President’s Message
!
!!
Jane Randol Jackson
New literature on the weapons of Lewis and Clark
Historic Trails & Communities
LCNHT Interactive Map Updates
Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation / www.lewisandclark.org
Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation / www.lewisandclark.org
November 2011 Volume 37, No. 4
May 2013 Volume 39, No. 2
T HE SHostile
EARCH FORRelations
C LARK ’ S E LUSIVE
Y ELLOWSTONE
C ANOE C
AMP
Between
Blackfeet
And
American Fur Trappers
KARL BODMER, BLACKFOOT CHIEF AND PEIKANN CHIEF, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.
"Our Canoes on the River Rochejhone" by Charles Fritz, 19 inches by 16 inches, oil on board
Thomas Jefferson, A Moose,
The Early History of We Proceeded On
and the Theory of American Degeneracy
Reflections on William Clark
Contents
President’s Message: What Would Lewis and Clark Do?
2
Letters: Suicide Theory Challenged
4
L&C Roundup: Remembering Ruth Lange,
6
Short Tempers and Long Knives:
8
Frank X Walker named Kentucky Poet Laureate,
Clymer Masterpiece on Exhibit, Artists on the Trail
Hostilities Between the Blackfeet Confederacy
and American Fur Trappers from 1806 to 1840
The geographic location of the Blackfeet Confederacy, the
confederacy’s alliance with the British, the inclusion of the
Atsinas in the confederacy, and materialistic competition that
developed as a result of the fur trade all led to hostile relations.
A Blackfoot Indian on Horseback, p. 8
By Jay H. Buckley
We Proceeded On
A look back at the creation and early years of our historical journal.
19
By Barb Kubik
William Clark: Reflections on His Interactions
with Family, Native Nations, and Landscapes
Clark’s legacy in the West is intrinsically tied to his relationships
and encounters with family and friends, American Indian nations,
and landscapes of the East.
25
By Jay H. Buckley
Book Reviews: Weapons of Lewis & Clark Expedition
35
Soundings: Updates to the Lewis and Clark National Historic
36
Trail Interactive Map
Jim Peterson and Bev Hinds, p. 21
On the Cover
WHEN SIOUX AND BLACKFEET MEET,
BY C.M. RUSSELL, COURTESY OF THE SID
RICHARDSON MUSEUM, FORT WORTH, TEXAS
A moment of furious fighting involving
three individuals from two of the most
feared tribes on the plains tells the
history of war at close quarters.
William Clark, p. 25
President’s Message
What Would Lewis and Clark Do?
May 2013 r Volume 39, Number 2
WE PROCEEDED ON is the official publication
of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage
Foundation, Inc. Its name derives from
a phrase that appears repeatedly in the
collective journals of the expedition. © 2013
E. G. Chuinard, M.D., Founder
ISSN 02275-6706
Interim Editor and Designer
Wendy Raney
Eileen Chontos, Chontos Design, Inc.
Volunteer Proofreaders
)$BSM$BNQr+FSSZ(BSSFUU
Printed by Advanced Litho
Great Falls, Mont.
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
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Robert C. Carriker
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Spokane, WA
Gary E. Moulton
Carolyn Gilman
Lincoln, NE
St. Louis, MO
Philippa Newfield
+BNFT)PMNCFSH
San Francisco, CA
Louisville, KY
Wendy Raney
Barb Kubik
Chair
Vancouver, WA
Cascade, MT
Membership Information
Membership in the Lewis and Clark Trail
Heritage Foundation, Inc. is open to the
public. Information and applications are
available by writing Membership Coordinator,
Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation,
P.O. Box 3434, Great Falls, MT 59403.
WE PROCEEDED ON, the quarterly journal
of the Foundation, is mailed to current
members in February, May, August, and
November. Articles appearing in this journal
are abstracted and indexed in HISTORICAL
ABSTRACTS and AMERICA: HISTORY AND LIFE.
Annual Membership Categories:
Student: $30
Individual: $49
Individual 3-Year: $133
Family/International: $65/$70
Trail Partner: $200
Heritage Club: $100
Explorer Club: $150
+FGGFSTPO$MVC
Discovery Club: $500
Lifetime: $995, $2,500 and $5,000
The Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Inc.
is a tax-exempt nonprofit corporation. Individual
membership dues are not tax deductible. The
portion of premium dues over $40 is tax deductible.
2
!
We Proceeded On May 2013
S
ometimes I
embark on
a personal mental
exercise by asking
the question: “What
would Lewis and
Clark do right
now?” That is, if
President Barack
Obama were to give
explorers a mission
in 2013, what would
that endeavor be?
Just as the Corps
of Discovery
“proceeded on” From left, Dan Sturdevant, Tyler Frisbee, staff member for
through challenges Congressman Earl Blumenauer, D-OR, and Lindy Hatcher.
and trials 210 years Most of Dan and Lindy’s 12 congressional office visits involved a
ago, the corps of the 10- to 15-minute meeting with a congressional staff member who
Lewis and Clark works on land, water, and trail issues.
Trail Heritage Foundation proceeds
modern explorers are interested in
on today.
exploring the ocean floor and outer
Lewis and Clark would be surprised
space. Astronauts on the U.S. Apollo
to know the Lewis and Clark Trail
moon missions embarked about the
Heritage Foundation has carried on
same year that the Lewis and Clark
their “darling project” to be keepers
National Historic Trail was created by
of the story and stewards of the trail.
Congress. The Space Shuttle missions
Like the captains, our organization
followed and were quite successful,
has had ties to the nation’s capital,
although Challenger and Columbia
especially during the Lewis and Clark
ended in disaster. Now, robot rovers
Bicentennial. We continue to be a
are conducting Mars explorations called
national leader, in concert with federal,
Spirit and Opportunity. They roam the
state, and tribal organizations, to
red planet and send back photos of what
protect, promote and extend the
appears to be water. More recently,
reach of the Lewis and Clark National
private individuals are considering plans
Historic Trail.
to send tourists into space.
Recently, Lindy Hatcher and I
Scientists also are probing inner space.
represented the Lewis and Clark
Exploration into microscopic matter and
Trail Heritage Foundation at a “Hike
subatomic particles, nanotechnology,
the Hill” event sponsored by the
and other quantum physics is leading
Partnership for the National Trails
them where no one has gone before.
System and the American Hiking
We seek cures for diseases and other
Society. We visited the offices of a dozen
solutions to pressing questions.
members of Congress in February to
Like Lewis and Clark, humankind
talk about land and water legislation
remains engaged in war and
and other bills related to the Lewis and
peace, seeking ways to overcome
Clark National Historic Trail.
disagreements, breaking down racial,
Lewis and Clark were interested
national, and economic barriers, and
in exploring the unknown, just as
living in peace with one another. As
our country and our world advance,
how are people living together, despite
the clash of cultures and traditions?
How are the Native American tribes
that Lewis and Clark encountered—
especially after the facing the challenges
that started with European arrival?
Lewis and Clark lived in a time
when the government was in debt,
international relations were in turmoil,
and a major political shift had resulted
from the last presidential election.
The captains had to find ways to
use their resources and improvise
to make ends meet. The bulk of the
funds held in trust by the Lewis and
Clark Trail Heritage Foundation is
invested as endowed funds supporting
trail stewardship. While the recent
stock market rise has helped the funds
recover to 2008 levels, those funds
are reserved for projects like the trail
stewardship grant program that we
launched two years ago. We carefully
use these endowment funds for the
benefit of the Lewis and Clark National
Historic Trail. We feel optimistic about
the long-range future of the Lewis
and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation
and we express our gratitude to those
whose forward thinking helped make
this possible. We encourage our readers
to make a donation.
A current financial phenomenon
among nonprofits is symbolized by
the statement, “Don’t break into jail.”
An organization may have endowed
funds, which have limits on how
and when withdrawals can be made,
even if the current office budget
suffers. The Lewis and Clark Trail
Heritage Foundation needs to grow
our endowments (and we have limited
capacity to draw from them), but
we also require operating funds.
Operating expenses for the office and
We Proceeded On depend largely on
annual membership dues, our annual
appeal letter, and contributions from
members like you. We have pared
down our expenses to meet constricting
budgets. We thank you for your past
support and encourage you to offer
your continued support.
Lewis and Clark also faced
publication pressures and obstacles.
Lewis’s efforts to publish their journals
were challenged by several editors
who initiated and stopped production.
Eventually they were published in 1814.
Our quarterly journal, We Proceeded
On, has had the good fortune to have
had some great editors for extended
periods of time. Jim Merritt and then
Wendy Raney edited the journal for
more than a decade. Since Wendy
started her family, we have had editors
step in, including Caroline Patterson.
Caroline just received her “dream job”
and will not be able to continue as
editor. Wendy Raney graciously agreed
to step in as interim editor of this issue.
We will be announcing the hiring of
a permanent editor who will assume
responsibility for the August issue. Our
intent is for our new editor to be on
board for at least five years. We believe
this continuity will be a great blessing
for the journal and for the organization.
Meanwhile, we encourage you to start
writing articles for this publication.
We thank you for your continued
support of this, our excellent journal,
We Proceeded On.
I want to thank Jay Buckley for his
help in writing the above.
–Dan Sturdevant
President, LCTHF
Two great ways to explore the Trail!
IDAHO’S OUTDOOR ADVENTURE RESORT
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hot tubs and spectacular views. Enjoy fine dining and
a superb wine list at the Syringa Café. Bring your family
or friends to explore the Trail or go on one of our
whitewater rafting or gentle float trips. There's also
hiking, fishing, biking and more!
www.RiverDanceLodge.com
Grab a paddle and
board one of ROW’s
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ROW provides all equipment, professional guides,
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“The expert help of ROW’s strong,
young canoeists who prepared our
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extraordinaire made the trip
as enjoyable as it was easy.”
–Gary Moulton, Editor,
Lewis & Clark Journals,
University of Nebraska Press.
www.ROWadventures.com
For a free brochure about River Dance Lodge, Missouri River trips,
ROW's whitewater rafting trips, as well as international adventures
including history-oriented yacht cruises in Croatia, Turkey or
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"!7@("7-=:,4-6-
E5)1416.7#!(),>-6<=:-;+75
May 2013 We Proceeded On
"
3
The Lewis and Clark Trail
Heritage Foundation, Inc.
Letters
P.O. 3434, Great Falls, MT 59403 406-454-1234 / 1-888-701-3434 Fax: 406-771-9237
www.lewisandclark.org
The mission of the LCTHF is:
As Keepers of the Story ~
Stewards of the Trail, the Lewis
and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation,
Inc. provides national leadership
in maintaining the integrity of
the Trail and its story through
stewardship, scholarship, education,
partnership and cultural
inclusiveness.
OFFICERS
President
Dan Sturdevant
Kansas City, MO
Immediate Past-President
+BZ#VDLMFZ
Provo, UT
Vice-President
Margaret Gorski
Stevensville, MT
Secretary
Larry Epstein
Cut Bank, MT
Treasurer
Clay Smith
Port Townsend, WA
DIRECTORS AT LARGE
Della Bauer, Omaha, NE
Sue Buchel, Great Falls, MT
,FO+VU[J$BNBSJMMP$"
Barbara Kubik, Vancouver, WA
Ron Laycock, Benson, MN
Gary Moulton, Lincoln, NE
.BSL/FMF[FO0TILPTI8*
Philippa Newfield, San Francisco, CA
Richard Williams, Omaha, NE
Incorporated in 1969 under
Missouri General Not-For-Profit
Corporation Act. IRS Exemption
Certificate No. 501(c)3, Identification
No. 510187715.
4
!
We Proceeded On May 2013
Lewis Suicide Theory
Challenged
I read with dismay and disappointment
another article in WPO (November 2012)
about the cause of Meriwether Lewis’s
death. This time we are presented with
the meaning of phraseologies Thomas
Jefferson used in correspondence
following Lewis’s death. An interesting
premise in the article is that Jefferson
never visited or ordered a federal
investigation of the site of Lewis’s death
and he accepted, without question, an
account of the incident written by a total
stranger, James Neelly.
All points made in the article by John
and Thomas Danisi support the theory
that Lewis killed himself, accidentally,
to end the torments of acute malaria
and, in Jefferson’s words, “distressing
hypochondriac affections,” which are
therein revealed as digestive disorders.
We also are led to an examination of the
term “intermittent paroxysms” as well as
various observations and explanations of
Lewis’s bouts of depression.
The article obviously is written by
good researchers and would present a
compelling story if it were not for the
fact that we already have information
that precludes the acceptance of the
Danisi theory, no matter how well
organized it is.
First of all, the validity of the letters
written by Major James Neelly and Captain
Gilbert Russell is in question. Did those
men actually compose the letters? Surely
the Danisis have seen the published findings
of modern handwriting professionals who
testify that they were forgeries.
Secondly, the story of the final leg
of Lewis’s journey from Fort Pickering
to Grinder’s Stand in September and
October of 1809 must be discounted as
fabrication. Major Neelly’s whereabouts
prior to and after the death of Lewis
must be examined by serious researchers
in light of recent discoveries noted in The
Death of Meriwether Lewis, A Historic
Crime Scene Investigation, by James
Starrs and Kira Gale. Among other
discrepancies in the story of that trip,
we now have evidence that James Neelly
was in court in Franklin, Tennessee, on
October 11, 1809, and did not arrive
at Grinder’s Stand as he claimed in his
letter to Jefferson. Franklin is more than
a day’s ride from Grinder’s Stand.
Lewis was traveling in a violent and
volatile environment, especially when
one considers the potential damage
Lewis could have caused General James
Wilkinson and his associates if he had
been allowed to arrive in Washington.
The various competing conspiracies
demand a close examination of Lewis’s
remains at Grinder’s Stand. This will
allow science an opportunity to quantify
a definitive pathway to the truth rather
than a continued stream of scholarlypresented speculations. It would be
cause for real excitement to see fine
researchers such as the Danisis direct
their considerable talents in the direction
of something that is waiting for serious
and long-deserved revelation.
John P. (Jack) Young
Mt. Pleasant, SC
Author Responds to
Challenge
Mr. Young , in his letter above, addresses
compelling ideas on Meriwether Lewis’s
death by calling attention to the Neelly
and Russell letters and who really
composed them. I am happy to report
that those concerns are fully explained in
my book, Uncovering the Truth About
Meriwether Lewis (2012, Prometheus
Books): 154-67, 168-77. These two
chapters also include additional
handwriting samples, unavailable in 2009
to Starrs/Gale, that prove who wrote the
letters and for what purpose.
Mr. Young also raises a formidable
challenge that dedicated researchers
WE PROCEEDED ON
(Back issues, 1974 - current)
All back issues of our quarterly historical journal are available.
Some of the older issues are copier reproductions.
Orders for a collection of all back issues receive a 30 percent discount.
Order your missing issues to complete your set.
Call 1-888-701-3434 or order
at [email protected].
$10 originals or cds
$4 shipping & handling
A copy of the bond summoning Captain
James Neelly to appear in court in
Williamson County.
should direct their talents in the
directions of long-deserved revelation.
Would Meriwether Lewis’s court martial
trial fall into that category? I think not;
however, for the past one hundred years,
it has been assumed that Lewis was
intoxicated and challenged a superior
officer to a duel. Then we find out in
2012 the opposite and that this superior
officer wanted to teach Lewis a lesson.
How do we know this? Direct and
incontrovertible evidence is documented
in my new book.
This is what is seriously lacking
today in Meriwether Lewis scholarship,
authentic documented evidence. I
challenge Mr. Young or anyone else who
has a theory about James Neelly, James
Wilkinson, or the “various competing
conspiracies,” to find the evidence to
support their assumptions. Until they
do, we should view those arguments, no
matter how convincing, as fiction.
Thomas C. Danisi
St. Louis, MO
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May 2013 We Proceeded On
"
5
L&C Roundup
Passages: Ruth Lange
Ruth Kincaid Lange, age 88, passed away December 14,
2012, at Park Manor Nursing Home in The Woodlands,
Texas. Ruth was born February 24, 1924, at home in the
rural community of Indian Point in Menard County,
Illinois. In 1947, Ruth graduated from Washington
University in St. Louis and its School of Nursing. She
worked as a nurse in New Orleans, several cities in
California and at the Naval Hospital in San Diego,
California. At the end of her active duty in the Navy, Ruth
married Robert Lange, whom she had met in St. Louis.
They made their home in Portland, Oregon, for 50 years.
Bob and Ruth helped found the Lewis and Clark Trail
Heritage Foundation and published We Proceeded On.
Frank X Walker named
Kentucky Poet Laureate
Very few people, other than Bob, knew all the things Ruth
did for LCTHF. She helped edit articles and proofread
WPO, and served as Bob’s sounding board and right hand
in all projects they worked on for the Oregon Historical
Society and the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation.
Dayton Duncan recognizes her on pages 378 and 379 in his
book, Out West.
Bob and Ruth jointly received the Foundation’s
Meritorious Achievement Award in 1983 and 1989. Ruth
later donated Bob’s extensive collection of Lewis and Clark
books to the Fort Clatsop Library.
Ruth was a special lady, one much admired, and now
sorely missed by those who knew her. She was preceded
in death by her husband. She is survived by several nieces
and nephews.
in Buffalo Dance is taken from a letter
William Clark wrote to his brother
November 9, 1808. Regarding York
he says, “… if any attempt is made by
york to run off, or refuse to provorm
Danville, Kentucky, native Frank X
his duty as a Slave, I wish him Sent to
Walker recently was named Kentucky
New Orleans and Sold, or hired out
Poet Laureate for 2013-14. At 51, he
to Some Severe master untill he thinks
is the youngest to be appointed to
better of Such Conduct.”
this esteemed position. He is the first
In the accompanying poem, York
African-American to be tapped for
speaks of missing his wife because of
this honor.
the three years spent assisting Lewis
Walker is the founder of the
and Clark. “I fear that next time I sets
Affrilachian poets, who celebrate
my eyes on her might be my last.”
African heritage and roots, giving voice
Walker recently wrote Isaac
to traditional values associated with
Murphy:
I Dedicate This Ride, a
family, land, food, artistic community,
collection
of poems that lauds the
music, and transformation.
accomplishments
of legendary African
Much of Walker’s poetry brings
American jockey, Isaac
history alive. Two
Burns Murphy (1861 –
of his collections,
1896). Walker’s poems
Buffalo Dance: the
allow us to hear the
Journey of York and
voices of Burns, son of
When Winter Come:
a slave; his wife, Lucy;
the Ascension of York,
his trainer, Eli Jordan;
examine York’s role on
and his parents.
the Lewis and Clark
As Kentucky’s Poet
Expedition. York’s
L a u r e a t e , Wa l k e r
point of view is
will travel the state
expressed in the
reading from these and
poems, but quotes
Frank X Walker has written two
other works. A gifted
from primary source collections of poetry on York.
teacher, he says he
documents are used
wants
to
serve
as
a role model for kids,
to educate the reader. For instance, an
like
himself,
who
come from humble
epigraph to the poem titled “Souvenir”
6
!
We Proceeded On May 2013
backgrounds. According to an article
in the Lexington Herald-Leader, he
wants to encourage kids to develop their
creativity and to read books.
“Everybody is creative,” Walker
said. “They just need the tools to
harness and control their creativity. I
grew up in the projects, so I want to
tell them, ‘Your circumstance is not an
excuse.’ If you commit to something,
if you work hard and have disciplines,
you can accomplish anything.”
Walker’s poems were featured in
the February 2007 issue of WPO and
he was a speaker at the 2006 LCTHF
annual meeting in St. Louis.
A New Clymer
Masterpiece on Exhibit
The Clymer Museum and Gallery
in Ellensburg, Washington, is now
exhibiting Visitors at Fort Clatsop by
John Clymer. This large work was
painted in 1978 and shows Clymer’s
attention to detail, his historical
accuracy, as well as technical merit.
It features an engaging scene of the
inhabitants of the fort welcoming a
small band of Indians that came to
trade goods such as roots, berries,
fish, and woven items. The Corps of
Discovery built the fort in 1805 in the
Northwest Territories at present-day
Astoria, Oregon. The location of the
winter camp offered a good supply of
water and wild game.
The painting is on loan through
collaboration of its owners the Portage
Route Chapter of the Lewis and Clark
Heritage Foundation, and the Clymer
Museum and Gallery, and was made
possible by the Clymer Museum’s
presence in Great Falls, Montana,
during the community’s Western Art
Week in March. It will be on exhibit
for three months, pending a possible
change in ownership.
Artists on the Lewis and
Clark Trail in Idaho and
Washington
The greater Palouse
region is divided in the
brochure into three
areas: Farms and Forest
Towns in the north;
Palouse Hills in the
central region; and
Rivers and Prairies to
the south.
Artisan Trails also
lists lodging, farms,
gardens, markets,
antique shops, historic
sites, museums, tours,
performing arts,
recreational and scenic
sites, restaurants,
wineries and breweries, and online
businesses. The map section delineates
scenic byways and bike trails in each
of the three areas. The brochure is a
remarkable resource for modern-day
explorers in the thoroughness of its
coverage and the schematic clarity of
its maps. It may be downloaded as a
.pdf file at 2dnw.org.
–Philippa Newfield
JOHN CLYMER, VISITORS AT FORT CLATSOP, COURTESY OF THE CLYMER MUSEUM AND GALLERY, ELLENSBURG, WASHINGTON
For Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage
Foundation members who plan to
attend the Idaho-Washington-Oregon
chapters’ regional meeting in Orofino,
Weippe, and Lewiston, Idaho, over
Memorial Day weekend 2013, there
awaits a remarkable world
of interest beyond the rivers,
prairies, and mountains of
the Lewis and Clark National
Historic Trail. It is the world of
local artists and artisans that is
ripe for exploration.
Unlike the Corps of
D i s c o v e r y ’s u n m a p p e d
experience in the area, the
artists’ and artisans’ locations
are very accessible thanks to the
brochure Artisan Trails: North
Central Idaho & Southeastern
Washington, which is produced
by the University of Idaho
Extension, the City of Moscow,
the Clearwater Resource Conservation
& Development Council, and Two
Degrees Northwest. Artisan Trails is a
guide to the cultural and historic sites,
experiences, and businesses of the greater
Palouse region—the area between
the 45th and 47th degrees latitude in
north-central Idaho and southeastern
Washington. The brochure notes,
“Listings in this guide were selected for
authenticity and quality.”
Visitors at Fort Clatsop is now on display at the Clymer Museum and Gallery in Ellensburg, Washington, pending a possible change in ownership.
May 2013 We Proceeded On
"
7
Short Tempers
And Long Knives:
Hostilities Between the Blackfeet Confederacy
and American Fur Trappers from 1806 to 1840
KARL BODMER, A BLACKFOOT INDIAN ON HORSEBACK, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
By Jay H. Buckley
N
ext to grizzly bears and Mother Nature, the
most feared enemy of American fur trappers
traveling along the upper Missouri River were
the Niitsítapi or Blackfeet, the “Original People” or
“Prairie People.”1 The Blackfeet Confederacy comprised
the dominant military power on the northwestern plains.
Blackfeet sought to maintain their hegemony by preventing
American traders and trappers from trading with and
strengthening the Shoshones, Crows, Flatheads (Salish),
and Nez Perces. They accomplished this by harassing and
attacking American trappers and stealing their horses and
furs. Blackfeet enmity toward the Americans and their
8
!
We Proceeded On May 2013
determination to keep them out of their neighborhood
instilled apprehension and fear in the heart of virtually
every traveler venturing along the Yellowstone and Missouri
rivers before 1840.
After wintering at Fort Clatsop during the winter
of 1805-6, the Corps of Discovery began its return to
St. Louis. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark divided
their expedition at Travelers’ Rest. Clark’s group ventured
toward the Three Forks of the Missouri and to Bozeman
Pass, intending to float down the Yellowstone River to
its confluence with the Missouri. Lewis took nine men
eastward across present-day Lewis and Clark Pass. Five of
PATRICK GASS
hours straight, fearing Blackfeet reprisal. Fortuitously, on
them traveled to the Great Falls to dig up caches stashed
Monday morning July 28, Lewis’s entourage met the party
the year before and float down the Missouri. Lewis took
who had dug up the caches at the Great Falls and together
three men, George Drouillard, and Joseph and Reubin
they descended the Missouri River to rejoin Clark’s party
Field, and headed overland, searching for the Marias River
near the confluence of the Yellowstone and the Missouri.4
to determine if its headwaters originated north of the fortyninth parallel.
Historians have asserted that the enmity between
The first documented encounter between Americans
the Niitsítapi (Blackfeet) and the Nistosuniquen —an
and Blackfeet occurred on July 26, 1806, when four
Algonquian word for “Big Knives,” referring to long
members of the Corps of Discovery—Lewis, Drouillard,
Green River knives (or perhaps even swords) mountain
and the Field brothers—met and
men carried—could be traced
encamped with eight Piegan or
to this initial violent encounter
Atsina teenage boys along the
in 1806. For example, in 1807
south side of the Two Medicine
British trader David Thompson
2
River. Lewis, through George
noted, “the murder of two
Peeagan Indians by Captain
Drouillard, explained to the
Lewis of the U.S. drew the
Blackfeet boys that America
Peeagans to the Missouri.”5 Even
wanted to make peace and
establish trade with the Indians
if Lewis’s group had not killed
of the Plains and Rockies. The
the Blackfeet teenagers, several
Patrick Gass drew this image, Lewis Fires upon a
Blackfeet, who kept other tribes
additional factors help explain
Blackfeet Warrior, in his expedition journal.
from coming north to trade
the hostile relations between
with North West Company
Blackfeet and Americans during
The young man returned Lewis’s fire, his bullet
traders and at Hudson’s Bay
the first four decades of the
Company posts along the
narrowly missing Lewis who wrote that he felt nineteenth century: namely,
Saskatchewan River, realized
the geographic location of the
their trading advantage would
Blackfeet Confederacy; the
the wind of the bullet pass near his head.
diminish if the “Big Knives”
confederation’s alliance with
(Euro-Americans) provided their
the British; the inclusion of
enemies with weapons and supplies. Blackfeet had no need
the Atsinas within the confederation; and, materialistic
to ally themselves with Americans because they already
competition resulting from the fur trade.
received armaments and supplies at British posts along the
The First Nations comprising the Blackfeet Confederacy
3
Saskatchewan River.
included the plains Algonquian-speaking Siksikas/
Siksikáwa (Blackfoot Proper), Kainahs/Káínaa (Bloods),
After spending a pleasant Saturday evening together,
and Piegan (Aapátohsipikáni or Northern Piegan in
Lewis posted a guard to watch their horses and weapons. On
Canada; Aamsskáápipikani or Southern Piegan/Blackfeet
Sunday morning Lewis awoke when he heard Drouillard
in Montana). Two other nations also belonged to the
shout, “damn you let go my gun.” The young Indians had
alliance: north of the forty ninth parallel, the Tsuu T’ina
seized an opportunity to steal their guns and horses since
(Sarcee); south of the border, the Atsinas (Gros Ventres of
raiding represented the fastest way to acquire wealth and
the River), relatives of the Arapahos. Hereafter, the term
status within the tribe and their party outnumbered the
Blackfeet applies to Indians in any one of these nations when
Americans two to one. Reubin Field seized his gun, wrestled
no distinction otherwise is made, although most incidents
it away, and mortally stabbed Calf-Standing-on-a-Side-Hill
in Montana and the Intermountain West usually involved
[Side Hill Calf] with his knife. Shortly thereafter, Lewis
either the Southern Piegans or the Atsinas, two nations
pursued those taking the horses and shot He-Who-Lookswhom American trappers took the liberty to lump together
at-the-Calf in the belly. The young man returned Lewis’s
under the all-encompassing term “Blackfeet.”6
fire, his bullet narrowly missing Lewis who wrote that he
felt the wind of the bullet pass near his head. Lewis left a
The Blackfeet Confederacy straddled the demarcation
peace medal around the neck of Calf-Standing-on-a-Sideline between the rapidly expanding American and British
Hill that the Blackfeet “might be informed who we were.”
territories. With the majority of their tribal lands in Canada,
After recapturing four horses, the Americans rode for 18
North West Company and Hudson’s Bay Company
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9
JIM MERRITT
their domination of the Northern Plains. Horses stolen
traders established the first contact with the Blackfeet, and
from Flatheads, Nez Perces, and Shoshones mobilized
developed an extensive trade with them at British posts
their firepower. The Blackfeet tenaciously and ferociously
on the Saskatchewan River. Blackfeet monopolized the
drove all the weaker nations to the south and west over the
fur trade of the northwestern plains by preventing other
Rocky Mountains.8
native nations from trading at British posts. This allowed
Americans an opportunity to establish alliances with a
The Lewis and Clark Expedition’s exploration of
majority of nations south of the forty-ninth parallel, such
the Louisiana Purchase brought Americans into contact
as the Crows, Shoshones, Nez Perces, and Flatheads.
with dozens of Indian nations, including those of the
These tribes welcomed opportunities to trade and acquire
Blackfeet Confederacy along the upper Missouri. The
weaponry and commodities to repel
Corps of Discovery was among the
the Blackfeet. Blackfeet saw potential
first American ventures to travel
The Lewis and Clark Expedition’s
danger as their traditional enemies to
beyond the Mandan villages on
exploration of the Louisiana Purchase the upper Missouri in 1805.9 After
the west and south grew stronger and
became more formidable opponents
crossing the Rockies and wintering
brought Americans into contact with at Fort Clatsop near the Oregon
when backed by American weapons.7
Coast, Lewis and Clark embarked
The British seized upon this situation
dozens of Indian nations, including
on their return journey, splitting
and stirred up the growing animosity
their forces to cover more territory
between Blackfeet and Americans.
those of the Blackfeet Confederacy
and fulfill particular missions. While
Dependency on British guns and
along
the
upper
Missouri.
Clark’s group went to the Three
whiskey ensured Blackfeet assistance
Forks of the Missouri and to the
in helping the British attempt to
Yellowstone, Lewis’s group traveled toward the Great Falls
expel the Americans from the Pacific Northwest. The
of the Missouri. He took three men to venture overland
Blackfeet acquired guns from North West Company
to the northeast to the Marias River. When his celestial
traders, the Hudson’s Bay Company, and Cree and
observations indicated he was still south of the forty-ninth
Assiniboine neighbors. The well-armed Blackfeet gained
parallel, he named the place Camp Disappointment. Shortly
immediate advantage over their southern rivals and began
thereafter they met the eight Blackfeet teenagers.10
Map of Northern Great Plains c. 1806
Several versions of Blackfeet oral history describe the
encounter differently. One account relates that the boys
crept into Lewis’s camp to steal from an enemy, a comingof-age ritual demonstrating courage. In another version,
“Lewis and his party ran into a group of young boys from
the Skunk Band who were herding horses back to camp
from a previous foray.” The boys camped with and wagered
with Lewis. “There is a story of a race. In the morning,
they went to part company and the Indians took what
they had won. That was it. That’s when they were killed.”
An important Blackfeet account comes from George Bird
Grinnell’s 1895 interview with Wolf Calf, a 102-year-old
Blackfeet who said that he was personally at the fight scene
when he was thirteen. He said their raid leader “directed the
young men to try to steal some of their things. They did so
early the next morning, and the white men killed the first
Indian [Side Hill Calf] with their big knives.” Wolf Calf
acknowledged that the boys were frightened but that they
“were bitterly hostile to the whites after the incident and
ashamed because they had not killed all the white men.”
Most importantly, when Lewis left the peace medal around
the dead Indian’s neck, it would have seemed like he was
10
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OLIN WHEELER
“counting coup” and it would have appeared “as a form
upstream, several hundred Blackfeet surrounded them and
of scalping.” As a result, Blackfeet closed their borders to
ordered them to shore. Colter went to the shore where they
Americans, “attacking and killing any intruder they could
stripped him naked; Potts decided he would rather stay
11
find within their borders.”
in his canoe. Struck by a well-aimed arrow as he shot the
Indian who fired upon him, Potts’s body was immediately
Upon the expedition’s return to St. Louis in September
riddled with dozens of bullets. “They dragged the body up
1806, its members related tales about the upper Missouri
onto the bank, and with their hatchets and knives cut and
country teeming with beaver. Preparations to capitalize
hacked it all to pieces, and limb from limb.” They threw
on this knowledge, especially in St. Louis, reached a
Potts’s body parts at Colter’s face. Colter narrowly escaped
fevered pitch. Several Spanish and French traders sought
death by running a race for his life. In
to be the first to take advantage of
the following months, Colter returned
this untapped source of wealth.
to the Jefferson River to retrieve his
Perhaps the most important trader
traps that he had dropped in the river
to take action was Manuel Lisa.
before the Blackfeet had attacked
Lisa quickly organized a large
Potts and him. While camping one
party of men to ascend the river,
night on the Gallatin River, Colter
which included about a third of
heard the clicking of gun hammers and
the veterans of the Lewis and
quickly dove into the thicket, narrowly
Clark Expedition.Within the next
escaping death for a third time. Colter
several years Blackfeet killed at least
made the long journey back to Fort
two former Corps of Discovery
Raymond, decided his luck with
members.12
Blackfeet had run out, and promised
Unlike the British, who built
his Maker to leave the country and
trading posts outside of Blackfeet Wolf Calf, a Blackfoot interviewed by George
territory and encouraged the Indians Bird Grinnell in 1895, claimed to have taken part “be d—d if I ever come into it again.”
Colter floated down the Missouri and
to do the trapping, Americans in the Two Medicine Fight as a boy of 13.
never returned.15
constructed forts within Blackfeet
territory starting in 1807 and began trapping beaver on
These three run-ins with Colter angered the Blackfeet
their own. Americans built posts along the Yellowstone,
to the point that they determined to drive all Americans
the Missouri’s Three Forks, and Henry’s Fork of the Snake
out of the area. Simultaneously, Manuel Lisa continued
River. These encroachments infuriated the Blackfeet. They
seeking Blackfeet contact. He sent men, under the
felt their resources were being robbed, which led to hostile
command of Andrew Henry, Reuben Lewis, and Pierre
confrontations as they repeatedly drove Americans from
Menard, to the Three Forks to establish a trading post.16
their land. These circumstances set the stage for the bloody
Blackfeet warriors killed two dozen of Menard’s American
13
encounters during the first half of the nineteenth century.
trappers in the spring of 1810 near the Three Forks of
the Missouri. The remaining trappers cowered in their
Lisa’s Missouri Fur Company group ascended the
makeshift fort, afraid to leave for fear of a Blackfeet
Yellowstone to its confluence with the Bighorn and in the
reprisal. Former expedition member George Drouillard
fall of 1807 erected Fort Raymond, the first American post
ventured out alone twice and brought back nearly twenty
near Blackfeet territory. In November, Lisa sent John Colter
beaver pelts. As a French Canadian Shawnee, Drouillard
to find and bring in the Crows, Blackfeet, and other tribes
boasted he was too much Indian himself to be captured or
to trade. While traveling with a group of several hundred
killed. On the third day, he convinced two Delawares to
Flatheads along the Gallatin River, fifteen hundred Blackfeet
leave the fort with him—all three failed to return. A search
attacked Colter and his Flathead allies. With the help of some
party found the Delawares’ bodies “pierced with lances,
Crow reinforcements who joined in the fray, they repelled
14
arrows, and bullets and lying near each other.” Nearby
the Blackfeet attack.
they discovered what remained of Drouillard and his
This encounter further inflamed Blackfeet hostility
horse. Drouillard had put up a fight, “being a brave man
toward Americans. The next year, John Colter and John
and well armed with rifle, pistol, knife, and tomahawk.”
Potts paddled up the Jefferson River, the most western
The pools of blood documented where Blackfeet had
of the Missouri River’s three forks, stopping occasionally
been wounded. The famous scout and hunter’s body was
to trap the plentiful beaver. As they paddled their canoe
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11
“mangled in a horrible manner; his head cut off, his entrails
torn out, and his body hacked to pieces.”17
The Blackfeet hated the Americans’ invasion, especially
the construction of American forts within their lands.
Nestled between the Jefferson and Madison rivers, the
trapper-traders experienced great success for the first few
weeks. They realized that if they could stay the whole season
they would be financially secure for years. The Atsinas had
other plans. Trappers could not venture out a single mile
without Atsinas attacking them. “So constant were the
Indian attacks that little trapping could be done.”18 These
attacks demoralized the trappers, causing Menard to lead a
group of them back to St. Louis. Henry, convinced of the
futility of staying there, took the remaining men and crossed
the Continental Divide to build a fort on Henry’s Fork of
the Snake. After a terrible winter of suffering and hardship,
Henry’s party returned to
St. Louis. Several hundred
Blackfeet warriors gave
them a violent sendoff near
the Three Forks, killing
one trapper but suffering
two dozen casualties
themselves.19 Henry and his
men believed the British incited Blackfeet hostility toward
them. Meriwether Lewis received a letter from his brother
Reuben, who was part of the group, wherein Reuben
confided, “I am confident that the Blackfeet are urged on
by the British traders in their country.”20
American wariness and fear of Blackfeet increased in
1811 when the overland Astorians—John Jacob Astor’s
American Fur Company who were traveling to the mouth
of the Columbia under the leadership of Wilson Price
Hunt—altered their course and traveled overland through
present-day Wyoming rather than risk venturing where
the Piegans and Atsinas lived. The following year Robert
Stuart, on his return trip from Astoria to St. Louis, carefully
traveled “out of the walks of the Blackfoot Indians, who
are very numerous and inimical to whites.”21
The Prairie People won round one of BlackfeetAmerican hostilities. Piegan and Atsina warriors successfully
drove the Big Knives out of the upper Missouri River
and burned down all three American trading posts. The
Blackfeet resumed fighting their Indian enemies who
recently had defeated them several times with the help
of American weapons. Blackfeet successfully expelled all
the Americans who had gone to trap in the Three Forks
country, stealing their beaver pelts, horses, traps, guns,
and ammunition in the process. The War of 1812 further
disrupted and halted American trapping and trading on the
upper Missouri. The following years marked relative peace
among Blackfeet and Americans for one simple reason:
they experienced very little contact. The British drove the
Astorians from the Pacific Northwest; the North West
Company forced John Jacob Astor to sell his trading post,
Fort Astoria, to them for a fraction of its value; and, the
Blackfeet already had driven Lisa, Henry, and Menard’s
trappers from their territory and destroyed their forts.
The War of 1812 had a major impact on most native
nations. The competition between Americans and British for
control of the fur trade in the upper Mississippi and upper
Missouri areas forced Indians to choose sides. Most Indians
in the Great Lakes and upper Mississippi region tended
to favor the British, while those living along the lower
Missouri affiliated themselves with America. Early British
successes in the war helped
them recruit Indian allies.
American frontier towns
feared neighboring tribes
would switch alliances when
they learned of American
defeats. By 1814, the British
and Americans agreed to
return to prewar status by signing the Treaty of Ghent.
However, hostility among the natives took years to
dissipate. When the British and Americans entered into
another treaty in 1818, the two nations resolved their
long-standing boundary issue by extending the fortyninth parallel west to the Rocky Mountains. This artificial
boundary line bisected the territory inhabited by the nations
comprising the Blackfeet Confederacy. Nevertheless, by
1819, the fur trade on the upper Missouri River looked like
a promising venture to entrepreneurs in St. Louis.22
The 1818 treaty between America and Great Britain
had declared joint-occupation of the Oregon Country.
America was caught up in expansionism. In 1819, the
U.S. government demonstrated its support for the fur
trade by allocating funds for the Yellowstone Expedition.
Unfortunately, this expedition met with disaster as the
steamboat became marooned on a sand bar in the Missouri
River. Upon returning, Major Thomas Biddle addressed the
U.S. Senate on October 29, 1819. He initiated discussions
on the government’s fur trade involvement. In 1821, the
government relinquished its control over the fur trade. 23
After Manuel Lisa’s death in 1820, new entrepreneurs
appeared. Joshua Pilcher’s newly reorganized Missouri Fur
Company was one of the first to try its luck on the upper
Missouri. The Blackfeet were waiting. Pilcher sent Robert
The competition between Americans and British for
control of the fur trade in the upper Mississippi and
upper Missouri areas forced Indians to choose sides.
12
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ALFRED JACOB MILLER, BLACKFEET ON THE WARPATH, GILCREASE MUSEUM, TULSA, OKLAHOMA
with supplies, they
Jones and Michael
planned summer
Immell to capitalize
rendezvous that
on the lucrative
accomplished the
beaver trade.
same tasks. The pack
Obtaining large
trains would carry
numbers of pelts
needed supplies into
each day, activities
the Rockies during
flowed smoothly
the summer that
until mid-May
could be exchanged
when 38 “friendly”
for furs from
Blackfeet arrived
mountain men and
in camp. Immell
friendly Indians,
successfully avoided
which the returning
and prevented
men sold in the fall.27
any hostility from
occurring. Fifteen The Blackfeet were so adept at stealing horses and furs and causing havoc that
The rendezvous
days later, however, American trappers developed the rendezvous system, which allowed trappers to
system temporarily
their luck ran out. avoid Blackfeet territory throughout the 1820s.
provided a solution
Three hundred to four hundred Atsinas descended upon
to Blackfeet hostilities because the trappers avoided
them and cut Immell to pieces. Jones’s body was riddled
their territory throughout the 1820s. Jedediah Smith had
with arrows; five others died and four more were wounded.
wintered with the Crows on the east side of the Wind River
The Atsinas stole more than $15,000 worth of property.
Mountains in 1823. While there he learned about the Green
This mishap severely crippled the Missouri Fur Company.24
River Basin, located on the other side of the mountains;
not only was it rich in beaver, but the friendly Utes and
Survivors of the Immell-Jones massacre blamed the attacks
Shoshones had not trapped the area. From 1824 to 1829,
on the British. The chief purportedly possessed a letter with
Americans and British trapped out present-day Utah,
the words “God Save the King” inscribed, which seemed to
Idaho, and Wyoming. As beaver became scarce, trappers
justify the Americans’ accusations.25
were forced to journey to Three Forks and the land of the
Even if the British did not incite the Blackfeet to raid
Blackfeet in Montana.
their American rivals—as the Americans believed—the
By the late 1820s, Blackfeet did not distinguish between
British profited significantly since valuable beaver pelts
beaver trappers according to nationality as they previously
with American stamps dominated the majority of furs that
had done.28 The North West Company had merged with
were exported to British posts on the Saskatchewan. Most
importantly, Blackfeet continually traded stolen horses at
the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821. These British trappers
British posts for tobacco and whiskey. British attempts to
continued their encroachment along American streams as
compete with their American rivals caused them to abandon
beaver became scarce in Canada. They eagerly moved up
their moderation policy in supplying liquor to the Blackfeet.
the Snake River to trap streams out before the Americans
Britain realized liquor motivated the Blackfeet to trap beaver.
had a chance to harvest any furs. Peter Skene Ogden of
This was both profitable and dangerous as the viciousness
the Hudson’s Bay Company reported Blackfeet hostility
and violent character of drunken Blackfeet had no rival.26
against British as well as Americans during this time.29
Meanwhile, Blackfeet simultaneously attacked Ashley
Blackfeet hostilities toward the Long Knives increased
and Henry’s trappers near present-day Great Falls,
in the 1820s as materialism permeated and undermined
Montana, killing four men and stealing numerous furs,
traditional Blackfeet culture. The fur trade created Blackfeet
traps, and horses. The company built a fort at the mouth
dependency on foreigners as inundation of western goods
of the Yellowstone but the Atsinas’ constant horse-raiding
such as kettles, guns, awls, axes, knives, tobacco, and larger
forced them to abandon it. Blackfeet were so adept at
tepees made it necessary to acquire more furs and horses to
stealing horses and furs and causing havoc in Montana that
exchange with British traders for these commodities. Horses
Ashley and Henry decided to adopt a different system of
also could be used to purchase additional wives, which
collecting furs. Instead of using trading posts on the river
were necessary to handle the increased burden of preparing
to collect and transport furs and furnish men and Indians
provisions and tanning hides. Female labor turned idle
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13
capital (surplus horses) into productive capital (women). The
easiest way to acquire women was to steal them from other
tribes or to trade horses for them. Stealing from Americans
provided the Blackfeet with furs and horses. To a Blackfeet
warrior, horses could be exchanged for anything in life worth
having; therefore, one could never capture enough of them.30
Magnificent warriors, the Blackfeet excelled at horse
larceny. The desire to acquire horses and scalps increased
an individual’s personal wealth and fulfilled part of his
initiation process to become an acceptable warrior within
the nation. Many skirmishes during the rendezvous period
consisted of Blackfeet attempts to take horses and furs
from Americans. The Blackfeet raiders traded horses and
furs they stole from Americans for British goods, guns,
whiskey, and tobacco. The Atsinas, in particular, mastered
horse larceny. They were among the most numerous and
JAY H. BUCKLEY
A map of the territory controlled by the Blackfeet Confederacy.
feared northern plains people. Contact between Atsinas
and trappers occurred frequently—much too frequently for
the trappers. Many trappers often developed a bad case of
“Blackfeet Fever,” which caused them to mistake herds of
antelope and bison for a Blackfeet war party. Meanwhile,
actual failure to detect Atsina raiders often resulted in
death. Alexander Henry described the Atsinas as a “most
audacious and turbulent race, and have repeatedly attempted
to destroy and massacre us all.”31 Ranging up and down
both sides of the Rockies, particularly the Three Forks area,
Atsinas and mountain men clashed repeatedly.32
Atsinas visited their Arapaho kinsmen in present-day
Wyoming and Colorado during the summer months,
leading to disputes and confrontations with Americans
along traditional travel routes. Atsinas hunted bison on
the Wyoming plains and ventured as far south as Santa
Fe, capturing mustangs between the
Platte and Arkansas rivers.33 Atsinas
realized the rendezvous strengthened
their rivals, providing armaments
and supplies to Shoshones, Utes,
Crows, Flatheads, and Nez Perces.
Large horse herds accompanied the
rendezvous as hundreds of mountain
men and thousands of Indians
gathered for games and recreation.
These horses proved tempting targets
for Indians skilled at the deadly but
exciting game of grand theft cayuse.
As could be expected, several
violent encounters occurred
during summer rendezvous. James
Beckwourth gave an excellent firsthand account of the 1827 rendezvous
at Sweet Lake (present-day Bear
Lake) on the Utah-Idaho border. A
Blackfeet party surprised and killed
five Shoshones. Shoshone Chief Cut
Face asked the American trappers to
show their friendship and loyalty by
assisting the Shoshones in mounting
a counter-attack. William Sublette
gathered nearly three hundred
trappers and charged the enemy.
After a six-hour battle the Blackfeet
retreated, abandoning many of their
dead—an unusual occurrence because
of the almost certain mutilation that
awaited the deceased. Beckwourth
14
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KARL BODMER, GREAT CAMP OF THE PIEKANNS NEAR FORT MCKENZIE, MONTANA, AUGUST 31, 1833, U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES
AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION
In 1837, Blackfeet stole blankets contaminated with smallpox from a steamboat at Fort Union and brought them back to their village near Fort
McKenzie. As many as 6,000 Blackfeet died as the epidemic spread throughout the area.
recorded the fruits of their
victory to be 173 Blackfeet
scalps, and numerous
weapons. The following
year, in 1828, a repeat attack
nearly occurred in the same location. Blackfeet abandoned
the field when reinforcements from the rendezvous arrived
before any bloodshed took place.34
In 1830, artist George Catlin observed, “The Blackfoot,
are, perhaps, the most powerful tribe on the continent.”
Even though American trappers attempted to incorporate
a profitable trade system, Catlin recognized the Blackfeet
Confederacy’s strength and saw them stubbornly resist fur
traders. Catlin noted the country “abounds with beaver
and buffalo and others.” Yet he lamented the destruction
of the beaver. “The Blackfoot have repeatedly informed
the traders of the company that if this persists they will kill
the trappers. The company lost 15-20 men. The Blackfoot
therefore have been less traded with and less seen by whites
and less understood.”35
Perhaps the most significant rendezvous battle occurred
at the 1832 Battle of Pierre’s Hole. The Atsina attackers
consisted of fifty men plus several women and children
and, as the Indians advanced, a British flag flapped in the
breeze.36 A small brigade under Milton Sublette and two
other parties had left the rendezvous on July 17. This party
of 41 men proceeded up the hills to the southeast, headed
for Teton Pass. The next morning they looked up toward
the pass and saw a group
of travelers, whom they
assumed to be one of the
supply trains that had not
arrived at the rendezvous.37
The Atsina chieftain rode out to meet the trappers. An
Iroquois named Antoine Godin rode his horse out to meet
him. Godin, whose father had been brutally murdered by
Blackfeet, raised his gun and shot the Atsina chieftain.38
The previous week, this same group of Atsinas had
attacked Thomas Fitzpatrick and taken his horses. George
Nidever relates how the Atsinas made a fortification in the
willows and fought tenaciously against the trappers and
allies. The Atsinas fled the scene when several hundred
reinforcements from the rendezvous arrived. Three mountain
men and five Indian allies died. Accounts list Atsina casualties
between 27 and 50 dead.39 Ironically, this same year a
group of Piegans had signed a treaty with the American
Fur Company to allow Kenneth McKenzie to build a fort
there the following year, provided the Indians would trap
the beaver and trade at the post.40 Built in 1831, Fort Piegan
became the first fort in Blackfeet lands of which the Piegans
approved. The following year, however, Bloods or Atsinas
burned it down. In 1833, McKenzie built Fort McKenzie near
the confluence of the Marias and Missouri rivers.41
This new fort achieved immediate success by offering
Blackfeet the chance to trade and barter. A chief had told
John Sanford, Indian agent for the upper Missouri tribes, “If
“If you will send Traders into our Country we will protect
them and treat them well; but Trappers—Never.”
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15
you will send Traders into our Country we will protect them
and treat them well; but Trappers—Never.”42 Unfortunately,
this fort unwittingly spread the deadly smallpox epidemic
that journeyed upriver in 1837 aboard the St. Peters
steamboat. Smallpox spread as far as Fort Union where
infected trade goods were transferred to another vessel
heading for Fort McKenzie. The post commander there,
Alexander Culbertson, quarantined the infected vessel to
prevent the epidemic from spreading; however, the Blackfeet
felt the Americans were discriminating against them by
withholding trade commodities, particularly a shipment
of guns they needed to fight the Crows and Flatheads.43
Several Blackfeet snuck on board and removed infected
blankets that contaminated their village near the fort. As the
tribes dispersed, they spread the epidemic. Perhaps as many as
6,000 Blackfeet, roughly half of their population, died in this
outbreak. This debilitating plague marked a numerical decline
that ended Blackfeet domination of the northern plains.
Consequently, by fall, the Blackfeet concerned themselves
more with survival than with fighting Americans. After 1837,
mountain men often followed Blackfeet to fight them in their
weakened condition. However, only minor confrontations
occurred as the beaver trade drew to a close and bison robes
became the new trading commodity at the forts.44
Between 1806 and 1840, the northern location of the
Blackfeet Confederacy had brought them into contact with
British trappers who formed alliances with them. These
bonds provided the British with an easy way to expel
Americans—by encouraging Blackfeet to attack Americans
to take their horses, furs, and guns. The Americans failed
to learn from the British how to trade effectively with the
Blackfeet. Whereas the British built posts on the outskirts
of Blackfeet territory and sent representatives to trade with
the nations, Americans chose to invade the territory and
trap fur-bearing animals themselves. In addition, Americans
built trading posts and forts in Blackfeet territory, often
without permission, traded with their traditional enemies,
and often intermarried with those tribes, becoming enemies
through kinship. Blackfeet disliked trapping themselves and
found it immensely easier to steal furs and horses from the
Americans and trade them with the British to meet their
rising materialistic tendencies. Blackfeet capitalistic ventures
often ended in violent confrontations with American and,
later, British trappers. To compound the problem, trappers
depleted the beaver, bison, and other fur and hide bearing
animals and introduced diseases that killed more Blackfeet
than bullets or big knives ever did.
The inclusion of the Atsinas in the Blackfeet
Confederacy brought frequent encounters with Americans
16
!
We Proceeded On May 2013
as they both traversed the northern and central Rockies.
Atsina depredations forced Americans to desert the upper
Missouri and venture overland to reach trapping streams.
These supply routes of the rendezvous caravans opened
the way for the overland migrations of the 1840s and 1850s
along the Great Fur Trade Road. After more than half a
century of conflict, diplomats for the United States and for
the Blackfeet Nation met at a council held on October 17,
1855, near the mouth of the Judith River. They agreed to a
treaty setting aside a reservation for the Blackfeet in what
became Montana. The Blackfeet represented the last Great
Plains Indian nation to enter into a treaty with the United
States, which ushered in a new era between the Blackfeet
and the Big Knives.45
Jay H. Buckley, associate professor of history at Brigham
Young University, served as president of the Lewis and Clark
Trail Heritage Foundation in 2011-12. He is the author of
William Clark: Indian Diplomat (2008) and co-author of
By His Own Hand? The Mysterious Death of Meriwether
Lewis (2006); and Zebulon Pike, Thomas Jefferson, and the
Opening of the American West (2012).
NOTES
1
The term Blackfeet referred to northwestern plains nations who
sometimes wore black moccasins dyed with paint or darkened
with ashes. J. Cecil Alter, James Bridger (Columbus, OH: Long’s
College Book Co., 1951), 6. “Original People,” “Real People,”
and “Prairie People” are some renderings of their national identity.
The author thanks reviewer Gary Moulton and proofreaders Carl
Camp and Jerry Garrett for their assistance with this article.
Helen B. West, Meriwether Lewis in Blackfeet Country,
Bureau of Indian Affairs, Blackfeet Agency (Browning, MT:
Museum of the Plains Indian, 1964).
2
Horse stealing represented the central focus of Plains Indian
culture. Alexander Henry regarded the Blackfeet tribes as the
“most independent and happy people of all the tribes East of
the Rocky Mountains. War, women, horses and buffalo are their
delights, and all these they have at [their] command.” Elliott Coues,
ed., New Light on the Early History of the Greater Northwest: The
Manuscript Journals of Alexander Henry and David Thompson,
1799-1814, 3 vols. (New York: Francis P. Harper, 1897), 2:737.
For an in-depth study, see John C. Ewers, The Horse in Blackfoot
Culture (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1955).
3
4
Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark
Expedition, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1983-2001), 8:127-37, esp. 134-35; John C. Jackson, “The Fight
on Two Medicine River: Who Were Those Indians, and How
Many Died?” We Proceeded On, 32:1 (February 2006), 14-23;
Robert A. Saindon, “The ‘Unhappy Affair’ on Two Medicine
River: Were the Indians with Whom Lewis Tangled Blackfeet
or … Gros Ventres of the Prairie?” We Proceeded On, 28:3
(August 2002), 12-25; Arlen J. Large, “Riled-up Blackfeet: Did
Meriwether Lewis Do It?” We Proceeded On, 22:4 (November
1996), 4-11; and Paul R. Cutright, “Lewis on the Marias 1806,”
Montana: The Magazine of Western History, 18:3 (1968), 30-43.
David Thompson, David Thompson’s Narrative of His
Explorations in Western America, 1784-1812 (Toronto: Champlain
Society, 1916), 375. See also Ted Binnema, “Allegiances and
Interests: Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) Trade, Diplomacy, and Warfare,
1806-1831,” Western Historical Quarterly, 37 (Autumn 2006),
327-49; Ted Binnema and William A. Dobak, “‘Like a Greedy
Wolf’: The Blackfeet, the St. Louis Fur Trade, and War Fever,
1807-1831,” Journal of the Early Republic, 29 (Fall 2009), 411-40,
esp. 415; Peter W. Dunwiddie, “The Nature of the Relationship
between the Blackfeet Indians and the Men of the Fur Trade,”
Annals of Wyoming, 46 (Spring 1974), 123-33; Paul Raczka,
“Posted: No Trespassing: The Blackfoot and the American Fur
Trappers,” in Selected Papers of the 2010 Fur Trade Symposium,
Jim Hardee, ed. (Three Forks, MT: Three Forks Area Historical
Society, 2011), 140-48. The Algonquian word for “big knives” is
provided by William Anderson in Dale L. Morgan and Eleanor T.
Harris, eds., The Rocky Mountain Journals of William Marshall
Anderson, The West in 1834 (San Marino, CA: The Huntington
Library, 1967), 233.
5
The tribal designation in Canada is always Blackfoot while
many American fur trade references use the term Blackfeet,
which I have done to avoid going back and forth. Donald Ward,
“Blackfoot Confederacy,” in The People: A Historical Guide
to the First Nations of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba
(Markham, ON: Fifth House Books, 1995), 24-56; Hugh A.
Demsey, “Blackfoot,” in Plains, vol. 13 of the Handbook of
the North American Indians, edited by Raymond J. DeMallie
(Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 2001), vol. 13, part 1, 60428; Loretta Fowler and Regina Flannery, “Gros Ventre,” in Plains,
vol. 13 of the Handbook of the North American Indians, edited
by Raymond J. DeMallie (Washington: Smithsonian Institution,
2001), vol. 13, part 2, 677-94.
6
John Jacob Astor’s men traded firearms to Flathead or Salish
Indians in 1810. Heretofore, these tribes had been forced by the
Blackfeet to travel all the way to the Missouri and trade with
the Hidatsas and Mandans. The balance of power equalized
as Blackfeet lost several Indian battles with their enemies to
the west and south between 1810 and 1812. Oscar Lewis, The
Effects of White Contact upon the Blackfoot Culture, with
Special Reference to the Role of the Fur Trade (New York: J.J.
Augustin, 1942), 20.
7
8
John C. Ewers, The Blackfeet: Raiders on the Northwestern
Plains (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958), 21-22.
Before 1806, few Americans had ventured above the Mandan
villages on the Missouri River. The lucrative sea otter fur trade
off the Pacific Northwest Coast drew the majority of American
fur traders involved in the Orient trade. Those not involved in
the Pacific Northwest trade participated in the dangerous but
profitable Santa Fe trade, exchanging manufactured goods from
St. Louis for Santa Fe gold and silver currency. For further
information on pre-1804 expeditions up the Missouri River, see
Abraham Nasatir, ed., Before Lewis and Clark, 2 ed., 2 vols.
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990).
9
James P. Ronda, Lewis and Clark among the Indians (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 238-43; Ronda, Finding
the West: Explorations with Lewis and Clark (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 2001), 71-72.
10
Many years after the encounter, Wolf Calf claimed to have
been a member of this Piegan raiding party and offered his
account of the incident. Olin D. Wheeler, The Trail of Lewis
11
and Clark, 1804—1904, 2 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
1904), 2:311-12. See Frederick E. Hoxie and Jay T. Nelson, eds.,
Lewis and Clark and the Indian Country: The Native American
Perspective (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 168-79;
John C. Jackson, The Piikani Blackfeet: A Culture Under Siege
(Missoula: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 2000), 56-57;
and Eric Newhouse, “Blackfeet recollections differ from those
recorded in Lewis’s journal,” Great Falls Tribune, April 23,
2003; A film, A Blackfeet Encounter, directed and produced by
Dennis Neary (Lincoln: Vision Maker Media, 2007) combines
Blackfeet and expedition viewpoints: <http://www.visionmaker.
org/stream/a_blackfeet_encounter>.
Manuel Lisa already had learned about the wealthy tribes
of the West, the Arapahos on the Platte, the Crows of the
Yellowstone, and the Blackfeet of the upper Missouri. Richard
E. Oglesby, Manuel Lisa and the Opening of the Missouri Fur
Trade (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), 34. See
also Larry E. Morris, The Fate of the Corps: What Became
of the Lewis and Clark Explorers After the Expedition (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); Frank H. Dickson, “Hard
on the Heels of Lewis and Clark,” Montana The Magazine of
Western History, 26 (Winter 1976),14-25; Charles E. Hanson,
Jr., “Expansion of the Fur Trade Following Lewis and Clark,”
We Proceeded On, Supplemental Publication, 4 (December
1980), 21-28; and Hardee, ed., Selected Papers of the 2010 Fur
Trade Symposium.
12
Alexander Henry recorded on September 14, 1808, at Rocky
Mountain House in Canada that “Last year, it is true, we got
some beaver from them; but this was the spoils of war, they
having fallen upon a party of Americans on the Missourie,
stripped them of everything, and brought off a quantity of
skins.” Barry M. Gough, ed., The Journal of Alexander Henry
the Younger, 1799-1814 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1992), 2:541.
13
Thomas James, Three Years among the Indians and Mexicans,
ed. by Walter B. Douglas (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society,
1916), 52-53.
14
Colter’s famous race for life is masterfully chronicled by Thomas
James as he heard the story from Colter while they trapped beaver
together on the Three Forks. James, Three Years among the
Indians and Mexicans, 58-65. For Colter’s narrow escapes from
Blackfeet, see Reuben G. Thwaites, ed., Early Western Travels,
1748-1846 (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1904), 5:44-47.
Colter biographers include Burton Harris, John Colter: His Years
in the Rockies (1952, reprint; Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1993); and L. Ruth Colter-Frick, Courageous Colter and
Companions (Washington, MO: Video Proof, 1997).
15
16
The Crows, with new American muzzle-loaders, defeated
a party of Atsinas on the Yellowstone River. This was an
unprecedented event that resulted in constant retaliation by the
Atsinas in an attempt to drive the Americans out and burn down
their posts.
James, Three Years among the Indians and Mexicans, 82-83;
and M.O. Skarsten, George Drouillard: Hunter and Interpreter
for Lewis and Clark and Fur Trader, 1807-1810 (Glendale, CA:
Arthur H. Clark Company, 1964), 301-04, 309-11.
17
18
Ewers, Blackfeet, 50.
Oglesby, Manuel Lisa and the Opening of the Missouri Fur
Trade, 115.
19
May 2013 We Proceeded On
"
17
Reuben Lewis to Meriwether Lewis, April 21, 1810,
Meriwether Lewis Collection, Missouri Historical Society
Archives, St. Louis, Missouri.
20
Kenneth A. Spaulding, ed., On the Oregon Trail: Robert
Stuart’s Journey of Discovery, 1812-1813 (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1953), 94.
21
22
Kate L. Gregg, “The War of 1812 on the Missouri Frontier,”
Missouri Historical Review (Part 1, October 1938; Part 2,
January 1939; part 3, April 1939), 3, 16, 327. Gregg’s three
articles contain an excellent overview of the impact of the War
of 1812 on natives and the tension between the British and
Americans.
Senate Executive Document, U.S. Senate, 16th Congress, 1st
Session (Washington, D.C., 1820).
23
Hiram M. Chittenden, American Fur Trade of the Far West,
2 vols. (New York: Press of the Pioneers, 1935), 1:148-51. For
other incidents involving fur traders and Blackfeet, see LeRoy
R. Hafen, The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West,
10 vols. (Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1965-1972).
24
David Lavender, Bent’s Fort (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1954), 121, 125.
33
Thomas Bonner, The Life and Adventures of James P.
Beckwourth, Mountaineer, Scout, Pioneer and Chief of the
Crow Nation of Indians, ed. Charles G. Leland (London: T.F.
Unwin; New York: Macmillan, 1892), 103-8. Indian tribes
believed mutilated bodies would not return to perfect form in
the resurrection. Therefore, mutilating an enemy’s body would
save them the trouble of fighting them again in the next life.
34
George Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs,
and Conditions of the North American Indians, 2 vols. (1841;
New York: Dover, 1973), 1: 51-52. In 1832, Catlin estimated
the three tribes (Blackfoot, Bloods, Piegans) numbered 1,650
lodges. Add to that, approximately three hundred Atsina lodges.
By taking the accepted estimation theory of eight to ten persons
per lodge, the 1832 Blackfeet population totaled nearly 19,500.
35
Jim Hardee, Pierre’s Hole!: The Fur Trade History of Teton
Valley, Idaho (Pinedale, WY: Sublette County Historical
Society, 2010), 187-262.
36
Joshua Pilcher to Thomas Hempstead, July 23, 1823, in Dale
L. Morgan, ed., The West of William H. Ashley (Denver: The
Old West Publishing Co., 1964), 41. Clay J. Landry, “‘When
Timely Apprised of His Danger, A Host Within Himself!’
Michael Immell, Fur Man,” in Selected Papers of the 2010 Fur
Trade Symposium, Hardee, ed., 184-99.
37
This same group of Atsinas had attacked Thomas Fitzpatrick
the week before and had stolen his horses. After escaping with
his life, Fitzpatrick eventually made it to the rendezvous. His
horses were among those taken after the Atsinas had fled.
LeRoy R. Hafen, Broken Hand: The Life of Thomas Fitzpatrick
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981), 106-20.
Lewis, Effects of White Contact upon the Blackfoot Culture, 21.
38
Washington Irving, The Adventures of Captain Bonneville,
U.S.A., In the Rocky Mountains and the Far West (New York:
G.P. Putnam, 1859), 73-80.
25
26
27
Frederick R. Gowans, Rocky Mountain Rendezvous: 18251840 (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1976) is the
major work on the rendezvous system and contains the best
compilation of the major battles involving Blackfeet Indians.
The Atsinas had never cared for the British, only trading with
them when they desired whiskey, for which they traded bison
meat, horses, or furs. As early as 1811, they made plots against
Hudson’s Bay Company posts. The Piegans and other tribes of
the confederacy usually warned the Hudson’s Bay Company
men when Atsinas were coming so the men could prepare for
their arrival. The Atsinas were “the most notorious thieves, and
when we hear of a band coming in to trade, every ... moveable
European article must be shut up.” Coues, ed., New Light on
the Early History, 378.
28
E.E. Rich, ed., Peter Skene Ogden’s Snake Country Journals,
1824-1828 (London: Publications of the Hudson’s Bay Record
Society, 1950).
29
Blackfeet, as well as other tribes who stole horses, walked to
enemy camps and rode the horses they stole to escape. While
Blackfeet parties traveled on foot, mountain men and Indians
sometimes gained and exploited this Blackfeet weakness and
lack of mobility by attacking them. See Lewis, Effects of White
Contact upon the Blackfoot Culture, 36-40; also, George Bird
Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People
(1892; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962),
242-55.
30
31
Gough, ed., Journal of Alexander Henry the Younger, 381.
In 1837, Alfred Jacob Miller estimated Blackfeet killed
between 40 and 50 mountain men a year during the fur trade.
Marvin C. Ross, ed., The West of Alfred Jacob Miller (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1951), 148.
32
18
!
We Proceeded On May 2013
William Henry Garrison, ed., The Life and Adventures of
George Nidever (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1937), 26-30.
39
David J. Wishart, The Fur Trade of the American West,
1807-1840: A Geographical Synthesis (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1979), 61n. Jacob Berger, the treaty mediator,
had traded with the Blackfeet for many years.
40
For Blackfeet involvement in the fur trade, see Eugene
Y. Arima, Blackfeet and Palefaces: The Pikani and Rocky
Mountain House (Ottawa: Golden Dog Press, 1995); Robert K.
Doerk, Jr., The Fur and Robe Trade in Blackfoot Country: 18311880 (Fort Benton: River and Plains Society, 2003); and John G.
Lepley, Blackfoot Fur Trade on the Upper Missouri (Missoula,
MT: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, 2004).
41
Francois Chardon, Journal at Fort Clark, 1834-1836, ed. by
Annie H. Abel (South Dakota: Department of History, State of
South Dakota, 1932), 253.
42
43
Leslie Wischmann, Frontier Diplomats: Alexander Culbertson
and Natoyist-Siksina’ among the Blackfeet (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 2000), 67-76.
Ewers, The Horse in Blackfoot Culture, 65-66. See also
Chardon, Journal at Fort Clark; K. C. Tessendorf, “Red Death
on the Missouri, The Tragic Smallpox Epidemic of 1837,” The
American West, 14:1 (January/February 1977), 48-53; and
Morgan, The West of William H. Ashley, 263.
44
“Treaty with the Blackfeet, 1855,” in Charles J. Kappler,
ed., Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, 5 vols. (Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1904), 2:736-40.
45
A look back at the creation and early years
of our historical journal
By Barb Kubik
“WE PROCEEDED ON …”
With those three simple words, the Lewis and Clark
Trail Heritage Foundation’s sixth president, Gary Leppart,
announced the long-awaited publication of We Proceeded
On, the organization’s quarterly journal. The board of
directors had chosen that name, Leppart said, because it
was “one of the most used phrases from the journals of
the captains …” and because the words seemed to be a
fitting tribute to both the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage
Foundation and its members.1 One member said, “Who
could resist the name … We Proceeded On?”2
The masthead came from the pen of Edward Burns
Quigley, then a well-known western artist living in
Portland, Oregon. Quigley worked in many mediums,
including oils, pen and ink, graphite, and wood—both
sculpture and bas-relief. He was well known for his
ability to capture, with these mediums, the cowboys,
wild horses, and round-ups of the Yakama people and
pioneering ranch families living in east-central Washington
and eastern Oregon.3 William P. Sherman, a “founding
father” of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation,
was a generous patron of the western art world, and it is
possible that through Sherman, Quigley agreed to design
the masthead for We Proceeded On.
The editor for We Proceeded On was Robert E. (Bob)
Lange and the business manager, Dr. Eldon G. (Frenchy)
Chuinard. Both men lived in Portland, Oregon, and were
“founding fathers” of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage
Foundation and active in the Oregon Lewis and Clark Trail
Above: The original
We Proceeded On
masthead, created
by Edward Burns
Quigley in 1975, has
graced the cover of
every issue of WPO
for the past 38 years.
Committee. Chuinard had served
as Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage
Foundation president in 1971-72,
and Lange in 1973-74.
At the August 1974 meeting
of the board of directors, George
Tweney (Seattle, Washington), chair
of the Publications Committee,4 assured the board that
the first four issues would be published “at no expense to
[the] Foundation,” through a $2,000 grant from the Lorene
Sales Higgins Charitable Trust (Portland, Oregon).5 At the
same time, the board began to explore fund-raising ideas
to help offset the costs associated with the publication of
We Proceeded On.
That first issue set both the tone and the standard
for subsequent issues of We Proceeded On. There was
news about the trail, with the Foundation a strong
proponent for trail stewardship and site protection. There
was information about the Foundation’s business, the
president’s column, and highlights of the sixth annual
meeting in Seaside, Oregon.
Starting with that first issue, and for decades thereafter,
the Foundation’s editor printed a roster of meeting
attendees, and a group photograph. Many subsequent
issues also included several candid photographs, taken by
Roy Craft, of Foundation members, guests, and speakers
enjoying fellowship, programs, and field trips. Craft was
the editor and owner of The Skamania County (Stevenson,
May 2013 We Proceeded On
"
19
The Man Behind
the Masthead
Edward Burns Quigley was
born in North Dakota in 1895.
In about 1900, his family moved
west, first to Idaho, and then to
Spokane, Washington, where
he honed his skills as an artist
drawing horses, cattle, and
circus animals. Spokane was
a frequent point of disembarkation for circus trains, and young
Quigley often stayed for hours at the rail yards, sketching the
animals and their handlers and equipment.1
After graduation from North Central High School in Spokane
in 1916, Quigley joined the military. According to Quigley’s
biographer, Carl Gohs, he eventually was assigned to the
Camouflage Division of the 40th Engineers. During World War
I, artists such as Quigley were put to work in the U.S. Army’s
newest, most creative, and far-thinking division, Company A,
40th Regiment of the Corps of Engineers, or the camouflage
division. In all probability, Quigley served his time in World War I
as a “camoufleur,” disguising gun placements, troops, trenches,
and war material from German aerial photographers.2
After the war, Quigley lived in Chicago and worked a variety
of art-related jobs, freelanced, and attended the Chicago Art
Institute. In 1930, he left Chicago for Portland, Oregon, where
his family had moved during the war. In Portland, he set up a
commercial studio and had another on the third floor of his
parents’ home. At the same time, he purchased 1.5 acres of
woodland on Cedar Creek, in the shadow of Mt. Hood. There
he built a log cabin, hand-carving the lintels and doors with
western themes.3
During the next five decades, Quigley became a respected
painter and carver of western art, the Yakama people, and the
circus. Among his works are more than 500 paintings, carvings,
and sketches with these themes. Some remain in private
collections and others are housed in the High Desert Museum
in Bend, Oregon.4 He painted murals for lodges, government
agencies, patrons, and Irvington Elementary School in Portland.
He carved countless horses and circus settings from sugar pine,
teak, and maple.
–Barb Kubik
Notes
1
Carl Gohs, Ed Quigley: Western Artist (Portland: Geneva Hale
Quigley, 1970), 8-9.
2
E. Malcom Parkinson, “The Artist At War: Painters, Muralists,
Sculptors, Architects Worked to Provide Camouflage for Troops
in World War I,” Prologue, 44:1 (Spring 2012) 2, under http://www.
archives.gov/publications/prologue/2012/spring/camoflauge
accessed March 5, 2013).
3
Gohs, 9-10; 163.
Andrew Moore, “Shaped By Experience: Edward Quigley’s Western
Art on Display at New Praegitzer Gallery,” Bend Bulletin, September
15, 2006, under http//:www.bendbulletin.com (accessed March 5, 2013).
4
20
!
We Proceeded On May 2013
Washington) Pioneer, a
weekly newspaper. He
had honed his craft as a
photographer in the
military, working for a
number of prominent West
Coast newspapers, and as
a Hollywood publicist.
His photographs in We
Proceeded On reveal his
eye for organization and for
people watching. It is obvious he loved the Foundation,
the story, the people, and the trail.6
Like so many others who brought a necessary skill set
to the organization and We Proceeded On, Craft served
as a Foundation board member. In addition to his work
with the Foundation and his many activities in Skamania
County, Craft also was a longtime member and chairman
of the Governor’s (Washington State) Lewis and Clark
Trail Committee.
In the center of that first issue readers found Donald
Jackson’s thoughtful and scholarly article, “Thomas
Jefferson and the Pacific Northwest,” which had been the
subject of Jackson’s banquet address at the Foundation’s
sixth annual meeting. Jackson was the editor of the
University of Illinois Press, the editor of Letters of the
Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents,
1783-1854, and the author of numerous articles about
the expedition. He also was a “sustaining member” of
the Foundation and recipient of the Foundation’s earliest
award, the Meritorious Achievement Award.7
Jackson’s article set the standard for scholarship that
continues to this day, both within the organization and
on the pages of We Proceeded On. Authors old and new,
published and unpublished, have contributed hundreds
of pages of thought-provoking, timely, and thoughtful
pieces that engage members, scholars, and students of the
story. From biographies of individual corps members, to
studies of mapping and tribal relations, to discussions of
flora and fauna and boats, much has been learned from
the pens of these authors.
In the second issue, Spring 1975, Lange shared the
story of the publication’s masthead with the membership
and introduced two new components to We Proceeded
On, book reviews and “Up-Dating Lewis & Clark in
Recent Periodicals.”
The first book review was by Tweney, a member
of the Foundation’s board, a dealer and collector of
rare books of western Americana, and like Thomas
LARRY BECKNER
Longtime Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation members Jim Peterson, of Vermillion, South Dakota, and Bev Hinds, of Sioux City, Iowa,
examined slides and photographs in the William P. Sherman Library and Archives in 2007 to identify people and places, particularly from the
early years of the Foundation’s history.
Jefferson, a bibliophile. Tweney put
his pen and wit to paper to explore
Marshall Sprague’s book, So Vast So
Beautiful a Land—Louisiana and
the Purchase, noting that Sprague
had “given us the definitive book
on the Louisiana Purchase, and
again in the distinguished style of
his numerous previous writings on
the western scene.”8
Lange’s new column, “UpDating Lewis & Clark in Recent
Periodicals” offered readers a quick peek into other
publications featuring articles about the story and the trail,
from Crown-Zellerbach’s Resources to the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers’ Water Spectrum, Arizona Highways,
and Montana: The Magazine of Western History. Lange
thoughtfully provided readers with a synopsis of each
article, as well as information on ordering that particular
publication and at what cost.
Lange also began contributing
h i s o w n s c h o l a r s h i p t o We
Proceeded On. His first article
was a two-page analysis of the
cost of the expedition. 9 Lange
based his research on three key
publications that have frequently
appeared as annotations in We
Proceeded On articles: Jackson’s
Letters, Reuben Gold Thwaites’ The
Original Journals of the Lewis and
Clark Expedition and the Missouri
Historical Society’s Bulletin.10
In the third issue of We Proceeded On, Tweney
reviewed John Logan Allen’s seminal work, Passage
Through the Garden: Lewis and Clark and the Image
of the American Northwest. Tweney called the book “a
scholarly contribution indeed to the literature of the
expedition, and will rank with Paul Russell Cutright’s
Lewis & Clark: Pioneering Naturalists and Donald
Authors old and new, published
and unpublished, have contributed
hundreds of pages of thoughtprovoking, timely, and thoughtful
pieces that engage members,
scholars, and students of the story.
May 2013 We Proceeded On
"
21
Jackson’s Letters … as the triumvirate of published reliable
information dealing with the expedition … no Lewis and
Clark bookshelf can be considered complete without this
newest work …”11 Tweney and others continued to review
books for children and adults, movies, and the occasional
kitsch, noting those items that should be on every “Lewis
and Clark bookshelf” and others that were not worthy of
the Foundation’s endorsement.
There was news of the passing
of a Foundation member, Owen
P. Buxton, a great-grandson of
expedition member Sergeant
Patrick Gass.12 At this time in the
Foundation’s early history, when
few descendants of the Corps of
Discovery were known, Foundation
members enjoyed Buxton’s warm
friendship and welcomed his
membership in the organization,
his interest in the expedition, and his
participation in the annual meetings.
Articles in We Proceeded On
were not without controversy.
Irving W. “Andy” Anderson’s
article, “Sacajawea?—Sakakawea?—Sacagawea?:
Spelling—Pronunciation—Meaning”13 started a long and
often raucous debate about the spelling and meaning of the
young Shoshone woman’s name, her contributions to the
expedition, and her marriage to Toussaint Charbonneau.
In the next issue of We Proceeded On, Lange announced
the journal would use the spelling “Sacagawea,” unless
the contributing author spelled her name differently.14 For
nearly 40 years, respected scholars have addressed these
and other questions in the pages of We Proceeded On.
By the fall of 1975, the Foundation had successfully
published four issues of We Proceeded On. The fourth
issue contained periodical updates, information about the
upcoming eighth annual meeting in Great Falls, Montana,
and news from the trail and trail-related organizations.
Lange included Larry Gill’s scholarly article, “The Great
Portage—Lewis and Clark’s Overland Journey around the
Great Falls of the Missouri River.”15 Lange encouraged
the meeting planners to contribute a series of informative
articles about topics associated with the upcoming meeting
site. Gill’s analysis of the corps’ portage was the first of
many such pre-meeting articles designed to pique the
membership’s interest in the annual meeting.
The fifth issue of We Proceeded On included Raymond
D. “Dar” Burroughs’s article “Lewis and Clark in
Buffalo Country.” Like so many other early scholars,
Burroughs was a Foundation member and a recipient
of the Foundation’s Meritorious Achievement Award
(1974). His book, The Natural History of the Lewis and
Clark Expedition, could be found on many members’
bookshelves, and he was a frequent contributor to history
and natural history publications before his death in 1976.16
Other items in that issue included
a new column that would appear
irregularly, honoring Foundation
members and their work with the
organization, the trail, or the story—
or all three. Called “Foundation
P e r s o n a l i t y, ” t h e f i r s t c o l u m n
recognized Seattle resident Cliff
Imsland and his work developing
audio-visual materials about the trail,
as well as his speaking engagements and
his work as a member of the Governor’s
(Washington State) Lewis and Clark
Trail Committee.17
The Spring 1976 issue contained
information about the upcoming annual
meeting, organizational and trail news,
and more periodical updates.18 Bob Saindon’s article, “The
Abduction of Sacagawea,” added to our understanding of
the young Shoshone woman’s frightening journey from
her homeland to that of her captors near the confluence
of the Knife and Missouri rivers in present-day North
Dakota.19
During this time, the Foundation’s president, Wilbur
Werner of Cut Bank, Montana, was working on a proposal
to help underwrite the costs associated with publishing We
Proceeded On. Publication costs were primarily for “the
three Ps”: paper, printing, and postage. Lange worked as a
volunteer. The black and white images in each issue were
either part of the public domain (i.e., William Clark’s maps)
or graciously donated by an author or photographer.
Members and authors contributed articles, news items,
and news releases. Lange frequently encouraged readers
to contribute articles of scholarship, assuring writers they
would “receive every consideration from our editorial
advisory committee.”20
During the board of director’s meeting at the
Foundation’s eighth annual meeting in Great Falls, Werner
presented a proposal he hoped would provide longterm funding for We Proceeded On. Werner proposed
commissioning well-known Montana sculptor Bob Scriver
to “strike a miniature bronze of Meriwether Lewis and the
During this time, the Foundation’s
president, Wilbur Werner of Cut
Bank, Montana, was working on
a proposal to help underwrite the
costs associated with publishing
We Proceeded On. Publication
costs were primarily for “the three
Ps”: paper, printing, and postage.
22
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We Proceeded On May 2013
LCTHF PHOTO
expedition’s dog.”21 When he asked for a “show of hands”
Lange printed two scholarly articles in that issue,
from board members, committee chairmen, and guests at
John Logan Allen’s banquet address, “The Summer
the board meeting, 15 people indicated a willingness to
of Decision: Lewis and Clark in Montana, 1805,” and
purchase one of the limited edition
Chuinard’s article, “The Photographs
bronzes for about $1,500. Werner
of Sgt. Patrick Gass.” Chuinard’s
also suggested the funds generated by
article was the first of many about
the sale of the bronzes be earmarked
Gass and existing images of him, and
specifically for We Proceeded On.
it served to engage Gass descendants
Newly elected Foundation president
in the story.25
Clarence Decker appointed an ad hoc
When Lange printed the next
committee, with Werner as chair, to
issue of We Proceeded On, he changed
study the proposal, engage Scriver,
it from a seasonal publication date to
and create a marketing plan.22
a monthly one, December 1976. The
O n e y e a r l a t e r, t h e b o a r d
issue contained important news about
announced the sale of the Foundation’s The Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation
the publication’s funding. Lange
commissioned
Montana
sculptor
Bob
Scriver
first bronze miniature, “Meriwether
reminded readers of the generosity of
Lewis and his Dog.” Proceeds from to create “Meriwether Lewis and His Dog.”
the Lorene Sales Higgins Charitable
Proceeds from the sale of the bronzes were
the sale of the limited edition, 8-inch- used to establish the Foundation’s Bronze Fund, Trust in providing additional grant
by-10-inch bronze were earmarked which continues to provide partial funding for
money for We Proceeded On: $2,000
the
publication
of
We
Proceeded
On.
for the “Bronze Fund,” an endowed
in 1974, $2,000 in 1975, and $2,500
fund to be used to publish We
in 1976. In addition, the J.N. “Ding”
Proceeded On. The bronze first was offered to Foundation
Darling Foundation had just given the Lewis and Clark
members for $950. Werner, still chair of the ad hoc “Bronze
Trail Heritage Foundation a gift of $500 to help with
Committee,” noted he had received orders for 30 of the
operational expenses.26
23
150 pieces in just a few months.
Generous gifts such as these, and the sale of the
The Fall 1976 issue of We Proceeded On was filled with
bronze the following year, allowed the Lewis and Clark
Foundation news, including the appointment of Hazel
Trail Heritage Foundation to “proceed on” for the next
Bain as the organization’s first membership secretary. Bain,
36 years, publishing its quarterly scholarly journal, We
of Longview, Washington, later became the Foundation’s
Proceeded On.
first female president. For many years, Bain worked hard
to increase the Foundation’s membership knowing that it
Barb Kubik is a former LCTHF executive director and officer.
was a portion of the members’ dues that helped support
She currently is the historian on the Meriwether Project. This
the publication of We Proceeded On.
is the first installment in her history of We Proceeded On.
The issue included a list of “contributing editors,”
names we recognize as early contributors to We Proceeded
NOTES
1
On: Anderson, Jackson, Burroughs, Saindon, Chuinard,
Gary Leppart, “President Leppart’s Message,” We Proceeded
On, 1:1 (Winter 1974-1975), 1. See We Proceeded On, 1:4 (Fall
and Tweney. In 1976, the Foundation’s Meritorious
1975), 1, for examples of usage of the phrase, “we proceeded on.”
Achievement Award was presented to two organizations
2
Robert E. Lange, “What’s in a Name,” We Proceeded On, 1:2
and four people, including the two most important people
(Spring 1975), 6.
to the operations of We Proceeded On, editor Bob Lange
3
Carl Gohs, Ed Quigley: Western Artist (Portland: Geneva Hale
and its business manager, Dr. Frenchy Chuinard.
Quigley, 1970), 10-11.
The Foundation continued to advocate for the
4
The Publications Committee included Tweney, Leppart, Lange,
preservation and protection of trail sites, including the
and Chuinard. 5 Minutes of the meeting of the Lewis and Clark
“salt cairn” in Seaside, Oregon. Oregon Senator Mark
Trail Heritage Foundation Board of Directors on August 11,
1974, 6.
Hatfield and Oregon Congressman Les AuCoin regulary
6
www.columbiagorge.org, “Roy D. Craft” (accessed March 12,
informed Lange as to the status of their federal legislation
2013). This more than 40-page file contains numerous obituaries
to make the salt cairn a part of the Fort Clatsop National
and tributes to Roy at his death on Christmas Day, 1989, as
Memorial. In turn, Lange notified the membership through
well as biographical sketches and copies of his work as editor of
the pages of We Proceeded On.24
several newspapers—The Kodiak (Alaska) Bear, The Skamania
May 2013 We Proceeded On
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23
County Pioneer and the McCleary (Washington) Stimulator.
Craft also worked for the Eugene (Oregon) Register-Guard, the
U.S. Army’s Stars and Stripes, and the San Francisco Examiner,
and he was the publicist for many Hollywood stars including
Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. In 1987, the Lewis and Clark
Trail Heritage Foundation presented Roy with its Distinguished
Service Award.
Robert E. Lange, We Proceeded On, 1:1 (Winter 1974-1975),
5-9. In 1974, general membership dues were $10 per year.
Sustaining members paid $25 per year.
7
ninth annual meeting was in St. Charles, Missouri, across the
Missouri River from then-president Clarence Decker’s home
in East Alton, Illinois.
Bob Saindon, “The Abduction of Sacagawea,” We Proceeded
On, 2:2 (Summer 1976), 6-8. Saindon would contribute many
articles to We Proceeded On, and when Bob Lange retired as
the Foundation’s editor in the spring of 1987, Saindon took the
job. He was a writer and editor, an educator, and a longtime
member of the Foundation. Saindon currently lives in Wolf
Point, Montana.
19
8
George H. Tweney, “Book Review,” We Proceeded On, 1:2
(Spring 1975), 6.
20
9
Robert E. Lange, “$2,500.00 vs. $38,722.25—The Financial
Outlay for the Historic Enterprise,” We Proceeded On, 1:2
(Spring 1975), 8-9.
21
At the time, Reuben Gold Thwaites’ eight-volume The
Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (New York:
Dodd, Mead and Co., 1904-05) was the definitive, annotated
work of the corps’ journals. Other edited, published journals of
importance were Ernest S. Osgood’s The Field Notes of Captain
William Clark, 1803-1805 (Yale University Press, 1964) and
Milo M. Quaife’s The Journals of Captain Meriwether Lewis
and Sergeant John Ordway (The State Historical Society of
Wisconsin, 1916). The Missouri Historical Society published
The Bulletin from 1944 to 1980. Since 1980, the publication has
been called Gateway Heritage.
22
10
11
George Tweney, “Book Review,” We Proceeded On, 1:3
(Summer 1975), 5, 11-12.
Owen P. Buxton (1904-1975) was the grandson of Patrick
Gass’s youngest daughter, Rachel Gass Brierly, and the son of
Rachel’s daughter, Sally Ann Brierly Buxton.
12
Irving W. Anderson, “Sacajawea?—Sakakawea?—Sacagawea?:
Spelling—Pronunciation—Meaning,” We Proceeded On, 1:3
(Summer 1975), 10-11.
13
Robert E. Lange, “Editor’s Note,” We Proceeded On, 1:1
(Fall 1975), 4.
14
Larry Gill, “The Great Portage—Lewis and Clark’s Overland
Journey around the Great Falls of the Missouri River,” We
Proceeded On, 1:4 (Fall 1975), 6-9. Gill was a former Great
Falls resident and a “dedicated student of the … Expedition
and particularly of the trials … over the navigational barrier of
the Great Falls.”
15
Raymond Darwin Burroughs, “Lewis and Clark in Buffalo
Country,” We Proceeded On, 2:1 (Winter 1976), 6-8; Robert E.
Lange, “R. Darwin Burroughs, 1899-1976,” We Proceeded On,
2:4 (December 1976), 11. Minutes of the meeting of the Lewis
and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation Board of Directors on
August 17, 1977, 8. When Burroughs died in 1976, his family
established the “Dar” Burroughs Memorial Fund in his honor.
This endowed fund is earmarked for youth and youth education.
16
17
Robert E. Lange, “Foundation Personality: Washington State’s
‘Cliff’ Imsland’s L. & C. Lectures in Demand,” We Proceeded
On, 2:1 (Winter 1976), 5.
For many years, the Foundation’s annual meeting was held in
the current president’s home state. The seventh annual meeting
was in Bismarck, North Dakota, the home city and state of thenpresident Gary Leppart. Werner was a resident of Cut Bank,
Montana, and the eighth annual meeting was in Great Falls. The
18
24
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We Proceeded On May 2013
Robert E. Lange, “Preview of Forth-Coming ‘Feature Stories
…’,” We Proceeded On, 2:1 (Winter 1976), 12.
Robert E. Lange, “Scriver’s Sculpture to be Dedicated June
13th at Ft. Benton,” We Proceeded On, 2:1 (Winter 1976), 1,
3. Bob Scriver recently had completed a heroic bronze statue
of Clark, Lewis, and Sacagawea for the nation’s bicentennial
celebration. The 16-foot-high bronze was installed on the Fort
Benton-Missouri River levee in Fort Benton, Montana. Funding
for this particular work had come, in part, from the sale of a
miniature bronze replica.
Minutes of the meeting of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage
Foundation Board of Directors on August 18, 1976, 11-12.
Robert E. Lange, “World Famous Sculptor, Bob Scriver,
Creates Exclusive Bronze for Foundation,” We Proceeded On,
3:3 (July 1977), 1, 3. Minutes of the meeting of the Lewis and
Clark Trail Heritage Foundation Board of Directors on August
16, 1977, 6, 8.
23
We Proceeded On, 1:1 (Winter 1974-1975), 11-12 and We
Proceeded On, 2:3 (Fall 1976), 7.
24
John Logan Allen, “The Summer of Decision: Lewis and Clark
in Montana, 1805,” We Proceeded On, 2:3 (Fall 1976), 8-11. Allen
continues to contribute to our knowledge of the expedition’s
cartography. He lives in Laramie, Wyoming, and is a lifetime
member of the Foundation. Dr. Eldon G. “Frenchy” Chuinard,
“The Photographs of Sgt. Patrick Gass,” We Proceeded On, 2:3
(Fall 1976), 4-5. In addition to his studies of Gass’ images, the
late Dr. Chuinard contributed much to our understanding of
the expedition’s medical practices, including his book, Only
One Man Died: The Medical Aspects of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition, first published by Arthur H. Clark Company in
1979. By 2001, five images of Gass had been identified by various
family members. J. I. Merritt, “A ‘New’ Portrait of Patrick
Gass,” We Proceeded On, 27:1 (February 2001), 26-30. We are
interested in the images of Gass because we know what so few
members of the expedition looked like. To our knowledge, only
Lewis and Clark had their portraits painted, and only Gass and
Private Alexander Hamilton Willard had their picture taken, as
elderly men.
25
http://www.ding-darling.org (accessed March 12, 2013).
Clarence H. Decker, “President Decker’s Message,” We
Proceeded On, 2:4 (December 1976), 2-3. Robert E. Lange,
“Annual Membership Renewal Due,” We Proceeded On, 2:4
(December 1976), 5. Jay Norwood “Ding” Darling was a prolific
editorial cartoonist, whose passion was the conservation of the
nation’s natural resources. Following Darling’s death in 1962,
colleagues, friends, and family established the J.N. “Ding”
Darling Foundation to provide funding for trail stewardship,
conservation, and activities such as those the Lewis and Clark
Trail Heritage Foundation has long advocated.
26
William Clark By Charles Willson Peale
William Clark:
Reflections on His Interactions with Family, Native
Nations, and Landscapes
By Jay H. Buckley
W
hen William Clark was born on August 1, 1770,
the Virginia Colony encompassed a territory
that stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the
Mississippi River, including all of what would become
Kentucky and portions of West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana,
Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. When Clark was 17, the
ratification of the U.S. Constitution created the United
States of America. Five years later, Kentucky entered the
union as the fifteenth state. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase
effectively doubled the size of America. Clark was
instrumental in exploring this new territory, negotiating
with its original inhabitants, encouraging American
settlement, and establishing his home in St. Louis where
he lived the remainder of his life.1
As Territorial Governor of Missouri, Clark played a
vital role helping to create the State of Missouri, which
joined the union on August 10, 1821, as the twentyfourth state. By Clark’s death in 1838, thirteen new states
had joined the original thirteen, doubling the number of
states in the Union. Clark’s encounters and interactions
with family and friends, Indian Nations, and the lands and
rivers of the trans-Appalachian and trans-Mississippi West
represent the driving factors that influenced and sustained
him. He often looked for examples in the East to solve
problems he encountered in the West.
William’s parents, John and Ann Clark, moved to
Albemarle County, Virginia, in 1749 to develop a 410-acre
tract of land along the Rivanna River near Charlottesville,
only a few miles from Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.
Five years later, the Clarks inherited land from John’s
uncle, also named John Clark, and moved to a plantation
in southwestern Caroline County twenty-five miles
from the Rappahannock River’s tidewater. There, in the
homeland of the Mattaponi and Rappahannock nations,
the Clarks shipped their tobacco from Port Royal, the
principal shipping outlet of the region. The Rappahannock
traverses the entire northern part of Virginia, emanating
from the Blue Ridge Mountains, and crosses the Piedmont
before emptying into the Chesapeake Bay just south of
the Potomac River. The Clarks also had the good fortune
to be located near the Southern or Ridge Road as well as
the stage line between Richmond and Washington City.
This proximity to major land and water thoroughfares
brought notable travelers, officials, military officers, and
merchants to William’s childhood home.2
With the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783
ending the Revolutionary War, Britain yielded its claims
to 250,000 square miles of land north of the Ohio
River and east of the Mississippi River. States including
Virginia eventually agreed to relinquish some western
May 2013 We Proceeded On
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25
26
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We Proceeded On May 2013
COURTESY OF THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY, LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY
land claims to the new republic.
Thomas Jefferson penned a Land
Ordinance in 1784 that provided a
rationale whereby new land could
be surveyed and sold to the public.
The Continental Congress passed
the Land Ordinance of 1785 and
the Northwest Ordinance of 1787
that enacted the aforementioned
measures, provided for surveying,
selling, and settling the land,
and formulated a pathway to
statehood. Since Congress did not
raise revenue through taxation, but
rather through a high trade tariff,
This photo of the Clark family’s two-story log cabin was taken by Rogers Clark Ballard Thruston in the
they sought to raise additional 1890s. It measured forty feet by twenty feet and was considered one of the finest cabins of its time.
monies by surveying and selling
western lands, a stroke of the pen that simultaneously
By 1799, the two-story cabin was expanded to forty feet
fueled western expansion into the Indian domain and
by twenty feet. It faced northwestward toward Louisville
brought the fledgling nation into direct conflict with
and represented one of the finest Kentucky log cabins of its
Indian nations. Adding to the potential for difficulties,
time. William Clark inherited the Clarks’ Kentucky estate
war veterans received land grants as a reward for their
in 1799 following the death of his parents and perhaps due
military service, which were usually located adjacent to
to the legal turmoil that precluded his brother George
Indian land on the frontier’s fringe.
from inheriting it.3
Instead of serving as a buffer between America’s
Clark gained valuable experience traveling on the
expanding settlement and Indian nations defending
Ohio and Mississippi rivers, especially on journeys to Ft.
their homelands, these military grants also brought in
Massac, Kaskaskia, Cahokia, St. Louis, and New Orleans.
land speculators who enticed and encouraged other
His Ohio River years contributed to his education
Americans to immigrate to the Ohio country. The trickle
because he copied some excellent aphorisms from things
of individuals and families into the trans-Allegheny and
he had read, such as: “Man cannot make principles; he
trans-Appalachian regions quickly swelled into a flood
can only discover them.” “The Most formidable weapon
that carried the Clark family with it. On October 30,
against errors of every kind is Reason.” “I believe that
1784, the Clarks, including 14-year-old William, packed
religious duties consist in doing justice, loveing mercy,
their belongings, left their eldest son Jonathan in charge of
and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.”4
the Virginia estate and traveled north to the Ohio River.
After making journal notations on the circumference of
They wintered at Redstone Fort on a mound overlooking
the earth, the tilt of its axis, and the distance of the six
the Monongahela River adjacent to the Indian route
planets from the sun, Clark lapsed into a discussion of
between the Potomac and Ohio rivers used by the Lenapes
trigonometry and concluded that the content “of its uses
(Delawares), Shawnees, Mingos, and other tribes. After
are unknown.” He agreed with Thomas Paine’s Age of
waiting for the spring thaw, the Clarks boarded a flatboat
Reason: “Learning does not consist in the knowledge
and descended the Monongahela to its junction with the
of Languages, but in the knowledge of things to which
Allegheny where together the rivers form the Ohio River at
language gives names—science and philosophy.” Clark
Pittsburgh. After narrowly escaping death from an Indian
summarized his thoughts with this poignant gem: “Every
attack, the Clarks arrived safely at the Falls of the Ohio in
person of learning is finally his own teacher.”5
the spring. They moved into their new Kentucky home, a
At the Falls of the Ohio in the summer of 1803,
two-story log cabin on a 256-acre plantation, “Mulberry
William Clark received a letter from Meriwether Lewis
Hill,” located a few miles southeast of Louisville. They
inviting him to help co-command an expedition to explore
also built two mills on the south fork of Beargrass Creek.
the Louisiana territory: “Thus my friend … you have a
Clark lived at this family homestead from 1785 to 1803.
summary view of the plan, the means and the objects of
for western tribes, and brigadier general of the militia the
this expedition. If therefore there is anything under those
following spring. In 1813, Clark was appointed Missouri’s
circumstances, in this enterprise, which would induce you
Territorial Governor and ex-officio Superintendent of
to participate with me in it’s fatiegues, it’s dangers and it’s
Indian Affairs. In 1822, Clark accepted a presidential
honors, believe me there is no man on earth with whom
appointment as the Superintendent of Indian Affairs
I should feel equal pleasure in sharing them as with
at St. Louis. During his time as soldier, explorer,
yourself.” Lewis asked Clark to: “find out and
Indian agent, territorial governor, and federal
engage some good hunters, stout, healthy,
superintendent, Clark met with hundreds
unmarried men, accustomed to the woods,
of individual American Indians including
and capable of bearing bodily fatigue in a
Little Turtle, Sacagawea, Shehekepretty considerable degree: should any
shote, Cameahwait, Coboway, Black
young men answering this description
Buffalo, Rabbit’s Skin Leggings, Black
be found in your neighborhood I
Hawk, and Keokuk, and negotiated
would thank you to give information
with dozens of Indian tribes. Clark
of them on my arivall at the falls of
conducted more treaties with Indian
the Ohio.”6
nations than any other American.
Clark responded to Lewis’s
Thirty-seven of the 370 Indian treaties
invitation from Clarksville in mid-July
ratified by the U.S. Senate bear his name.9
with a letter of acceptance. “[I] cheerfully
join in an ‘official character’ as mentioned
The Mississippi River became Clark’s
in your letter and partake of all the Dangers
new home, as well as a major transportation
Difficulties & fatigues, and I anticipate the honors
thoroughfare that propelled St. Louis to gain the
& rewards of the result of such an enterprise should
moniker Gateway to the West. The fur business, of
we be successful in accomplishing it.”7 While
which Clark became a principal player, centered
on the river and its tributaries. Emigrants such
he waited for Lewis’s arrival, Clark searched
as Daniel Boone settled along its banks.
for healthy, strong, unmarried men who
Clark’s personal diary from 1826 to 1831
were accustomed to the outdoors and a
reveals how large a role the river played
strenuous life.
in his life. He chronicled in his diary the
On October 14, 1803, Lewis
daily height and condition of the river,
arrived in Louisville, joining Clark and
the weather, the names of the steamboats
forming the famous Lewis and Clark
and vessels arriving or departing, and
duo. The keelboat was piloted through
the comings and goings of Indian
the Falls to Clarksville and a camp
delegations and family and friends.10
established at the nearby Clark cabin
on the eastern edge of town where
Clark resided in or near St. Louis
William and George Rogers lived. They
from 1807 until his death in 1838. He
spent almost two weeks going back and
shared his time there with two of the
forth between Louisville and Clarksville
most important people in his life. On
making final preparations. On October 26, Julia Hancock Clark (top) and Harriet January 5, 1808, he married Judith or
1803, Lewis and Clark, together with the Kennerly Radford Clark (bottom). “Julia” Hancock. They had five children
Pencil sketches by
nucleus of the Corps of Discovery, including
together: Meriwether Lewis, William Preston,
Kerry D. Soper.
York and the “Nine Young Men from Kentucky,”
Mary Margaret, George Rogers Hancock, and John
set off down the Ohio River from Clarksville, Indiana, on
Julius. Two years after Julia’s death in 1820, Clark married
a journey into the chronicles of history. The Lewis and
her cousin, the widowed Harriet Kennerly Radford,
Clark Expedition traveled the Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri,
who had three small children. Together they had three
and Columbia rivers, as well as some of their tributaries.
children, Jefferson Kearny, Edmond, and Harriett. Over
Of the 10,624 miles they traveled, 85 percent of their
the course of three decades, Clark and his growing family
journey was via rivers, roughly 9,046 miles.8
made numerous journeys from St. Louis to Louisville and
Fincastle, the county seat of Botetourt County, Virginia, to
Upon Clark’s safe return in September 1806, Thomas
visit family and friends. These numerous trips to Fincastle,
Jefferson soon appointed him the principal Indian agent
May 2013 We Proceeded On
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27
nestled near the headwaters of the James River in the
foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in addition to his
correspondence with officials in Washington, constantly
kept William Clark apprised of national events and assisted
in maintaining his close connection to the East Coast.11
William Clark was truly a man astride a continent. His
travels took him from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific
Ocean and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.
Residing near the country’s geographic center in St. Louis,
he had advanced American claims westward to the Pacific
while retaining his associations and contacts along the
Atlantic seaboard.
During the American Revolution,
General George Rogers Clark built
Fort Nelson in Louisville to provide
protection for the settlers against the
Indians’ defense of their land. He used
the area as a base of operations during
the Revolutionary War. In 1778, he
constructed a post on Corn Island
on the Ohio River where he trained
his 175-man regiment for the western
theater of the war. After the war was over, the general and
the men of his Illinois regiment received a tract of 150,000
acres for their wartime services. General Clark founded
two cities along the Ohio River, one on the sunnyside
and one on the bluegrass side. He founded Louisville in
1778—named after King Louis XVI of France—which
represented one of the oldest American cities west of the
Appalachian Mountains. In 1783, he platted Clarksville
across the river in Indiana on a thousand acres of the
southwestern corner of the large grant. Clarksville was
located opposite the lower Falls of the Ohio, and it was
here that Clark eventually established his residence near
a large bluff called Point of Rocks (present-day Clark’s
Point) overlooking the town and the river. He also built
a sawmill and gristmill. Clarksville represented one of the
first American settlements in the Northwest Territory.12
Louisville and Clarksville were situated at about mile
600 on the thousand-mile-long Ohio River. A buffalo
trace led from the Kentucky salt licks to the Kentucky
plains where Iroquoian and Shawnee hunting parties
accessed bison. The trace crossed the Ohio River at
the falls and emerged on the west side of Clarksville in
Floyd County. Emigration to southern Indiana after the
revolution consisted principally of settlers from Virginia
and Kentucky. It was another decade before Congress
admitted the “Land of the Indians,” or Indiana, to the
Union as the nineteenth state on December 11, 1816.13
William followed George Rogers’ example a half
century later when he founded a Kentucky town on the
south bank of the Ohio River at the confluence of the
Tennessee River. Many years prior, George Rogers had
chosen the location for a settlement. Although a few
settlers arrived after 1820, William platted 100 acres in
1827 and named the town Paducah. In a letter to his son
Lewis, who was attending West Point, Clark wrote, “I
expect to go to the mouth of [the] Tennessee the 26th of
next month and be absent about two weeks. I have laid out
a town there and intend to sell some lots [in] it, the name
is Pa-du-cah once the largest Nation
of Indians know[n] in this Country,
and now almost forgotten.”14 It is
important to note that Clark chose
the name of an Indian tribe (not
the legendary Chickasaw Chief
Paduke) as the name for his town,
just as the residents of Kentucky,
Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana had
given native names to their states.
Clark paid for an advertisement
in the Missouri Republican to drum up publicity to attract
settlers. He wrote: “At the mouth of the Tennessee River,
situated on the bluff on the Ohio river, opposite the lower
end of Tennessee Island. This place affords a perfect safe
steam boat land, and can be visited by steam boats from
New Orleans at all seasons of the year, is well situated
for houses for the storage of the exports from, and the
imports to the states of Tennessee and Alabama, at such
times as the Tennessee River cannot be navigated by steam
boats, and possesses numerous other advantages which
it is deemed unnecessary here to enumerate.”15 Paducah
was incorporated in 1830 and two years later became the
McCracken County seat. Twelve miles from the mouth of
the Cumberland River, 165 miles from Memphis, and 225
miles from Louisville, the city became known for its port
on the river, which serviced steamboats, towboats, and
barges. The city also served as an industrial center, making
red bricks and specializing in water and rail transportation.
Later it became a hub for the Illinois Central Railroad, the
main north-south railway connecting Chicago and East St.
Louis to the north and providing a link to the Burlington
Northern Railroad and the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa
Fe Railway lines. Louisville currently is the largest town
and Paducah is the fifth or sixth largest town in Kentucky.16
One of the most significant results of Paducah’s
settlement may be that it is in an area known as the Jackson
Purchase—a region in the state of Kentucky bounded by the
William Clark was truly a man
astride a continent. His travels took
him from the Atlantic Ocean to the
Pacific Ocean and from the Great
Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.
28
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BY MEGAN RYTTING AND BRENT BECK, BYU CARTOGRAPHY
Mississippi River to the west, the Ohio River to the north,
and Tennessee River to the east. Although it was included
as part of Kentucky in 1792, it came under national and
state control in 1819. The 2,100 square miles included seven
counties in western Kentucky: Ballard, Hickman, Fulton,
Graves, McCracken, Marshall, and Calloway. The purchase
also included all of West Tennessee, the region between the
Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, which includes all or part
of twenty counties.17
The purchase was necessitated because the Chickasaws
retained their traditional title to the land. Moreover,
Thomas Walker’s 1780 survey line of the border between
Virginia and North Carolina had been extended to the
Mississippi, supposedly along the 36°30’ parallel, but
apparently his line was too far north. To remedy the
situation, President James Monroe authorized General
Andrew Jackson and Kentucky Governor Isaac Shelby
to treat with the Chickasaws in 1818. They exchanged
$300,000 for 8,500 square miles west of the Tennessee
River. Article 1 of the treaty reaffirmed that “Peace
and friendship are hereby firmly established and made
perpetual, between the United States of America and the
Chickesaw nation of Indians.” Article 2 indicated that
the Chickasaws ceded all claim or title to the “land lying
north of the south boundary of the state of Tennessee …
thence, due west, with said degree of north latitude, to
where it cuts the Mississippi river at or near the Chickasaw
Bluffs; thence, up the said Mississippi river, to the mouth
of the Ohio; thence, up the Ohio river, to the mouth of
Tennessee river; thence, up the Tennessee river, to the place
of beginning.”18
In return, the Chickasaws received $20,000 a year
for fifteen years. Some of their leaders received signing
bonuses with assurances of assistance against the Creek
May 2013 We Proceeded On
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29
Nation. A Chickasaw reservation of four square miles
was established near the Sandy River, a tributary of the
Tennessee. The treaty was signed by the signatories,
ratified by the U.S. Senate and proclaimed law on January
7, 1819. On February 11, 1820, the legislature of Kentucky
approved the report of the commissioners designating the
state boundary.
Meanwhile, next door in
Missouri in January 1820, Missouri
was petitioning for statehood.
Southerners linked Maine’s efforts
to enter the Union as a free state with
Missouri’s admission as a slave state.
As part of the compromise, slavery
was supposed to be excluded from
the rest of the Louisiana Purchase
north of the southern boundary of
Missouri or the 36°30’ parallel. Speaker of the House Henry
Clay represented Kentucky, which had just established its
official western boundary in 1820. Clay’s eloquence carried
the day and on February 26, 1821, the U.S. House voted to
admit Missouri as a slave state.19
Missouri’s western boundary had always remained
somewhat elusive. The state’s western edge had been set,
in part, by Clark’s 1808 and 1809 treaties with the Osage
Nation.20 Clark extinguished all Osage claims east of a line
extending south from Fort Osage to the Arkansas River
(most of present-day Missouri and half of Arkansas) and
south of a line between Fort Osage and Fort Madison.
The Great and Little Osages ceded nearly three hundred
square miles or in Clark’s words, “Thirty Million of
acres of excellent country” for the
paltry sum of $1,500 annually, plus
some additional considerations
and presents. Later, after years of
experience, a more reflective Clark
opined that this first treaty he made
“was the hardest treaty on Indians
he ever made and that if he was to
be damned hereafter it would be for
making that treaty.”21
Fifteen years after statehood,
Missourians wanted to expand the northwestern borders
of Missouri to the banks of the Missouri River. Clark
may have remembered how Kentucky had extended its
boundaries to the Mississippi with the Jackson Purchase,
which he replicated somewhat with a similar purchase
in Missouri. Clark’s last Indian treaty, just as his first,
involved extracting extensive land cessions from Missouri
tribes. In September 1836, Clark made his last journey up
the Missouri River, this time to Fort Leavenworth, where
he treated with the Ioways, Sauks, and Foxes. He argued
that extending the Missouri state line to the Missouri
River would provide a “natural boundary between whites
and Indians.” The Indian delegations agreed to an annual
payment of $7,500, a greatly reduced reservation, and other
considerations.22
These treaties he conducted at Fort Leavenworth
have collectively become known as the Platte Purchase.
The Indian cession added 3,149 square miles to the
northwestern corner of Missouri and was carved into
Andrew, Atchison, Buchanan, Holt, Nodaway, and
Platte counties. Clark’s first and last Indian treaties, then,
had extinguished Indian title to virtually all the land in
Missouri. Missouri followed the examples of Kentucky
and Virginia, replicating their choice of closely following
the 36°30’ parallel when they formed and extending their
southern and western borders, as well as their penchant for
seeking to remove most of the Indians from within their
borders. Moreover, like the Jackson Purchase, wherein
Paducah emerged as an important river port and railroad
hub, the Platte Purchase included Kansas City and St.
Joseph, two of the main departure points for the westward
overland migration of the mid-nineteenth century.
BY MEGAN RYTTING AND BRENT BECK, BYU CARTOGRAPHY
In September 1836, Clark made
his last journey up the
Missouri River, this time to Fort
Leavenworth, where he treated
with the Ioways, Sauks, and Foxes.
30
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C.M. RUSSELL, CAPTAIN WILLIAM CLARK OF THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION MEETING WITH THE INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST.
COURTESY OF THE SID RICHARDSON MUSEUM, FT. WORTH, TEXAS.
Clark conducted more treaties with Indian nations than any other American. Thirty-seven of the 370 Indian treaties ratified by the U.S. Senate bear
his name.
Clark’s immediate and extended family stretched in a
line from St. Louis to Louisville to Fincastle. William Clark
made numerous visits to Louisville. He visited Jonathan
at Trough Spring; Edmund at Mulberry Hill or in town;
George Rogers at Point of Rocks and later at his sister
Lucy Clark Croghan’s home at Locust Grove after George
Rogers’s leg was amputated in 1809. He visited his brotherin-law Richard C. Anderson (Elizabeth’s widower) at
Soldier’s Retreat, and sister Frances or “Fanny” (O’Fallon,
Thruston, Fitzhugh) at a number of locations, including
brother-in-law Dennis Fitzhugh’s store, as well as family
members buried at Mulberry Hill. In his journeys to
Fincastle, Virginia, to see his friend William Preston or
his Hancock in-laws, Clark’s roots ran deep in Kentucky
and Virginia.23
William admired Jonathan and George Rogers.
Jonathan received the most attention from his parents,
who tried to ensure that his education and station in life
would make him worthy of inheriting the family estate
and caring for them in their old age. Jonathan was a
dutiful son, and fulfilled his parents’ expectations, serving
with honor in the Revolutionary War, even spending the
winter with General George Washington at Valley Forge.
Jonathan became the caretaker of the Clarks’ Virginia
estate when his family moved to Louisville. After both
parents died near the turn of the century, Jonathan became
the patriarch of the family and was looked to for advice
and counsel. William continually turned to Jonathan for
advice throughout his life, usually through letters.24
The letters covered topics including military service,
the expedition, the Burr Conspiracy, reuniting at the falls,
money and property matters, fossil excavations at Big
Bone Lick, William’s activities in St. Louis, and William’s
reaction to the death of his dear friend Meriwether Lewis.
Clark also wrote about York and his other slaves. Nearly
12 letters specifically mention York. They reveal that York
was married before he joined the expedition and that, after
their return, he wanted to rejoin his wife and family in
Kentucky. Initially Clark resisted, which caused a great rift
between the two. York’s persistence eventually paid off.
After serving some time with severe masters, he was sent
back to Louisville to serve William’s extended family. Clark
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31
eventually freed York and set him up in his own drayage
business hauling freight. York was not the only slave who
caused William to question the institution of slavery and
consider liquidating his property in exchange for cash. A
personal or private profile of William emerges through
these letters that is not as apparent in his other writings.
William expressed his gratitude saying, “I received your
kind letters … with greater pleasure that you can amagine.
I do assure you that advice was never given to one who
receved it with more Satisfaction,
and red the letters of another with
more real pleasure than I do yours
… I have in all Cases Sought your
advice and good Councils words
Cannot express the pleasure which
I feel in receving it unasked.”25
Clark was not the first Kentuckian
to have conflicted feelings over
slavery, and he would not be the last. One of Clark’s Indian
agents, John Sanford, represented his sister in the court
case over what was to become of her late husband’s slaves.
The Dred Scott Decision was one of the principal causes of
the Civil War. Kentuckian Henry Clay, the author of the
Missouri Compromise in 1820, also played a decisive role
in the Compromise of 1850, which simultaneously delayed
yet ensured the impending conflict. Abraham Lincoln and
Jefferson Davis, the respective presidents of the North and
South, both hailed from Kentucky. Residents of Indiana
and Kentucky divided over the issue, as did Abraham
Lincoln and his Todd in-laws. Nevertheless, the motto on
the Kentucky state flag and seal reads, “United We Stand,
Divided We Fall.”26
As profound an influence as
Jonathan had on William, perhaps
his brother George Rogers had an
even greater impact. George Rogers
Clark conceived and commanded
the campaign that secured the entire
Old Northwest Territory for the
future United States; William cocommanded the transcontinental
expedition that helped secure the entire New Northwest
Territory of the Oregon Country for the United States.
George founded Clarksville, one of the oldest towns in the
Northwest Territory; William helped put St. Louis on the
map as the principal city of the upper half of the Louisiana
Purchase. George led
volunteer soldiers to
capture Vincennes, only
to have to do it again; the
same thing happened to
William during the War
of 1812 when he captured
Prairie du Chien, only to
lose it again to the British
and their Indian allies.
Both brothers met and
treated with Chickasaws,
Shawnees, and other
nations. George Rogers
Clark called upon Patrick
Henry in Williamsburg to
elicit support for the new
Virginia county named
Kentucky. He endured
great hardships during
the Revolutionary War,
George Rogers Clark conceived
and commanded the campaign that
secured the entire Old Northwest
Territory for the new United States
This map illustrates the
comparative area of the free
and slave states and the
territory open to slavery or
freedom by the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise. c. 1856
32
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Jay H. Buckley, Associate Professor of History at Brigham
Young University, served as President of the Lewis and
Clark Trail Heritage Foundation in 2011-2012. This essay
was adapted from his Presidential Address at the Lewis and
Clark Trail Heritage Foundation’s 44th Annual Meeting in
Clarksville, Indiana, in August 2012.
Notes
Major books dealing with Clark’s life include: Jay H. Buckley,
William Clark: Indian Diplomat (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press); William Foley, Wilderness Journey: The Life
of William Clark (Columbia: University of Missouri Press,
2004); James J. Holmberg, ed., Dear Brother: Letters of William
Clark to Jonathan Clark (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2002); Landon Y. Jones, William Clark and the Shaping of
the West (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004); Peter J. Kastor,
William Clark’s World: Describing America in the Age of
Unknowns (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011); and
Jerome O. Steffen, William Clark: Jeffersonian Man on the
Frontier (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977). The
author thanks reviewers Jim Holmberg and Gary Moulton, and
proofreaders Carl Camp and Jerry Garrett for their assistance
with this article.
COURTESY OF THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY, LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY
1
George
Rogers Clark
(left) and
his younger
brother,
William,
shared many
similar
experiences.
Image
attributed to
Matthew H.
Jouett.
but eventually he and his men were awarded land grants.
William Clark received Thomas Jefferson’s blessing to
accompany Lewis on the expedition, receiving equal pay,
secured land grants, and land for the members of the
expedition. Both brothers recruited some of their finest men
from the Ohio River region and both dealt with river falls:
George Rogers at the Falls of the Ohio, and William at the
Great Falls of the Missouri and The Dalles of the Columbia.
Brotherly example and advice were not lost on
William. Later, while in General Anthony Wayne’s
campaign, Clark employed Indian scouts, kept a journal,
drew maps, constructed forts, managed men and supplies,
prepared for dangers, dealt with logistics, fended off attack,
and developed skills as a leader and diplomat, lessons
from his youth and early manhood in Kentucky. All of
these skills served him well a decade later while on the
expedition and in his lifelong career as an Indian agent
and militia general. Following his famous expedition,
William Clark remained in the West, yet his western
legacy is intrinsically tied to his eastern legacy, especially
his relationships and encounters with family and friends,
American Indian nations, and the rivers and streams of
the trans-Appalachian and trans-Mississippian wests. His
expedition with Lewis across the continent took them
across many rivers, through many Indian nations, and
forged the Corps of Discovery into a family.
Robert E. Gatten, Jr., “The Birthplace of William Clark,” We
Proceeded On, 19:2 (May 1993), 6-11; Robert E. Gatten, Jr.,
“Clark Land in Virginia and the Birthplace of William Clark,”
We Proceeded On, 25:2 (May 1999), 6-11; and Christy Hawes
Bond, Gateway Families: Ancestors and Descendants of Richard
Simrall Hawes, III, and Marie Christy Johnson (Concord, MA:
C. Hawes Bond, 1994).
2
John (1725-1799) and Ann (Rogers) Clark (1728-1798) and
their four youngest children: Lucy (1765-1838), Elizabeth (17681795), William (1770-1838), and Frances (1773-1825) arrived at
the Falls of the Ohio in March 1785. Ludie J. Kinkead, “How
the Parents of George Rogers Clark Came to Kentucky,” The
History Quarterly of the Filson Club, 3 (October 1928), 1-4;
James J. Holmberg, “Mulberry Hill,” in John E. Kleber, The
Encyclopedia of Louisville (Lexington: University Press of
Kentucky, 2001); Ernest M. Ellison, Mulberry Hill Plantation:
The Clark Family Home in Louisville, Kentucky (Louisville:
Privately printed, 1991); and Alfred Pirtle, “Mulberry Hill: The
First Home of George Rogers Clark in Kentucky,” Register of
the Kentucky Historical Society, 15 (September 1917), 49-54.
Ann Clark died on Christmas Eve, 1798, and her husband, John,
passed away on July 29, 1799. Douglas C. Harrison, The Clarks
of Kentucky (Bloomington: iUniverse, Inc., 2011).
3
4
William Clark, “William Clark’s Notebook, 1798-1801,”
Western Historical Manuscript Collection, State Historical
Society of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri.
William Clark, “Memorandum Notebook, 1798-1801,”
Breckenridge Collection, C 1075, State Historical Society of
Missouri; and William Clark Papers, Missouri Historical Society,
St. Louis, Missouri.
5
Lewis to Clark, June 19, 1803, in Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of
the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 17831854, 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 1:57-60.
6
7
Clark to Lewis, July 29, 1803, in Letters, 1:112-13.
8
The definitive source of the expedition is Gary E. Moulton,
May 2013 We Proceeded On
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33
ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, 13 vols.
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001). For an
analysis of Clark’s interactions with rivers, including the Corps
of Discovery’s use of a keelboat, two pirogues, and more than
a dozen canoes, bull boats, catamarans, and rafts, see Vern
Huser, On the River with Lewis and Clark (College Station:
Texas A & M University Press, 2004). Jonathan Clark diary,
October 26, 1803, “Capt. Lewis and Capt. Wm. Clark sot [set]
of[f] on a Western tour - went in their boat to Mr. Temple’s.”
Benjamin Temple was Jonathan’s son-in-law who had a farm
along the Ohio River in the area of present-day Lake Dreamland
neighborhood in western Louisville. Jonathan Clark Diary,
Clark-Hite Collection, and John Clark Papers – Temple Bodley
Collection, The Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky.
An October 29, 1803, report datelined “Louisville” noted that
“Capt. Clark and Mr. Lewis left this place on Wednesday last
[October 26], on their expedition to the Westward.” Kentucky
Gazette, November 8, 1803.
9
Buckley, William Clark: Indian Diplomat.
Louise Barry, ed., “William Clark’s Diary, May 1826-February
1831,” Kansas Historical Quarterly, 16 (1948), 1-39.
10
Eldon G. Chuinard, “Fincastle—Santillane and William and
Judith Clark,” We Proceeded On, 14:1 (February 1988), 10-15;
Raymond P. Barnes, “George Hancock,” Virginia Cavalcade,
20:2 (1970), 34-39; Stella M. Drumm, “The Kennerlys of
Virginia,” Missouri Historical Collections, 6 (1928), 98-123; and
Gene Crotty, The Visits of Lewis and Clark to Fincastle, Virginia
(Roanoke: History Museum and Historical Society of Western
Virginia, 2003).
11
The map of the grant, the Virginia patent, and the names of
those receiving land (mostly veterans from Pennsylvania and
Virginia) are in William H. English, Conquest of the Country
Northwest of the River Ohio, 1778-1783: And Life of Gen.
George Rogers Clark, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Bowen-Merrill
Co., 1897), 2:834-35, 839-50, 852-53, 1117-19; Margaret M.
Harding, comp., George Rogers Clark and His Men: Military
Records, 1778-1784 (Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society,
1981); and James A. James, George Rogers Clark Papers, 17711784, 2 vols. (Springfield: Indiana State Historical Society,
1912-1926). See also John D. Barnhart and Dorothy L. Riker,
Indiana to 1816: The Colonial Period (Indianapolis: Indiana
Historical Society, 1971), 254; Andrew R. L. Cayton, Frontier
Indiana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 103,
178; and James H. Madison, The Indiana Way: A State History
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 29.
12
13
For a more detailed history of the county, see Lewis C. Baird,
Baird’s History of Clark County Indiana (Indianapolis: B.F.
Bowen & Co., 1909); and John Bakeless, Background to Glory:
The Life of George Rogers Clark (Philadelphia: Lippincott,
1957).
William Clark to Meriwether Lewis Clark, April 27, 1827, in
William Clark Papers.
14
15
“PA-DU-CAH,” Missouri Republican, April 26, 1827.
John P. Dyson, “The Naming of Paducah,” Register of the
Kentucky Historical Society, 92:2 (1994), 149-74; and F. Kevin
Simon, ed., The WPA Guide to Kentucky (1939; reprint,
Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), 221-29.
16
Robert Fletcher, as agent for William Clark, recorded the plan
June 18, 1830. The 12 blocks of 12 lots each, lot fronts measuring
17
34
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We Proceeded On May 2013
57.5 feet by 173 feet deep, with 24 smaller lots lying along the
river. J.H. Battle, W.H. Perrin, and G.C. Kniffin, Kentucky:
A History of the State (1885; Rev. ed., Easley, SC: Southern
Historical Press, 1979), part 2:1-7.
Charles J. Kappler, ed., “Treaty with the Chickasaw, 1818,”
Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, 7 vols. (Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1904), 2:174-77.
18
Robert Pierce Forbes, The Missouri Compromise and Its
Aftermath: Slavery & the Meaning of America (Chapel Hill:
19
University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
Thomas Jefferson and Henry Dearborn, “Commission of
William Clark as Brigadier General of the Militia of Louisiana
Territory, March 12, 1807,” William Clark Papers. President
Thomas Jefferson had appointed Clark as brigadier general of
the militia and principal Indian agent for all tribes west of the
Mississippi (except the Osages) as part of the Office of Indian
Trade on March 12, 1807. The president already had appointed
Pierre Chouteau as Indian agent for the Great and Little Osages.
20
21
Buckley, William Clark: Indian Diplomat, 77.
“Treaty negotiated by General William Clark with the Ioway,
Sac, and Fox Tribes,” dated September 17, 1836, Superintendency
Records, Kansas State Historical Society.
22
Trough Spring was Jonathan Clark’s home near Louisville,
just east of Mulberry Hill. The core of the house still stands
but has significantly changed since the Clarks lived there.
George Rogers selected the location and William supervised
its building. Locust Grove was the home of William and Lucy
Clark Croghan, about six miles upstream from Louisville. Still
extant today as a historic home, it is a beautiful brick Georgian
style house. George Rogers spent the last nine years of his life
there after his leg was amputated. After Jonathan died in 1811,
William shifted his base of operations while visiting Louisville
to Locust Grove, and Julia and their children spent months
there at a time while he traveled or was in St. Louis. Soldier’s
Retreat was the home of Richard C. Anderson, about ten miles
east of Louisville. After his wife Elizabeth Clark Anderson died
in 1795, the families remained close. Soldier’s Retreat usually
was the jumping off place for Clarks heading east via the road
to Frankfort, which William did in October 1809. Some of the
original outbuildings remain and a replica of the original stone
house was built in the 1970s and 1980s. These houses can be
viewed at www.lewisandclarkinkentucky.org.
23
24
Jim Holmberg, curator at the Filson Historical Society, edited
nearly 50 letters between William and Jonathan that were
discovered in 1988. Holmberg’s book is the culmination of more
than a decade of work piecing together the people, places, and
events mentioned in this correspondence where William sought
the advice and approval of his oldest brother. See Holmberg,
Dear Brother: Letters of William Clark to Jonathan Clark.
Jonathan Clark Diary, Clark-Hite Collection, The Filson
Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky.; Jonathan Clark Papers
- Temple Bodley Collection, The Filson Historical Society.
Quoted in Jim Holmberg, “I Wish You to See & Know All,” We
Proceeded On, 18:4 (November 1992), 5; and Holmberg, Dear
Brother: Letters of William Clark to Jonathan Clark.
25
James A. Ramage and Andrea S. Watkins, Kentucky Rising:
Democracy, Slavery, and Culture from the Early Republic to
the Civil War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2011).
26
Reviews
Weapons of the Lewis & Clark
Expedition
+JN(BSSZ
The Arthur H. Clark Company
$32.95 / 208 pp.
W
eapons of the Lewis & Clark
Expedition is a book that I have
wanted to write. In my heart, I know
my version of this book would be dry,
technical, and interesting
only to the specialist.
Jim Garry’s book covers
the subject fully and is a
pleasure to read. It will
satisfy the advanced arms
collector and educate the
non-technical historian.
The men of
the Lewis and Clark
Expedition carried a relatively small
assortment of weapons. All had rifles
or muskets for hunting and defense.
Lewis had an air rifle and a shotgun in
addition to his rifle. There were a few
pistols, two swivel-blunderbusses, and
one small swivel-cannon. The officers
carried swords and spontoons, and all
carried tomahawks and knives.
Jim Garry does much more than
just describe the weapons. He provides
historical background on the expedition
and how it was armed; how the Indians
that Lewis and Clark met were armed;
use of the weapons for hunting,
specimen gathering, and defense; care
and repair of the firearms (in particular
by John Shields); and trade in arms with
the Indians.
He reminds us that Lewis wrote
on July 12, 1805, “we eat an emensity
of meat; it requires 4 deer, [or] an
Elk and a deer, or one Buffaloe, to
supply us plentifully 24 hours.” This
demonstrates the importance of guns
for the survival of the mission.
The author devotes a chapter to
each firearm, the edged weapons (knives,
tomahawks, swords, and spontoons),
the ammunition, and John Shields, the
extraordinary gunsmith/blacksmith.
On April 8, 1806, Clark wrote, “John
Shields cut out my rifle & brought hir
to shoot very well. The party owes much
to the injinuity of this man, by whome
their guns are repaired when they get out
of order—which is very often.”
Historians generally agree on
the types of weapons carried on the
expedition. There are only two guns
that engender controversy, the air rifle
and the Harpers Ferry “short” rifle.
Lewis mentions his air rifle several
times in his journals, but does not give
any particulars on it. He demonstrated
have astonished the Indians, as well as
anyone in America in 1804.
Indians knew how guns worked.
First you pour a measured charge of
blackpowder down the muzzle, then
ram a lead ball down the bore, return the
ram rod to the sleeves under the barrel,
put some blackpowder in the flash pan,
be sure your flint is OK, cock the gun,
pull the trigger and a loud noise results
along with a flash of fire and a large
quantity of smoke.
With the repeating air rifle, Lewis
could put a target on a tree and fire 20
shots in a minute without smoke or loud
noise, and no preparation for each shot.
They were astonished! You can read
in Chapter 6 the details of acceptance
by historians of the certainty of Lewis
having this repeating air rifle.
The controversy of the origin of the
“short” rifles is ongoing. Garry gives
both positions in Chapter 3. Everyone
agrees that Lewis picked up 15 rifles
at Harpers Ferry, and that they were
prepared at the same time his iron boat
was being constructed there. Were they
of new construction, or were the 15
rifles taken from a 1792 sub-contractor’s
shipment in storage
at the armory? My
position is that the
15 rifles were preGirandoni Model 1780 repeating air rifle.
production examples
of the Harpers Ferry
Model 1803 rifle.
Jim Garry
Harpers Ferry Model 1803 rifle.
has written a very
readable book on
it during meetings with Indian chiefs
the important subject of the weapons
and usually wrote that the Indians were
of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
astonished at its performance.
He presents technical aspects of the
For many decades historians
firearms couched in language the
were convinced that Lewis’s air rifle
casual reader will understand, and
was a single-shot air rifle made by
he covers the controversial subjects
Isaiah Lukens in Philadelphia. I was
in an impartial manner. There is
the recipient of a spirited series of
misinformation on this subject in
denouncements and feisty letters-toseveral publications and on the Internet.
the-editor when I published articles
With this book in your library, you will
( W P O , November 2002 and May
have current information from a trusted
2011) debunking the Lukens’ air gun
and knowledgeable author.
and proposing that Lewis carried a
repeating, .46 caliber, Austrian Military
—Michael F. Carrick
Model 1780 air rifle capable of firing
Note: This book includes 23 illustrations
provided by the reviewer.
20 shots in a minute. Now that would
May 2013 We Proceeded On
"
35
Soundings
Make New Discoveries and Plan Your Next Adventure
By Ryan Cooper
Geographer, National Park Service
T
he National Park Service is proud
to announce and share a new interactive Web map of the Lewis and
Clark National Historic Trail. Personalize your exploration by discovering exciting trail themes with
this portal into the geography of the
Lewis and Clark National Historic
Trail. This interactive map allows
you to instantly travel to Lewis
and Clark campsites, learn about
the historic rivers encountered on
the expedition, and dynamically
display different map layers and
backgrounds of your choice. The
information is organized thematically in a table of contents and you An overview of what map users see when they first visit the map site. can choose to view map layers
that show recreation and visitor
sites, historic information, natural
and cultural resources, land cover,
public lands, and much more. The
interactive map site also contains
a variety of clickable links to Web
sites that provide a wealth of information about the trail, including the
online journals of Lewis and Clark.
Unlike traditional paper maps,
which are static and contain a limited number of geographic layers
printed at a set scale, the Lewis
and Clark National Historic Trail
interactive map site allows you to
zoom in and out of areas of interest
and choose the geographic extent A detailed, “zoomed-in” view of the Fort Mandan area, showing the historic Missouri River, the
course of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, campsites, and historic overlooks, as well as some of
and scale at which you wish to
the “pop-ups” a map user can view to find more information.
view the trail. Users can turn layers of information on and off in the table of contents and
more data layers and tools will be added. The National
display different map backgrounds, such as aerial photos,
Park Service hopes this interactive Web map will be used by
topographic maps, street maps, and terrain. The site allows
people not only to help plan their trips along the trail, but
you to create, export, and print your own custom maps by
also to educate future generations about the historic journey
drawing and adding text. Toolbars are available to allow
of the Corps of Discovery and the importance of protecting
you to measure distance and area, add your own GPS data,
the trail’s vital resources. To learn more, visit the Lewis and
find latitude and longitude coordinates, and open and view
Clark National Historic Trail’s website at http://www.nps.
locations in Google Maps and Google Earth Street View.
gov/lecl or access the interactive web map directly at http://
The interactive Web map will continue to be enhanced and
imgis.nps.gov/DSC/Viewer/?Viewer=LECL.
36
!
We Proceeded On May 2013