Jefferson had a passion for Indian language, believing he would be able to trace the Indians’ origins by discovering the basis of their language. So the gathering of vocabularies was an important charge on the captains. They put a major effort into attempting to render words from various Indian languages into an English spelling.
MacKenzie was present once to see the captains at work on their vocabularies. The language being recorded was Hidatsa. A native speaker would say a word to Sacagawea, who would pass it on in Hidatsa to Charbonneau, who would pass it on in French to Jessaume, who would translate it into English for the captains. MacKenzie thought Jessaume’s English ranged somewhere between inadequate and nonexistent, magnifying the chances for error.
On another occasion, MacKenzie wrote: “I was present when vocabularies were being made of the Mandans; the two Frenchmen [Charbonneau and Jessaume] had warm disputes upon the meaning of every word that was taken down by the captains. As the Indians could not well comprehend the intention of recording their words, they concluded that the Americans had a wicked design upon their country.”2 Despite the difficulties, Lewis kept at it. He put in immense amounts of time on the task. Whether he found the work interesting, or thought it important, cannot be said. It sufficed that Mr. Jefferson wanted it done.
Lewis was relatively uninterested in Indian mythology or spiritual life, but he was a skilled observer of some parts of Indian culture, especially how things were done. One of his contributions, for example, was a graphic and precise description of glass-bead-making among the Arikaras. As the expedition prepared to depart for the mountains, the captains purchased a buffalo-skin tepee to provide shelter for themselves, Charbonneau, Sacagawea, and Pomp. Lewis described it in his journal entry of April 7, 1805, in what James Ronda characterized as “one of the best descriptions yet drafted of that distinctive plains dwelling.”3
In addition to their written descriptions, the captains gathered such objects as Arikara corn, tobacco seeds, mineral and botanical specimens, along with artifacts from Indian life, including bows, clothing, and painted robes, to be sent to Jefferson. Altogether, the amount of information they gathered, organized, and presented in a systematic fashion to Jefferson—and, beyond him, to the scientific world—was enough to justify the expedition, even if it made not a single further contribution.
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The model for Lewis and Clark’s report was Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. Like that work, written a quarter-century earlier, Lewis’s description of Upper Louisiana was part guidebook, part travelogue, part boosterlike promotion, part text to accompany the master map. Adding in Clark’s contributions, the final report from Fort Mandan totaled something close to forty-five thousand words, almost book-length (Jefferson’s Notes ran to some eighty thousand words).
Like Jefferson, Lewis began with a detailed account of the waterways, or, as he put it, “A Summary view of the rivers and Creeks, which discharge themselves into the Missouri . . . from the junction of that river with the Mississippi, to Fort Mandan.”4 As Jefferson had done for Virginia, Lewis described not only the tributaries but the people living along the rivers, whether the French at St. Charles, or the Otos, or the Sioux. He included information on the local economy, the soil, mineral deposits, climate, and more.
The report combined the captains’ actual observations of the various rivers flowing into the Missouri with information received from traders and Indians about the upper reaches of those streams and their own principal tributaries. For example, Lewis saw only the mouth of the Platte River, but he described it up to its head in the mountains. From what he had been told, he said, the Platte ran “through immence level and fertile plains and meadows, in which, no timber is to be seen except on it’s own borders.” He named five major tributaries of the Platte, discussed the mineral deposits in its drainage, the soil, the people—Otos and Missouris—and more. Naturally, the farther west Lewis’s report ventured, the more speculative it became. His conjecture about the Platte’s relationship to Santa Fe and to the Black Hills was purely imaginative and badly wrong.
Lewis expected that Jefferson would have his work printed and distributed as a report to Congress, and he knew something about the audience for the work, so on occasion he sounded like a promoter writing a broadside: “This river [the Muddy, in eastern Missouri] waters a most delightfull country; the land lies well for cultivation, and is fertile in the extreem . . . covered with lofty and excellent timber, and supplyed with an abundance of fine bould springs of limestone water.” The Grand River, farther west, was also prime farm country. “The lands are extreemly fertile; consisting of a happy mixtuure of praries and groves, exhibiting one of the most beautifull and picteresk seens that I ever beheld.”
Enthusiastic as he was in his report about the lower-Missouri country—he made it sound almost like heaven—he actually was holding back his emotions. In his letter to his mother, dated March 21, 1804, he allowed himself to rhapsodize about the country, writing not so much as son to mother as Virginia planter to Virginia planter. “This immence river so far as we have yet ascended,” he wrote, “waters one of the farest portions of the globe, nor do I believe that there is in the universe a similar extent of country, equally fertile, well watered, and intersected by suuch a number of navigable streams.” He added, “I had been led to believe that the open prarie contry was barren, steril and sandy; but on the contrary I found it fertile in the extreem, the soil being from one to 20 feet in debth, consisting of a fine black loam [that produces] a luxuriant growth of grass and other vegitables.”
The Plains were not quite Eden, however; the absence of timber was a serious drawback, for it was almost unimaginable for any American in 1805 to live in a country without plenty of lumber and fuel. Indeed, in the eastern third of the United States, too much timber was the problem.5
In his report to Jefferson, Lewis took note of all the things that would spring to the mind of a frontier farmer hankering to move into Upper Louisiana. He pointed out “several rappids well situated for water-works”; he warned against areas that had tolerably fertile soil but no timber. Lewis was an advance man for the American fur trappers and traders as well as farmers. He noted the furs available and scouted likely spots for trading posts.
One of Lewis’s responsibilities was to make recommendations on how to drive the British away from the Missouri so that American companies could take over the fur trade. His analysis of the economic-political situation on the river led him directly to his conclusion and recommendation.
“I am perfectly convinced that untill such measures are taken by our government as will effectually prohibit all intercourse or traffic with the Sioux” and the British fur companies, he reported to Jefferson, “the Citizens of the United States can never enjoy, but partially, those important advantages which the navigation of the Missouri now presents.” He recommended establishing garrisons in places where the soldiers could stop the British from coming into Dakota from Canada or across today’s Minnesota. If trade between the British and the Sioux was prohibited for a few years, he wrote, “the Sioux will be made to feel their dependance on the will of our government for their supplies of merchandize, and in the course of two or three years, they may most probably be reduced to order without the necessity of bloodshed.” Given what happened in Sioux-American relations over the following seventy-one years, that was a hopelessly optimistic prediction.
Much of the report was a business prospectus, with the emphasis on the Indian as customer and supplier. In a separate section, written in Clark’s hand but the product of both men’s labor, entitled “Estimate of the Eastern Indians,”6 the captains described no fewer than seventy-two different tribes and bands, with at least some information on where they lived, how they lived, who they were at war with, their numbers, their dwellings, and more. Of course the captains could only describe a few tribes from firsthand knowledge, but they made clear where their information was word-of-mouth.
Those they knew they
did not hesitate to characterize, often in a heartfelt fashion. They wrote of their friends the Mandans, “These are the most friendly, well disposed Indians inhabiting the Missouri. They are brave, humane and hospitable.” Of the Teton Sioux, the opposite: “These are the vilest miscreants of the savage race, and must ever remain the pirates of the Missouri, until such measures are pursued, by our government, as will make them feel a dependence on its will for their supply of merchandise.”
Of the tribes living along the route they intended to follow, they wrote of the mountain-dwelling Flatheads: “They are a timid, inoffensive, and defenceless people. They are said to possess an abundance of horses.”
Of the Shoshones, the captains’ information indicated that they traded with the Spanish, who refused to give them firearms. Consequently, although the Shoshones were a very numerous and well-disposed people, “All the nations on the Missouries below make war on them & Steal their horses.”
Of the Nez Percé: “Still less is known of these people, or their country. The water courses on which they reside, are supposed to be branches of the Columbia river.”
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Along with the written report, the captains sent back to Jefferson 108 botanical specimens, to add to the collections at the American Philosophical Society, all properly labeled as to where and when collected, and described. The first was “a species of Cress, taken at St. Louis May 10th 1804. It is common in the open growns on the Mississippi bottomes, appears in the uncultivated parts of the lots gardens and orchards, the seed come to maturity by the 10th of May in most instances.”
If medicinal properties were claimed for a plant, Lewis mentioned them. If the claim touched a common medical problem back in the States, Lewis emphasized it, none more so than a root known by the name of “white wood of the prairie” which was said to be sovereign for the bite of a mad wolf or a mad dog, and for the bite of the rattlesnake. Rabies and snakebite were common dangers in the early nineteenth century, so a cure was such an exciting prospect that Lewis made the root of the white wood the subject of a separate letter to Jefferson, in which he detailed how to prepare it as a poultice, how to apply it, and so forth. He concluded: “I have sent herewith a few pounds of this root, in order that experiments may be made by some skilfull person under the direction of the pilosophical society of Philadelphia.”7
It was probably the purple coneflower, which was widely used by the Indians as an antidote for snakebite. Jefferson sent the root along to a doctor to experiment with it.8
Lewis also sent to Jefferson sixty-eight mineral specimens, all labeled as to where and when collected. He included such items as “sand of the Missouri,” “one pint of Missouri water,” “pebbles common to the Missouri,” lead ore, quartz, Glauber salts, alum, pyrites, lime, lava and pumice stone, and fossils.
The plants and minerals were part of a larger shipment to Jefferson that included skeletons of a male and female pronghorn, the horns of two mule deer, insects and mice, skins of various animals, including a marten and a white weasel that came from beyond the mountains via the trade route, and more. There were live animals too, new to science: four magpies, a prairie dog, and a prairie grouse hen (only one magpie and the prairie dog reached Jefferson alive).
Included also in the shipment was Clark’s map of the United States west of the Mississippi River. It was a masterpiece of the cartographers art, and an invaluable contribution to knowledge. From St. Louis to Fort Mandan, Clark got it exactly right along the Missouri. His map became a bit sketchier as it moved west, naturally, because his depictions of the various tributaries was based on hearsay, often from people who did not claim to be eyewitnesses but knew someone who had been there. Lewis explained Clark’s method: he would compare one Indian’s description with another’s, questioning them separately and at different times, and questioning as many as possible. Only when there was agreement on placement, distance, mountain passes, and so forth was the information put on Clark’s map and into Lewis’s report.
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For all their concern with getting the specimens ready for shipment and with making their report and the map as complete as possible, in the first two weeks of spring what was uppermost in the captains’ minds was what lay ahead. They pumped the Mandans, who never ventured very far west and thus could tell them little, and the Hidatsas, whose war parties ranged to the mountains and who thus could tell them a lot.
From the Hidatsas, Lewis had learned the names of rivers coming into the Missouri, and their connections with one another. He commented on his source: “I conceive [the Hidatsas] are entitled to some confidence.”
Lewis expected to find, at 117 miles upriver from Fort Mandan, the White Earth River coming in on the north side. The prospect excited him greatly, because if the White Earth came in from as far north as the Indians indicated, it would mean that the boundary between Canada and the United States might be moved north by as much as a full degree of latitude, something Jefferson very much hoped for.
Three miles above the mouth of the White Earth, the Indians told Lewis he would come to the greatest of all the tributaries of the Missouri, the Yellowstone. The Hidatsas said that the Yellowstone “waters one of the fairest portions of Louisiana, a country not yet hunted, and abounding in animals of the fur kind.” They thought the river navigable “at all seasons of the year for boats and perogues to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, near which place, it is said to be not more than 20 miles distant from the three forks of the Missouri.”
The obvious importance of the Yellowstone led Lewis to recommend that the government build a trading post at the junction with the Missouri. It would “afford to our citizens the benefit of a most lucrative fur trade [and] might be made to hold in check the views of the British N. West Company,” whose intention was “to panopolize” the Missouri River fur-trade business. “If this powerfull and ambitious company are suffered uninterruptedly to prosecute their trade,” Lewis warned, the British might someday use their influence with the natives to block all American navigation on the Missouri.
Some 150 miles upstream from the mouth of the Yellowstone would come “The River Which Scolds at All Others,” falling in on the north side. Then the Musselshell from the south. Another 120 miles and the expedition would be at the falls of the Missouri, “discribed by the Indians as a most tremendious Cataract. They state that the nois it makes can be heard at a great distance. . . . They also state that there is a fine open plain on the N. side of the falls, through which, canoes and baggage may be readily transported. this portage they assert is not greater than a half a mile.”
Some fifteen miles beyond the falls, the Medicine River would fall in on the north side. Another sixty miles and the expedition would enter the first connected chain of the mountains. After another seventy-five miles, the Missouri would divide into three nearly equal branches, at the place called Three Forks, where Sacagawea had been captured some five years earlier. The most northern of the three rivers “is navigable to the foot of a chain of high mountains, being the ridge which divides the waters of the Atlantic from those of the Pacific ocean. The Indians assert that they can pass in half a day from the foot of this mountain on it’s East side to a large river which washes it’s Western base.”
How Jefferson must have loved reading that line. The singular objective of the expedition was about to be realized.
The Divide was as far as the Hidatsas ever ventured. Lewis noted that “we have therefore been unable to acquire any information further West than the view from the top of these mountains.”
But what the Hidatsas said they saw from the top of the mountain was exactly what Lewis and Jefferson hoped for and expected: “The Indians inform us that the country on the Western side of this river consists of open & level plains like those they themselves inhabit.” The Flathead and Shoshone tribes lived on a river in that country. Their principal food was fish. “This river we suppose to be the S. fork of the Columbia,” Lewis wrote, “and the fish the Salmon, with which we are i
nformed the Columbia river abounds. This river is said to be rapid but as far as the Indian informants are acquainted with it is not intercepted with shoals.”
What had been high expectations now soared, both at Fort Mandan and, some months later, in Washington, when the report arrived and Jefferson read it with what must have been the most intense satisfaction, feeling that, even as he was reading, the all-water route to the Pacific was being found and mapped.
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Along with the report, Lewis sent back to St. Louis various letters, dispatches, and copies of the drafts and chits he had signed, what he called “my public accounts.” In a covering letter to Jefferson dated April 7, but almost certainly written the previous day, Lewis confessed to considerable embarrassment about those accounts.9 He had intended to put them in order and have them returned to St. Louis in the fall of 1804, but in the event it turned out that “the provision perogue and her crew could not have been dismissed . . . without evedently in my opinion, hazarding the fate of the enterprise in which I am engaged, and I therefore did not hesitate to prefer the sensure that I may have incurred by the detention of these papers, to that of risking in any degree the success of the expedition.”
Jefferson had instructed Lewis to be diligent about his accounts and to get his drafts back to the War Department with all possible speed. Lewis said his failure to do so had become “a serious source of disquiet and anxiety; and the recollection of your particular charge to me on this subject, has made it still more poignant.”
Clearly, as an army officer, Lewis had made the correct decision. But as the president’s protégé he felt terrible about it, because he hated disappointing Jefferson. Yet, however bad he felt about it, Lewis’s casualness with his accounts and the chits he had signed was becoming habitual.
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In the second half of his April 7 letter to Jefferson, Lewis told his commander-in-chief his plans. In the morning, he intended to send the keelboat and pirogues on their way. Accompanying Corporal Warfington would be four privates plus NewmanI and Reed, Mr. Gravelines acting as pilot and interpreter, and four Frenchmen. They were well armed and adequately supplied. “I have but little doubt but they will be fired on by the Siouxs,” Lewis wrote, “but they have pledged themselves to us that they will not yeald while there is a man of them living.”
Undaunted Courage Page 29