REPORTS ON LEWIS AND CLARK

JAMES P. RONDA

It had been more than a year since had reliable word from his cherished Lewis and Clark expedition. There were rumors--stories of Indian attacks and Spanish troubles--but the president chose to put those tales aside and wait for something substantial from his westering captains. Lewis and Clark knew that many were hungry for news of their great journey. No sooner had they returned to St. Louis than prepared a detailed report for Jefferson.I At the same time he drafted a letter under 's name, addressed to one of Clark's brothers. The explorers knew this letter would be reprinted in dozens of newspapers east and west3 But even before the letter got its first publication in the 9 October 1806 issue of the Frankfort [Kentucky] Palladium, merchants and traders were intent on learning all they could about the expedition, its route, and what "curiosities" it carried back from beyond the mountains. When the explorers were feted at a grand dinner and ball at Christy's Inn on 25 September, there must have been excited talk about "tremendious mountains," the surging Pacific Ocean, and streams teeming with ) In the days that followed, St. Louis taverns and count- inghouses buzzed with expedition gossip and tales told third- hand. Wilson Price Hunt was one of those city businessmen anxious to know about Lewis and Clark. Hunt came to St. Louis in early 1804 and soon struck a partnership with John Hankin- son. The two men became general merchandise agents, selling everything from grain and soap to boats and whiskey. They

JAMES P. RONVA, PH.D., teaches history at Youngstown State University at Youngstown, Ohio. 1 Lewis to Jefferson, St. Louis, 23 September 1806, Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents 1783- 1855 (2nd ed.; 2 vols.; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 1:319-24. 2 Clark to , St. Louis, 23 September 1806, ibid., 1:325-80. 3 The Western World, Frankfort, Kentucky, 11 October 1806.

The Filson Club History Quarterly 251 Vol. 62, No. 2, April, 1988 252 The FiIson Club History Quarterly [April even dabbled in the fur market, doing business with the great Chouteaus as well as 's St. Louis agent Charles Gratiot.s Hunt was no ordinary shopkeeper. He never gave his dreams formal shape in words, but his actions bespoke a lasting fascina- tion with the West. By the time he died in 1842 Hunt had led the first American commercial transcontinental expedition. His travels took him from Russian Alaska and Spanish California to Hawaii and the Marquesas Islands before returning to the United States by way of Canton. In late summer 1806, just before Lewis and Clark came back to St. Louis, Hunt got his first taste of western opportunity. He was approached by , one of the frontier's most energetic explorers and traders. Lisa was planning an expedition to Santa Fe. Fortunes were to be made in the Spanish Provincias Internas, but hazards along the trail could not be discounted. Many Americans bound for Santa Fe met death at Indian hands or suffered long imprisonment for violating Spanish trade restrictions. Lisa must have thought that young Hunt was ready for adventure and profit no matter the risk. But Hunt counted the dangers and by mid August let himself out of any southwestern voyage.5 No more than four weeks later, Lewis and Clark were in St. Louis. Like everyone else in the city, Hunt was intent on hearing about the expedition. Perhaps he made it a point to attend the festive celebration at Christy's on 25 September. If he did not get to talk with Lewis and Clark on that occasion, he did not have long to wait. Two days later, on 27 September, Meriwether

4 The Hunt and Hankinson account books for this period have not sur- vived, but Hunt's business dealings can be traced in his letters to John Wesley Hunt in the John Wesley Hunt Papers,The Filson Club, Louisville, Kentucky. See also the Hunt-Gratiot Accounts, Gratiot Collection, box 1, Historical Society, St. Louis and the Hunt-Chouteau Accounts, Chouteau Collection, box 11, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis. Infor- mation on the dissolution of the Hunt-Hankinson partnership can be found in the Louisiana Gazette, 21 June and 2 August 1809. 5 James Wilkinson to Henry Dearborn, Cantonment, Missouri, 2 August 1806, Donald Jackson, ed., The Journals of Zebulon Montgomery Pike (2 vols.; Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, ]:966), 2:129; Wilkinson to Pike, Cantonment, Missouri, 6 August 1806, ibid., 2:134. 1988] Wilson Price Hunt 253

Lewis came to Hunt looking to buy a wide variety of provisions. Lewis eventually purchased some $300.00 worth of goods.6 Here was Hunt's chance, and it is plain that in the following days he learned much from both Lewis and Clark. Hunt not only talked with the explorers but also saw many of the objects brought back from the West. On 14 October he wrote his cousin John a detailed account of the expedition's route. John Wesley Hunt was a prominent Lexington merchant and Wilson Price was sure he would be interested in this new highway to the Pacific. Hunt's letter, part of the John Wesley Hunt Papers at The Filson Club, is one of the earliest manuscript accounts of the expedition. The portion of the letter which is printed below provides a fresh sense of what an eager American public knew about Jefferson's Corps of Western Discovery and the lands of a rising American domain.

You have I suppose heard e'er this of the arrival of Caps. Lewis & Clark from their voyage to the Pacific Ocean- you will soon have them with you too, as they are now preparing to go on to Washington- Their rout after leaving Fort Mandane where they passed the first winter was about West though they were at one time as high as 48 North Latitude -- 2575 up the Missouri they found 4 falls of different height each perpendicular, the greatest of which was 97 ft. all within 12 miles of each other -- the length of the river they found to be 3122- navigable for 3096 miles for canoes -- and a short distance the waters commence running the other way, tho the dividing is a mountain on which there is snow all the year--140 miles by land took them to waters of the Columbia which they descended 640 to the Ocean latitude 46 -- 19 North. They have many curiosities from the Sea Coast and country

6 Lewis to Dearborn, St. Louis, 27 September 1806, Jackson, Lewis and Clark Letters, 1:349. 254 The Filson Club History Quarterly [April between here & there, the most valuable of which are Sea Otter skins, which are indeed very beautiful-

Even the most casual reader of this letter cannot miss the precise mileages and distances Hunt gave. Ordinary conversation tends to round off large numbers, making them easier to re- member. But Hunt took pains to present specific figures. There was no hedging when he told his correspondent that Lewis and Clark found the Missouri to be 3122 miles long. This number was only two miles greater than the figure Clark recorded in his "Summary Statement of Rivers, Creeks, and Most Remarkable Places.''7 Even more telling for the connection between Hunt and the captains is the number recorded as the place where the ex- pedition finally had to abandon its canoes. On 17 August 1805 Clark and his exhausted boatmen wrestled their dugouts from the shallow Beaverhead River and joined Lewis's advance party for the march over the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass. Resting at Camp Fortunate southwest of present-day Dillon, Montana, before crossing the pass, Clark noted in his field book that it was 3096 miles from that place to St. Louis.s Here was the head of navigation for canoes in the commercial system the explorers hoped to establish in the West. This was a number of lasting economic importance, and Hunt was determined to set it down correctly. His figures were equally exact for distances on the west side of the Rockies. Hunt reported that the expedition's voyage down the from the Snake/Columbia confluence to

7 Reuben G. Thwaites, ed., The Original Journals o] the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 180•,-1806 (8 vols.; New York. 1904-1905), 6: 64. When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers measured the from its mouth to Three Forks, Montana, at the end of the last century they computed the distance as 2551 miles. Lewis and Clark, using much less accurate instru- ments, calculated the same river run as 2848 miles. Considering the shifts in river course and improvements in technology, the difference of 297 miles is a testimony to Clark's surveying skills. 8 Thwaites, ed., Original Journals, 2: 365; 6:64. Lewis reported this num- ber to Jefferson in his 23 September 1806 letter. 1988] Wilson Price Hunt 255

Point Adams on the Pacific was 640 miles. Again he drew his information directly from the explorers since that mileage figure was found only in Clark's "Summary." Not even Thomas Jeffer- son would learn that valuable piece of information until much later. The latitude 46°19, North was that calculated by the ex- pedition for "Cape Disappointment at the Enterance of the Co- lumbia river into the Great Pacific Ocean.''s Here again Hunt gained a vital bit of location data neither sent immediately to Jefferson nor included in the earliest printed accounts of the expedition. Hunt's drive to obtain accurate numbers was not an idle fascination with figures. Mileages and distances had com- mercial value. More than that, they made the West something manageable, something comprehensible to Americans bent on possessing and exploiting a new land. The numbers represented the struggle to move the West from the realm of fantasy to the world of business accounts and government policies. Few wonders of nature so captivated Lewis and Clark as the Great Falls of the Missouri. Meriwether Lewis, possessed of a keen naturalist's eye and a facile pen, could usually find words to describe any part of the landscape. But even he was at a loss when confronted by a thundering series of five falls that dropped the river more than four hundred feet in some twelve miles. Lewis could only call it "this truly magnifficent and sublimely grand object.''10 But when Lewis sent his first report to Jeffer- son, he barely made mention of the Great Falls. Perhaps the explorer already realized that the falls would prove a formidable barrier to navigation on the Missouri. He surely had vivid mem- ories of the eleven backbreaking days it took to portage men and equipment around the falls.

Wilson Price Hunt learned this and more. He was told that the falls began 2575 miles up the Missouri, a distance that was re- layed to Jefferson and confirmed from Clark's field survey of

9 Ibid., 6:69-70. 10 Ibid., 2 : 149-50. 256 The Filson Club History Quarterly [April the region. Hunt also heard that there were four distinct cas- cades all within twelve miles. Although Lewis and Clark actually counted five falls, a quick look at Clark's "Summary" -- perhaps the kind of look Hunt had -- might lead one to think there were only four. The explorers named only two of the falls- Great Falls and Crooked Falls- but took elevations on all of them.11 Hunt understood that Great Falls or "the Grand Cataract" had a drop of ninety-seven feet. Again Hunt got remarkably accurate information few others were privy to. Perhaps his figure of ninety-seven feet for the first fall was a mishearing or a simple slip of the pen for the eighty-seven foot mark set down by Clark. Hunt's letter carried more than what Lewis and Clark always called "courses and distances." Implicit in the account is an important geographic concept, one that dominated the thoughts and plans of all those who dreamed of western empires. Like his contemporaries, Jefferson believed that there was a certain sym- metry to the mountains and rivers of all . As the eastern Appalachians were notched by navigable rivers, so geo- graphers thought the Rockies would be threaded by equally useful streams. Jefferson did not think that one river pierced those distant mountains, but he was sure that a single narrow ridge separated the head of the Missouri from a branch of the Colum- bia. Lewis and Clark went confidently into the West expecting to find what their instructions described as "the most direct.& practicable water communication across this continent for the purposes of commerce.''is Jefferson's captains did not find interlocking rivers bridged by an easy portage. What they encountered instead were forbid- ding mountain ranges and treacherous rivers wholly unlike the

11 Ibi•l., 6:5-7, 62. Clark's map of the Great Falls is in ibid., 2: opposite 178. " 12 Jefferson to Lewis, Washington, 20 June 1803, Jackson, Lewi• and Clark Letters, 1:61. For a full discussion of this geographic image, see John L. Allen, Passage Through the Garden: Lewis and Clark and the Image of th6 American Northwest (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), chapters one and two. 1988] Wilson Price Hunt 257 rounded Alleghenies and gentler streams of Virginia and Mary- land. Caught between a harsh western reality and an outmoded geographic theory, Lewis shaded the failure to find Jefferson's long-desired passage. He told the president that a trail had been found from Great Falls to the Clearwater River. From the Clear- water, canoes could navigate all the way to the Pacific. Lewis was convinced that even though this route had to pass over "tremendious mountains which for 60 miles are covered with eternal snows," still the passage had been found. Never mind that "many articles not bulky brittle nor of a very perishable nature" were the only goods that could stand the journey. Hope and theory had combined to demand a passage and mountain realities would not be allowed to stand in the way.13 Hunt heard the same story. It was a tale of fact mixed with undying expectation. He told his cousin that the distance across the divide was a "short one." Once over the ridge--again the image of the Rockies as a single range--it was only 140 miles to western waters. Here reality intruded as Hunt learned from the explorers that a mountain blanketed with perpetual snow kept east from west. But one snowy crest seemed hardly enough to deter American commerce and the tide of empire. Five years later Hunt and his own expedition would learn firsthand the bitter lesson of passes too far and mountains too steep. Lewis and Clark brought back more than maps and journals. Expedition baggage was filled with plant specimens, mineral samples, and artifacts representing many native peoples. But when Lewis went to describe those treasures to Jefferson, he ignored the exotic Shoshoni mantle made of ermine skins and the strange camas bulbs and cous roots. Instead he first listed "several skins of the Sea 0tter.''14 Both Lewis and Jefferson knew it was those rich brown furs that had first attracted Euro-

13 Lewis to Jefferson, St. Louis, 23 September 1806, Jackson, Lewb and Cla•'k Letters, 1:320-21. 14 Lewis to Jefferson, St. Louis, 23 September 1806, ibid., 1:323. 258 The Filso•z Club Histo•T Quarterly [April

pean traders to the Northwest coast. As luck would have it, Hunt saw those furs long before Jefferson could appreciate them. Sometime after meeting Lewis on 27 September, Hunt was shown expedition collections garnered from two and a half years of western travel. Of all those objects it was the sea otter pelts that captured his imagination. After seeing those lustrous furs, Hunt could only write that they were "indeed very beautiful." Lewis must have agreed and found it difficult to give them up. When an inventory was taken of his personal goods after his death in 1809, one "Handsome dressed Sea Otter skin" turned up. That pelt went to William Clark, perhaps to become a prized exhibit in his St. Louis Indian museum. 15

Those shining furs were more than beautiful skins. They symbolized Hunt's future in western trade and exploration. In 1808 John Jacob Astor began to lay plans for an American com- mercial empire beyond the Rockies. Sea otter pelts, prized in China, would be the foundation for Astor's . The next year Astor engaged Hunt as leader of his transcon- tinental expedition and chief agent at on the Co- lumbia. The young merchant who had flirted with Lisa's South- west and had studied Lewis and Clark assumed command of a great western journey.

When the citizens of Fincastle, Virginia, gathered in January 1807 to celebrate the expedition's return, they praised Lewis and Clark for opening "to the United States a source of inexhausti- ble wealth.''•6 Just what that wealth might be still seemed vague and remote. Few would have dared guess that the West might become something more than a fur trade domain. One thing was certain at this and other meetings. The Lewis and Clark expedi- tion had sparked a growing sense of expectation. A western em- pire now seemed within the grasp of a young and struggling

15 Memorandum of Lewis's Effects, 23 November 1809, ibid., 2:471. 16 Citizens of Fincastle to Lewis and Clark, 8 January 1807, ibid., 1:358. 1988] Wilson Price Hunt 259 nation. Wilson Price Hunt's letter to his cousin captures that sense of wonder and excitement as the West was laid open to American enterprise.