“A River of Promise” Historians Reconsider the and Its Explorers

JOSEPH C. PORTER

Among “the central themes in the history of the American West,” according to historian James I! Ronda, is “the story of western riv- ers.” During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the river most crucial to that story was the Missouri-“a highway into the West,” in Ronda’s words, but also “a river of promise, of dreams, and of dreams denied.”’ In marking the two-hundredth anniversary of the most famous expedition up the length of the Missouri, several historians have recon- sidered the expedition of Lewis and Clark and their . Some authors have looked for those who went before, in the earliest ex- plorations of the river; some have focused on the lesser-known characters of the well-known story; and some have found new ways to look at the narratives set forth in the diaries and journals. This essay examines five of these works.

Joseph C.Porter is chief curator of the North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh, and author of Paper Medicine Man:John Gregory Bourke and His American West (1989). ’James P. Ronda, introduction to W. Raymond Wood, Prologue to Lewis and Clark: The Mackay and Evans Expedition, (Norman, Ok., 2003). xii.

INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY, 100 (December 2004). 0 2004, Trustees of Indiana University. “A RIVER OF PROMISE” 365

THE MISSISSIPPI, THE MISSOURI, AND THE WEST BEFORE 1800 The Mississippi River and its valleys were some of the earliest- explored regions of North America. In 1673 LouisJoliet and Jesuit Jacques Marquette reached the river and established a French presence in the in- terior of the continent. In 1682 Rene Robert Cavalier de La Salle claimed the Mississippi and its drainage for his king, Louis XIV of France, and named the territory “Louisiana.” From that time until the Louisiana Pur- chase in 1803, France, Spain, Great Britain, and the all made claims to the area, and explorers moved west beyond the Mississippi val- ley, attempting to follow the Missouri River to its conclusion. In 1763, the French, via the Treaty of Paris, transferred Louisiana to Spain to foil Brit- ish designs on the region. The Spanish made several attempts to explore and strengthen their claim to the territory, sending expeditions to find sites for trading posts and forts. The strategy of officials in St. Louis was for the Spanish flag to follow the Indian trade. “Theoretically, the trade was open to all Spanish subjects,” writes W. Raymond Wood, but officials limited the actual licenses “to a favored few whom the Spaniards used as quasi-governmental agents.” Wood‘s Prologue to Lewis and Clark: The Muckuy and Evans Expedition examines Spain’s most ambitious endeavor to explore and control its acquired lands.’ After two failed attempts by teams of explorers in 1794 and the spring of 1795, Spanish officials launched a third expedition to “discover a route west of the headwaters of the Missouri River across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast. They planned to reinforce and defend this route with a series of trading f~rts.”~They chose Scottish-born, veteran frontier trader James Mackay (1759-1822) as commander. A Spanish citizen living in the St. Louis region, Mackay spoke and wrote French fluently and had worked for British trading companies in Canada, eventually becoming a trader in the villages of present-day North Dakota. “A man with his experience would have been priceless to the St. Louis Spanish,” writes Wood, “for no one in that city could match his knowledge of the northern

zWood, Prologue to Lewis and Clark, 8-16, and 27, quoting Nicolas de Finiels, An Account of Upper Louisiana, ed. by Carl J. Ekberg and William E. Foley, trans. by Carl J. Ekberg (Columbia, Mo., 1989), p. 86, n 151. 3W~~d,Prologue to Lewis and Clark, 30-34, quote p. 30. 366 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

limits of Spanish territ~ry.”~Welsh-born John Thomas Evans (1770-1799) was second-in-command. Evans was eager to journey up the Missouri because he believed that the were “Welsh Indians,” descendants of Welsh prince Madoc who, according to legend, discovered North America in 1170. The instructions given to Mackay and Evans were “astonishingly similar” to those that Thomas Jefferson later issued to Lewis and Clark. Indeed, the Mackay and Evans expedition, with its “exploratory and scientific” goals, could be compared to the mission of the Corps of Discov- ery “in almost every respect save one: the Americans were to open the area for trade, but unlike Mackay and Evans they did not engage in trade them- selves nor were they told to build trading forts anywhere along their route.”* In late summer of 1795 Mackay, Evans, and their men left St. Louis. The crew probably comprised French immigrants and metis of French and American Indian ancestry. Although Spain had controlled St. Louis since 1763, French-speaking settlers and their culture dominated the area. Wood has difficulty identifymg many of the crew members, but comments that “[ilt would be interesting to know if anyone from the crew later served on the Lewis and Clark expedition; if not, they undoubtedly knew some of the men who did serve the American Corps of Discovery.”6 In November 1795 Mackay and Evans arrived at an Omaha Indian village in northeastern Nebraska and constructed Fort Carlos as a winter camp.’ In June of the next year, the leaders split so that the expedition could cover more territory. Evans arrived at the Mandan villages in North Dakota in September and learned quickly that the inhabitants were not long-lost Welsh. Despite his personal disappointment, Evans vigorously pursued the goals of the Spanish government, seizing a British trading post and foiling British plots against his life. In May 1797 he left the Man- dans, arriving back in St. Louis sixty-eight days later. Mackay remained among the Omaha for the rest of 1796 and part of 1797, exploring eastern Nebraska and accompanying the tribe on a buffalo hunt into central Ne- braska. In the spring, out of touch with Evans and probably under orders to return, Mackay also made the journey back to St. Louis.E Mackay and Evans and their expedition, well known for decades af- ter their explorations, have languished in undeserved obscurity in the

+Ibid.,41. IIbid., 65. 61bid.,66. ’lbid., 84. 81bid.,115-16, 128-33. “A RIVER OF PROMISE” 367

A Mandan Rain Dance, by George Catlin. The Mackay-Evans expedition explored the length of the Missouri River as far north as the Mandan villages in present-day North Dakota. George Catlin, The Manners, Customs, and Condition ofthe North American Indians (London, 1841)

twentieth century, but Wood restores them to their rightful place in the history of western American exploration and cartography. The maps they drew were “the most precise made before the Corps of Discovery traversed the area”-so much so that while Lewis and Clark planned their journey and during their early travels up the Missouri, they “consulted the jour- nals and maps generated by the Scot and Welsh leaders.” Those maps “laid out in detail the entire first year of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The captains carried copies of the Mackay and Evans charts with them and regularly inspected them during their ~oyage.”~

THE MISSOURI RIVER TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN: THE CORPS OF DISCOVERY On January 10,1803,the past and soon-to-be expeditions had a brief meeting of the ways. Lewis had already received copies of some of the MackayEvans maps, and now Mackay himself arrived at the Corps’ camp

91bid.,134. 368 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

outside St. Louis to visit and to give the captains a personal account of the Missouri River as far upstream as the Mandan villages. Lewis and Clark began their journey northward in May 1804, and after 1,510 river miles the expedition arrived at the Mandan and Hidatsa villages on October 25. They spent five months interviewing the Mandans, Hidatsas, and white traders about the country to the west, and after their departure depended upon Indian information and their own skills to guide them.1° On June 13, 1805, the expedition reached the Great Falls of the Missouri, in present-day , a sight that Lewis described as “truly magnifficent [sic] and sublimely grand.” At the confluence of the three rivers that form the Missouri the expedition members reached the outer limits of their geographic knowledge. Gary Moulton, the editor of the Corps’ journals, writes: “All the way from they had jour- neyed through country known only to the native inhabitants, until they neared the mouth of the Columbia and reentered the world of known geography”l’ In November 1805 the expedition reached its goal, the Pacific Ocean. Patrick Gass recorded in his journal entry for November 16: “We are now at the end of our voyage, which has been completely accom- plished according to the intention of the expedition . . . notwithstanding the difficulties, privations and dangers, which we had to encounter, en- dure and surmount.” The expedition spent a miserably uncomfortable winter at on the Columbia River and then set off on the return trip on March 23,1806, reaching St. Louis on September 23. Three days later, William Clark noted in his final journal entry that the explor- ers were beginning the process of writing a formal report of all of their discoveries: “a fine morning we commenced wrighting Q c.”l* “Wrighting” preserved the expedition’s hard-won information that would enable the American government to control and exploit the re- sources of the Louisiana Purchase. Historian Donald Jackson has observed that Lewis and Clark were “the writingest explorers of their time. They wrote constantly and abundantly, afloat and ashore, legibly and illegibly, and always with an urgent sense of purpo~e.”’~The primary source of that

loJamesLogan Allan, Passage Through the Garden: Lewis and Clark and the Image of the American Northwest (Urbana, 111.. 1975), 254-55. ”Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals ofthe Lewis and Clark Expedition, (13 vols., Lincoln, Neb., 1983-2001). 2:7,4:285.Hereafter cited asJLCE. 121bid.,10: 171; 2: 8. ”Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783- 1854.2nd ed., (2 vols., Urbana, Ill., 1978), 1:viii.Henceforth cited as UCE. “A RIVER OF PROMISE” 369

urgency was Thomas Jefferson, who ordered his explorers to ascertain “by celestial observations, the geography of the country thro which you will pass,” to compile meticulous “observations of latitude and longitude at all remarkable points on the river, & especially at the mouths of rivers, at rapids, at islands & other places & objects distinguished by such natu- ral marks & characters of a durable kind, as that they may with certainty be recognized hereafter.’’I4 Jefferson wanted information about soil, plants, animals, “mineral productions of every kind,” and climate. Considering knowledge of the western Indian tribes to be essential to “the interest which every nation has in extending & strengthening the authority of reason & justice among the people around them,” Jefferson ordered Lewis “to acquire what knolege you can of the state of morality, religion & information among them, as it may better enable those who endeavor to civilize & instruct them, to adapt their measures to the existing notions & practices of those on whom they are to pera ate."'^ Jefferson expected Lewis to write a polished narrative of the expedi- tion, but Lewis died in 1809. William Clark turned to Nicholas Biddle to prepare a paraphrased account based on the original journals, and in 1814 Biddle published his History of the Expedition under the Command of Cap- tains Lewis and Clark. The journals sat unregarded for most of the century, until in 1893 Elliott Coues rediscovered them at the American Philosophi- cal Society in Philadelphia while annotating Biddle’s work. A few years later, Reuben Gold Thwaites compiled those documents, together with diaries and manuscripts from the descendants of William Clark, the jour- nal of Sergeant Charles Floyd, and the fragmentary journal of Private Jo- seph Whitehouse, and published The Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1904. Throughout the twentieth century scholars added to the collection of primary documents. In 1916 Milton Quaife published Lewis and Clark‘s eastern journal and the journal of SergeantJohn Ordway. In 1953 William Clark‘s field notes from the winter of 1803-1804 sur- faced, and Ernest Staples Osgood published them ten years later. In 1962 the Northern Natural Gas Company of Omaha, Nebraska, purchased the materials assembled by the German Prince Maximilian and the artist Karl Bodmer during their 1832-1834 North American expedition. William Clark had given the prince an atlas containing copies of thirty-four of his

I4ThomasJefferson to , April 27, 1803, LLCE, 1:61-62 I5Ibid..62-63 370 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

route maps of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers. Not accessible to early twentieth-century scholars, these maps were valuable resources for later studies.16 In 1962 Donald Jackson published Letters of the Lewis and Clark Ex- pedition with Related Documents, 1783-1854, a milestone in Lewis and Clark historiography.l7 Jackson called for a new comprehensive edition of the expedition journals: “There is new material, there are new second- ary studies and-perhaps most important-there are new editing tech- niques.”lS Jackson’s call was answered in the next decade, when Gary Moulton at the University of Nebraska began his work on a new thirteen-volume “Nebraska Edition’’-eleven volumes of the maps and journals (of Lewis, Clark, Charles Floyd, John Ordway, Patrick Gass, and Joseph Whitehouse), the expedition’sherbarium, and a comprehensive index. The first volume, the atlas of the expedition, appeared in 1983. In volume two Moulton explained the organization of the series and its editorial procedures. He sought a trustworthy text “largely uncluttered with editorial interference,” with a “transcription that is true to the original.” The explorers’ “erratic, but delightful and ingenious, manner of spelling and capitalizing” were major challenges. Clark, for example, creatively spelled the word “Sioux” twenty-seven different ways. The editor retained the original spelling and grammar, silently correcting “uncrossed t’s and undotted i’s” but reminded readers: “Little can be promised in the way of consistency for no rule can stand against Clark‘s inimitable style.”lg Volumes one through eight of the Nebraska Edition contain the en- tries of Lewis and Clark organized by date, with each day’s writings sepa- rately annotated with information on “the events, persons, and inquiries of the expedition.” The next three volumes, organized in the same way, contain the journals of the sergeants and enlisted men; these are anno- tated only when they differ significantly from the accounts by Lewis and Clark. There are many occasions, however, when the memories of the

I6W. Raymond Wood, Joseph C. Porter, & David C. Hunt, Karl Bodmer’s Studio: The Newbeny Library Bodmer Collection. (Urbana, Ill., 2002). 42. “Donald Jackson, ed., Letters ofthe Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783- 1854 (Urbana, Ill., 1962); and Jackson’s second edition, LLCE, cited above. See Paul Russell Cutright, A History ofthe Lewis and Clark Journals (Norman, Okla., 1976), chapter 10, “Donald Jackson,” 177-201. Cutright’s assessment of Jackson’s singular contributions was made before the appearance of the expanded second edition of Jackson’sLLCE. 18LLCE, xiii. ‘YLCE 2:49-54, quote pp. 49-50. “A RIVER OF PROMISE” 371

enlisted men differ from their captains’ and times when they see things that Lewis and Clark miss. Because of these differences, the annotations to their journals refer more often to people encountered along the way, as well as to places, flora, and fauna. Moulton thus follows the precedent of readers turning first to Lewis and Clark and then to the enlisted men’s diaries as supplements.20 The Nebraska Edition of the Lewis and Clark journals stands as a scholarly milestone in the historiography of exploration in the western hemisphere. Its monumental length, however, did not meet the need for a convenient, comprehensive, readable abridgement of the journals. Pub- lished by the same press to coincide with the bicentennial of the expedi- tion, The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery is a single-volume model of the art of abridgement. It focuses on the expedi- tion’s interaction with and observation of Native Americans and natural history, while still capturing the narrative thread and excitement of the journey.”

LESSER-KNOWN MEMBERS OF THE CORPS In 1805, Lewis wrote that seven non-commissioned officers and en- listed men kept journals; to date, however, only those of sergeants John Ordway, Charles Floyd, Patrick Gass, and Private Joseph Whitehouse are known.22The accounts of Sergeant Nathaniel Pryor and Private Robert Frazer remain lost to history, as does the identity of the seventh journal- ist. Floyd had the briefest journal, beginning on May 14,1804and ending on August 20, two days before his death near Sioux City, Iowa. Gass, pro- moted to sergeant to replace Floyd, kept a journal with details unique to his interests. The expedition carpenter, Gass earned the gratitude of fu- ture historians by being “the only journal keeper” to record the dimen- sions of Fort Mandan, the expedition’s 1804 winter quarters.23Sergeant John Ordway kept the longest continuous journal of all of the Corps mem- bers, writing daily from May 14, 1804, until September 23, 1806, and surpassing Clark as the most diligent journali~t.~~Ordway’s faithfulness is

*Olbid.,2:53. ’lGary Moulton, ed., The Lewis and ClarkJoumals: An American Epic of Discovery: The Abridg- ment ofthe Definitive Nebraska Edition (Lincoln, Neb., 2003). 2zJLCEl0:xii-xiii. ”Ibid., 1O:xv. ”lbid. 372 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

An illustration from the journal of Patrick Gass. The sergeant’s account was published in 1807,making it the first by a participant of the expedition to be printed. Woodcuts were added for three Philadelphia editions beginning in 1810. Patrick Gass,Journals ofthe Voyages and Travels ofa Corps ofDiscovery. . . ,3ded. (Philadelphia, 1811)

all the more remarkable because he was first sergeant and, after the cap- tains, had the most numerous and demanding resp~nsibilities.~~ Historians have also used the bicentennial of the expedition as an opportunity to underscore the significant role of the French in American exploration. The roster of the Corps included five men and one child of French heritage: privates Pierre Cruzatte, Francois Labiche, and John Bap- tiste Lepage; and interpreters George Drouillard and Toussaint Charbon- neau, the last of whom traveled with his Shoshone wife Sacagawea and their infant son Jean Baptiste. Of the six, four were French rnttis: La Biche and Cruzatte were French-Omaha; Drouillard was French-; and littleJean Baptiste was French-Shoshone. La Biche and Cruzatte were sturdy and diligent men throughout the journey, and they played a crucial role during the expedition’s nearly violent confrontation with the Lakota. Drouillard was an accomplished interpreter and hunter and received the highest salary of any man on the expedition.

251bid.Private Joseph Whitehouse started his journal on May 14,1804,and ended it in Novem- ber 1805,but a paraphrase copy of his narrative continues through April 2, 1806. “A RIVER OF PROMISE” 373

W. Dale Nelson’s Interpreters with Lewis and Clark: The Story ofSaca- gawea and Toussaint Charbonneau and M.O. Skarsten’s George Drouillard: Hunter and Interpreterfor Lewis and Clark and Fur Tradel; 1807-1810 are excellent companion volumes to the expedition journals and to Woods study of Mackay and Evans. Numerous contemporaries and many subse- quent historians have regarded Charbonneau as a lecherous, lazy, incom- petent, ne’er-do-well; W. Dale Nelson presents a very different view of the man. Toussaint Charbonneau (1758-ca 1843) was born near Montreal and by 1796 was a trader among the Mandan and Hidatsa. Charbonneau was a braggart, claiming “that when he arrived on the Missouri it was so small he could straddle it.” He married Sacagawea (ca 1788-18121, a Lemhi Shoshone captured by Hidatsa raiders about 1800, and by the spring of 1805 she was expecting their first child.26Lewis and Clark knew that her knowledge of the territory and of the Indian tribes to the West would be crucial to the expedition. The journals and letters of the Corps indicate that the men respected and admired the indefatigable, resourceful, and personable Sacagawea, and Clark befriended the Charbonneau family for the rest of their lives. Nelson corrects a widespread misconception about the Shoshone woman, writing that “except on rare occasions she was not a guide.” When the captains divided the expedition on their 1806 return trip, Sacagawea trav- eled with Clark’s group and did act as a guide in at least one instance, showing Clark how to reach the Yellowstone River via the Bozeman Pas2’ The Charbonneaus remained at the Mandan villages after the expe- dition departed for St. Louis. In 1812 Sacagawea “died of a putrid fever” at Fort Manuel, South Dakota. She was survived by her husband, son, and infant daughter, Lisette. The fur trader who recorded her death wrote that she was “a good woman-the best in the fort.” Nelson follows Toussaint’s career until his death in the 1840s, portraying him as a skilled frontiers- man who faithfully served the United States and American trading com- panies. In 1810, as Nicholas Biddle prepared his history of the Lewis and Clark expedition, Toussaint worked with Clark to recall the details; dur- ing the War of 1812, he spied for the Americans, reporting British at- tempts to recruit Indian allies in the Missouri River country.28

26W. Dale Nelson, Interpreters with Lewis and Clark: The Story of Sacagawea and Toussaint Charbonneau. (Denton, Tex., 2003). 6-10. quote p. 9. ”lbid.,lO, 60. mIbid.,73, 70,3. 374 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

Fort Manuel, South Dakota, recently restored. Toussaint Charbonneau and Sacagawea were living at the fort at the time of her death in 1812. Photo by Roger Lawien. Courtesy Moreau-Grand Electric Cooperative

Nelson also details the life of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau (1805-1866), who accompanied the Corps of Discovery as an infant. Baptiste grew up among the Indians along the Missouri River, but was educated in St. Louis, supported by William Clark. He returned for a while to life on the fron- tier, and along the Missouri River in 1823 met Duke Paul of Wurttemberg. Baptiste accompanied the duke to Germany, where he remained for four years, attending the local public schools. Raised in Indian country, edu- cated in St. Louis and Germany, fluent in French, English, Spanish, Ger- man, and several Indian languages, Baptiste Charbonneau was, wrote one journalist who knew him, “a gentleman of superior education” with “a quaint humor and shrewdness in his con~ersation.”~~ A Zelig-like figure in western American history, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau seemed to be everywhere. His life encompassed the trans- Mississippi West from the Rio Grande to the northern Great Plains and

291bid.,76-83, quote from Rufus B. Sage, Rocky Mountain Lqe . . . (1858; reprint, Lincoln, Neb., 1982), 205-07. “A RIVER OF PROMISE” 375

the Wind River, and from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. Baptiste knew or worked with, among others, Kit Carson, , the Bent Brothers, Ceran St. Vrain, James Beckwourth, John C. Fremont, Sir Will- iam Drummond Stewart, and General Stephen W. Kearney. During the Mexican War Baptiste guided Lt. Colonel Philip St. George Cooke’s Mor- mon Battalion to California, as they sought to firmly establish American power on the Pacific coast. The Lewis and Clark expedition and the Mexican War bracketed the geo-strategic transformation of the United States into a transcontinental nation, and Baptiste participated in both. The infant who had spent his first winter of life at Fort Clatsop, Oregon, in 1805-1806 died in 1866 and was buried near Danner, Oregon. Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, after a most remarkable life, was indeed home. Interpreters with Lewis and Clark is erudite and readable, providing a nuanced appraisal of Toussaint Char- bonneau, correcting the mythology of Sacagawea, and offering an excel- lent summary of Baptiste’s life. George Drouillard (ca early 1770s-1810), the second interpreter who accompanied the Corps of Discovery, was the son of a French Canadian father and a Shawnee mother. The late M.O. Skarsten first published George Drouillard: Hunter and Interpreterfor Lewis and Clark and Fur Trade< 1807- 1810 in 1964 to excellent reviews.30Robert C. Carriker has now written an introduction to a second edition of this classic work. Skarsten did his research in the 1950s and 1960s, confronting difficulties because the elu- sive Drouillard so seldom appeared in the records and documents of his era and because so much scholarship about Lewis and Clark has taken place since the 1960s and was unavailable. Skarsten openly admired Drouillard, and his book carries a more worshipful tone than Nelson’s nuanced work on the Charbonneaus (in part, of course, because Nelson had far more material on which to rely when writing about that family). Yet Drouillard was a remarkable individual, and Skarsten remains a good source on this Shawnee-French American who figured prominently in the history of western American exploration. In addition to new biographical information about members of the Lewis and Clark expedition, some historians are seeking different ways to look at the traditional journals, letters, and maps. Thomas I? Slaughter, in Exploring Lewis and Clark: Reflections on Men and Wilderness, eschews the

’OM.0.Skarsten, George Drouillard: Hunter and Interpreterfor Lewis G Clark and Fur Trade6 1807- 1810,2nd ed. (Spokane, Wash., 2003). 376 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

approach of historians who “generally adopt the same chronological, epi- sodic approach” employed by the members of the Corps. Slaughter ad- mits that linearity is often useful for historians, but he seeks a different perspective, focusing on the “variety of intercultural, interspecies, and geographic engagements” recorded by the expedition. He draws upon the discipline of cultural anthropology to examine how humans “react to the ‘new’ through a sequence of emotional responses that. . . . filter such ex- periences through myths, dreams, hope, fear, and our sense of self.” Hu- mans first “rationalize newness,” then come to “an emotionaVintellectua1 place” where they can relate to different beings and things, and finally reach ownership of their knowledge, “taking possession in some fashion that gives ‘newness’order and meaning.” According to Slaughter, this ty- pology is useful when examing the history of the American frontier be- cause during that period and in those places “men exhibited a need for control that resulted in violence, sometimes in silence, not often enough in awe. Sometimes our ancestors felt lost; occasionally they were found in some mystical sense.”31 Slaughter considers the Lewis and Clark expedition as “an occasion for contemplating first meetings on the American frontier.” In pursuing this theme, he deeply analyzes the texts and the people and culture that produced them. He begins the book by examining the mythical founda- tions of the trip and the journals themselves. He also looks at the “secular and historical ambitions” of the captains. Several chapters try to “gaze outside the journals” to understand the most liminal members of the ex- pedition: Clark‘s slave York; the teenaged Sacagawea (whom Slaughter also labels as a “slave,” having been captured in childhood and then mar- ried to a man thirty years her senior); and even Lewis’s Newfoundland dog Seaman.32 A brief review cannot fully describe Slaughter’s multidimensional textual analysis, but one illustration provides an intriguing example. Slaughter comments extensively on the events of August 25, 1804. The expedition was in Clay County, South Dakota, and the captains decided to visit “the Mound which the Indians Call Mountain of little people or Spirits.”33A party including the captains, York, and Seaman began a hard

31ThomasE Slaughter, Exploring Lewis and Clark: Refections on Men and Wilderness, (New York, 2003), xiv, xvi, xv. ’”bid., xv-xvii 33JLCE,3: 9. “A RIVER OF PROMISE” 377

walk at 8:OO A.M. and reached the apex of the mound four hours later. Seaman did not complete the climb, becoming “So Heeted Q fatigued we was obliged Send him back to the Creek.” Clark, upon returning to the boat at sunset, observed “my Servent nearly exosted with heat thurst, and fatigue, he being fat and un accustomed to walk as fast as I went.”34Clark also recorded “Capt Lewis much fatigued from heat the day it being verry hot. . . and Several of the men complaining of Great thirst.”35 Slaughter attempts to go beyond Clark‘s description of the mound and the day’s weather. Did Clark, asks Slaughter, dismiss Indian beliefs that the hill was holy and occupied by spirits and refuse to recognize its mystical properties? Why did the brisk pace to the hill and back exhaust York, and why did the group set such a pace? Why, Slaughter wonders, unless they were spooked by spiritual presences but stubbornly clung to their own beliefs about Indian superstition^?^^ Slaughter also suggests that Seaman “gave out’’ when he sensed the spirituality of the hill, “be- cause animals often sense trouble before humans can see it.”37Slaughter’s exegesis is more complex than this brief summary, yet it invites other, perhaps more prosaic, interpretations based on the same narrative. Clark recorded that Lewis and others suffered from the heat, and it was a tomd August day that could produce thirst and heat fatigue. York was a big man who might have been affected by the climate before the others; Seaman was a Newfoundland, a large, heavy breed of waterdog developed along the north Atlantic coast to work in a cold, damp envir~nment.~~Indeed, on this day, Clark recorded his only temperature reading taken between May 14 and September 19 of 1804 (86 degrees fahrenheit at 3 P.M.). Was the day so hot that it attracted Clark‘s attention enough for him to note the temperat~re?~~Sometimes, especially on the Great Plains, a hot day is just a hot day.

’+Ibid.,3%. ’IIbid., 3:9. ’%laughter, Exploring Lewis and Clark, 21-24

37 Ibid., 22. %Andrew DePrisco and James B. Johnson, The Mini-Atlas of Dog Breeds (Neptune City, N.J., 1990), 141. ’91LCE 3, p. 13 n 12, p. 91 n 1.