Snowbound and Eclipse

by Richard S. Wheeler

  “Ah, Capitaine, tell me every grand thing.”

  I laughed. “Well, first of all, I want you to meet a friend of ours, Chief Big White of the Mandans.” I spotted the translator. “Jessaume, come help us out, and bring the chief.”

  “It is so? This is a Mandan sauvage?”

  “We’re taking him to meet the president, and maybe put together an alliance.”

  “Ah! A concord.”

  Jessaume arrived with the chief and his family, and the translation proceeded in French, which let me out. But that was fine. I had things to do.

  A short swart Spaniard I knew slightly, who had been hovering about like a bumblebee, saw his chance and approached.

  “Manuel Lisa, Captain. It was a formidable journey, and we are pleased. Have you a moment?”

  I nodded, reluctantly.

  “Are there perhaps beaver up the Missouri?”

  I laughed; that was answer enough.

  “And what are the little impediments to reaching them?”

  I could see where this was heading. “The Sioux,” I said. “They block the river.”

  “Could they be pacified, or stupefied, with gifts?”

  “We weren’t able to, sir.”

  “How many would it take to break through?”

  “More than you can hire, and I doubt that the government would let you.”

  “Are the British trading up there?”

  “They certainly are. Nor’westers, mainly.”

  “Do they have the tribes in their possession?”

  “Yes, mostly they do.”

  He was stroking his small jet-haired beard. “And have you a map showing the beaver streams?”

  “Mister Lisa! I haven’t been on shore but half an hour!”

  “I shall await your instruction,” he said.

  I turned, discovering half a dozen men lusting after our words. St. Louis was a city built on furs; these were entrepreneurs, fur men, blotting up my every word, concupiscent for beaver that could earn them a bonanza. I grinned, perhaps cynically. I knew the sort. St. Louis was not so much celebrating our safe return as it was celebrating the opening of a Golconda. About our survival, about our reaching the Pacific, about a river route to the Pacific, about our charting an uncharted continent, they were indifferent; about the streams habited by Castor canadensis, they were ardent students.

  “More later, gents,” I said, seeing their disappointment. Fortunes, empires, monopolies, rivalries, lives of ease hung on every word I breathed, but I had no time for that. We had a guest and his family, half awed, half afraid, stiff as a plank, and needful of my comforts.

  “Jessaume, tell brother Big White we’re going to take them to the big chief’s house and get them settled,” I said.

  The translator repeated that in Mandan, and soon the somber Mandan, a big, lumbering man gotten up for the occasion in his finest ceremonial leathers, and his entourage were trailing me, along with half of St. Louis, as I hiked upslope, past warehouses and then mercantile firms along the Rue Principale, on up to the decaying Spanish military post.

  I found our men stacking their arms in stands, in an orderly’s quarters under the supervision of Patrick Gass.

  “Good,” I said. “Who’s in command here?”

  “Don’t know, Captain. They’re all down to the water thinking up ways to get rich.”

  I took matters into my own hands, surveyed the old seat of government in Upper Louisiana erected by the Spanish, studied a dusty barracks that appeared unused, and rejected the idea of putting the Mandans in there. These savages were tribal royalty. Big White was a king. I would give my coppery brother a king’s billet.

  I found General Wilkinson’s chambers, but no Wilkinson, made a swift decision, and put Big White and his family in them, explaining to Jessaume, who barely grasped English, that this place was the very home of the American big chief, and Big White would be his guest for now. This was high diplomacy; the navigation of the Missouri River was at stake, and the friendly Mandans would be our passport.

  I liked Big White. He had a powderhorn full of courage to come down the river with us to meet his new Father, past his enemies the Arikaras, and the truculent Sioux, and there had been wailing aplenty when he stepped into our canoe. Most of his people thought they would never see him again.

  Big White nodded. I hoped it would do.

  “Tell him we’ll feed him just as soon as we can,” I said to Jessaume. “Settle yourself and stay with him.”

  The interpreter nodded. I didn’t much trust him, and never had, since meeting him on the way out to the Pacific.

  And then, for the first time since debarking, I had a moment to reflect. Where was that damned York? Never in sight when I needed him. Where would I billet myself? Probably in a tent somewhere, in my buffalo robe. What about the men? Turn them all loose?

  I found Sergeant Ordway posting the corps to that empty barracks. He approached me.

  “Don’t know what you intend, sir. Some signed on for the trip, and should be released. Most are still regulars, and still under command,” he said.

  I seconded that. “Look to their mess, and let ’em loose tonight. You, too. All the sergeants, all the corps, so long as there’s a guard here tonight. I’ll find out who’s commanding here.” I grinned. “Whether or not Captain Lewis comes up with some back pay, I don’t imagine you’ll suffer for the want of spirits.”

  He nodded wryly. We understood each other. For three years we had been understanding each other.

  I stepped into sunlight and found myself strangely alone, even though we had scarcely arrived. It was over. We were safe, but plentifully embroidered with boils and rashes and wounds. I had seen feet so lacerated I wondered how a man could put weight on them; men so ravaged I wondered how they could step one more time through hip-high snow. I had seen Meriwether vomit every last shred of camas root he had eaten, turn so sick I thought he’d expire; and most of the men, too. I’d been fevered and bilious more times than I could remember. I don’t know how we survived, though I credit Meriwether, who learnt something from Doctor Rush, and plenty more from his mother.

  Upper St. Louis was deserted and hushed. I hiked back toward the crowded levee, absorbing the city’s foul stench, fetid air, the cess in the mucky lanes, the stone structures with real glass in the windows, the temporary squared log ones. Not a brick had been set to mortar in St. Louis, yet stone mansions rose upslope, and shacks jostled one another everywhere.

  I wouldn’t stay here long. I knew exactly where I was headed. Miss Judith required my attention. As soon as we could put matters in order here, Meriwether and I would head east, stopping at Mulberry Hill, our family home near Louisville, en route.

  I remembered how she looked the last time I saw her, this cousin of mine, Judith Hancock. She was trying to deal with a disobedient horse. She was twelve, not yet a woman, a pretty thing, flat chested, in a girl’s brown skirts, bright-eyed. She captured me then. I named a river for her, Judith’s River, high up the Missouri. I had the same design then as now; when I got back—if I got back—I would head for Fincastle, Virginia, where Colonel Hancock resided, and put my designs forward.

  They were affluent people, the Hancocks, landed and comfortable, but I didn’t suppose I’d long be poor or unequal to their measure. Jefferson had promised me much: the captaincy had been turned down by the War Department, much to Meriwether’s disgust, but as for the rest, land warrants, back pay, bonus, I’d be comfortable … if Judy would have me. It had been a long time, and I hadn’t the faintest idea of her circumstance. I knew only my own condition, which was to make haste and claim her whilst I could. For nigh three years I had been thinking on it.

  Meriwether and I had talked much of what we would do: we needed first to see the president and present him with the fruits of our labors; not merely an account of our journey, but my maps, of which I am proud because I know they are true. And the specimens, pressed and skinned and pickled by the hundreds. We plucked them up. We s
hot them, skinned them, preserved them, and packed their bones. We had boxes and barrels full of them, diligently described by Meriwether, less by me, though I copied out many of his pages to give ourselves a duplicate record. All of that we would soon deliver to the President’s House in Washington City, or Monticello if Tom Jefferson so desired, for we had been faithful to his command, and except that our diplomacy with the tribes has to some degree failed, we had met his every objective.

  But first, I would put a letter in that post bag being delayed for us at Cahokia; and soon we will be rowing and poling up the Ohio to my family home on Mulberry Hill where my older brothers George Rogers and Jonathan will be waiting.

  3. LEWIS

  Pierre Chouteau took Will Clark and me into his home until we could find lodging. But today we rented a room from a tavernkeeper from Kentucky to store our baggage, of which we had considerable.

  I had scribbled furiously at my letter to Mr. Jefferson, and sent it off with discontent, knowing I had barely touched upon what needed saying. Ah, the impotence of words! But I took special pride in announcing that “in obedience to your orders we have penetrated the continent of North America to the Pacific Ocean, and sufficiently explored the interior of the country to affirm with confidence that we have discovered the most practicable route which does exist across the continent by means of navigable branches of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers.”

  I wanted the world to grasp the implications. So I emphasized the riches in furs, the commercial potential of Louisiana for the republic, and prated a little about our botanical and zoological collections and Indian vocabularies. And I did not neglect my co-commander, urging the president to make certain that Will received an equal measure of the rewards and emoluments of our perilous journey.

  I had an eye to publication, and wrote not only for the president but for the whole nation, not neglecting to tell the world what perils and hardships we had endured, and what progress we had made in charting the unknown continent upon which the republic had seated itself along one shore.

  I intended to pen a reprise of our experiences, and achieved that, though I knew I could not tarry long, for I was holding the government post. I drafted a letter for Will as well, which he copied in his own hand, and we sent George Drouillard canoeing across the Mississippi with our missives. And so it was that the news winged eastward, officially proclaimed by my own hand. I knew what the effect would be. Washington City would celebrate. But I much more wanted to hear what the sage of Monticello would say when I stood at his door. Well done, good and faithful friend.

  There was much to do that day, and the next days. Will and I found a half-deaf tailor who had several bolts of suitable black broadcloth, and had ourselves measured for suits of clothes and smallclothes as well, having nothing between our flesh and the public eye but the animal skins we had been reduced to wearing, and a few borrowed rags we were fitted out in until we could have some garments made up. We were both scarecrows.

  I for one regretted every moment I was clad in elkskin and doeskin, though the woodsman’s costume did have its effect upon the imaginations of those who beheld me, for my attire was a mark of my passage through a barbarous land. Still, I wanted my blue and white uniform, my gold thread epaulets, my lace, my well-blacked boots, my emblems of rank and honor, and felt naked without these proper ensigns of rank and position.

  Will grinned at me, but he had no proper care for his person, and often it showed in his mode of dress.

  “Try wooing in buckskins, and see whether you go nose to nose with your fair Judy,” I said by way of retort.

  He had no reply to that.

  I turned that day to other matters: the men needed cash and I had to provide it. By employing my power to sign warrants upon the government, I was able to get them some coin, though little of that existed in this rude city of St. Louis; and none of it in dollars. I got them two-bit pieces, dimes, doubloons, ducats, pieces of eight, shillings, francs, and all manner of coin that the city’s merchants provided by digging deep into their private hoards. Enough to help my doughty men buy what they needed, mainly pantaloons, shirts, ale, and women, for they were as reduced as I, and without means.

  I turned next to a matter most delicate and private. Prior to our departure, I was greatly assisted in medical matters by the Parisian doctor Antoine François Saugrain, a royalist refugee who had settled in St. Louis and brought within his mind the most advanced knowledge of medicine available anywhere, and a mastery of science unknown outside of Philadelphia. He had provisioned me with medical supplies and also shared his medical knowledge prior to the expedition. Now I turned to him for help.

  Several of my men suffered gravely from certain diseases of the flesh gotten from the savage women we had encountered along the way. This matter was so private that I made little mention of it in my public journals, but confined myself to reporting certain symptoms in some of my men, in particular Goodrich, Gibson, and MacNeal. What the enlisted men did was one matter; what the commanders did was quite another, and so I had chosen to write nothing, though in fact a certain disease had ravaged me in the autumn of 1805, and so severely that Will despaired of my health.

  Thus, this twenty-fourth day of September, I excused myself from the warm ministrations of my hosts, and set out to see the eminent Doctor Saugrain with the intent of seeing to the health of the men returned from the Pacific. I did not wish to make my visit known, and thus loitered about the Rue L’Eglise until no one was watching, and then I burst into his chambers.

  He welcomed me at once, this diminutive gentleman of four feet and six inches, and heard me out.

  “In short, sir, we are suffering from various venereal infections gotten from the savage women, and I wish to have you consult with my men. I will write the president and ask him to appoint you as an army surgeon, thus securing your pay and achieving a desirable privacy for the corps.”

  Saugrain eyed me sardonically, his pointed black beard bobbing as he weighed the matter.

  “My capitaine, step behind that screen and disrobe. Everything. Even the stockings. The bottoms of your feet will tell me much,” he said. “And your hands, oui, the palms.”

  “Ah, I’m talking about the men. Not the officers.”

  His response was a small ivory finger pointed at the screen.

  I surrendered. I had dreaded this moment, the shame of it, the revelation in it that I had lain with a savage woman long before. All the way up the Missouri I had ruthlessly resisted the opportunities thrown my way by eager chiefs and their eager women; but I imagined one lonely night when I was ahead of the corps, there in the Bitterroot Mountains, isolated from the world, that the Shoshones would be well insulated from this New World disease and that the chances of catching what Columbus’s crew brought to Europe would escape me. I would avoid the mortification and pain that attends the discovery of such congress by friends and family and even strangers. Was I not the explorer who had been the first to reach the Pacific? I could not endure the thought that a secret vice might sicken me and ultimately expose my folly to the world.

  How I rue that single night with the Shoshone woman, when I and three of my men had found Cameahwaite and his people, far in advance of Clark and the rest, who were toiling up the headwater streams east of the divide. The chief had given me a good buffalo-skin lodge and I had surrendered to my voluptuary passion, thinking myself safe enough. I was not. If I could but live my life over, I would excise that night from it. I have reproached myself a thousand times, aching with remorse and shame, but I cannot undo the bitter truth of that bitter night in the Bitterroot Mountains.

  I had treated numerous of our corps with the purgative calomel, mercurous chloride mixed into a salve, directing them to apply it to any chancres on their private parts or elsewhere, and directing them to ingest my pills in considerable quantities to alleviate the burning when they passed water, and to quell the outbreaks of chancres and rashes and infections on their flesh. And I had quietly taken the same course
s myself, though I made no note of it in the journal, and for some while not even Will was aware of it, though he soon figured it out.

  What interested Saugrain at first was the fresh wound through my buttocks, wrought by Cruzatte’s ball, which had been slow to heal and troubled me greatly, suppurating for weeks and healing improperly, so even now I could barely sit.

  “Now, sit yourself on the table there, and let me see the bottoms of your feet, Capitaine.”

  I raised a foot, then the other.

  “Bien. Were they sore?”

  “Yes. Blisters, about the time I was so sick in the fall of eighteen and five. I had to ride a horse. I couldn’t walk.”

  “Bien. Show me your hands, palms up. Those too?”

  “Yes, hard liverish lumps. They went away.”

  “I see. That is to be expected.”

  From within his gloomy office, stuffed with steel instruments of torture and morocco-bound books, I could see no part of the world; his examinations were well screened from prying eyes. And yet I felt a thousand eyes upon me as he studied the evidence of my folly, the healed-over chancre on my member; the scarce-healed pus holes of a ruined flesh. He hummed, sucked breath, touched no part of me, but bade me turn this way or that, and thus he took my entire measure, his small, delicate face creasing into frowns, his small lips pursed. He spent an amazing amount of time examining my skin, the inside of my mouth, my nostrils, and the rest of me as well, often with a magnifying lens.

  “Bien,” he said, which I took as a sign that I might restore my clothing.

  “The rest, they are like this?”

  “A few: I could not help Gibson; I fear for him.”

  “And yourself, mon ami.”

  The way he said it shot a chill through me.

  “It is far advanced, the stage deuxième,” he said. “You are perhaps entering the benign stage when it lurks out of sight, but the disease does not sleep, it crouches and waits. When did you, ah, acquire this badge of honor?”

  I thought back to that joyous moment when we had finally found the Shoshones in the folds of the Bitterroots, and the relief I felt when I learned we might obtain horses from them; and the joy they expressed when we gave them meat that Drewyer (as I’ve always spelled Drouillard’s name) had shot, for they were starved and intent upon going on a buffalo hunt. Oh, I remember those days and that sole night, when Will wasn’t around and the main body of the corps was far below, dragging the canoes over endless shallows, and I felt free and my secret would be safe.