riverman’s equivalent of crossing the equator. It also meant entering a new ecosystem—and Sioux territory. The expedition stopped so the captains could make the usual measurements.
Lewis wrote a five-hundred-word description of the Platte, that fabulous river that makes its way from the Rockies across modern Nebraska to the Missouri, running a mile wide and an inch deep, just bursting with animal and plant life. What most impressed Lewis was the immense quantity of sand the Platte emptied into the Missouri, and the velocity of the current. He measured, as he always did: whereas on the Mississippi below St. Louis a vessel would float at four miles an hour, and on the Missouri from five and a half to seven, depending, on the Platte that vessel would make at least eight miles an hour. Assuming it never ran aground, which it would at every bend or sandbar.
&nb
sp; Lewis also made his celestial observations. The next morning, he wrote a thousand-word description of the instruments he was using, how he was using them, what he was measuring, and so forth. It seems Lewis wanted to be as sure as he could that someone someday would take all his figures and make some sense out of them.
On July 30, Clark recorded, “Capt. Lewis and my Self walked in the Prarie on the top of the Bluff and observed the most butifull prospects imagionable, this Prarie is Covered with grass about 10 or 12 Inch high.” There were swans in a nearby pond. Great quantities of catfish were caught that evening.
Private Joseph Field killed and brought in to Lewis a badger. Lewis wrote that “this is a singular anamal not common to any part of the United States,” and went on with a description of its weight, teeth, eyes, and so on. Then he skinned and stuffed the badger to send back to Jefferson. This was the first time he had put into practice the taxidermic skills Jefferson had taught him. The badger was not new to science: a specimen sent from Canada to Europe in 1778 had been technically described. (The expedition had already discovered and Lewis had described two animals new to science, the Eastern wood rat and the plains horned toad).6
So far, 640 miles up the river, the party had not seen an Indian. All the river tribes were out on the prairie, hunting buffalo.
* * *
I. Most of the rivers had French names; the first named by Clark was Cupboard Creek, on June 3, 1804.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Entering Indian Country
August 1804
August 1 was Clark’s thirty-fourth birthday. To mark the occasion, “I order’d a Saddle of fat Vennison, an Elk fleece & a Bevertail to be cooked and a Desert of Cheries, Plumbs, Raspberries, Currents and grapes of a Supr. quallity.” Taking note of the flora and fauna in this wonderland the expedition was entering, Clark noted, “What a field for a Botents [botanist] and a natirless [naturalist].”
No American, not even the professional naturalists such as John James Audubon and Alexander Wilson, had ever seen anything to surpass it.1 Lewis was fully aware of the magnitude of the discoveries and greatly excited by the opportunity to be the one to note and describe plants and animals new to science. He spent hours examining and describing his finds. On August 5, for example, he killed a bull snake. He measured its length from nose to tail (five feet two inches), its “circumpherence” (four and a half inches), the number of scuta on its belly (221) and tail (53), its color, spots, and other distinctive markings.
That afternoon, he killed two aquatic birds he had previously observed but been unable to obtain. They were least terns. He used a thousand words to describe the specimens, including weight (an ounce and a half), length (seven and a half inches), markings, and so on. He recorded, “The tail has eleven feathers the outer of which are an inch longer than those in the center gradually tapering inwards. . . . the largest or outer feather is 23/4” that of the shortest 13/4”. . . . This bird is very noysey when flying which it dose exttreemly swift. . . . It has two notes one like the squaking of a small pig only on reather a high kee, the other kit’-tee’,-kit’tee’ as near as letters can express the sound.”
As the men laboriously moved the keelboat upriver, Lewis, in the cabin, weighed and measured and examined and recorded. He took his responsibilities seriously, but he had a lot of fun doing it, and he had a never-flagging sense of wonder and delight at seeing something new.
On August 8, one of the bowmen called back to Lewis, who was working in the cabin. The captain looked up to see a blanket of white coming down the river. He went to the bow to stare down into the water. The keelboat and the white whatever-it-was came together. On close examination it turned out to be a sea of white feathers, over three miles long and seventy yards wide.
The boat rounded a bend. Ahead was a large sandbar at the foot of a small island. It was entirely covered with white pelicans, preening themselves in their summer molt. To Lewis, the number of birds was “in credible; they apeared to cover several acres of ground.” The mosquitoes were so thick that he could not keep them out of his eyes to take an aimed shot, so he fired his rifle at random into the mass and collected a specimen, which he then weighed, measured, and described. He was astonished to find that the pouch could hold five gallons of water.
The white pelican was not new to science. Lewis had not seen one before, but he knew enough about it to call it a “bird of clime” that wintered “on the coast of Floriday and the borders of the Gulph of mexico.” That knowledge came from book learning; he had never been to Florida or the Gulf of Mexico.
On August 12, at 5:00 p.m., what Clark called a “Prarie Wolf’ appeared on the bank and barked at the passing keelboat. The captains had not previously seen this animal, or read anything about it, so they went ashore to collect a specimen. But, Clark sadly noted, “we could not git him.”
The animal was a coyote. Lewis and Clark were the first Americans to see one. The captains set a precedent; millions of Americans who came after have also failed in their attempt to kill the coyote.
On August 18, while waiting for an Indian delegation to approach, Lewis took twelve soldiers to a fishing pond used by the Otoes. The party caught 490 catfish and upward of three hundred fish of nine other species.
Beyond flora and fauna, Lewis studied and described the soil and minerals of the area. He was not so good a mineralogist as a botanist. One mineral experiment almost cost him his life. On August 22, along with some copperas and alum he found a substance that appeared to be arsenic or cobalt. Clark recorded, “Capt. Lewis in proveing the quality of those minerals was near poisoning himself by the fumes & taste” of the unknown substance. Lewis took some of Rush’s pills to “work off the effects of the Arsenic.”
By August 23, the expedition was almost at the ninety-eighth meridan, the generally agreed-upon eastern border of the Great Plains of North America. The sense of being in a Garden of Eden was strong. There were fat deer and elk and beaver and other species in numbers scarcely conceivable. That afternoon, Lewis sent Private Joseph Field on a hunt. A few hours later, Field came rushing down the bluff to the bank and hollered out to the boat to come ashore. When it did, he breathlessly announced that he had killed a buffalo.
The buffalo was the quintessential animal of the North American continent, the symbol of the Great Plains, more than any other animal save the beaver the magnet that drew men to the West. It was not new to science, but of the men of the expedition only the French voyagers had previously seen one. Lewis immediately detailed twelve men to accompany him to the site of the kill to bring the carcass back to the river. That night, for the first time, the party dined on buffalo hump, buffalo tongue, buffalo steaks. Next to the tail of the beaver, buffalo hump and tongue at once became the meat of choice.
•
In the Garden of Eden, man had but to reach out for his food. So too on the Great Plains, as Clark’s birthday menu demonstrated. But this Garden of Eden was also a potential battlefield populated by numerous Indian tribes containing thousands of warriors. As a result, in addition to being a fabulous field for the botanist and naturalist, the Plains were also a challenging field for the soldier, the peacemaker, the ethnologist, and the businessman.
These tribes were virtually unknown except to a handful of British and French fur traders. There were many stories and rumors about them, most of all the Sioux, but little solid fact.
Jefferson and Lewis had talked at length about these tribes, on the basis of near-complete ignorance. They speculated that the lost tribe of Israel could be out there on the Plains, but it was more likely, in their minds, that the Mandans were a wandering tribe of Welshmen.2 Because they subscribed to such odd ideas, Jefferson’s instructions to Lewis on how to deal with the tribes were, in most particulars, hopelessly naive and impossible to carry out. For example, Jefferson assumed that, although the Sioux were said to be the fiercest and greatest of the tribes, they were “very desirous of being on the most friendly terms with us.” That bit of wishful thi
nking led to Jefferson’s direct order to Lewis. “On that nation,” he commanded, referring to the Sioux, “we wish most particulary to make a favorable impression.”3
In general, Jefferson wanted Lewis to inform the tribes that the new father intended to embrace them into a commercial system that would benefit all involved, and that to make this happen the new father wished them to make peace with one another. Lewis’s objectives, as given to him by Jefferson, were to establish American sovereignty, peace, and a trading empire in which the warriors would put down their weapons and take up traps.
Jefferson recognized that the possibility of resistance to this program existed, meaning there was a possibility that the Sioux, or some other, unknown tribe, would attempt to stop the expedition. Jefferson knew too that Lewis was, like other army officers of his day, extremely sensitive to perceived threats or slights, and he had reason to suspect that Lewis inclined more toward rashness than prudence. That was why Jefferson specifically ordered Lewis to avoid a fight if at all possible.
This brought back some realism to the commander-in-chief’s orders. Relations with the Indians were important, establishing commercial ties with them was desirable, but the sine qua non of the expedition was to get to the Pacific and return with as much information as possible. Put more bluntly, Lewis’s first objective was to get through, and whatever he had to sacrifice to do it would be sacrificed. That was why the standard of discipline was so high, why there was a cannon on a swivel on the bow of the keelboat, and blunderbusses on the stern and on the canoes. Jefferson, Lewis, Clark, everyone involved hoped to God that they would not be needed, but all were prepared to use them if necessary.
•
To avoid fighting and to promote commerce, Lewis had made a major effort to select gifts for the Indians. In Philadelphia in the spring of 1803 and in St. Louis in the winter of 1803–4, he had purchased beads, brass buttons, tomahawks, axes, moccasin awls, scissors, mirrors, and other wonders of the early industrial revolution, along with tobacco, vermilion face paint, and whiskey. On Jefferson’s direct orders, he had lugged along two corn grinders, presumably to teach the tribes how to make grits.4
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