First Across the Continent

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FIRST ACROSS THE CONTINENT

The Story of The Exploring Expedition of Lewis and Clark in 1804-5-6

By Noah Brooks




Chapter I -- A Great Transaction in Land

The people of the young Republic of the United States were greatly
astonished, in the summer of 1803, to learn that Napoleon Bonaparte,
then First Consul of France, had sold to us the vast tract of land known
as the country of Louisiana. The details of this purchase were arranged
in Paris (on the part of the United States) by Robert R. Livingston and
James Monroe. The French government was represented by Barbe-Marbois,
Minister of the Public Treasury.

The price to be paid for this vast domain was fifteen million dollars.
The area of the country ceded was reckoned to be more than one million
square miles, greater than the total area of the United States, as the
Republic then existed. Roughly described, the territory comprised all
that part of the continent west of the Mississippi River, bounded on the
north by the British possessions and on the west and south by dominions
of Spain. This included the region in which now lie the States of
Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, parts of Colorado, Minnesota, the
States of Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, a part
of Idaho, all of Montana and Territory of Oklahoma. At that time, the
entire population of the region, exclusive of the Indian tribes that
roamed over its trackless spaces, was barely ninety thousand persons,
of whom forty thousand were negro slaves. The civilized inhabitants
were principally French, or descendants of French, with a few Spanish,
Germans, English, and Americans.

The purchase of this tremendous slice of territory could not be complete
without an approval of the bargain by the United States Senate. Great
opposition to this was immediately excited by people in various parts
of the Union, especially in New England, where there was a very bitter
feeling against the prime mover in this business,--Thomas Jefferson,
then President of the United States. The scheme was ridiculed by persons
who insisted that the region was not only wild and unexplored, but
uninhabitable and worthless. They derided "The Jefferson Purchase," as
they called it, as a useless piece of extravagance and folly; and, in
addition to its being a foolish bargain, it was urged that President
Jefferson had no right, under the constitution of the United States, to
add any territory to the area of the Republic.

Nevertheless, a majority of the people were in favor of the purchase,
and the bargain was duly approved by the United States Senate; that
body, July 31, 1803, just three months after the execution of the treaty
of cession, formally ratified the important agreement between the two
governments. The dominion of the United States was now extended across
the entire continent of North America, reaching from the Atlantic to the
Pacific. The Territory of Oregon was already ours.

This momentous transfer took place one hundred years ago, when almost
nothing was known of the region so summarily handed from the government
of France to the government of the American Republic. Few white men had
ever traversed those trackless plains, or scaled the frowning ranges of
mountains that barred the way across the continent. There were living in
the fastnesses of the mysterious interior of the Louisiana Purchase many
tribes of Indians who had never looked in the face of the white man.

Nor was the Pacific shore of the country any better known to civilized
man than was the region lying between that coast and the Big Muddy, or
Missouri River. Spanish voyagers, in 1602, had sailed as far north as
the harbors of San Diego and Monterey, in what is now California;
and other explorers, of the same nationality, in 1775, extended their
discoveries as far north as the fifty-eighth degree of latitude. Famous
Captain Cook, the great navigator of the Pacific seas, in 1778, reached
and entered Nootka Sound, and, leaving numerous harbors and bays
unexplored, he pressed on and visited the shores of Alaska, then called
Unalaska, and traced the coast as far north as Icy Cape. Cold weather
drove him westward across the Pacific, and he spent the next winter at
Owyhee, where, in February of the following year, he was killed by the
natives.

All these explorers were looking for chances for fur-trading, which was
at that time the chief industry of the Pacific coast. Curiously enough,
they all passed by the mouth of the Columbia without observing that
there was the entrance to one of the finest rivers on the American
continent.

Indeed, Captain Vancouver, a British explorer, who has left his name
on the most important island of the North Pacific coast, baffled by the
deceptive appearances of the two capes that guard the way to a noble
stream (Cape Disappointment and Cape Deception), passed them without a
thought. But Captain Gray, sailing the good ship "Columbia," of Boston,
who coasted those shores for more than two years, fully convinced that a
strong current which he observed off those capes came from a river, made
a determined effort; and on the 11th of May, 1792, he discovered and
entered the great river that now bears the name of his ship. At last
the key that was to open the mountain fastnesses of the heart of the
continent had been found. The names of the capes christened by Vancouver
and re-christened by Captain Gray have disappeared from our maps, but
in the words of one of the numerous editors(1) of the narrative of the
exploring expedition of Lewis and Clark: "The name of the good ship
'Columbia,' it is not hard to believe, will flow with the waters of the
bold river as long as grass grows or water runs in the valleys of the
Rocky Mountains."


(1) Dr. Archibald McVickar.


It appears that the attention of President Jefferson had been early
attracted to the vast, unexplored domain which his wise foresight was
finally to add to the territory of the United States. While he was
living in Paris, as the representative of the United States, in 1785-89,
he made the acquaintance of John Ledyard, of Connecticut, the well-known
explorer, who had then in mind a scheme for the establishment of a
fur-trading post on the western coast of America. Mr. Jefferson proposed
to Ledyard that the most feasible route to the coveted fur-bearing lands
would be through the Russian possessions and downward somewhere near to
the latitude of the then unknown sources of the Missouri River, entering
the United States by that route. This scheme fell through on account of
the obstacles thrown in Ledyard's way by the Russian Government. A few
years later, in 1792, Jefferson, whose mind was apparently fixed on
carrying out his project, proposed to the American Philosophical Society
of Philadelphia that a subscription should be opened for the purpose of
raising money "to engage some competent person to explore that region in
the opposite direction (from the Pacific coast),--that is, by ascending
the Missouri, crossing the Stony (Rocky) Mountains, and descending the
nearest river to the Pacific." This was the hint from which originated
the famous expedition of Lewis and Clark.

But the story-teller should not forget to mention that hardy and
adventurous explorer, Jonathan Carver. This man, the son of a British
officer, set out from Boston, in 1766, to explore the wilderness north
of Albany and lying along the southern shore of the Great Lakes. He was
absent two years and seven months, and in that time he collected a vast
amount of useful and strange information, besides learning the language
of the Indians among whom he lived. He conceived the bold plan of
travelling up a branch of the Missouri (or "Messorie"), till, having
discovered the source of the traditional "Oregon, or River of the West,"
on the western side of the lands that divide the continent, "he would
have sailed down that river to the place where it is said to empty
itself, near the Straits of Anian."

By the Straits of Anian, we are to suppose, were meant some part of
Behring's Straits, separating Asia from the American continent. Carver's
fertile imagination, stimulated by what he knew of the remote Northwest,
pictured that wild region where, according to a modern poet, "rolls the
Oregon and hears no sound save his own dashing." But Carver died without
the sight; in his later years, he said of those who should follow his
lead: "While their spirits are elated by their success, perhaps they may
bestow some commendations and blessings on the person who first pointed
out to them the way."




Chapter II -- Beginning a Long Journey

In 1803, availing himself of a plausible pretext to send out an
exploring expedition, President Jefferson asked Congress to appropriate
a small sum of money ($2,500) for the execution of his purpose. At that
time the cession of the Louisiana Territory had not been completed; but
matters were in train to that end, and before the expedition was fairly
started on its long journey across the continent, the Territory was
formally ceded to the United States.

Meriwether Lewis, a captain in the army, was selected by Jefferson to
lead the expedition. Captain Lewis was a native of Virginia, and at that
time was only twenty-nine years old. He had been Jefferson's private
secretary for two years and was, of course, familiar with the
President's plans and expectations as these regarded the wonder-land
which Lewis was to enter. It is pleasant to quote here Mr. Jefferson's
words concerning Captain Lewis. In a memoir of that distinguished young
officer, written after his death, Jefferson said: "Of courage undaunted;
possessing a firmness and perseverance of purpose which nothing but
impossibilities could divert from its direction; careful as a father of
those committed to his charge, yet steady in the maintenance of
order and discipline; intimate with the Indian character, customs
and principles; habituated to the hunting life; guarded, by exact
observation of the vegetables and animals of his own country, against
losing time in the description of objects already possessed; honest,
disinterested, liberal, of sound understanding, and a fidelity to truth
so scrupulous that whatever he should report would be as certain as if
seen by ourselves--with all these qualifications, as if selected and
implanted by nature in one body for this express purpose, I could have
no hesitation in confiding the enterprise to him."

Before we have finished the story of Meriwether Lewis and his
companions, we shall see that this high praise of the youthful commander
was well deserved.

For a coadjutor and comrade Captain Lewis chose William Clark,(1) also
a native of Virginia, and then about thirty-three years old. Clark, like
Lewis, held a commission in the military service of the United States,
and his appointment as one of the leaders of the expedition with which
his name and that of Lewis will ever be associated, made the two men
equal in rank. Exactly how there could be two captains commanding the
same expedition, both of the same military and actual rank, without jar
or quarrel, we cannot understand; but it is certain that the two young
men got on together harmoniously, and no hint or suspicion of any
serious disagreement between the two captains during their long and
arduous service has come down to us from those distant days.


(1) It is a little singular that Captain Clark's name has
been so persistently misspelled by historians and
biographers. Even in most of the published versions of the
story of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the name of one of
the captains is spelled Clarke. Clark's own signature, of
which many are in existence, is without the final and
superfluous vowel; and the family name, for generations
past, does not show it.


As finally organized, the expedition was made up of the two captains
(Lewis and Clark) and twenty-six men. These were nine young men from
Kentucky, who were used to life on the frontier among Indians; fourteen
soldiers of the United States Army, selected from many who eagerly
volunteered their services; two French voyageurs, or watermen, one of
whom was an interpreter of Indian language, and the other a hunter; and
one black man, a servant of Captain Clark. All these, except the negro
servant, were regularly enlisted as privates in the military service of
the United States during the expedition; and three of them were by the
captains appointed sergeants. In addition to this force, nine voyageurs
and a corporal and six private soldiers were detailed to act as guides
and assistants until the explorers should reach the country of the
Mandan Indians, a region lying around the spot where is now situated
the flourishing city of Bismarck, the capital of North Dakota. It was
expected that if hostile Indians should attack the explorers anywhere
within the limits of the little-known parts through which they were
to make their way, such attacks were more likely to be made below the
Mandan country than elsewhere.

The duties of the explorers were numerous and important. They were to
explore as thoroughly as possible the country through which they were
to pass; making such observations of latitude and longitude as would be
needed when maps of the region should be prepared by the War Department;
observing the trade, commerce, tribal relations, manners and customs,
language, traditions, and monuments, habits and industrial pursuits,
diseases and laws of the Indian nations with whom they might come in
contact; note the floral, mineral, and animal characteristics of the
country, and, above all, to report whatever might be of interest to
citizens who might thereafter be desirous of opening trade relations
with those wild tribes of which almost nothing was then distinctly
known.

The list of articles with which the explorers were provided, to aid them
in establishing peaceful relations with the Indians, might amuse traders
of the present day. But in those primitive times, and among peoples
entirely ignorant of the white man's riches and resources, coats richly
laced with gilt braid, red trousers, medals, flags, knives, colored
handkerchiefs, paints, small looking-glasses, beads and tomahawks were
believed to be so attractive to the simple-minded red man that he would
gladly do much and give much of his own to win such prizes. Of these
fine things there were fourteen large bales and one box. The stores of
the expedition were clothing, working tools, fire-arms, food supplies,
powder, ball, lead for bullets, and flints for the guns then in use, the
old-fashioned flint-lock rifle and musket being still in vogue in our
country; for all of this was at the beginning of the present century.

As the party was to begin their long journey by ascending the Missouri
River, their means of travel were provided in three boats. The largest,
a keel-boat, fifty-five feet long and drawing three feet of water,
carried a big square sail and twenty-two seats for oarsmen. On board
this craft was a small swivel gun. The other two boats were of that
variety of open craft known as pirogue, a craft shaped like a flat-iron,
square-sterned, flat-bottomed, roomy, of light draft, and usually
provided with four oars and a square sail which could be used when the
wind was aft, and which also served as a tent, or night shelter, on
shore. Two horses, for hunting or other occasional service, were led
along the banks of the river.

As we have seen, President Jefferson, whose master mind organized and
devised this expedition, had dwelt longingly on the prospect of crossing
the continent from the headwaters of the Missouri to the headwaters of
the then newly-discovered Columbia. The route thus explored was more
difficult than that which was later travelled by the first emigrants
across the continent to California. That route lies up the Platte River,
through what is known as the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, by Great
Salt Lake and down the valley of the Humboldt into California, crossing
the Sierra Nevada at any one of several points leading into the valley
of the Sacramento. The route, which was opened by the gold-seekers, was
followed by the first railroads built across the continent. The route
that lay so firmly in Jefferson's mind, and which was followed up with
incredible hardships by the Lewis and Clark expedition, has since been
traversed by two railroads, built after the first transcontinental
rails were laid. If Jefferson had desired to find the shortest and most
feasible route across the continent, he would have pointed to the South
Pass and Utah basin trails. But these would have led the explorers into
California, then and long afterwards a Spanish possession. The entire
line finally traced over the Great Divide lay within the territory of
the United States.

But it must be remembered that while the expedition was being organized,
the vast Territory of Louisiana was as yet a French possession. Before
the party were brought together and their supplies collected,
the territory passed under the jurisdiction of the United States.
Nevertheless, that jurisdiction was not immediately acknowledged by
the officials who, up to that time, had been the representatives of the
French and Spanish governments. Part of the territory was transferred
from Spain to France and then from France to the United States. It was
intended that the exploring party should pass the winter of 1803-4 in
St. Louis, then a mere village which had been commonly known as Pain
Court. But the Spanish governor of the province had not been officially
told that the country had been transferred to the United States, and,
after the Spanish manner, he forbade the passage of the Americans
through his jurisdiction. In those days communication between frontier
posts and points lying far to the eastward of the Mississippi was very
difficult; it required six weeks to carry the mails between New York,
Philadelphia, and Washington to St. Louis; and this was the reason why
a treaty, ratified in July, was not officially heard of in St. Louis
as late as December of that year. The explorers, shut out of Spanish
territory, recrossed the Mississippi and wintered at the mouth of Wood
River, just above St. Louis, on the eastern side of the great river, in
United States territory. As a matter of record, it may be said here that
the actual transfer of the lower part of the territory--commonly known
as Orleans--took place at New Orleans, December 20, 1803, and the
transfer of the upper part was effected at St. Louis, March 10, 1804,
before the Lewis and Clark expedition had started on its long journey to
the northwestward.

All over the small area of the United States then existed a deep
interest in the proposed explorations of the course and sources of the
Missouri River. The explorers were about to plunge into vast solitudes
of which white people knew less than we know now about the North Polar
country. Wild and extravagant stories of what was to be seen in those
trackless regions were circulated in the States. For example, it was
said that Lewis and Clark expected to find the mammoth of prehistoric
times still living and wandering in the Upper Missouri region; and it
was commonly reported that somewhere, a thousand miles or so up
the river, was a solid mountain of rock salt, eighty miles long and
forty-five miles wide, destitute of vegetation and glittering in the
sun! These, and other tales like these, were said to be believed and
doted upon by the great Jefferson himself. The Federalists, or "Feds,"
as they were called, who hated Jefferson, pretended to believe that he
had invented some of these foolish yarns, hoping thereby to make his
Louisiana purchase more popular in the Republic.

In his last letter to Captain Lewis, which was to reach the explorers
before they started, Jefferson said: "The acquisition of the country
through which you are to pass has inspired the country generally with a
great deal of interest in your enterprise. The inquiries are perpetual
as to your progress. The Feds alone still treat it as a philosophism,
and would rejoice at its failure. Their bitterness increases with the
diminution of their numbers and despair of a resurrection. I hope you
will take care of yourself, and be a living witness of their malice and
folly." Indeed, after the explorers were lost sight of in the wilderness
which they were to traverse, many people in the States declaimed
bitterly against the folly that had sent these unfortunate men to perish
miserably in the fathomless depths of the continent. They no longer
treated it "as a philosophism," or wild prank, but as a wicked scheme to
risk life and property in a search for the mysteries of the unknown and
unknowable.

As a striking illustration of this uncertainty of the outcome of the
expedition, which exercised even the mind of Jefferson, it may be said
that in his instructions to Captain Lewis he said: "Our Consuls, Thomas
Hewes, at Batavia in Java, William Buchanan in the isles of France and
Bourbon, and John Elmslie at the Cape of Good Hope, will be able to
supply your necessities by drafts on us." All this seems strange enough
to the young reader of the present day; but this was said and done one
hundred years ago.




Chapter III -- From the Lower to the Upper River

The party finally set sail up the Missouri River on Monday, May 21,
1804, but made only a few miles, owing to head winds. Four days
later they camped near the last white settlement on the Missouri,--La
Charrette, a little village of seven poor houses. Here lived Daniel
Boone, the famous Kentucky backwoodsman, then nearly seventy years old,
but still vigorous, erect, and strong of limb. Here and above this place
the explorers began to meet with unfamiliar Indian tribes and names. For
example, they met two canoes loaded with furs "from the Mahar nation."
The writer of the Lewis and Clark journal, upon whose notes we rely for
our story, made many slips of this sort. By "Mahars" we must understand
that the Omahas were meant. We shall come across other such instances
in which the strangers mistook the pronunciation of Indian names. For
example, Kansas was by them misspelled as "Canseze" and "Canzan;" and
there appear some thirteen or fourteen different spellings of Sioux, of
which one of the most far-fetched is "Scouex."

The explorers were now in a country unknown to them and almost unknown
to any white man. On the thirty-first of May, a messenger came down the
Grand Osage River bringing a letter from a person who wrote that the
Indians, having been notified that the country had been ceded to the
Americans, burned the letter containing the tidings, refusing to believe
the report. The Osage Indians, through whose territory they were now
passing, were among the largest and finest-formed red men of the West.
Their name came from the river along which they warred and hunted, but
their proper title, as they called themselves, was "the Wabashas," and
from them, in later years, we derive the familiar name of Wabash. A
curious tradition of this people, according to the journal of Lewis and
Clark, is that the founder of the nation was a snail, passing a quiet
existence along the banks of the Osage, till a high flood swept him down
to the Missouri, and left him exposed on the shore. The heat of the sun
at length ripened him into a man; but with the change of his nature
he had not forgotten his native seats on the Osage, towards which he
immediately bent his way. He was, however, soon overtaken by hunger and
fatigue, when happily, the Great Spirit appeared, and, giving him a bow
and arrow, showed him how to kill and cook deer, and cover himself
with the skin. He then proceeded to his original residence; but as he
approached the river he was met by a beaver, who inquired haughtily who
he was, and by what authority he came to disturb his possession. The
Osage answered that the river was his own, for he had once lived on its
borders. As they stood disputing, the daughter of the beaver came, and
having, by her entreaties, reconciled her father to this young stranger,
it was proposed that the Osage should marry the young beaver, and share
with her family the enjoyment of the river. The Osage readily consented,
and from this happy union there soon came the village and the nation of
the Wabasha, or Osages, who have ever since preserved a pious reverence
for their ancestors, abstaining from the chase of the beaver, because in
killing that animal they killed a brother of the Osage. Of late years,
however, since the trade with the whites has rendered beaver-skins more
valuable, the sanctity of these maternal relatives has been visibly
reduced, and the poor animals have lost all the privileges of kindred.

Game was abundant all along the river as the explorers sailed up the
stream. Their hunters killed numbers of deer, and at the mouth of Big
Good Woman Creek, which empties into the Missouri near the present town
of Franklin, Howard County, three bears were brought into the camp.
Here, too, they began to find salt springs, or "salt licks," to which
many wild animals resorted for salt, of which they were very fond.
Saline County, Missouri, perpetuates the name given to the region by
Lewis and Clark. Traces of buffalo were also found here, and occasional
wandering traders told them that the Indians had begun to hunt the
buffalo now that the grass had become abundant enough to attract this
big game from regions lying further south.