Lewis and Clark scholar James Ronda puts perspective on the Indian policy of the expedition: “These items, everything from ivory combs to calico shirts, represented what the United States offered to potential trading partners. As Jefferson repeated to every delegation of western Indians, Americans sought commerce, not land. Lewis and Clark were on the road to show American wares. The expedition was the mercantile and hardware display case for a trade empire on the move. Moccasin awls and brass kettles were as much symbols of American power as the medals and flags destined for headmen and warriors. . . . Lewis and Clark, surrounded by bright mirrors and yards of red flannel, offered more than goods. They proposed membership in a system with well-established posts and dependable delivery schedules.”5
The most desired items of all were rifles, balls, and powder. Most of the Indian-held guns on the Plains were cheap British shotguns. Lewis wanted to show the overall excellence of the American arms industry, but because of the bulk he could not carry along free samples. He could demonstrate what his men could do with a Kentucky long rifle, but he could only promise, not deliver, similar weapons for the Indians.
The presents, trade goods, certificates, medals, and the rest were packed into twenty-one bags, each containing a variety of items and each marked for one of the various tribes Lewis expected to encounter before going into winter camp. They began with the Poncas and Omahas, tribes of the lower Missouri, and went on to the Mandans. Five bales were stuffed with goods for the tribes beyond the Mandans.
Thus armed with his orders, guns, and goods, Lewis set out to meet the Indians of the Great Plains.
•
All the tribes of the lower Missouri had been out hunting buffalo as the expedition made its way west and north. It did not encounter a single Indian from St. Charles to past the Platte River. Then, at sunset on August 2, a party of Otos and a few Missouris arrived at camp, accompanied by a French trader and translator. After an exchange of greetings, the captains gave the Indians some tobacco, twisted together into what was called a carrot after its shape, and some pork, flour, and meal. “In return,” Clark noted, “they Sent us Water millions [watermelons].”
The Indians said their band of combined Otoes and Missouris numbered 250. They were a farming as well as a hunting people, with semipermanent towns. The captains invited them to a council the next day, at their campsite, which they called Council Bluff (across and downriver from present Council Bluffs, Iowa). Clark recorded that he and Lewis also “put every man on his Guard & ready for any thing.” The night was a restless one, marked by tension and anticipation instead of sleep.
In the morning, the expedition had its first meeting with Indians. Going into it, as James Ronda points out, the captains had expectations and actions that were deeply rooted in the history of white-red relations in North America, directly linked to generations of forest diplomats. They were preparing for exactly the kind of ritual Clark had seen at the council negotiating the Treaty of Greenville with General Anthony Wayne in 1795.6
On Friday morning, August 3, 1804, fog hung over the river. As he waited for it to lift and the Indians to come to the council, Lewis wrote out a long speech he intended to make. Clark supervised the preparation of the gifts. The voyagers opened bale number thirty and took out red leggings, fancy dress coats, and blue blankets, along with flags and medals. The sergeants put their squads through a close-order drill, then had some of the men use the mainsail to erect an awning to shield the diplomats from the August sun, while others put in place a flagstaff and ran the Stars and Stripes up it.
By 9:00 a.m., the sun had burned off the fog. An hour later, the Indian delegation arrived. The main chief of the Otos, Little Thief, was away hunting, but six or seven lesser chiefs were present. They joined the captains under the awning. Clark and Lewis were in full-dress uniform, complete with cocked hats. The sergeants put the men through a dress parade and passed in review. This must have been the first time the Otos had seen men march in step, turn as if one, shoulder arms in unison, fire a volley on command, and all the rest that goes into a well-run drill. But how the review impressed the Indians, no member of the expedition thought to record.
Lewis then stood to deliver his speech. It was some twenty-five hundred words, so it took him at least half an hour to deliver it, and the translator at least as long to put it into the Oto language. How accurately it was being translated, Lewis of course had no way to judge. Nor could he tell how much of what he was saying the Indians could understand, or how much of what they understood they accepted.
Lewis opened by advising the warriors to be wise and look to the true interests of their people. “Children,” he continued, as Clark recorded his speech, “we have been sent by the great Chief of the Seventeen great nations of America to inform you . . . that a great council was lately held between this great chief and your old fathers the French and Spaniards.” There it was decided that the Missouri River country now belonged to the United States, so that all those who lived in that country, whether white or red, “are bound to obey the commands of their great Chief the President who is now your only great father.”
In a long, convoluted paragraph, Lewis told the Otos that the French and Spanish were gone “beyond the great lake towards the rising Sun, from whence they never intend returning to visit their former red children.”
“Children,” Lewis went on, the president was now “your only father; he is the only friend to whom you can now look for protection, or from whom you can ask favours, or receive good counciles, and he will take care to serve you, & not deceive you.”
After giving out the good news about this wonderful new father the Otos had suddenly acquired, Lewis tried to explain the purposes of the expedition. No easy task, since the only white men the Plains Indians had ever seen were traders, whose purpose was obviously to do business. The expedition had more goods than any trader any Indian of the Plains had ever seen—yet the captains did not wish to trade. What on earth were they going to do with all those goods? The Indians had to wonder.
“Children,” Lewis explained, the great chief “has sent us out to clear the road, remove every obstruction, and to make it the road of peace between himself and his red children residing there, to enquire into the Nature of their wants.” When the expedition returned home, Lewis would tell the president what the Otos wanted, and the president would see that those wants were satisfied.
Lewis and Clark were advance men and traveling salesmen, in short, representing American business and the American people, whose numbers and skills were all but unlimited. In the seventeen great nations of America, Lewis declared, “cities are as numerous as the stars of the heavens.”
What the Americans were doing, Lewis went on, was untainted by any base or self-serving motive. The great chief “has commanded us his war chiefs to undertake this long journey, which we have so far accomplished with great labour and much expence, in order to council with yourselves and his other red-children on the troubled waters, to give you his good advice; to point out to you the road in which you must walk to obtain happiness.”
As a good father, the president told his children how to behave. They should not block or obstruct in any way the passage of any boat carrying white men, ever. They should make peace with all their neighbors.
Now came the threats. Lewis told the Otos that they must avoid the council of bad men “lest by one false step you should bring upon your nation the displeasure of your great father, who could consume you as the fire consumes the grass of the plains.” The Great Father, “if you displease him,” would stop all traders from coming up the river.
Do as we say, in other words, or no white man will come to you again, ever. That was an extreme threat, strange as it sounds to modern ears. Without contact with European trade goods, the Otos would suffer a severe setback in their living conditions and would be seriously vulnerable to their neighbors who had access to guns and powder.
But if the Otos did as Lewis advised them, he would see t
hat a trading post was set up at the mouth of the Platte, where they could bring their furs to trade for “a store of goods in such quantities as will be equal to your necessities.” Meanwhile, their old traders, whether French or British, could stay among them as long as they acknowledged the supremacy of the United States and gave good council. In short, after all that talk, Lewis told the Otos that nothing would be changing in the next year or two.
Next came an even bigger embarrassment. Because the expedition had such a long journey ahead of it, and therefore had to carry so many provisions, there were very few presents for the Otos.7
That was a flat ending. How Lewis’s first oratorical experience went over with his audience cannot be said, although Private Gass recorded in his journal that the announcement about a new father was “well received.”8 Clark claimed, “Those people express great Satisfaction at the Speech Delivered,” but he also noted that Lewis’s speech consisted primarily of “Some advice to them and Directions how They were to Conduct themselves,” words that would have served well as the title for the speech.
When Lewis concluded, the captains distributed presents. They weren’t much. Each chief received a breech clout, a bit of paint, and a small medal with the new father’s likeness on it or a comb.
The Oto chiefs spoke next. According to Sergeant Ordway, they were “very sensible,” but Clark was unimpressed. In his opinion, “They are no Oreters.” Still, they managed to make their point. The Oto chiefs acknowledged that they had heard what Lewis said, promised to follow his good advice, said they were happy that their new father could be depended on, and concluded by requesting some powder and whiskey.
Lewis was eager to please, because he wanted Little Thief and some other chiefs to go to Washington in the spring to meet the new father, so he met the request, providing a canister of powder, fifty balls, and a bottle of whiskey. He also shot off his air gun, to the astonishment of the Indians. He ended the council by giving the copy of his speech to one of the chiefs, to take back to Little Thief, along with a request that Little Thief come to the river to council.
•
The Indians departed, the expedition proceeded on. At camp that night, on a sandy point on the larboard side, the mosquitoes were excessively troublesome. Private Moses B. Reed told the captains that he had left his knife back at the council site. They gave him permission to go retrieve it—a simple act that illustrated how valuable knives were on the frontier.
Jefferson Peace Medal, of the type the captains handed out to various chiefs. The one pictured here is a mint specimen cast in 1801, now in the museum of the American Numismatic Society. (National Park Service)
Three days later, Reed had not returned. The captains talked it over and concluded that he had deserted. They selected a four-man detail, headed by Drouillard, to seek, find, and bring back “the Deserter reid with order if he did not give up Peaceibly to put him to Death; &c.”
The orders were clear and logical, and met the situation perfectly. By making the orders a matter of record, the captains absolved Drouillard and the others in the event they had to kill Reed, and took the responsibility for his death onto themselves. The orders also highlighted the fact that the expedition was in a potential war zone and every rifle and paddle was needed.
The captains also instructed Drouillard to attempt to find Little Thief and bring him to camp on the river.
Drouillard was gone ten days. The captains moved upstream. By August 17, they were near present-day Sioux City, Iowa. Toward dusk, Private Francis Labiche, one of Drouillard’s party, came into the camp. He reported success: Drouillard was bringing in Reed and also a delegation of chiefs from the Otos, including Little Thief. They would arrive in the morning.
When Drouillard came up at about 10:00 a.m. on August 18, the captains gave the Otos something to eat, then turned to the business immediately at hand, the trial of Private Reed.
The court-martial was formed; the charges were read. Reed confessed that he had deserted and stolen a public rifle, shot pouch, powder, and balls. He requested that the captains be as lenient with him as their oaths would allow. His manly behavior seemed to soften the captains; at least they didn’t have him shot. Clark recorded that “we only Sentenced him to run the Gantlet four times through the Party & that each man with 9 Swichies Should punish him.” That amounted to about five hundred lashes, well laid on. In addition, Reed was discharged from the permanent party. He had to give up his rifle and the privilege of standing guard. He would work with and be treated as if he were one of the voyagers, and would be sent back to St. Louis in the spring.
When these results were explained to Little Thief, he and the others “petitioned for Pardin for this man.” Clark and Lewis explained to the chiefs the necessity for the beating. They must have been persuasive, for Clark recorded that the chiefs “were all Satisfied with the propriety of the Sentence & was witness to the punishment.”
That evening, after eating, the expedition managed to rid itself of the bad taste from the day’s principal event. It was Captain Lewis’s thirtieth birthday. To celebrate, an extra dram of whiskey per man went round, and the fiddle came out, and the men danced about the campfire till nearly midnight.
In the morning, breakfast. Clark was astonished when one of the chiefs, Big Horse, showed up naked, to emphasize his poverty. After they had eaten, the awning went up and a council was held. Apparently Lewis read his speech, from the copy already held by Little Thief. The chief then asked the captains to act as honest brokers and negotiate a peace between the Otos and the Omahas. Lewis explained that, since the Omahas were out hunting and the expedition must press on, it would be impossible for him to arrange a peace.
Then the chiefs spoke. Big Horse pointed out the obvious, that he had come to the camp naked, and expressed his fear that he would return home naked. Peace was all very well, he said, but if there were peace where would the young men go to get their goods? If the captains wanted the Otos at peace, Big Horse pointed out, he could arrange it as long as he had something to give to his young men at home. Whiskey would be the most effective peacemaker.
The captains were not going to give Big Horse or any other Indian a barrel of whiskey. They did hand out tobacco, paint, and beads. These gifts made little impression on the chiefs or their warriors. The captains then tried handing around printed certificates proclaiming the bearer to be a “friend and ally” of the United States. These trifles did not answer either; one disgusted warrior disdainfully handed back his certificate. The captains, angered by this disrespect toward an official document, rebuked the man “very roughly.”
There were bad feelings all around. To dissipate them and to impress the Indians with their powers, the captains gave the chiefs and warriors a dram of whiskey each and brought out their magic show, including the air gun, a magnifying glass that could concentrate the sun’s rays to start a fire in a bit of dry grass, the telescope, and other items.
But the Otos had not come to be awed; they had come for goods. They had imagined wonderful giveaways of valuable items from the apparently endless supply on the keelboat, and what they got was some tobacco and a piece of paper. They went away unhappy. Still, Little Thief indicated that he would go to Washington in the spring, so Lewis’s and Clark’s first venture as frontier diplomats had some success.
The Otos were a tribe that had once been mighty but were now greatly reduced by the smallpox. Woefully inferior to the Sioux, in morale as well as numbers, they were not the Indians to try to use force to make the captains hand out the goods. With the Sioux, just upriver, things might well be different.
•
Sergeant Charles Floyd had been desperately ill the past few days. Lewis had diagnosed his disease as “Biliose Chorlick,” or bilious colic, and had nothing effective to treat it with—but, then, neither did Dr. Rush back in Philadelphia.9 On August 20, Floyd died, most likely from peritonitis resulting from an infected appendix that had perforated or ruptured.
Sergeant Floyd was
the first U.S. soldier to die west of the Mississippi. The expedition carried his body to a high round hill overlooking an unnamed river. The captains had him buried with all the honors of war and fixed a red-cedar post over the grave with his name and title and the date. Captain Lewis read the funeral service over him. Clark provided a fitting epitaph in his journal: “This Man at all times gave us proofs of his firmness and Deturmined resolution to doe Service to his Countrey and honor to himself.” The captains concluded the proceedings by naming the river Floyds River and the bluff Sergeant Floyds Bluff.
Two days and forty-one miles later, the captains ordered an election for Floyd’s replacement. Private Patrick Gass got nineteen votes, while Privates William Bratton and George Gibson split the remainder. This was the first election ever held west of the Mississippi.
On August 26, Lewis issued general orders appointing Patrick Gass to the rank of “Sergeant in the corps of volunteers for North Western Discovery,” the first time he used such a phrase. He praised Gass for his previous faithful service and concluded, “The commanding officers are still further confirmed in the high opinion they had previously formed of the capacity, deligence and integrety of Sergt. Gass, from the wish expressed by a large majority of his comrades for his appointment as Sergeant.”
That same day, Private George Shannon, youngest member of the party, failed to come up after a day of hunting. Nor did he report in the next day, or the day after. The captains grew concerned, not about desertion—evidently Shannon gave them no uneasiness on that score—but about possible Indian trouble, or a hunting accident. They sent Private John Colter out looking for Shannon, but he had no luck. They sent Drouillard to look, but, after searching through the night of August 26–27, he too reported failure.
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