Those were stern words for Jefferson, and he immediately softened them. He realized that the slowness of the mails might have been the cause; he said it was not until February that he had learned that the Arikaras had attacked Ensign Pryor’s expedition to return Big White to his people, and turned it back, with casualties (including the loss of George Shannon’s leg). This was a severe blow to the president, who had given his word that Big White would be returned home safely and soon.
As to his relations with Lewis, Jefferson had decided to “put an end to this mutual silence” and write himself, to ask for a report from Lewis on what he intended to do to return Big White: “We consider the good faith, & the reputation of the nation as pledged to accomplish this.” He hastened to add he did not want “any considerable military expedition” sent up the river “in the present uncertain state of our foreign concerns.” But he did authorize Lewis to get the job done “if it can be effected in any other way & at any reasonable expence.”
That statement from the president amounted to almost a blank check for Lewis, nearly as good as the letter of credit he had carried with him on the expedition—or so at least Governor Lewis chose to read it.
Jefferson passed on some welcome news: “A powerful company is forming for taking up the Indian commerce on a large scale.” It was headed by John Jacob Astor and would have a capital of one million dollars. Jefferson described Astor as “a most excellent man long engaged in the [fur] business & perfectly master of it.”
As to the bad news, relations with Britain were worse than ever, and the Congress was debating “whether war will not be preferable to a longer continuance of the embargo.” In politics, it looked as if the Republican nominee, Secretary of State James Madison, would easily defeat the Federalist Charles Pinckney, “but with this question it is my duty not to intermeddle.” Lewis’s friends and family in Albemarle were fine.
Jefferson’s closing line cut to the heart: “We have no tidings yet of the forwardness of your printer. I hope the first part will not be delayed much longer.”18
•
The journals were in St. Louis, and Lewis had not prepared a single line for the printer, who was in Philadelphia. Jefferson here offered him an opportunity to straighten out his misconception, but Lewis did not take it. He never answered the letter.
Nor did he reply to others. In August, Jefferson told Dearborn, “It is astonishing we get not one word from him.”19
The cause almost surely was Lewis’s chagrin at failing to prepare his manuscript for the printer. He knew how much it meant to Jefferson. He further knew how much it meant to his own financial future and to his reputation. Yet he did nothing.
Clark must have talked to him about publication. Still he did nothing. True, he was terribly busy, but he had an option—a man who could put more than five thousand dollars into land speculation could afford a five-hundred-dollar-per-year editor. Not that an editor could have done the job quickly or accurately, at least without Lewis’s active help, but hiring one would have meant some progress was being made. In addition, Lewis might have told Jefferson that it was impossible for the governor of Louisiana to find time to do the work himself. Had Lewis pointed this out and confessed to Jefferson that nothing had been done, the president could have helped, perhaps by getting the journals to Washington and putting some War Department clerks to work on them.
Jefferson must bear some of the responsibility. He could have pushed Lewis much harder. Dumas Malone comments that in this case “Jefferson, who was so tolerant of persons he trusted, may have erred on the side of patience.”20
•
Lewis found numerous opportunities to get out of the office, sometimes on horseback trips for land speculation, on other occasions to visit old army friends at Bellefontaine. He visited George Shannon in the hospital. He joined other Masons in St. Louis in establishing a Masonic Lodge in St. Louis, and agreed to serve as the first Master.21 He helped establish the first newspaper west of the Mississippi by participating in the financing of Joseph Charless’s Missouri Gazette, which printed its initial issue on July 22, 1808. The governor used it as an outlet for his pronouncements. On August 2, the paper printed the first half of Lewis’s long policy statement to Dearborn; he used the nom de plume “Clatsop.”
He also wrote occasional pieces for the newspaper. On November 16, 1808, he contributed an essay on “The True Ambitions of an Honest Mind.” It read, in full:
“Were I to describe the blessings I desire in life, I would be happy in a few but faithful friends. Might I choose my talent, it should rather be good than learning. I would consult in the choice of my house, convenience rather than state; and, for my circumstances, desire a moderate but independent fortune. Business enough to secure me from indolence, and leisure enough always to have an hour to spare. I would have no master, and I desire few servants. I would not be led away by ambition, nor perplexed with disputes. I would enjoy the blessings of health but rather be beholden for it to a regular life and an easy mind, than to the school of Hippocrates. As to my passions, since we cannot be wholly divested of them, I would hate only those whose manners rendered them odious, and love only where I knew I ought. Thus would I pass cheerfully through that portion of my life which cannot last always, & with resignation wait for that which will last forever.”22
These are ideals that Polonius would have approved, put in the stilted language the earnest young governor often used when he tried to express feeling. Some of the blessings he described, he enjoyed; others, not. He had a few faithful friends, most of all Jefferson and Clark. He lived in fairly simple accommodations. He was short of an independent fortune, but in sight of one. He often complained about his lack of leisure. He had but one servant, a free black man named John Pernier. His ambition was always in danger of leading him away, and he was cursed with disputes aplenty. His health was dependent on the medicines for malaria he regularly took. As to hatred, he perhaps had Bates in mind when he expressed the hope that he would hate only those who were odious.
•
“My life is still one continued press of business which scarcely allows me leasire to write to you,” Lewis told his mother in a letter of December 1, 1808. Of course he was not quite that busy, but that is the way a young man opens a letter to his mother when he suddenly realizes he has not seen her or written to her in over a year. Lewis’s first concern was for her health, but he expressed it with a complaint: “I sincerely hope you are all well tho’ it seems I shall not know whether you are dead or alive untill I visit you again.” With what can only be called a piece of gall from someone who had not written a letter to his family in a year, he went on: “What is John Marks and Edmund Anderson about that they do not write to me?” He wanted to know whether John Marks was studying in Philadelphia, whether Mary was married, and if so if she had moved to Georgia. “I know your feelings on this subject,” he continued. “I hope you will bear the seperation with your usual fortitude.”
Then he expressed a fantasy of his, one that he had not put into his Missouri Gazette article but nevertheless a blessing of great importance to him, to bring his family together in St. Louis. He already had Reuben with him. Now he told his mother that it was his hope “that I shall have it in my power in the course of a few years to bring you together again.” He explained that he would be offering John Marks “such inducements as will determine him to remove to Louisiana,” and that he had selected a thousand-acre farm for his mother, “with which I am convinced you will be pleased,” and was purchasing other land so that Mary and her husband could join them. He said he had paid out three thousand dollars for the land, with fifteen hundred more due in May 1809 and twelve hundred on May 1, 1810. To get the money, he was putting his inheritance—the farm on Ivy Creek—up for sale.
He closed with a promise to come to Virginia for a visit during the course of the winter.23
•
Through the second half of 1808, Lewis was involved in organizing the St. Louis Missouri Rive
r Fur Company. Among the partners were William Clark, Manuel Lisa, Pierre Chouteau, Auguste Chouteau, General Wilkinson’s brother Benjamin, and Reuben Lewis. Meriwether Lewis was assumed to be a secret partner. Not many details are known, but the general idea was to send a privately raised, publicly financed, very large expedition up the Missouri in 1809 to return Big White to his people. After the expedition got to the Mandan villages, the fur traders could go on to the mouth of the Yellowstone, where the company would enjoy a monopoly granted by Governor Lewis.
The scheme smacked of nepotism and reeked of conflict of interest, but to Lewis and the partners it made perfect sense. The government could not raise the force necessary to overpower the Arikaris and the Sioux; the partners had insufficient capital to finance the military part of such an expedition; the commander-in-chief had authorized Lewis to use whatever means seemed best to him, at whatever “reasonable” cost, to return Big White. The work of forming the company went forward.
•
In late July, Boilvin returned with four Indians. They were Iowas, and according to the Sauks and the Foxes they were the men who had committed the murder. Lewis said publicly that three of them would be hanged—after trial.
The trial was held on July 23. “The streets of St. Louis teemed with Indian warriors,” an observer reported. They incessantly harassed Governor Lewis and General Clark, beseeching pardon. The Iowa warriors were found guilty, but something must have bothered Lewis about the trial, for he ordered a new one, which was held on August 3. The Indians were again found guilty, but instead of hanging them, Lewis had them put in jail, evidently to await instructions.24
•
Not until mid-August did Lewis receive Dearborn’s letter of rebuke dated July 2; nor until then did Dearborn receive Lewis’s report of July 1—which was then passed on to Jefferson at Monticello, since Dearborn was in Maine. The maddening slowness of the mails made a difficult situation worse.
On August 20, Lewis replied to Dearborn. He got immediately to the point: “I shall in future . . . be as cautious with rispect to my requisitions on the regular troops as you can possibly wish me.”
Of course there was an immediate “but”: “When you take into view Sir, my great distance from the seat of the general government, surrounded as I am with numerous faithless and savage nations [it is obvious] that many cases will arrise which require my acting before it is possible I can consult.” That got him into a convoluted sentence of explanation: “I have ever thought it better not to act at all than to act erroniously, and I shall certainly not lay myself liable hereafter to the censure of the executive under this head, tho’ I shall ever feel a pleasure in exercising to the best of my judgment and abilities such discretionary powers as they may think proper to confide to me.”
He went on at great length to defend what he had done. After nearly a thousand words on the subject, he concluded: “This has been an extreemly perplexing toilsome & disagreeable business to me throughout and I must candidly confess that it is not rendered less so at this moment in reflection than it was in practice from the seeming disapprobation which you appear to have to the measures pursued.”25
Jefferson, meanwhile, replied on August 21 to Lewis’s July 1 report to Dearborn. Although he had privately expressed fear that Lewis had been too prompt “in committing us with the Osages,” he told Lewis only that he regretted “that it has been necessary to come to open rupture with the Osages, but, being so, I approve of the course you have pursued in permitting the other nations to take their own satisfaction for the wrongs they complain of.” Indeed, the commander-in-chief was willing to go further and supply the guns and ammunition the Indians attacking the Osages would need, a strange action for a man who wanted peace among all the inhabitants of Louisiana.
But Jefferson did not approve at all of sending the Boilvin expedition to snatch the accused murderers from the Sauks and the Foxes, and hoped that nothing had happened yet. If Boilvin had brought in some accused Indians, Jefferson told Lewis to “give time,” for “Indulgence on both sides is just & necessary” in such cases.
Like every nineteenth-century president, Jefferson could not set and hold to a consistent Indian policy. This reflected the pressures he was under. On the one side, there were questions of morality and law and order, and certainly the white frontiersmen committed many an outrage on the Indians before crying for help when retribution came. On the other side, the Indians could not be controlled with good intentions, and American citizens had to be protected. Jefferson hoped it could be done without bloodshed, but controlled they must be. Jefferson told Lewis, “Commerce is the great engine by which we are to coerce them, & not war.” The operative verb in the sentence was “coerce.”
Thus, in the Boilvin matter, Jefferson approved of Lewis’s requisition for arms and militia expenses, but in passing this along to Dearborn he expressed the hope that Lewis would be able to settle with the Sauks and the Foxes without war, “to which he seems too much committed.”26
From the territorial governor’s point of view, that was a lovely sentiment, but too mushy for practical affairs. As Lewis had put it in his report to Dearborn, “I sincerely hope that the general government in their philanthropic feelings towards the indians will not loose sight of the safety of our defenceless and extended frontiers.”27
Three days later, Jefferson again wrote Lewis. He had just heard of Lewis’s statement in early July that three Iowas were to be hanged for murder. He hoped it would not be done, “as we know we cannot punish any murder which shall be committed by us on them even if the murderer can be taken. Our juries have never yet convicted the murderer of an Indian.” If a hanging was necessary, he instructed Lewis to limit it to one man, the “most guilty & worst character,” because only one white man had been killed. (Lewis kept the Indians in jail, from which they escaped in the summer of 1809.)
Jefferson next turned to a much more important matter, one on which Lewis had been inexcusably lax, as far as Jefferson knew. “I am uneasy,” the president wrote, “hearing nothing from you about the Mandan chief, nor the measures for restoring him to his country.”
Once more, Jefferson authorized in advance any measures Lewis might consider necessary, saying that the return of Big White “is an object which presses on our justice & our honour. And farther than that I suppose a severe punishment of the Ricaras indispensable, taking for it our own time & convenience.” The president signed off, “I repeat my salutations of affection & respect.”28
•
Lewis spent much of his time on the routine business of government. His duties put him in contact with men who had been or would be famous, most notably Daniel Boone and Moses Austin. He appointed Boone justice of the district of Femme Osage. He had various dealings with Austin, who held lands west of St. Louis that were rich in lead. Austin expressed his “confidence” in Lewis but warned him that the bickering parties in the territory would attempt to drive a wedge between the governor and Secretary Bates; Austin later commented that a breach between the two “has already taken place and Governor Lewis has expressed his dissatisfaction of the Secretary’s conduct.”29
Indeed, Lewis had dismissed a number of officeholders, some of them Burrites who had been appointed by Wilkinson, others friends of Bates.30 In the process, he made enemies. The governor created what amounted to an Indian territory, access to which by whites would be controlled by him. His purpose was to prevent claim-jumpers and squatters from taking up lands; there was much grumbling about this. When he issued orders suspending all trading with the Great Osages, he made more enemies.
•
When Clark established Fort Osage near the river by that name, he negotiated a treaty establishing a boundary line. When the Great Osages learned that the treaty forbade them to cross to the east of the line, they complained that they had never understood the treaty and anyway only the Little Osages had agreed to it. Lewis then commissioned Pierre Chouteau to go to Fort Osage and negotiate a new treaty.
&n
bsp; Lewis’s instructions to Chouteau were solidly in the tradition of treaty-making with the Indians. A line should be drawn that “assures to them, for their exclusive use, the lands west of the boundary line.” That was a backward way of saying the Osages would be selling the land east of the line. Any Osages who refused to make their mark on the treaty “can have no future hopes . . . for it is our unalterable determination, that if they are to be considered our friends and allies, they must sign that instrument, and conform to its stipulations.” Those who obeyed would have trade goods aplenty, plus a blacksmith shop and the horse-power mill Clark had brought to St. Louis. Those who resisted would be cut off completely from all trade goods.31
The Osages did as they were told, adopting the treaty on November 10, 1808. It was ratified by the U.S. Senate, unanimously, on April 28, 1810.
The governor enacted a law to permit villages to incorporate as towns, and laid out a road from St. Louis to Ste. Genevieve, Cape Girardeau, and New Madrid. He oversaw the construction of a shot tower and arranged for the exploration of nearby saltpeter caves.32
•
Lewis’s relations with Clark were excellent, as always. He borrowed money from Clark regularly. On one occasion he recorded in his account book, “Borrowed of Genl. Clrk this sum [$1] at a card party in my room.” On another occasion he borrowed $6, which he then loaned to his brother, Reuben. On October 7, it was $50 for an unstated purpose. On October 28, Clark loaned him $49.50 for two barrels of whiskey.33
In August, when one of Clark’s slaves ran away, Lewis gave York $4 for his expenses as he searched for the man. That indicates a high level of trust in York, but nevertheless Clark was upset with York.
York was demanding his freedom as his reward for his services on the expedition. His wife belonged to someone else and lived in Louisville, Kentucky. When Clark refused to free him, York asked to be allowed to go to Louisville. Clark agreed to send him there, but only for a visit. In a November 9, 1808, letter to his brother Jonathan, Clark explained that he would “send York and premit him to Stay a fiew weeks with his wife, he wishes to Stay there altogether and hire himself [a fairly common practice; York was proposing to hire himself out and send the money his labor earned to Clark] which I have refused. he prefers being Sold to return[ing] here, [but] he is Serviceable to me at this place, and I am determined not to Sell him, to gratify him, and have derected him to return . . . to this place, this fall. if any attempt is made by York to run off, or refuse to proform his duty as a Slave, I wish him Sent to New Orleans and sold, or hired out to Some Sevare Master untill he thinks better of Such Conduct. I do not wish him to know my determination if he conducts himself well.”
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