Lewis needed a fellow officer to share the burden of command, help plan the journey, and take over leadership should anything happen to him. He needed a man he could trust, preferably a friend. He thought immediately of William Clark, his senior officer on the frontier.
The president approved his suggestion. He knew the Clark family, too. They had once lived near him in Albemarle County as well, although they moved to eastern Virginia before Clark was born and then to the Kentucky frontier. Like most children there, William grew up with little schooling. He knew a great deal about life in the wilderness but little about grammar. His journals contain many imaginative misspellings.
Clark was the youngest of six boys; five had been soldiers in the Revolution. William was born too late to take part in that war, but he spent nearly eight years in the Army and fought at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, which was credited as the decisive victory in the Northwest Indian War. After the Treaty of Greenville opened up the Ohio country for American settlement the following year, Clark was chosen to scout Spanish positions on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers for General Wayne, his commander. Meriwether Lewis, joining Clark’s rifle company in 1795, found the outgoing lieutenant not only an able commander but a friend. The following year, however, poor health and financial problems at home forced Clark to resign, and for the last seven years, he had been living on Mulberry Hill, his family’s plantation in Kentucky.
On June 19, Lewis wrote to Clark, telling him of the expedition and suggesting he take part in it. Although Lewis had been named leader of the expedition by Jefferson, he courteously offered Clark a partnership: “If therefore there is anything under those circumstances, in this enterprise, which would induce you to participate with me in it’s fatiegues, it’s dangers and it’s honors, believe me there is no man on earth with whom I should feel equal pleasure in sharing them as with yourself; I make this communication to you with the privity of the President, who expresses an anxious wish that you would consent to join me in this enterprise.”
By July, Lewis had received no answer from Clark, and he became impatient to begin the expedition. On July 26, he wrote to Jefferson to say that a fellow officer, Lieutenant Moses Hook, would be happy to accompany him if he did not hear from Clark.
But it was more than a month before Lewis was able to leave Pittsburgh. The boat builder had promised the boat would be ready on July 20, but the vessel was not completed until August 31. In the meantime, Clark’s answer arrived, and the great adventure became the Lewis and Clark - not the Lewis and Hook - Expedition.
Clark had not delayed in answering; the mail had taken a long time going to and from his Kentucky farm. He had answered Lewis’s letter the day after receiving it, after discussing the adventure with his brother. “This is an amence undertaking fraited with numerous dificulties,” he wrote, “but my freind I can assure you that no man lives with whome I would prefur to undertake & share the Dificulties of Such a trip than yourself.”
Although Lewis had promised Clark that he would be equal in rank, and the president had requested a captain’s commission for him, the War Department made him only a second lieutenant, a grade lower than his rank when he had resigned. Clark was disappointed, and Lewis wrote to his friend: “I think it will be best to let none of our party or any other persons know any thing about the grade, you will observe that [it] has no effect upon your compensation, which by G d, shall be equal to my own.”
While their slow exchange of letters delayed their meeting, the American negotiators in Paris had been successful. Napoleon, with his affairs in the Americas going badly, and a war with Britain looming, offered to sell all of Louisiana for $15 million. It was more than the Americans were authorized to pay, but would more than double the size of the United States – at a cost of less than three cents an acre. The Americans snatched up the bargain.
The agreement was dated April 30, 1803; the news reached the United States on July 14, meaning Lewis and Clark would be traveling on American territory as far as the Rocky Mountains. Once across the Continental Divide, the expedition would be in the Oregon country, which stretched from the mountains to the Pacific, and from California northward. The United States laid claim to this region based on the discovery of the Columbia River in 1792 by Captain Robert Gray, who named the river after his ship, the Columbia. Great Britain and Spain also claimed Oregon, but the United States’ claim was a strong one, and the explorations of Lewis and Clark would strengthen it. Jefferson immediately wrote to tell Lewis the news.
The day the long-overdue keelboat was completed, Lewis started down the Ohio with his dog Seaman, a half dozen recruits, and a heavily laden pirogue. The water was so low that horses or oxen had to be hired at times to drag the boat across shoals. Clark joined them at Louisville, Kentucky, with more volunteers, and the two made their way down the Ohio, purchasing another pirogue as they went. When they reached the Mississippi, they traveled to the village of St. Louis and established their winter camp opposite the mouth of the Missouri.
All winter, they worked, planned, recruited more men, and readied every detail. By mid-May 1804, the expedition was prepared to depart. By early June, the little “Corps of Discovery” was on its way up the river that was to be its road to hardship, adventure, and glory.
On May 26, 1804, Lewis made an exhaustive entry in the Corps of Discovery’s orderly book, detailing the group’s organization for the journey upstream. Most of the orders concerned the expedition’s two most essential activities: getting enough to eat and maintaining a strict guard.
The three sergeants, John Ordway, Nathaniel Pryor, and Charles Floyd, were assigned specific duties aboard the keelboat. Meanwhile, the French “patroon” was responsible for the watermen on the red pirogue, and Corporal Warfington was given command of the white pirogue.
“One Sergt. shall be stationed at the helm, one in the center on the rear of the starboard locker, and one at the bow,” wrote Lewis, arranging for the three men to alternate duties on the keelboat each day. The sergeant at the helm, responsible for steering the boat, ensured that no baggage, “cooking utensels or loos lumber” were stored on the decks, and kept an eye on the compass.
The sergeant at the center was to “command the guard, manage the sails, see that the men at the oars do their duty; that they come on board at a proper season in the morning, and that the boat gets under way in due time.” The sergeant was also charged with looking for topographical features that might interest his captains, “attend to the issues of sperituous liquors,” and post sentries whenever the boat stopped. He was part of reconnaissance parties dispatched to explore “the forrest arround the place of landing to the distance of at least one hundred paces;” at night, this radius was to be increased to 150 paces. To those duties, Lewis added a regular check on the mooring of each boat.
The sergeant at the bow was to keep a lookout “either of the enimy, or obstructions” and to report “all perogues boats canoes or other craft which he may discover in the river, and all hunting camps or parties of Indians in view of which we may pass.” He was given a pole to help the French bowmen, Cruzatte and Labiche, maneuver the boat through the currents and around the shifting sandbanks of the Missouri River.
Additionally, each sergeant was ordered to keep a daily journal, and Ordway also was responsible for issuing provisions and scheduling men for guard duty. Each sergeant had eight men in his squad, one of whom was appointed cook, or as Lewis put it, “Superintendant of Provision.” In exchange for exemption from guard duty, pitching tents, and collecting firewood, the cooks had the challenge of making the expedition’s rations palatable. “Lyed corn and grece” were issued one day, “the next day Poark and flour, and the day following, indian meal and poark; and in conformity to that rotiene, provisions will continue to be issued to the party untill further orders.”
Since the expedition’s stores did not include vegetables or fruit, the men ate the fruits that grew in the woods and on the prairies: plums, raspberries, currant
s, grapes, and gooseberries. At least once, Clark’s servant, York, swam across the river to gather fresh greens and watercress for the evening meal. Despite this, many of the men suffered from dysentery and boils. Clark believed the dysentery came from drinking river water, but the boils were likely the result of the men laboring from sunup to sundown in eighty- to ninety-degree temperatures. Clark noted: “Worthy of remark that the water of this river or some other cause . . . throws out a greater preposn [proportion] of Swet than I could Suppose could pass thro: the humane body. Those men that do not work at all will wet a shirt in a Few minits & those who work, [the sweat] will run off in streams.”
The two captains were keen on impressing everyone they met, friendly or hostile, with the expedition’s military strength and vigilance. They ran their party like a miniature army, with regular arms inspections and firm discipline. In the evenings, however, the men not on guard duty were able to relax around the campfire with their liquor ration, or dance and sing to the music of Cruzatte’s violin.
On June 29, Collins’s liking for liquor got the better of him once more. While standing guard over the expedition’s whiskey supply, he and Private Hugh Hall tapped a barrel. At dawn, they were arrested. Collins pleaded not guilty to the charge of “getting drunk on his post this morning out of whiskey put under his Charge as a Sentinel and for Suffering Hugh Hall to draw whiskey out of the Said Barrel intended for the party.” A court-martial headed by Pryor sentenced Collins to 100 lashes. Hall got fifty.
Some two weeks later, Private Alexander Willard – from New Hampshire, and an assistant blacksmith under John Shields - fell asleep on guard duty. Technically, this grave offense merited the death penalty, but Lewis and Clark let Willard off lightly with “one hundred lashes, on his bear back, at four different times in equal proportion.” By drawing out the punishment, they likely hoped to make an impression on Willard’s comrades, and they succeeded. Not one member of the expedition failed in his guard duties in the months to come.
Through June and the first three weeks of July, the only people they saw were white fur traders, who passed them on rafts loaded with furs and buffalo tallow bound for St. Louis. On July 4, the expedition honored Independence Day by naming the waterway they were on – near present-day Atchison, Kansas – Independence Creek.
On one raft, they met an old French-Canadian, Pierre Dorion, who had lived for years among the Sioux tribes and spoke their language fluently. The captains were lucky in persuading Dorion to travel with them - once they reached Sioux territory, he would act as their interpreter. In the meantime, he provided a wealth of information about the land they had come to explore. Lewis agreed to pay Dorion an interpreter’s salary, and also bought from him 300 pounds of buffalo grease, “which we use to repel insects.”
On July 21, the expedition arrived at the mouth of the Platte River, which flows into the Missouri near the present-day city of Omaha, Nebraska. They had trouble getting through the many sand bars formed by the meeting of the rivers, but the two captains and several men went a mile or so up the Platte in one of the pirogues. Clark “found the Current verry rapid roleing over Sands, passing through different Channels none of them more than five or Six feet deep.”
The Oto Indians lived near the Platte River, so when Lewis, Clark, and their crew camped the following day, Drouillard and Cruzatte were sent to bring the Oto chiefs in for a council. While their comrades made oars and dried out their supplies, the two leaders were “much engaged” copying out their maps and notes to send to Jefferson. After two days, Cruzatte and Drouillard returned to report that they had found only deserted villages; the tribe was hunting buffalo farther to the west. Once the party was on its way again, it had better luck. On July 28, Clark wrote, “G Drewyer brought in a Missourie Indian which he met with hunting in the Prarie. This Indian is one of the fiew remaining of that nation, & lives with the Otteauz [Otos].”
This man, the first Indian they met, was a grim reminder of what the diseases of European traders and settlers had done to the native inhabitants. Smallpox was the worst, wiping out entire villages. Even ailments such as measles, considered relatively minor by the whites, killed the Indians, whose bodies had no built-in resistance. The Missouri nation had been so decimated by disease and wars with other tribes that the remaining handful had moved in with the Otos. The Otos in turn had been so weakened that they had moved up the Platte River to be within the protection of the Pawnees.
The Missouri Indian was sent back with a French boatman named La Liberté, and told to bring his people and the Oto chiefs to meet the expedition at its next stop.
The following day, Clark made notes on a new animal: “Joseph Field Killed and brought in an Anamale called by the French Brarow, and by the Panies [Pawnees] Cho car tooch this Anamale Burrows in the Ground and feeds on Flesh, (Prairie Dogs) Bugs & Vigatables his Shape & Size is like that of a Beaver, his head mouth &c. is like a Dogs with Short Ears, his Tail and Hair like that of a Ground Hog.”
The animal Clark had such a difficult time describing was the badger, common in Europe but previously unknown in America.
On the evening of August 2, fourteen Oto and Missouri Indians arrived at the camp with a French interpreter who spoke their language, but without La Liberté. They exchanged formal greetings and gifts of food: roast meat, pork, flour, and meal to the Indians; “Water millions [melons]” from the Indians in return. Since this was their first encounter, Clark noted, the expedition spent the night with “every man on his Guard & ready for any thing.”
The next morning, Lewis and Clark met the six chiefs on a ridge overlooking the river, under an awning made of the keelboat’s mainsail. The captains explained that there was now a new government to take care of the Indians and gave “Some advice to them and Directions how they were to conduct themselves.” Each chief replied in much the same manner: He was happy about the change in government, he hoped the captains would recommend him to the Great Father (the President), and his people were eager for more trade. From their twenty-one bales of “Indian presents,” the captains gave medals of three different grades to chiefs of differing importance.
After the gift-giving, Lewis created a sensation by firing the expedition’s air gun. Air guns had been in use in England for some thirty years, but they were rare in the United States. Since they could compress enough air to fire several shots and were almost as accurate as a rifle, Lewis had purchased one in Philadelphia in case the expedition’s powder ran out. His weapon held the Indians spellbound.
Four days later, on August 7, Drouillard and three others were sent out after the missing La Liberté. Drouillard was also to look for Private Moses Reed, who had not been seen since he left camp on August 4, on the pretext of retrieving a knife he had left behind.
On August 18, they returned with Private Reed and a party of Oto chiefs, who had come, as requested, for further council with the captains. La Liberté had also been captured but had escaped again. Reed was court-martialed the same day and confessed: “. . . he ‘Deserted & stold a public Rifle Shot-pouch Powder & Ball’ and requested we would be as favourable with him as we Could consistantly with our Oathes - which we were and only Sentenced him to run the Gantlet four times through the Party & that each man with 9 Swichies Should punish him and for him not to be considered in future as one of the Party.”
In the meantime, Reed would have to remain with the expedition as a laborer until the extra soldiers returned to St. Louis the next spring. The punishment was carried out immediately, much to the concern of the Oto chiefs. But when the European’s customs were explained to them, the chiefs “were all Satisfied with the propriety of the Sentence & was Witness to the punishment.”
Once it was over, the captains talked to the Otos about their constant state of warfare with neighboring tribes, and, following Jefferson’s instructions, tried to convince them to live in peace. Since it was Lewis’s thirtieth birthday, “the evening was closed with an extra gill [quarter-pint] of whiskey and a Dance un
till 11 oClock,” both of which probably made a greater impression on the Indians that all the talk about peace. Not three weeks earlier, on August 1, William Clark had marked his thirty-fourth birthday on the Platte River.
On August 19, Clark noted unhappily: “Serjeant Floyd is taken verry bad all at once with a Biliose Chorlick [colic] we attempt to relieve him without success as yet, he gets worst and we are much allarmed at his Situation, all attention to him.”
Floyd had been ill three weeks earlier, but had apparently recovered. On the twentieth, however, his condition became so serious that a short time after starting, the expedition was forced to stop under some bluffs. Clark noted in his journal that “every man [was] attentive to” the sergeant, principally Clark’s slave, York. Floyd’s last words were to Captain Clark: “I am going away - I want you to write me a letter.”
“We buried him,” Clark wrote in his journal, “on the top of the bluff 1/2 Mile below a Small river to which we Gave his name, he was buried with the Honors of War much lamented, a Seeder [cedar] post with the Name Sergt. C. Floyd died here 20th of august 1804 was fixed at the head of his grave.” The gravesite in present-day Sioux City, Iowa, now includes a monument – a 100-foot-high sandstone obelisk, second in size only to that of the Washington Monument – that was dedicated in ceremonies on Memorial Day 1901.
Sergeant Charles Floyd would be the only fatality of the journey. Nothing could have saved his life; modern doctors believe his appendix ruptured. Two days after Floyd’s death, Lewis and Clark ordered the men to nominate three candidates and elect a new sergeant. Patrick Gass, a barrel-chested Irishman, was selected. A first-class carpenter, he would prove an excellent sergeant.
Lewis and Clark Page 2