They were always barefoot, and women as well as men covered themselves only from the waist up, for the good reason—as Lewis took care to note—that they lived in a damp but mild climate and were in and out of their canoes in waist-deep water much of the time. Lewis remarked that he could do a visual examination for venereal disease on every man who came to the fort. He described their cloaks, furs, hats, and ornaments in considerable detail, then rendered his final, scathing judgment: “I think the most disgusting sight I have ever beheld is these dirty naked wenches” (March 19).
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Disconcerting as it was to a Virginia gentleman to have fully exposed men and women squatting in front of him, Lewis was able to overcome his disgust and point out various positive attributes of the Clatsops and Chinooks. They built solid wood houses, twenty feet wide and up to sixty feet in length, divided into rooms where extended families lived. They had a fire in the center, slept on boards raised from the ground, and dried their fish and meat in the smoke. They had wooden bowls and spoons for eating, and woven baskets to store food.
Their bows were short, only two and a half feet, but “extreamly neat and very elastic.” They were good for small game and fish, but not very effective with elk. “Maney of the Elk we have killed since we have been here,” Lewis noted on January 15, “have been wounded with these arrows, the short piece with the barb remaining in the animal and grown up in the flesh.”
They had no rifles, their only firearms “being oald refuse American and brittish Musquits which have been repared for this trade . . . invariably in bad order” (January 30). Therefore, their principal method of getting elk was to trap them in deadfalls and pits.
Their hats were a masterpiece of design. They were conic in shape, made of the bark of cedar and bear grass (obtained in trade with upriver Indians) woven tightly together, and held in place by a chin strap. The shape “casts the rain most effectually,” Lewis noted on January 30. He and Clark found these hats so attractive and practical that they ordered two made-to-measure hats from a Clatsop woman. When the work was done, Lewis reported that they “fit us very well” and satisfied so completely that the captains bought hats for each of the men. Lewis remarked that the style of the hat “is that which was in vogue in the Ued States and great Britain in the years 1800 & 1801.”
The canoes beat anything Lewis or Clark had ever seen. “I have seen the natives near the coast riding waves in these canoes with safety and apparently without concern where I should have thought it impossible for any vessel of the same size to live a minute,” Lewis wrote on February 1. Some of the larger canoes were up to fifty feet long and could carry five tons or thirty people. They were “waxed painted and ornimented with curious images at bough and Stern.” Their paddles too were of a superior design. They chiseled out a canoe using only old files embedded in a block of wood as a handle. “A person would suppose that the forming of a large canoe with an instrument like this was the work of several years,” Lewis wrote, but, to his astonishment, “these people make them in a few weeks.”
So impressed was Lewis that he came as close as he ever did to praising the Clatsops and Chinooks. The canoes, he wrote on February 22, along with “the woodwork and sculpture of these people as well as these hats and their waterproof baskets evince an ingenuity by no means common among the Aborigenes of America.”
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“They are generally cheerfull but never gay,” Lewis observed. He described their games and their gambling proclivities, but apparently saw no dances or celebrations. For pleasure, he found that they were “excessively fond of smoking tobacco.” They inhaled deeply, swallowing the smoke from many draws “untill they become surcharged with this vapour when they puff it out to a great distance through their nostils and mouth.” Lewis had no doubt that smoking in this manner made the tobacco “much more intoxicating.” He was convinced that “they do possess themselves of all it’s [tobacco’s] virtues in their fullest extent.”
To Lewis’s approval, “these people do not appear to know the uce of sperituous liquors, they never having once asked us for it.” He assumed that the captains on the trading vessels never paid for furs with whiskey, “a very fortunate occurrence, as well for the natives themselves, as for the quiet and safety of thos whites who visit them.”
They were peaceful people who fought neither among themselves nor against others. “The greatest harmoney appears to exist among them,” Lewis wrote on January 19. Their chiefs were not hereditary. A chiefs “authority or the deference paid him is in exact equilibrio with the popularity or voluntary esteem he has acquired among the individuals of his band.” His power “does not extend further than a mear repremand for any improper act of an individual.” Their laws consisted of “a set of customs which have grown out of their local situations.”
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The Chinookan Indians at the mouth of the Columbia were at the center of a vast trade empire that ran from the Rocky Mountains to the Hawaiian Islands and on to the Orient. Lewis was keenly interested in how it worked and made such inquiries as he could.
“There is a trade continually carryed on by the natives of this river,” he learned, “each trading some article or other with their neighbours above and below them; and thus articles which are vended by the whites at the entrance of this river, find their way to the most distant nations enhabiting it’s water” (January 11).
The trading ships came to the Columbia in April and remained until October. The whites did not come ashore to establish trading posts; instead, the natives would visit them in their canoes, bringing furs and other items to barter. The ships anchored in today’s Baker Bay, which was “spacious and commodious, and perfectly secure from all except the S. and S.E. winds . . . fresh water and wood are very convenient and excellent timber for refiting and repairing vessels” (January 13).
No sailing vessel could possibly come to the Pacific Northwest from London or Boston in one year, which led Lewis to speculate that there had to be a trading post down the coast to the southwest, or perhaps on some island in the Pacific. He was wrong about the trading post, right about the island. Although he never knew of its existence, the trading base was Hawaii.
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Lewis was always interested in how Indian tribes treated their women. His comparisons were between one tribe and another, never between Indian male-female relations and those of Virginia planters and their women, much less slaveowners and female slaves.
He noted first that the Indians had no compunctions about discussing their women even in their presence, “and of their every part, and of the most formiliar connection.” They did not hold their virtue in high estimation “and will even prostitute their wives and daughters for a fishinghook or a stran of beads.” As with other Indians, the women did every kind of domestic work, but, unlike other tribes, Chinookan men shared the drudgery. Even more surprising to Lewis, “notwithstanding the survile manner in which they treat their women [the men] pay much more rispect to their judgment and oppinions in many rispects than most indian nations; their women are permitted to speak freely before them, and sometimes appear to command with a tone of authority.”
Old people were treated with rather more deference and respect than among the Plains Indians, in Lewis’s judgment because the old-timers among the Chinooks made a contribution to obtaining a livelihood. That observation got him off on a philosophical point. “It appears to me that nature has been much more deficient in her filial tie than in any other of the strong affections of the human heart,” he wrote. As far as he could tell, the Americans’ practice of seeing to the ease and comfort of their old folks was a product of civilization, not human nature.
As for the Plains Indians, when their men or women got too old to keep up on a hunt or journey, it was the practice of their children “to leave them without compunction or remose; on those occasions they usually place within their reach a small peace of meat and a platter of water, telling the poor old superannuated wretch for his consolation, that he
or she had lived long enough, that it was time they should dye and go to their relations who can afford to take care of them much better than they could” (January 6).
When Clark copied that passage, it reminded him of an experience he had had the previous winter among the Mandans. An old man had asked him for something to ease the pain in his back. “His grand Son a Young man rebuked the old man and Said it was not worth while, that it was time for the old man to die.”
The Chinookan people buried their dead in canoes. The craft were placed on a scaffold, with a paddle, furs, eating implements, and other articles. A larger canoe was then lifted over the canoe-casket and secured with cords. “I cannot understand them sufficiently to make any enquiries relitive to their religeous opinions,” Lewis lamented, “but presume from their depositing various articles with their dead, that they believe in a state of future existence.”
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Although Lewis never acknowledged it, obviously the Corps of Discovery could not have gotten through the winter on the coast without the Clatsops and Chinooks. They provided priceless information—where the elk were, where the whale had come ashore, who the ships’ captains were and when they came—along with critical food supplies. It was only thanks to the natives’ skills as fishermen and root collectors that the Americans were able to survive.
Lewis called them savages, even though they never threatened—much less committed—acts of violence, however great their numerical advantage. Their physical appearance disgusted him. He condemned their petty thievery and sexual morals, and their sharp trading practices. Except for their skill as canoe-builders, hatmakers, and woodworkers, he found nothing to admire in his winter neighbors.
And yet the Clatsops and Chinooks, without rifles, managed to live much better than the Americans on the coast of the Pacific Northwest. They had mastered the environment far better than the men of the expedition managed to do. The resources they drew on were renewable, whereas the Americans had shot out all the elk in the vicinity in just three months. With the coming of spring, the Corps of Discovery had no choice but to move on. The natives stayed, living prosperous lives on the riches of the Pacific Northwest, until the white man’s diseases got them.
* * *
I. It is used today by historians of the fur trade.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Jefferson and the West
1804–1806
From the spring of 1804 until the summer of the following year, President Jefferson had no direct communication with Lewis. People of that era accepted such anxiety. Much as he wanted to know about the safety, progress, and discoveries of the expedition, there was nothing Jefferson could do. He could not issue any orders, provide any warnings, consult on any decisions. He could only wait and hope.
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In July 1804, Jefferson got his first return on the investment in the Corps of Discovery. A delegation of fourteen Osage Indians, from present-day Missouri, whom Lewis had convinced to make the journey in April, arrived in Washington.
Captain Stoddard made the final arrangements. Horses, food, shelter, and soldiers for guides and security made it an expensive trip, but the often penny-pinching president considered it a good investment. “The truth is,” he wrote Secretary of War Dearborn, “the [Osages] are the great nation South of the Missouri, their possession extending from thence to the Red river, as the Sioux are great North of that river. With these two powerful nations we must stand well, because in their quarter we are miserably weak.”
The representatives of the Osage nation arrived on July 11—which chanced to be the day of the Burr-Hamilton duel at Weehawken. The Osage men impressed Jefferson mightily: “They are the finest men we have ever seen.” They were gigantic, he said, and noted with high approval that they were unused to spirituous liquor.
He intended to win their loyalty through a combination of bribes and threats, the traditional American Indian policy. “We shall endeavor to impress them strongly not only with our justice & liberality,” he wrote, “but with our power.”1
St. Louis businessman and friend of Lewis Pierre Chouteau accompanied the Osages as interpreter and general manager of the tour. Chouteau had his eye on the main chance; he met with Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, who sized him up thus: “He seems well disposed, but what he wants is power and money.” He asked for a monopoly on the Indian trade west of the Mississippi. “I told him this was inadmissable, and his last demand was the exclusive trade with the Osages. . . . As he may be either useful or dangerous I gave no flat denial. . . .”2
Thus did the intense competition between frontier businessmen for the Indian trade continue under new management. The Chouteau family, along with Manuel Lisa, Joseph Robidoux, and others were adept at currying favor with corrupt Spanish bureaucrats for precious trading licenses with the western tribes. And no wonder: it was the most immediate and by far the most profitable source of wealth in the trans-Mississippi West.
There was a ritual to the Indians’ visits: they were taken to the cities (Philadelphia, New York, Boston), some cannon were fired for their edification, troops paraded, and then they called on the president.
Jefferson’s speech to the Osages, given in the President’s House, was typical: “You have furs and peltries which we want,” he said after announcing that he was their new father, “and we have useful things which you want.” But a mutually beneficial commerce could not begin until the United States knew more about the Osages and their country. “For this purpose I sent a beloved man, Capt. Lewis, one of my own household to learn something of the people with whom we are now united, to let you know we were your friends, to invite you to come and see us, and to tell us how we can be useful to you.”
When Lewis returned, “we shall hear what he has seen & learnt, & proceed to establish trading houses where our red brethren shall think best, & to exchange commodities with them.”
Jefferson went on, in a passage that is almost poetry: “It is so long since our forefathers came from beyond the great water, that we have lost the memory of it, and seem to have grown out of this land, as you have done. . . . We are all now of one family, born in the same land, & bound to live as brothers; & the strangers from beyond the great water are gone from among us. The great Spirit has given you strength, and has given us strength; not that we might hurt one another, but to do each other all the good in our power.” He concluded, “No wrong will ever be done you by our nation.”3
(Two weeks later and more than a thousand miles west, Lewis made the same points in his speech to the Otos, and persuaded Chief Little Thief, two other Otos, three Pawnees, and a Missouri Indian to visit the president.)
In the fall of 1804, the Osages returned to St. Louis, thence on to their homes on the Osage River. According to Major James Bruff, who had replaced Captain Stoddard as commandant of the newly created Department of Upper Louisiana, they were “puffed up with ideas of their great superiority to other nations” because of all the presents they had been given and the attention lavished on them.4
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That same fall, Jefferson began to get garbled reports on Lewis’s progress. On November 6, he wrote Reuben Lewis, “I have the pleasure to inform you that we have lately received thro a channel meriting entire confidence,I advice that on the 4th of Aug. he [Lewis] was at the mouth of the river Plate, 600 miles up the Missouri. . . . Two of his men had deserted from him.” According to the informant, Lewis’s plans were to send one of his boats and half the men back to St. Louis before winter set in. In the spring, he would leave half the remaining men with the Mandans, to make corn for his return, and would proceed with the rest to cross the mountains and journey to the Pacific.
That was sketchy, and only about half true, but it was something. Jefferson, typically thoughtful, sent it on to Lewis’s brother so that Reuben might inform his mother that her oldest son was safe so far.5
On November 5, Major Bruff passed on an even more garbled report that he got in St. Louis from some French trappers w
ho had been on the Missouri River that summer. They told Bruff that “two of [Lewis’s] boatmen deserted . . . that the others were much dissatisfied & complained of too regid a discipline. I am not, however, disposed to give full credit to their story, as they report other unfavourable circumstances that cannot be true:—Such as a difference between the Captains &c.”6
That was awfully thin, and we may suppose that Jefferson joined Bruff in doubting the possibility of trouble between the captains, but it was the only news Jefferson was to get until the summer of 1805, following Corporal Warfington’s arrival in St. Louis with the keelboat and the dispatch from there of the captains’ reports, maps, and specimens to Washington.
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For practical purposes, Lewis and Clark were almost as out of touch with the civilized world as Columbus had been. Even parties of experienced soldiers sent out to find them, couldn’t.
The search for Lewis came about because the commanding general of the U.S. Army was secretly a Spanish spy, code name “Agent 13.” General James Wilkinson (born in 1757) was a fabulous if despicable character. As an officer in the revolution, he had entered into the Conway Cabal (a group trying to supplant General Washington), and from then until his death in 1825 he never met a conspiracy he didn’t embrace. Charming, amoral, shrewd, a high risk-taker, and a survivor, he was a double agent. As Donald Jackson writes, “One never really knows at any given time whether Wilkinson is acting on behalf of the United States, Spain, or—as was often the case—his own arcane greed for power and money.”7
He had betrayed Washington; he betrayed his superior, General Anthony Wayne, intriguing against him for his job; he betrayed George Rogers Clark, his rival for popular leadership in the West, spreading rumors and telling lies about him; he betrayed his country when he swore to Spain in 1787 that he would work for the secession of the western states from the Union.
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