From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  “Aye, Fanny. A lot of land.” He shifted in his chair. “Let me tell you a story you might not remember, so’s y’ll understand what I’m askin’ ’em for. This is a good story. Ma and Pa and the boys used to like it, but I think you were too wee-bitty to’ve understood it back then.”

  “Good, a story. How long since you told me a story!” She sounded eager as a young girl. She crumpled her chin and was blinking.

  “So, then. It was right after I captured Vincennes, in ’79. Most impressed by the happenings was a Piankeshaw chief there, named Sonotabac; Tobacco’s Son, we called him.”

  “I remember his name.”

  “This chief was so bumfuzzled by what we did that he trailed me around like that black dog o’ Cap’n Lewis’ does him. He proclaimed himself a Big Knife, my brother, and he tried to give me anything I’d take. He offered me squaws, wanted to get some Long Knife blood in the veins of his people. He offered—”

  “Did, did you accept the …”

  George grinned at her and slapped his thigh. “You and Pa! Ha, ha! That was his first question, too! Well, the answer is no. As I told that panderin’ Indian, no thankee, I’m already betrothed. And so, next day he …” Fanny was about to interrupt to ask him about that betrothal, that old half-secret romantic episode she and her sisters had always wondered about, but George put up his hand to shush her and went on: “Next day that chief came to me and he offered me the deed to a huge, huge tract o’ land that his tribe controlled. I say huge. About one hundred and fifty thousand acres it amounted to when I surveyed it out. Think o’ that!”

  “One hundred and fifty thousand!”

  “Right. And listen, baby sister: D’ ye know where that land is?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sittin’ on it this minute.” Her mouth dropped open. “Aye,” he said. “This little parcel this house is built on is one corner of it. The rest of it’s up there and over there.” He swept his hand north and east. “The Illinois Regiment Grant. My old boys and their families live on it. You know the meetings I go to in Louisville every month? I still administer all that land for all my old troopers. It’s the last public service I’ll ever do, and I reckon I’ll do it long as I can walk and talk. Y’ didn’t know that was the story o’ this land, did you?”

  She was shaking her head. “But, but did you give it to them, or what?”

  “Back to my story, and y’ll understand. Y’see, when that Piankeshaw offered me that land, I doubted I could accept it all as a private man. Because then, what I was, all I thought I was, was a soldier for Virginia. So I took that deed, and put it in trust for the State of Virginia.”

  “My heavens! And could it have been yours?”

  “As well as I can make out the laws, yes. But what happened then was, I gave that deed to Virginia, as this tract fell in their charter lands. Well, then, Sister, when the war was over, and it was time for the State to reward my regiment o’ heroes with the land it’d promised ’em, Virginia didn’t want to give that land to my boys, because it was on this side of the river. D’you know,” he said, now jabbing his forefinger into the palm of his hand, “I had to go to Capitol and all but do corporal harm to those bedamned Assemblymen—years it was I fought those snot-snifflin’ picayunes!—before they’d grant those promised lands to my boys? And it was this land as’d been given to me!” She was shaking her head slowly, making silent Os with her mouth. He went on: “Sister, I know you’ve heard my old tunes of lament so long and so loud you probably try to stop up your ears to ’em by now. But that about this land is just like everything else that’s been done me, and compared with the rest it’s so niggardly you’ve never heard me speak of’t.”

  “Oh, George! This I can hardly believe! I’ve known what-all Billy was fighting for in your cause, but … this too!”

  “Aye. This too. And so, that’s that bedtime story. The share o’ this Illinois Regiment Grant I finally got for my pains was some ten thousand acres. Most of it the creditors took from me. I signed a great spread of’t over to Pa so those vultures couldn’t snatch it, and this little piece we sit on is all I have left me. That’s the story, and now here’s what I aim to do, baby sister,” he said, picking up the quill again and twirling it before her eyes. “Right now—I mean, as soon as I have another tongueload o’ persimmon juice to wash the putrid taste o’ begging out o’ my mouth—I’m going to write me a letter to the Committee on Public Lands at Congress. And I’m going to tell Congress that same bedtime story, and I’m going to ask for a hundred and fifty thousand acres—a same-size tract as I gave Government—somewhere out of the Public Lands. Either in this territory I won ’em, or out in that Western country Tom Jefferson’s just bought from Bonaparte. Now, the land-grabbers are already all over this old territory like ants on a bread crust. But that beyond the Mississippi, where Billy’s headed now, why, it’s next to boundless, I’d say, and I reckon I deserve some parcel o’ that before the ants get it. I know that sounds like a big asking, a hundred fifty thousand acres. But it only amounts to one five-thousandth part of what I won for this country, and they’d be damned mean to deny me that.” He sipped the brandy and savored it on his tongue, and adjusted the paper in just the right position. “Our friend Senator Breckenridge says he’ll take the letter to Congress for me,” George muttered, “and then I’ll sit here and wait and pray there’s a shred o’ conscience somewhere in Congress.”

  “If,” she said, “if they gave you land out West, would you leave us and go there?”

  He looked and saw the woebegone look in her eyes, and chuckled. “Why, no, Fanny, what I’d do is sell it, and if I got a fair price I might pay off the rest o’ these damned debt-vultures and pass the rest of my years in peace. Or …” Now he paused and got that long look in his eyes again. He was remembering the rich Mississippi bottomlands near St. Louis, the vast spaces beyond. “Or maybe if there was some left over, I might remove there. And then I’d bring the rest of ye there after me. And maybe there we’d all find the peace and plenty I brought you here for, eh? How would you like to pass the rest o’ your days in sight of the greatest river of ’em all, eh, Fanny?”

  She smiled, and the little dimples appeared in her mouth corners. “I see it’s true what I’ve been thinking just lately: There’s just no bounds on what this family can dream, is there?”

  “No. A body can dream as far as a star, as Ma would say. Now excuse me, Fanny, as I’m going to tell Congress a bedtime story.”

  It was an hour later when he had finished recounting the history of the land tract in his letter, and when he looked up from it the fire was low, and Fanny’s chair was vacant. The house was still; even the old servants had retired from their noisy duties in the kitchen. George decanted a little more liquor. His brain was rushing with its own familiar night-hum, and from far down the hill came the sound of the rapids. He wrote again, his pen scratching, while the tall clock across the room woodenly ticked the seconds away.

  … I engaged in the Revolution with all the Ardour that Youth could possess. My zeal and Ambition rose with my success, determined to save those frontiers which had been the seat of my toil, at the hazard of my life and fortune. At the most gloomy period of the War, when a Ration could not be purchased on Publick Credit, I risked my own, gave my Bonds, Mortgaged my lands for supplys, paid strick attention to evry department, flattered the friendly and confusd the hostil tribes … and carried my point.

  Thus at the end of the War I had the pleasure of seeing my Country secure. But with the loss of my Manual activity, and a prospect of future indigence—Demands of very great amount were not paid, others with depreciated Paper—Suits commenced against me for those sums in Specie

  My Military and other lands, earned by my service, as far as they would extend were apropreated for the paymt of those debts, and demands yet remain to a considerable amount more than the remains of a shatterd fortune will pay

  This is truly my situation—I see no other recorce remaining but to make applicat
ion to my Country for redress—hoping that they will so far ratify the Grant as to allow to your Memorialist an equal quantity of land now the property of the United States.…

  There. He had done his begging. And having scraped so low, it was less hard to beg even more abjectly for any bone they might toss him if they wouldn’t give him the lands. So he added:

  … or such other relief as may seem proper.

  Then he signed it and thrust it far across the table in disgust.

  He sat in the ticking stillness now with his glass in his hand and gazed into the coals and thought back to that higher and happier part of the day, when he had attended the start of William’s brave new venture. He raised his glass to the level of his eyes and, although he was alone in the room, he said aloud:

  “Godspeed ye, youngster, to the Western Sea. Here’s to your dream o’ sweet glory. And may they never ever curdle yours as they did mine.”

  32

  CAMP WOOD, ILLINOIS COUNTRY

  May 14, 1804

  Proceded on a jentle brease up the Missourie.

  —from the journal of William Clark

  The bow cannon bucked on its swivel and belched smoke and its boom rolled away over the broad brown Mississippi. The crowd of farmers and hunters on the shore whooped and stamped and fired their guns into the air. Two barefoot boys, frowning with self-importance, freed the mooring lines from the pilings and threw them to the crew. And the Discovery, low in the water with her ten-ton cargo, slowly parted from the muddy riverbank where she had lain all winter. With her flag flapping at the stern, she swung out onto the sun-glaring expanse of water. A sergeant’s deep voice called a cadence, the oars, eleven on a side, began rising and dipping, swishing and dripping, and sluggishly the boat began to move across the current toward the distant mouth of the Missouri.

  God, but she’s a ponderous barge of a thing, William thought. He stood on the roof of the poop-deck cabin looking down along the rows of faces of the men on the cars, and thought of the hundreds and hundreds of miles they would have to row this overloaded floating fortress against the Missouri’s current, and he felt a wave of pity for them. They would be like galley slaves, as George had said, though right now they all looked as cheerful and eager as a boatload of excursionists on a Sunday outing. Master Sergeant Ordway stood like a slavemaster calling the measure out in a deep, round voice. “Yo-oooooooo, heyyyyyyy. Yo-ooooooo, heyyyyyyy.” Beside William, Sergeant Charles Floyd stood with the tiller under his arm, squinting past the mast into the afternoon sunlight, and he looked as if he were straining with all his might to keep himself from laughing aloud with joy.

  On the deck of the bow fifty feet forward stood the two Missouri Creole river pilots, Cruzatte and Labiche, who had agreed not only to accompany the expedition all the way, but to enlist as privates in the U.S. Army—a remarkable commitment for two independent voyageurs. Cruzatte, small and wiry, was an extraordinary creature. Having but one eye, and that nearsighted, he was nevertheless known as the best riverman on the Missouri. He was also a master of sign language and the Omaha Indian tongue, and could play a fiddle to make one’s legs twitch. To William he seemed like a combination of the riverman Manifee and George’s old one-eyed steersman Davy Pagan, and thus sure to be full of good luck.

  In a bright red dugout pirogue ahead of the keelboat were eight more local Frenchmen who had been attached to the party, but these were only temporary. They had been hired to paddle that canoe with its freight only as far up the Missouri as the Discovery could navigate, and there they would be transferred to the big boat and help bring it back down to St. Louis. Six American army privates also were on such temporary duty, and at this moment they were rowing a smaller pirogue, painted white, which moved alongside the red one. These two vessels were also heavily laden, carrying supplies and equipment that had overflowed the keelboat. Friend Lewis had thought of an astonishing number of things to bring along, and although every item made sense in terms of the expedition’s purpose, William felt almost overwhelmed by the sheer mass and variety of things. Lewis had spent most of the winter across the river in St. Louis, purchasing more supplies and interviewing traders and officials, leaving to William the enormous tasks of training the men and listing and packing all the equipment and provisions.

  William took a last look back at Camp Wood, the cluster of cabins that had been the first winter quarters of the Corps of Discovery: the trampled parade ground, the planks and broken barrels and skids, the rifle targets off against the shore, the bare flagpole. Here William had spent the busiest winter of his life, hammering the forty-five boisterous, headstrong, hard-drinking volunteers into a disciplined, spirited crew, weeding out those who weren’t quite right for the rigors ahead. Here he had redesigned the keelboat’s superstructure according to Brother George’s recommendations, adding the hinged, bulletproof lockers, and ridgepoles for a canopy to shade the rowers. And here he had labored for weeks packing and making inventories of the thousands of items of food, tools, and weapons, ammunition, navigational instruments, medicines, liquors, papers, notebooks, ropes, clothes and boots, tin, iron, and blacksmith tools, and a profusion of Indian gifts, enough of every conceivable necessity to last the expedition for at least two years in a vast wilderness which was a complete blank on every map and which might or might not be hospitable to human life. Lewis had acquired several new inventions, through the War Department and other sources, that he felt might sometime save them in an emergency. The gunpowder was in heavy lead canisters with watertight screw-on lids; when emptied, the canisters could be melted down to make rifle balls. He had obtained many big tins of portable soup, dried and fortified with iron, which might feed the Corps someday when the hunters could get no game meat. He had bought an airgun, a rifle powered by compressed air in a brass globe. It was an inaccurate and erratic weapon—in fact, Lewis had slightly wounded a woman in one of the Ohio River towns with it last fall while demonstrating it for a crowd of spectators—but he imagined that Indians would be impressed by the magic of a gun that shot without smoke or noise. Lewis also had had made at a forge in Harper’s Ferry a folding boat frame of iron rods—his own invention, which he believed could form the skeleton of a large cargo boat if covered with animal skins—just in case they might someday need to build a boat where there was no timber. And so its ninety pounds had been added to the huge load the rowers were pulling. And one of his most remarkable purchases had been a quantity of Dr. Saugrain’s chemical matches: small glass tubes that, when broken to expose their contents to air, would create flame. These would certainly amaze the Indians; they had already amazed the troops, who had always lived in a world dependent on flint and steel for fire-starting. Lewis’s fondness for useful novelties apparently was one result of his long exposure to President Jefferson, and his thoroughness in equipping his expedition likewise reflected the thinking of his mentor in the White House. But it had nearly driven William Clark out of his wits at Camp Wood, as the endless trickle of Lewis’s purchases had come over from St. Louis, filling and surpassing the available space. He had constantly revised the manifest, even while training and indoctrinating the soldiers. It was Meriwether Lewis’s expedition in name, but as far as the men of the Corps of Discovery were concerned, they were William Clark’s men.

  Even now, at what William considered the true start of the voyage, Lewis was missing. He was still at St. Louis, attending to last details with the Army agent there, and was going to ride overland and join the boat at a village several miles up the Missouri.

  Still, William had lost none of his faith in Meriwether Lewis. William would have preferred a smaller, less-burdened party, and would have trusted their ability to live off the land, to improvise things rather than carry everything that could possibly be needed. But Lewis had explained convincingly his reasons for every item he had purchased, and certainly had engaged enough strong-backed soldiers to move it all along. Lewis was thorough, and thus it was a big expedition. That was just the way it was. The rowers were s
trong, and the thirty-two-foot mast was rigged to carry a large squaresail that would augment their muscle power. All the same, it was going to be an ordeal. William had been up and down the Mississippi a couple of times on freightboats, and he knew how that rowing could be. Usually it was done by Negroes, not white men like these.

  Well, give them their whiskey ration every day and I reckon they’ll bear anything, he thought.

  He had never seen such a collection of whiskey lovers. Except for Private Bratton, who drank none, and two or three others who could live without it, most of these frontier soldiers seemed to need whiskey more than food. During the tedious months of winter bivouac, they had drunk as their official army rations about 180 quarts a month, but that had only been enough to prime them. A family of bootleggers had moved in near Camp Wood and, despite orders banning them from the camp, had continued to infiltrate the garrison and sell their gut-blistering product all winter long. Most of the breaches of discipline had been committed by soldiers drunk on duty—especially by those whose duty it had been to guard the army whiskey from the others.

  Eh, well, William thought. No matter; look at ’em now that they’re sober and have something to do.

  They were really as hardy and handy a set of men as ever he’d seen, and he knew their qualities pretty well. Several who had volunteered for the expedition last fall had backed out during the winter when they began to understand the distance and dangers that lay ahead, and now William was sure of the ones he had left, almost to a man. Almost.

  He looked hard for a moment at the smirky young face of Private John Collins, a Marylander recruited from Kaskaskia. Collins had too quick a tongue sometimes, too quick to retort and too quick to lie. One of the best hunters, he had been sent out one winter day to get meat, and had returned with a skinned haunch that he had tried to pass off as bearmeat. The next day William had sent around the neighborhood to inquire of local farmers whose hog it was. Aye, this Collins had the earmarks of a blackguard. But he had good qualities too, and would have a chance to prove himself.