LEWIS AND CLARK TRAIL HERITAGE FOUNDATION · 2 We Proceeded On E Volume 43, Number 4 November 2017...

The 1812 Issue:• Jay Buckley on Clark's Impossible Task• William Foley on the New Madrid Earthquakes• Interview with Elliott West—Part Two

LEWIS AND CLARK TRAIL HERITAGE FOUNDATION

NOVEMBER 2017 VOL 43 NO 4

We Proceeded On welcomes submissions of articles, proposals, inquiries, and letters. Writer’s guidelines are available by request and can be found on our website, lewisandclark.org. Submissions should be sent to Clay S. Jenkinson, 1324 Golden Eagle Lane, Bismarck, North Dakota 58503, or by email to [email protected]. 701-202-6751

Future Issues: WPO intends to publish themed issues on the forts of the Lewis and Clark Trail; filmic treatments of Lewis & Clark, including documentaries; the fate of other explorers; Sacagawea; the Nine Young Men from Kentucky. If you are interested in contributing on these subjects, please let editor Clay Jenkinson know.

Message from the President ....................................................3

Lewis and Clark Roundup .......................................................6

Clark’s Impossible Task: The Sentimental Imperialist and the War of 1812 .............................................................8 By Jay Buckley

Turbulence and Terror: The New Madrid Earthquakes, 1811-1812 ....................................................23 By William Foley

The WPO Interview: Dr. Elliott West, Part 2 ...............26

Letters .................................................................................32

Review: Havens, Scenes of Visionary Enchantment ................................33

Covers - Front: Painting of William Clark by John Wesley Jarvis (ca. 1810). Courtesy Missouri Historical Society. Back: Painting of Andrew Jackson returning to Tennessee after the Battle of New Orleans by Michael Haynes.

Clark and Teton Sioux by James Ayers, p. 8

Earthquakes by William Foley, p. 23

Dr. Elliott West, p. 26

In this Issue:

2 We Proceeded On E Volume 43, Number 4

November 2017Volume 43, Number 4We 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. © 2017

E. G. Chuinard, M.D., Founder, We Proceeded OnISSN 02275-6706

EditorClay S. Jenkinson Bismarck, North DakotaAssistant EditorCatherine Jenkinson New York City, New York

Volunteer Proofreaders H. Carl Camp, Jerry Garrett, and C. O. Patterson

Publisher Washington State University Press Pullman, Washington

Editorial Advisory BoardWendy Raney, ChairPullman, WA Jay H. BuckleyProvo, UT H. Carl CampOmaha, NE Robert C. CarrikerSpokane, WA Carolyn GilmanWashington, DC James HolmbergLouisville, KY

Barbara KubikVancouver, WA Glen LindemanPullman, WA J.I. MerrittPennington, NJ Robert Moore, Jr.St. Louis, MO Gary E. MoultonLincoln, NE Philippa NewfieldSan Francisco, CA

Membership InformationMembership 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 or on our website, lewisandclark.org.

We Proceeded On, the quarterly journal of the Foundation, is mailed to current mem bers 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: $30Basic: $49Basic 3-Year: $133Family: $65Heritage: $100Explorer: $150Jefferson: $250Discovery: $500Lifetime: Steward: $995 Captain: $2,500 President: $5,000

The Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Inc. is a tax-exempt nonprofit corporation. A portion of your dues may be tax deductible. Donations are fully deductible.

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, mail your request to P.O. Box 3434, Great Falls, MT 59403, or order at [email protected].$10 originals or cds$4 shipping & handling

P.O. Box 3434, Great Falls, MT 59403406-454-1234 / 1-888-701-3434Fax: 406-727-3158www.lewisandclark.org

Our missiOn: 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.

OfficersPresidentPhilippa Newfield, San Francisco, CAVice-PresidentLouis Ritten, LaGrange, ILSecretaryJane Knox, Storrs Mansfield, CTTreasurerJohn Toenyes, Great Falls, MTImmediate Past-PresidentSteve Lee, Clarkston, WA

DirectOrs at largeBud Clark, Brighton, MTChuck Crase, Prospect, KYKaren Goering, St. Louis, MOElla Mae Howard, Miles City, MTBarb Kubik, Vancouver, WAJim Sayce, Seaview, WAClay Smith, Port Townsend, WAJerry Wilson, Versailles, IN

staffLindy Hatcher, Executive DirectorKris Maillet, Admin. AssistantShelly Kath, Library TechnicianLora Helman, AccountantAlice Kestler, Archives TechnicianErin Stypulkoski, Ad Sales Manager The views and opinions expressed in articles and features published in We Proceeded On are those of the authors and contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, its officers and board, or staff.

We Proceeded On is published four times a year in February, May, August, and November by Washington State University Press in Pullman, Washington, for the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, P.O. Box 3434, Great Falls, Montana 59403. Current issue: November 2017, volume 43, No. 4, ISSN 02275-6706

Incorporated in 1969 underMissouri General Not-For-ProfitCorporation act. IRS ExemptionCertificate No. 501(c)3,Identification No. 510187715.

The Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Inc.

November 2017 D We Proceeded On 3

A Message from the President

Phillip Gordon and President Philippa Newfield

It will be the teachers and their stu-dents who will carry the story of Lewis and Clark forward and ensure the pres-ervation of their trail. The fate of our collective memory of one of the most consequential events in American his-tory and its contemporary evidence upon our landscape is in their hands.

In keeping with this realization, the National Park Service (NPS) included education as part of its mission from the outset. The National Park Cen-tennial Act of 2016 codified the edu-cational aspect of the NPS’s existing mission into the US Code of Federal Regulations.

Teacher Training

Fortunately, there have been for-ward-thinking educators, in keeping with the NPS’s emphasis on education, who have recognized the need for an organized approach to training teach-ers about the Lewis and Clark Expe-dition. They have organized programs for elementary and high school teach-ers and developed curricula for imple-mentation in their classrooms.

Carl E. Kramer, PhD, is one such prescient professor. Now retired from Indiana University Southeast (IUS)

where he was an adjunct assistant pro-fessor of history, director of the Insti-tute for Local and Oral History, and special assistant to the vice chancellor for academic affairs, Kramer realized about ten years ago that, if the teach-ers and school children of southern Indiana’s Falls of the Ohio region and Louisville, Kentucky, were to know the role their area played in the saga of Lewis and Clark, then he had to make it happen by designing course work and curricula for them.

With the pedagogical support of Dr. Claudia Crump, professor emeritus of elementary education and co-founder of the Center for Cultural Resources (on whose board Kramer served), the institutional support of the deans of the Schools of Education and Social Sciences, and financial assistance from the Indiana Lewis and Clark Expedi-tion Commission, Kramer organized the IUS Lewis and Clark Summer Institute. The institute was conducted in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2012.

IUS Lewis and Clark Summer Institute

Although the curriculum addressed the entire expedition, it focused on topics related to the Falls of the Ohio region, including slavery on the fron-tier, the significance of the Clark fam-ily, and the recruitment, organization, and training of the initial members of the Corps of Discovery in Clarks-ville, Indiana. Students submitted reg-ular essays based on reading assign-ments, but daily schedules tilted heavily toward activities that teach-

ers could use in developing interdisci-plinary learning activities for their own classrooms.

The program included field trips to the Filson Historical Society, Falls of the Ohio State Park, and Locust Grove, the last home of George Rog-ers Clark. There were lectures by IUS faculty members and community experts on geography, geology, flora and fauna, medicine, and surveying. The program also attracted visiting Lewis and Clark scholars Jay Buckley, Gary Moulton, Dark Rain Thom, and Lorna Hainesworth. In its entirety, the program was well received by partici-pants and instructors alike.

Student Field Investigation Program

On the student side of the equa-tion, Jay Russell of the Lewis and Clark Foundation in Great Falls, MT, developed a science-based Field Inves-tigation program geared to seventh graders, entitled “Trail Stewardship: Students Explore in the Footsteps of Lewis and Clark.” Jay’s idea was to get the students out on the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail to per-form measurements and make obser-vations about the state of the trail and the health of the waters of the Mis-souri River. In so doing, the students acquired an appreciation of scientific methodology, learned more of the Lewis and Clark story, and actively worked to preserve the Lewis and Clark Trail.

The program is designed to work best at a site near a body of water. Mid-


A Message from the President

dle school students are bussed to the location to conduct several on-site experiments and observations. Before the field day, teachers have a curric-ulum for preparing students for the field trip. The curriculum is exten-sive, including worksheets and a jour-nal. The field trip experience enables students to conduct experiments such as checking water quality, identify-ing macro-invertebrates, and iden-tifying plant life. There are five field learning stations: observations, botany, ornithology, macro-invertebrates, and hydrology. The curriculum also con-tains follow-up lessons after the field day.

The Field Investigation program endeavors to create a connection to nature and science that will have a lasting impact on students’ attitudes toward the natural world and their appreciation of their role in conserv-ing natural resources and preserving the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. The children out on the trail today will become the stewards of the trail tomorrow.

Program Goals

Other goals of the Field Investi-gation program are to spark the stu-dents’ interest in the Lewis and Clark story, highlight the scientific aspects of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and involve middle school students in hands-on field investigative science. Such hands-on study will also foster dialogue among the student groups along the trail who participate in the program as they compare the different landscapes through which the Corps of Discovery traveled.

The program will also engage com-munities along the Lewis and Clark Trail and educate them as to the

importance of stewarding the water-ways through which the Lewis and Clark Expedition traveled. By nurtur-ing people’s relationship with the trail, the program hopes to build a com-munity that will preserve the trail and keep it accessible to everyone.

The Lewis and Clark Foundation has been sponsoring the Field Inves-tigation program for the past six years. Now the Lewis and Clark Foundation is partnering with the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation (LCTHF) and National Park Service to expand this program to additional sites along the Lewis and Clark Trail, thus intro-ducing the concept of trail stewardship to middle students throughout the country. The LCTHF has an exten-sive network of chapters located in close proximity to visitor center sites and is uniquely positioned to take the program “on the road.”

The Field Investigation program meshes with the LCTHF’s goals of trail stewardship, involvement of young people in the story of Lewis and Clark, bringing young people out on the trail, and expanding Lewis and Clark scholarship to include a sci-ence-based learning component to complement the history and geogra-phy curricula already being taught in our schools.

Involvement of Scholars

Both a curriculum committee and a site-selection committee were involved in the planning process. Members of the curriculum committee included Jay Buckley, PhD, Sean Chandler, PhD, Pat Otto, Beth Thomas, Jay Russell, and Jill Hamilton-Anderson. Mem-bers of the Site Selection Committee included Lindy Hatcher, Jay Russell, Jill Hamilton-Anderson, and Rachel

Daniels. The site selection committee chose sites that are prepared to initiate the Field Investigation program. The first two sites under consideration are St Joseph, Missouri, and Pasco, Wash-ington. The committees worked as part of a planning grant awarded through the National Park Service, Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail.

The program is now fully developed and ready for phase two which involves seeking funding for implementation through government and private agen-cies in the amount of $20,000. Work completed in phase one will form the basis for and provide the resource material for grant applications in phase two. The foci for fundraising will be children, education, history, environ-ment, STEM, science, and botany. Once funding is in place, the program will be implemented.

I would like to thank Dr. Carl E. Kramer and Lindy Hatcher for their considerable assistance in the prepara-tion of this column. ❚

Philippa Newfield President Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation


The Journal of the Lewis & Clark Trail Heritage Foundation

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I join so many others in sadness that Joe Mussulman has died. I loved Joe. He was one of the finest, funniest, gentlest, and wittiest individuals I have ever met, not to mention exceedingly well-educated, well-read, and capable of researches that would have choked Thomas Jefferson or Reuben Gold Thwaites or Bernard DeVoto.

Joe was a musician, musicologist, actor, scholar, biographer, antiquar-ian, and man of the wilderness. After a distinguished career as a professor of music at the University of Montana, Joe embarked on a retirement career as a Lewis and Clark scholar-editor. In 1998 he created the finest and most often consulted Lewis and Clark web-site—Discovering Lewis and Clark. He had an exquisite sense of humor. He was, as often as not, self-amused, cer-tainly self-effacing. He was a master of puns. He wore giant glasses, goggles almost, which made him look a bit like the Chicago Cubs’ announcer Harry Caray.

For an NPR documentary series called The Unfinished Journey, I ven-tured to Missoula to interview Joe. This was 2004 or so, the first time I actually met him. It was for the episode about the “Social Dynamics of the Expedition,” and his subject was the music they likely danced to out under the stars in the course of the journey, and the kinds of jokes, boasts, jests, and exchanges of wit that we might have heard had we been helicoptered into their camps. As usual, Joe had done extremely careful and painstak-

ing research, and he now knew more about the subject than anyone alive. He hummed the tunes, a dozen or more of them, blew deafeningly into a “sounden horn” like one of the four the expedition carried, and told all the jokes he had found in early nineteenth century magazines and books of jests.

(By the way, I know how many horns they purchased because I just looked it up at Discovering Lewis and Clark). The jokes were so lame, so authentically unfunny by contemporary standards, that you laughed in spite of yourself, in large part because Joe delivered them as if he were the funniest standup comedian alive. From time to time he’d look up from his notes and say, “I’ll be here all week,” or “Be sure to tip your waiter.”

Whenever I found myself near Mis-soula I emailed Joe to invite him to go to dinner with me. You name the place, I’m buying, sky’s the limit, let’s

go wherever you fancy, I’d say. And when I arrived at his apartment, and finally managed to talk him out of his work chair and into my car, he’d say, “Let’s go to Perkins. Good menu, nice servers.” “Perkins?” I’d reply. “Joe, I’m happy to take you to absolutely any restaurant you desire in this fine uni-versity town: sushi, Vietnamese, Thai, French, a steakhouse, seafood, Nige-rian, you name it. I’m on an expense account (I lied).”

Joe: “Yeah, I said Perkins.” After my fifth visit, I just picked him

up and drove on autopilot to Perkins, where, as always, he studied the giant laminated menu as if it were the Kab-balah and then ordered a cheeseburger and fries. On one occasion I was there with my friend David Borlaug, an established gourmand, and even he was reduced to a Philly cheese steak.

Joe always reminded me of one of those tremendous seventeenth century antiquarians—John Aubrey, William Camden, or Robert Cotton. He was never content to accept the received wisdom on any subject, even from those he revered, like Gary Moulton, James Ronda, or John Logan Allen. He knew the larger trajectories of the Lewis and Clark story so thoroughly that he didn’t care to bother with that anymore. But ask him what Lewis meant by “imps of Saturn” or “sublu-nary world” or how Traveler’s Rest got its name or Lemhi Pass or Lolo Trail, and he was off and running. He spent nine months differentiating a cer-tain kind of flea from a certain kind of

Joe Mussulman November 20, 1928-September 10, 2017by Clay S. Jenkinson

Lewis and Clark Roundup


tick, assuring me that to get this wrong would be the source of almost endless confusion to anyone who really cares about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Even in the last months of his life, when he was sure he was approaching death, Joe would give me a list of five new articles he was researching, and 49 that he needed to revise, “Because I wrote them,” he’d say, “before I knew a darn thing about this story.”

Once, a few years ago, when I was spending a few days in western Mon-tana, I asked Joe if he needed anything. He said yes there was a certain cactus (the brittle prickly pear) that he wanted to get photographs of for the website, not to be confused with the more com-mon prickly pear, and would I be will-ing to drive him to the site. Of course I would. Shouldn’t take too long, Joe said. So I picked him up at about nine

a.m., assuming that we would be back in town by noon or shortly thereafter, and that the elusive cactus in question was within a few dozen miles of town. Whereto, I asked. He said, “Well, just start by driving to Dillon, and I’ll direct you from there.” Oh, my.

Dillon. Dillon was 171 miles from Missoula, and that was nothing more than our portal into the landscape he wished to explore. We drove to Dillon. Then Lima. Then up Red Rock River towards the Montana-Idaho border. We finally reached a feeble wooden bridge just below Upper Red Rock Lake, some six hours from Missoula, and still no brittle cactus in sight. I began to worry about running out of gas. Joe barked out orders, rebuked me for steering with my knee, repeat-edly demanded that I stop on a dime, and four or five times leaped out to

inspect what appeared to me to be a standard garden variety prickly pear. Eventually we found the elusive speci-men he sought, took a hundred photos, which involved a good deal of damage to our hands and feet, and called it a day. Well, half a day, because of course now we had to drive all the way back to Missoula.

We finally got back to town about ten-thirty p.m. Joe was lost in total sat-isfaction, and made it clear that I must lack “the right stuff” if I found that wee journey exhausting (and possibly pointless).

I last saw him two months ago as I came off a week on the Lolo Trail. He was certain his end was near, but cheerful and resolute as ever, and full of ideas for new entries in his master-work, Discovering Lewis and Clark. He ordered a cheeseburger and fries. ❚

Photograph of Trapper Peak, Bitterroot Mountains, Montana, courtesy of Steve Lee.

In Honor of Bob Gatten, Jr of Greensboro, NC: William H. Weiland of Houston, TX

In Memory of Col. Edwin R. Scholl, Jr: Arlene & Arthur Siron of North Wales, PA

In Memory of Dr. Joeseph Mussulman of Missoula, MT Larry Epstein of Essex, MT Barbara and Rennie Kubik of Vancouver, WA Steve Lee of Clarkston, WA Philippa Newfield & Phillip Gordon of San Francisco, CA

In Memory of Agnes Brooks Don & Cherie Peterson of Great Falls, MT Larry and Callie Esptein of Essex, MT

In Memory of Adam Goldsmith Howard Goldsmith of Sudbury, MA

In Memory of Tom Black of Ovando, MT Zach Zachowski and Barbara Gabel of Napa, CA Steve and Sara Gabel of Golden Valley, MN

Donor Roll


William Clark stood silently, reflecting upon his first meeting with Brulé Chief Black Bull Buffalo (Untongarabar) over a decade previous, on Septem-ber 24, 1804, at the Lakota village near the mouth of the Bad River in present-day South Dakota. For three days Black Buffalo, the Partisan, and Buffalo Medicine parlayed with Lewis and Clark. On September 28, as the expedition pre-pared to leave, a few Lakota warriors became so heated that Clark had actually drawn his sword. Fortunately, Black Buf-falo’s presence prevented bloodshed. He even accompanied Lewis and Clark upstream, perhaps as a hostage, in order to discourage the Lakotas from trying to prevent the Corps of Discovery from proceeding on.1

Now, on July 14, 1815, Clark, along with Ninian Edwards, Auguste Chouteau, and a large gathering of Lakotas (Teton Sioux), Nakotas (Yanktons), and Dakotas (Santees) gazed intently as Lakota warriors lowered Black Buffalo’s body into a grave at Portage des Sioux, a peninsula of land situated between the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi riv-ers. Black Bull Buffalo received a full military funeral com-plete with a grand procession, military band and drum corps

playing, an American flag flying, and a gun salute and firing of the cannon. Omaha chief Big Elk (Ongpatonga) offered part of Black Buffalo’s eulogy. “Do not grieve. Misfortunes will happen to the wisest and best men. Death will come, and always comes out of season. It is the command of the Great Spirit, and all nations and people must obey.” He contin-ued, “Be not discouraged or displeased then, that in visiting your father here [the American commissioner Clark], you have lost your chief.”2 A few days later on July 19, the Teton Lakotas, the Sioux of the Lakes, the Sioux of St. Peters, and the Yankton Sioux all signed treaties of peace and amity with the United States of America. William Clark conducted and signed all of those peace treaties that brought an end to the War of 1812 on the American frontier.

Largely a forgotten conflict in American memory, Amer-icans barely noticed the War of 1812’s two-hundred-year commemoration. Unlike the American Revolution, which was fought over concepts like freedom, independence, and representative government, or the Civil War, which was fought over issues of federalism (states’ rights) and free-

William Clark’s Impossible Task

By Jay Buckley

The Sentimental Imperialist and the War of 1812


dom (slavery), the causes behind the War of 1812 are nei-ther ideologically based, nor are they easily discernible. The causes—British naval impressment of American citizens, American neutrality during the Napoleonic Wars, native nations’ relations with England and the US on the Ameri-can frontier, and the possible US acquisition of new territory (Canada and Florida)—do not have the same cachet as free-dom and independence. Nevertheless, the war was an event of immense importance in that it represented a second war for independence for the United States, shaped future gen-erations of relations with Native Americans, and redefined a continent.3

After the US Senate voted 19–13 in favor on June 17, 1812, President James Madison commenced the war with a stroke of his pen, signing the congressional declaration of war into law on June 18. Many Americans must have felt like they were tempting fate. The original thirteen colo-nies had been blessed by what they regarded as divine provi-dence and by extreme luck during the American Revolution. Now the seventeen states comprising the United States of

Impossible Task

Encounter with the Teton Sioux, September 25, 1804 by James Ayers, oil on canvas, 24in x 40in

Black Buffalo’s Grave, Portage des Sioux.

Phot

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America once again declared war on Great Britain, the most powerful nation on earth. By whatever measure—finance, industry, international trade, military might, naval power—Great Britain represented the economic, political, and mil-itary titan of the world. For two-and-a-half years the war raged. By war’s end, some 25,000 American, British, Cana-dian, and Native American casualties resulted from the inde-cisive stalemate.4

Today’s Americans may remember hearing something about Captain Oliver Hazard Perry’s naval victory on Lake Erie, the victorious Battle of Plattsburgh on Lake Cham-plain, the courageous defense of Fort McHenry (and the Star-Spangled Banner), or Andrew Jackson’s victory at New Orleans. All of these events occurred on the northern, east-ern, and southern borders of the United States. Not many would be able to discuss the implications of the war on the trans-Appalachian frontier, however, nor would they recall the subsequent peace treaties with Indian nations signed at Portage des Sioux in 1815 and at Clark’s Indian office in St. Louis over the next few years, many months after the Treaty of Ghent had formally ended the war. An understanding of the war on the western flank is necessary to comprehend the implications for native nations and the expansion of America.

Historical Context

Indian nations living west of the Appalachian Moun-tains experienced increased settler colonialism pressure and conflict during and after the French and Indian War (1754-1763). Odawa war chief Pontiac (Ottawa) formed a pan-In-dian resistance effort in the Great Lakes region against Brit-ish expansion, but the effort ultimately failed. Then, during, and after the American Revolution, tribes facing east from Indian Country joined the British side in an unsuccessful attempt to temper American expansion. In the 1790s, Little Turtle (Miami) and Blue Jacket (Shawnee) formed anoth-er Indian confederacy in the Ohio Country to try to keep Americans south of the Ohio River. In 1803, the United States purchased the “Doctrine of Discovery” title to the Louisiana territory from France. The United States now felt justified to extend her sovereignty over the region, but ran up against native peoples who sought to defend their full sovereignty to the land and not just the “right of occupancy” assumed under the European discovery doctrine.5

The US government authorized Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the Missouri River from its con-fluence with the Mississippi to its headwaters in the Rocky

Mountains for the purpose of finding a commercial route to the Pacific. Lewis and Clark notified native nations of America’s suzerainty, acknowledging native nations’ internal autonomy in exchange for recognition of Ameri-ca’s over-arching sovereignty and trading opportunities.6 They distributed peace medals—tokens of sovereignty that displayed a portrait of President Thomas Jefferson on one side and the words “Peace and Friendship” on the other—to influential chiefs.7

The federal government’s official Indian policy of fos-tering “peace and friendship” through commerce was im-plemented via the US factory system. Theoretically, these frontier posts sold or traded manufactured goods for furs and skins hunted and trapped by native customers. In reality, the extension of credit soon indebted native peoples. One method to erase debt was to cede land. Jefferson articulated this concept in a letter to Governor William Harrison on February 27, 1803:

When they withdraw themselves to the culture of a small piece of land, they will perceive how useless to them are their extensive forests, and will be willing to pare them off from time to time in exchange for necessaries for their farms and families. To promote this disposition to ex-change lands, which they have to spare and we want, for necessaries, which we have to spare and they want, we shall push our trading houses, and be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the indi-viduals can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands…. In this way our settlements will gradu-ally circumscribe and approach the Indians, and they will in time either incorporate with us as citizens of the US, or remove beyond the Mississippi.8

Governor Harrison followed Jefferson’s advice and de-manded a huge land cession from representatives of the Sauk (Sac) and Mesquakies (Foxes) nations in a controversial 1804 treaty conducted in Saint Louis that the tribes repeatedly refused to acknowledge or accept as valid.9 From Harrison’s perspective, the United States had acquired southern Wis-consin, western Illinois, and part of northeastern Missou-ri through this fifteen-million-acre cession. In 1805 Gen-eral James Wilkinson constructed the Fort Belle Fontaine (Bellefontaine) factory on the south bank of the Missouri, four miles from its confluence with the Mississippi (some fif-teen miles from St. Louis) and across from the narrow pen-insula known as Portage des Sioux. This was the first Amer-ican fort west of the Mississippi. It served as a government



trading house and military outpost. Its erection advanced the US government’s aims to regulate private traders, count-er foreign (British) designs in upper Louisiana, and provide credit, gifts, and goodwill to Indian delegations venturing to Washington.10

Following the return of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the secretary of war appointed William Clark brigadier gen-eral of the militia and federal Indian agent for all western tribes, excluding the Osages, who had already been assigned to agent Pierre Chouteau. Having explored the Louisiana Purchase (and beyond), Clark was now given by President Jefferson the unenviable role of simultaneously protecting Indian rights and interests through trade while overseeing and advancing the dispossession of native peoples’ “right of occupancy” to the Louisiana Territory through land cession treaties.11

Initially, Clark used Fort Belle Fontaine as his supply headquarters for the Indian trade, and the gifts he presented to Indian delegations came from its storehouses. The fort was poorly located for the Indian trade, however, and upon hear-ing Clark’s recommendations, the War Department agreed to close the Belle Fontaine factory and construct two new trad-ing houses, Fort Osage and Fort Madison, to better serve the Indians along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. President Jefferson expected the factories on the Missouri and Missis-sippi would “have more effect than as many armies.” Open-ing commerce with the Indians would supposedly enable the tribes to become allies and help “prohibit the British from appearing westward of the Mississippi.”12

In the summer of 1808, Clark sent Colonel Thomas Hunt to oversee the construction of Fort Madison, located above the Mississippi’s rapids near its confluence with the Des Moines River, to promote goodwill among the Win-nebagos, Sacs, and Foxes.13 Meanwhile, also in 1808, Clark oversaw the design, location, and construction of Fort Clark (Fort Osage) on the Missouri River near the mouth of the Osage River. Located three hundred miles above the mouth of the Missouri and twenty-five miles east of present-day Kansas City, Fort Osage represented the westernmost of the twenty-eight factories and served as a government trading house and a military outpost. George Sibley served as factor, while the fort itself offered a commanding position one hun-dred feet above the river. All passing watercraft fell within gun range.14

After summoning the Great and Little Osages—the Ni-U-Ko’n-Ska, or Children of the Middle Waters—to meet on

the Fire Prairie, Clark drafted his first federal treaty. Over-anxious to demonstrate his abilities as an Indian agent, Clark pressed chiefs White Hair (Paw-Hiu-Skah or Pawhuska) and Walking Rain (Nichenmanee) and the Osage nation to agree to his terms. The Osage leaders welcomed American promises of protection against their enemies, especially the Sac and Fox, and looked forward to a trading post on the Missouri. They may have also thought they were exchang-ing only their rights to hunt on the land east of Fort Osage, which had settlements of Quapaws, Cherokees, and French settlers anyway. Clark took advantage of the situation to wrest from the Osages all of their land claims east of a line extending south from Fort Osage to the Arkansas River (half of present-day Missouri and Arkansas) and south of a line between Fort Osage and Fort Madison. Clark’s thinly veiled threats to punish them for past depredations were offset by his declarations that the United States wished peaceful trade and friendship with the Osages, and his promise “to protect all orderly friendly & well-disposed Indians . . . who will Strictly attend to and preserve the counsels of the President of the U. States through his Agents.” Clark helped to dispos-sess the Osages of fifty thousand square miles of land for ten cents per square mile--land that the government could turn around and sell for $1.25 to $2.50 an acre.15

When some of the tall, proud Osage warriors not present at the initial treaty protested its terms, Governor Meriweth-er Lewis asked Pierre Chouteau to present a slightly altered treaty to the tribe for approval, with an annual annuity pay-ment of $1,200 and $1,500 in merchandise. Chouteau con-vinced the tribes to sign. Clark defended his actions to Sec-retary of War Henry Dearborn: “No unfair means had been taken on my part to induce the Osage to seed to the United States such an extencive Country for what is conceived here to be so small a Compensation, when in reality their Com-pensation when taken into proper view is fully adequate.”16

Indian agent Clark had fulfilled the objectives and desires of his superiors by clearing Indian title to lands cheaply, even when it meant offering an unfair settlement to the tribes in-volved. At the time, Clark boasted to his brother Jonathan that he had extinguished the Osages’ right of occupancy to three hundred miles of Missouri “fer a verry Small Sum.”17 Later, after years of experience as an Indian diplomat, a wis-er and more reflective Clark apologetically told Ethan Allen Hitchcock, who was serving as a temporary aide in Clark’s St. Louis office, that the Osage treaty “was the hardest treaty on the Indians he ever made and that if he was to be damned


hereafter it would be for making that treaty.”18 Perhaps Clark “had reason to fear a tenure in hell, because he admitted to complicity in political manipulations that contributed to the exaggerated accusations of Osage ‘depredations’ to advance American interests.”19

Indians willing to sign treaties faced opposition within their nations. Osage bands on the Arkansas, such as the one led by Clermont, scoffed at White Hair’s agreement, think-ing him an American pawn, and undermined his credibility among the dissidents. It was clear to them that land-hungry Americans possessed an insatiable desire to divest Indians of their land and paid little attention to the legal and moral implications of the seizures. This opposition to land dispos-session found a powerful voice in the Shawnee leader Te-cumseh, who in an 1810 speech articulated a firm stance for all Indians to take against future land cessions. When there were “no white man on this continent,” he began, the land “all belonged to the red men . . . placed on it by the Great Spirit.” The Indians were a “happy race,” but had since been “made miserable by the white people, who are never con-tented, but always encroaching.” The only way “to stop this evil, is, for all the red men to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land.” Furthermore, no tribe “has a right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers” and the “white people have no right to take the land from the In-dians, because they had it first; it is theirs.” Moreover, “Any sale not made by all is not valid. . . . It requires all to make a bargain for all.”20

On the eve of the War of 1812, Indian resistance to An-glo-American expansion coalesced under the leadership of Tecumseh and his prophet-brother Tenskwatawa. Seeking native solutions to European land encroachment, these Shawnee leaders preached independence from American sovereignty. With covert British support, they hoped to cre-ate an independent Indian state bordered by the Great Lakes on the north and the Mississippi and Ohio rivers to the west and south. Their pan-Indian movement gained momentum among some tribal communities, such as the Delawares, Io-ways, Kickapoos, Miamis, Otos, Piankashaws, Potawatomis, Sacs and Foxes, Shawnees, Wabash, Weas, Winnebagos, and Wyandots. Fully half of these tribes fell under Clark’s super-vision.

The summer of 1813 brought additional responsibilities to Clark. President James Madison offered Clark the gover-norship of the Missouri Territory, with an annual salary of $2,000. Due to hostilities emanating from the War of 1812,

Madison called upon Clark to serve his nation by governing and defending the western frontier and the Missouri Territo-ry from British intrigues and native resistance.21 As the terri-torial governor and ex-officio superintendent of Indian affairs, Clark retained all of his former duties as Indian agent and was additionally responsible for the Indian tribes in the Missouri Territory (present-day Missouri, Arkansas, and parts of Okla-homa and Kansas), and all the tribes west of the Mississippi River in the Louisiana Purchase north of the state of Louisi-ana since they fell under no other territorial jurisdiction.

Clark’s first act was to assess the resources at his disposal. He wrote to William Morrison, the military contractor for the district, to determine the stock of supplies such as pork, beef, soap, candles, flour, and bacon at Portage des Sioux and at St. Louis. He contacted his agents and asked for an accounting of “every species of public property in your possession,” and re-quested them to compile a “report of the disposition situation & number of Indians within the bounds of your agency, stat-ing such as are friendly towards the United States, such as may be reasonably suspected of intruding to join in the war against us, and such as are actually at war with us.” Clark wanted an accounting of depredations, numbers of people killed, num-bers of prisoners, and time and place of property taken. Final-ly, he asked for an accounting of Indian grievances and claims, both tribal and individual, against citizens of the United States so that he could take appropriate action.22

Clark’s agents informed him that the Potawatomis, Kick-apoos, and other tribes along the Illinois River and near the Great Lakes had allied themselves with the British. One of his ablest agents, Thomas Forsyth, informed him the Brit-ish had given their allies a “large quantity of supplies,” and the Indians’ periodic victories against the United States had made them confident that “with the assistance of the British they will be able to drive the Americans across the Ohio River.” Other tribes, including the Ottawas, Chippe-was, Menominees, and Piankashaws, were “now at war with us.” 23 Forsyth delivered a sobering account of the numerous murders and depredations committed by both sides during the war. Another agent, Nicholas Boilvin, provided Clark with an accounting of supplies on hand as well as informa-tion about which Indians were friendly, hostile, or neutral.

British agents recruited Indian allies to fight against Americans. The British, unlike the Americans, employed Indian auxiliaries to great advantage. After Harrison’s early defeat of Sac and Fox forces at the Battle of Tippe-canoe in November 1811, Indian forces successfully raided



frontier settlements in Illinois, Indi-ana, Iowa, and Missouri. Black Hawk, still upset over the controversial Har-rison treaty of 1804, led a group of warriors against American settlements and forts in order to advance tribal in-dependence. The animosity created a division within the nation, since a portion of the Sacs and Foxes favored peace and remained neutral, hoping to maintain access to American trade and protection.24 American settlers’ unquenchable thirst for Indian land meant that most tribes who had ced-ed lands in Ohio, Indian, Illinois, and Missouri needed little provocation to take up arms against the Americans in their war for Indian independence. British and Indian forces captured forts Mackinac/Michilimackinac, Dearborn, and Detroit in rapid suc-cession, and they besieged or captured forts Wayne, Har-rison, Kaskaskia, Meigs, and Miami. Widespread fear of hostilities—real and imagined—descended upon the Mis-sissippi Valley settlers. Their anxiety increased when a Sac force compelled troops to evacuate and burn Fort Madison in the fall of 1813. The fall of Fort Madison on the Mis-sissippi revealed the clear and present danger St. Louisans faced. The Missouri settlements lay exposed and vulnerable to an Indian attack, especially from Sac and Fox forces led by Black Hawk.25

Clark’s civic duties as governor took a backseat to his re-sponsibility to protect both Missourians and Indians. The rumors of war resulted in great uncertainty and anxiety. Clark called upon outlying communities to prepare to de-fend themselves from attack. As commander-in-chief and with a breveted rank of brigadier general of militia, Clark’s next priority involved building blockhouses for defense and enlisting rangers to run patrols between them. Squatters who ignored government proclamations, settled wherever they pleased, and then demanded protection from the In-dians whose land they had invaded, exacerbated Clark’s dif-ficulties in preventing conflict. Moreover, he was expected to carry out his duties with little direction from the federal government, which had its hands full in the East. Clark did what he could. Fortunately, Secretary of War Eustis agreed

with and approved Clark’s recommendations for the ranger patrols and chain of blockhouses, such as Fort Cooper. Fort Cooper was one of nearly two dozen defenses built across the Missouri frontier. Settlers erected some of these fron-tier defenses themselves, while troops and rangers built the others. The structures differed in strength, with some being nothing more than fortified houses while others contained stockades and blockhouses. Most were log houses with a projecting upper story with loopholes for rifle ports.26

Nathan Boone’s St. Charles militia patrols were replaced by a company of the US Mounted Rangers led by Captain Daniel Morgan Boone. Both were sons of the famous fron-tiersman Daniel Boone, who was then residing on Femme Osage Creek, twenty miles southwest of St. Charles. Reg-ular patrols by a company of rangers traveling back and forth between Fort Osage and Fort Madison occupied them episodically, and Missourians occasionally fled to the forts for protection when threats escalated. Although the posts and the patrols probably did not impress the Indians much, they at least gave local residents a sense of security and some peace of mind. These local units provided an important ser-vice, since the government had only 241 regular troops sta-tioned west of the Mississippi.27

To make matters worse, the government felt that Clark’s militia and rangers would be sufficient to protect the frontier,

William Clark’s America, 1770-1838.

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so orders were given for General Benjamin Howard and the First Infantry stationed in the West to evacuate to support the northern and eastern fronts.28 Clark sent his pregnant wife, Julia, and their two sons Meriwether Lewis and Wil-liam Preston Clark to Fincastle, Virginia, for safety and the eventual birth of their daughter Mary Margaret. About two months after Mary’s birth, Julia expressed concern about her husband, commenting in a letter, “I am afraid we shall have some trouble in the spring with the Indians as the rangers’ (who now protect the frontier) time will expire in May and instead of more troops being sent on to protect us it is hour-ly expected that the first regiment will be ordered from this place to Canada. God only knows what our fate is to be.”29 In addition to the blockhouses and patrols, Clark anticipated that he might punish Indians who had been plundering trad-ers on the Mississippi and squelch any attack planned on the Mississippi by capturing and occupying the strategic loca-tion of Prairie du Chien, located adjacent to the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers.30 Robert Dickson’s Indian alliance of warriors from the Sioux, Winnebagos, Menominees, Chippewas, Sacs, and Foxes had gathered at Prairie du Chien. They had plundered or burned all the American property they could find there and at other trad-ing locations along the Mississippi. Nathaniel Pryor of the Lewis and Clark Expedition had built a trading post near the Winnebago nation near present-day Galena, Illinois. Clark assigned Alexander Willard (also from the expedition) to carry military dispatches from St. Louis to Prairie du Chien, as well as to warn Pryor of the outbreak of the war. A party of Winnebago warriors fired upon Willard’s party and an “American Family of women & children was killed on the bank of the Mississippii, a fiew minits before the Express passed the house.”31 Native forces also closed down nearly all of the lead mines along the upper Mississippi, resulting in shortages of and inflated prices on crude lead.32

Nobody, in fact, really knew whether Indians or whites held the upper hand. During the war, neither side controlled the frontier. Isolated attacks and retaliatory raids simultane-ously enraged and struck terror in tribal villages and frontier settlements alike. Clark generally blamed the British for as-sisting and strengthening anti-American Indian forces. These Anglo-Indian alliances were based, in large measure, on the industrial and commercial superiority of the British, who sup-plied more and better goods at British-occupied trading de-pots than their American counterparts could offer elsewhere. Since Jay’s Treaty in 1795, British traders had operated freely

on American soil south of Canada so long as they promised to obey American laws. With enforcement minimal to nonex-istent, the British fanned Indians’ fears that Americans’ land hunger could never be satiated and would result in the dis-possession of Indian nations from their ancestral lands. Some Britons, including Robert Dickson, encouraged all Indians between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River to join to-gether in resisting the American advance on the frontier. The British advantage in these areas allowed them to gain many Indian proponents.33

Uncertainty, rumors, and false reports caused more anx-iety than actual skirmishes. Clark focused his attention and meager resources closer to home, where the chances for suc-cess loomed brighter. With the American military presence severely diminished in the West and with British sympathiz-ers and fur traders dominating Green Bay and Prairie du Chien, Clark sought to remedy the increased vulnerability of Missouri Territory, brought about by the abandonment of Fort Madison, by taking matters into his own hands. At stake were alliances with the Sioux, Sacs, Foxes, Kickapoos, and Winnebagos, control of the fur trade centers at Green Bay and Prairie du Chien, and navigation of the upper Mis-sissippi. Americans were not content to let control of the up-per Mississippi go unchallenged. Governor Ninian Edwards of Illinois and General Benjamin Howard sent rangers into the upper Illinois country to punish the Indians responsible for an attack on Portage des Sioux. Tragically, differentiating between the guilty and the innocent, especially during times of war, proved impossible. The rangers rampaged through Indian villages, destroying them, and erected a fortification on the right bank of the Illinois River at Peoria. This fort, called Fort Clark after William Clark’s older brother George Rogers Clark, helped protect the Illinois frontier and bring some peace of mind to St. Louis during the winter of 1813.34

After the winter of 1813, Clark tried once again to estab-lish peace with the Sacs and Foxes. During the summer, he sent Nicholas Boilvin and John Johnson to invite the Indians to a council at St. Louis. Howard intercepted several of the bands headed downstream and told them to wait for Clark at Portage des Sioux. Clark succeeded in persuading the friendly portion of the tribes to relocate to northern Mis-souri, where Johnson opened up a factory nearby for their use on Moniteau Creek in Howard County. Although many chose to return to the Rock Island country adjacent to the Mississippi in central Illinois, a few remained. The summer of 1814, however, proved that Clark’s efforts to achieve peace



with the Sacs had not been successful. Hostilities that year claimed as many vic-tims in Missouri Territory as in the previous two years combined. Sac warriors attacked Johnson’s facto-ry on Moniteau Creek. Half a dozen settlers were murdered in or near their cabins, and the bodies of white men who had been stabbed, tomahawked, and scalped floated down the Missouri. Cries for revenge escalated to new heights. The Missouri Gazette emphatically stated, “The BLOOD of our citizens cry aloud for VEN-GEANCE. The general cry is let the north as well as the south be JACKSONIZED.”35

With General Howard and the First Infantry in the East, citizens implored Clark to do something. The War Depart-ment had deprived territorial executives of their military authority in 1814, and Missouri fell under the jurisdiction of the Eighth Military District. Governor Clark was officially encouraged to let the army handle the territory’s military af-fairs. Tired of waiting for some action to be taken and wishing to convince Missourians that he had their protection foremost in his mind, however, Clark prepared to invade the British stronghold on the upper Mississippi. Acting on his own instincts and experience, Clark saw the necessity of establish-ing a strong fort at the strategic location of Prairie du Chien, located at the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississip-pi rivers. This private venture, like the exploits of George Rogers Clark a few decades earlier, could have ruined Clark and personally cost him thousands of dollars if the govern-ment had chosen not to honor his drafts. Unable to wait for direction or approval from the secretary of war, Clark mobi-lized two gunboats to proceed up the Mississippi.36 One of them, the Governor Clark, sported fourteen swivel cannon, was propelled by thirty-two oars, and had planking thick enough to stop musket balls. The construction of the gun-boats demonstrated Clark’s military acumen when it came to solving the problem of safely transporting men and supplies

into hostile territory.37

Governor Clark knew that he could reestablish an Amer-ican presence on the upper Mississippi by retaking Prairie du Chien. Although he believed that a garrison near Green Bay, at the mouth of the Fox River, would do more than a garrison at Prairie du Chien to prevent Canadians from trading along the Mississippi, he also realized that the capture of Prairie du Chien would “produce ‘valuable ef-fects’ on the minds of the Indians.” He had been pressing for permission for such an expedition for the past two years. He also regarded the seizure of Prairie du Chien as “indispens-able to hold the British Traders in check.”38 With the rang-ers’ enlistments expiring that spring, the governor recruited 150 volunteers for two months of service. On May 1, 1814, Clark and Major Zachary Taylor led a force of 50 regulars and 140 militiamen up the Mississippi, meeting only minor resistance from the Sacs at the Rock Island rapids (between modern Davenport, Iowa, and Rock Island, Illinois). Clark proceeded on to Prairie du Chien, turned his guns on the British post and captured it without firing a shot when Brit-ish captain Francis Dease surrendered. On June 2, Gover-nor Clark left Lieutenant Joseph Perkins and sixty-five men to build Fort Shelby, named after Kentucky governor Isaac Shelby. Clark designed it to have two blockhouses armed with cannons. He also left the Governor Clark with its eighty-man crew. Clark returned to St. Louis hopeful that the tide

Andrew Jackson returning to Tennessee after the Battle of New Orleans by Michael Haynes.

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of the war had turned. The city held a ball in his honor at the Missouri Hotel, and eloquent patriotic toasts calling him “the shield of the territory” were offered. The Missouri Gazette concluded that the campaign was well-conducted and was “more important to these territories than any hith-erto undertaken.”39

The whole Prairie du Chien enterprise cost $30,000. If the government had not honored Clark’s drafts, it would have ruined him, much as it had his brother George Rogers Clark in a similar scenario during the American Revolution. Nonetheless, Clark’s successful retaking of Prairie du Chien was short-lived. The decision to establish a garrison six hun-dred miles deep into hostile territory had been wishful think-ing in the first place. Promised reinforcements were never sent by the war department. General Howard thought Clark a poor military commander, but William Henry Harrison insisted, “I do not hesitate to say that in the kind of warfare in which we are engaged I had rather have him [Clark] with me than any other man in the United States.”40 Meanwhile, Colonel Robert McDouall, the British official at Fort Mack-inac, sent Captain William McKay and a large British and Indian force of 650 men some 400 miles to recapture Prairie du Chien. The counterattack caught Perkins and his men by surprise in the unfinished and indefensible Fort Shelby. The British fired upon the Governor Clark, cutting its tow-line and sending it floating haphazardly downstream. Per-kins held out for a while but eventually surrendered the fort (renamed Fort McKay by the British) and weaponry on July 20, 1814, in exchange for safe passage by boat to St. Louis. Downstream, Major John Campbell learned that Fort Shel-by was under attack and headed upstream, only to have his 120 regular troops and rangers pinned down by Black Hawk and 400 Sac, Fox, and Kickapoo warriors at the Rock Island rapids on July 21. The timely arrival of the Governor Clark from Prairie du Chien ended the skirmish, and Campbell and his men retired to St. Louis to regroup. A relief expedition of 350 men and eight gunboats under the command of Major Zachary Taylor was surprised by a force of well-armed Ca-nadians and four hundred warriors at the Rock River rapids. Their attack prevented other American attempts to proceed upriver in the fall, and effectively returned the area to Indian and British control for the duration of the war.41 More bad news arrived when General Howard died in mid-September and several strategic forts were evacuated. As winter set in, Missourians braced for the possibility of renewed hostilities in the spring.

The Treaties Ending the War of 1812

Fortunately, good news reached St. Louis in the spring of 1815. British and American diplomats had reached a “Treaty of Peace and Amity between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America” at Ghent, Belgium, on Christ-mas Eve of 1814. The US Congress ratified the treaty on February 17, 1815, formally ending the war.42 Article 9 of the Treaty of Ghent stated: “The United States of America engage to put an end immediately after the Ratification of the present Treaty to hostilities with all the Tribes or Na-tions of Indians with whom they may be at war at the time of such Ratification, and forthwith to restore to such Tribes or Nations respectively all the possessions, rights, and priv-ileges which they may have enjoyed or been entitled to in one thousand eight hundred and eleven previous to such hostilities. Provided always that such Tribes or Nations shall agree to desist from all hostilities against the United States of America, their Citizens, and Subjects upon the Ratifica-tion of the present Treaty being notified to such Tribes or Nations, and shall so desist accordingly.”43 In some ways, the frontier situation appeared more helpless than before. Article 9 of the Treaty of Ghent called for the termination of hostilities and the restoration of the rights, privileges, and possessions that the Indians had held in 1811.44 In other words, the western interests of the United States were not well served by the Treaty of Ghent.

The treaty signed in Belgium did not end hostilities on the Missouri frontier, however, particularly since the hostile bands of Sacs, Foxes, and Kickapoos led by the Indian patri-ot Black Hawk still roamed the countryside around the Rock River. Many white Missourians felt that the Indians should be militarily conquered and compelled to negotiate peace, but the treaty prevented the Missouri Militia and rangers from striking back. St. Louis merchant Christian Wilt con-cluded, “I am really apprehensive of a long & bloody war, which can only be averted by a rise en masse of the Americans & driving the British out of North America & slaying every Indian from here to the Rocky Mountains.”45

During the six months between the Treaty of Ghent and the negotiations at Portage des Sioux, some of the bloodiest attacks of the entire war occurred. Indians achieved victories along the river at towns such as Côte san Dessein, Loutre Island, Cap au Gris, and Femme Osage, as well as in the Boone’s Lick region.46 With no federal troops to protect the region and upward of 10,000 Indians on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers capable of war, Clark felt that he had to do



something, so he reorganized the militia with a stricter en-forcement of drafts. Clark felt troubled because funds to pay the rangers and militia had not yet been allocated, making the drafts more resented than ever. With all of these prob-lems, peace negotiations took on added importance.47

Clark employed three major initiatives in 1815 to ad-vance peace and progress. First, on March 9, 1815, he de-clared the lands ceded by the Great and Little Osages in the 1808 Treaty at Fort Clark (Osage) “annexed to, and made a part of the country of St. Charles for all purposes of civil government whatsoever; the proprietary as well as sovereign rights to same having been regularly acquired by the United States, by the treaty above mentioned.”48

Then, Governor Clark tried to strengthen ties with In-dian allies and fulfill his duties as governor to keep white settlers from intruding on Indian lands. He issued a proc-lamation that unauthorized settlement of white persons on Indian lands was “in violation of laws and disregard of the executive authority of the territory” and it “can no longer be permitted.” Thus, while many Missouri constituents clamored for support against Indian depredations, real and imagined, Clark tried his best to uphold the law, opposing squatters who illegally occupied Indian lands. But who could Clark employ to enforce the law? The territorial militia over which he presided included many persons who stood to gain the most from illegally squatting on Indian land. Although the militia generally mustered out quickly to defend the frontier against Indian attack, they were reluctant to con-vene in order to reprimand their own ranks. Clark’s efforts to balance the demands of Indians, settlers, and the federal government proved an impossible task.49 Moreover, by 1815 the Missouri population has swelled to 25,000 people, an increase of nearly five thousand in the five years since the 1810 census. These settlers elected representatives to the territorial assembly who supported squatters’ claims and un-dermined Clark’s attempts to protect Indian rights of occu-pancy. For the next five years, political opponents charged Clark with being too friendly with the Indians. It took con-siderable courage for Clark to take such an unpopular stand, sacrificing personal popularity, power, and monetary gain to support Indian land rights.50

The third and most important measure involved Clark’s appointment as a federal diplomat to bring frontier hostilities to a close. On April 15, 1815, President Madison appointed Governor Clark of the Missouri Territory, Governor Ninian Edwards of the Illinois Territory, and Indian agent Auguste

Chouteau as peace commissioners to various Indian nations along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.51 The commission-ers notified the people of Missouri and Illinois about their appointments and encouraged citizens to refrain from hos-tile acts toward Indians that might hurt the commissioners’ success at negotiating peace. Citizens complained that Indian depredations had to be punished, and they expected Clark to do something about it.52 Clark and his fellow commissioners followed the counsel of Secretary of War James Monroe that they were not to seek trade or land concessions; they were to “confine this treaty to the sole object of peace.” Monroe dispatched $20,000 worth of excellent-quality goods to make negotiations more palatable to the tribes. Later, both parties could arrange other mutually beneficial treaties.53

Treaty-making involved attention to numerous details. The treaties were confined solely to reestablishing peace and reaffirming previous treaties. A majority of each tribe had to give their consent to the proposed actions of the trea-ty. Finally, Congress had to ratify the treaty in order for it to be regarded as legal and binding. Preparations for trea-ty-making necessitated deciding on a time and place, no-tifying the tribes involved, and, when possible, conducting the negotiations in Indian country. Once these preparations were under way, laborers were sent to build a council house, arbor, kitchen, bakery, and sleeping quarters for the partic-ipants. Adequate provisions and wages for the commission-ers, secretary, agents, subagents, interpreters, workers, and principal chiefs and warriors had to be acquired, and con-tracts had to be signed to transport the goods to the council location. Numerous presents, such as tobacco, pipes, paint, medals, and even ammunition, had to be delivered to the site, along with provisions of beef, salt pork, flour, corn, and salt, which would be distributed regularly to the tribes to supply their wants and secure the influence and cooperation of the principal chiefs. Once the talks had taken place—with interpreters to relay each provision with precision—the commissioners sought as many Indian signatures as possi-ble. It was especially important to court the young men so that they became active participants in the process and had a stake in the outcome.54

Notifying all of the tribes was particularly challenging. Clark used Indian agents such as Thomas Forsyth and Man-uel Lisa, army personnel such as Terry Berry and George H. Kennerly, and traders such as Frenchmen Pierre Turcotte and Edward LaGuthrie to dispatch invitations and talks to 37 Indian nations to inform them that peace had been


established between England and the United States and to invite them to the peace talks. These men, in turn, spread the message farther by sending it on with Indian emissar-ies they contacted. Predictably, most tribes did not respond quickly or express much enthusiasm about attending the peace council at Portage des Sioux, although Manuel Lisa succeeded in improving the dispositions of the Sioux, Oma-has, and Pawnees and gathered delegations from among those tribes for the treaty.55

While these tribes and others treated the invitation with reserve, others, including the Kickapoos and Sacs and Fox-es, expressed open hostility. A recalcitrant Sac and Fox band living near the Rock River murdered one of Berry’s peace en-voys. The commissioners also had to convince frontiersmen to maintain the peace. Many of them wanted to exact revenge for their losses of life, property, and livestock during the war, but they had been denied retaliation by the provisions of the Treaty of Ghent and the pleas of the commissioners.56

In order to ensure tranquility at the negotiations, the commissioners simultaneously prepared for the best and the worst, making sure the Indians’ friendship could be secured either by gifts or by force. Government factors George C. Sibley and John Johnson returned from Ohio with the pres-ents. The commissioners’ secretary also requested troops from Fort Bellefontaine, so General Daniel Bissell sent 275 regulars, under the command of Colonel John Miller, and two gunboats, the Governor Clark and the Commodore Perry, to anchor in the Missouri, near enough that their guns could be trained on the Indian encampments if difficulties arose.57

Portage des Sioux had been selected as the council site because of its favorable location. The small French commu-nity founded in 1799 along the right bank of the Mississippi River lay about six miles above the mouth of the Missouri and near the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi riv-ers. It was a relatively convenient place for tribes from the upper reaches of all three rivers to assemble easily. Portage des Sioux was also near enough to Fort Bellefontaine and St. Louis to facilitate transportation of supplies and military support.58 Clark and Bissell visited Portage des Sioux on July 1, 1815, to find suitable places for the troops to encamp, to visit the Indian delegations that were already present, and to select a site for the council house. General Bissell recounted the evening visit: “from what little I have noticed of the de-portment of the Indians since I arrived, I think they appear to attach much consequence to themselves, and hold the Americans in great contempt as warriors, little better than

Squaws.” The general believed that the British evacuation of Prairie du Chien had strengthened the American cause and cautiously attested that it was “not unlikely all [Indians] may Subscribe to such a treaty as we wish, yet I do not believe we shall have peace long with them, or that those Indians will ever respect us as a Nation, untill they are well chastised.”59

The following months at Portage des Sioux were busy ones. The counseling and treaty-making with at least 19 dif-ferent tribes took the entire summer and fall to complete. Some Indians began arriving after July 1. Abandoned by the British, these tribal representatives bravely faced the gun-boats and endured the presence of US army troops. Cut off from British suppliers, with game diminishing rapidly and the trickle of white settlers turning into a small stream, many Indians saw the necessity of signing peace treaties to put an end to the conflict and to resume their lives. Gover-nor Clark sent runners to bring in those not yet present and opened the council on July 10.60

More than 2,000 Indians were encamped along the river when the council began. Clark, presiding in his dark suit and white ruffled shirt, opened with a forceful speech. He told the tribes that it was time to bury the tomahawk and put past transgressions aside in order to forge a lasting peace. He informed them of the government’s plan to build forts along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. After his fellow commissioners delivered their messages, Clark undertook the task of meeting with each tribe individually to recon-cile any existing complaints and difficulties. The continuous drum-rolling and the never-ending deputations of one trib-al delegation after another created an ostentatious display. Between July 18 and September 16, 1815, the commission-ers signed 13 separate treaties asserting “perpetual peace and friendship” and a mutual forgiveness of all atrocities. They asked the Indians to “deliver up all the prisoners now in their hands to the officer commanding at St. Louis” and to acknowledge themselves and their tribe or nation “to be under the protection of the United States and no other na-tion, power or sovereign whatsoever.” Nations signing in-cluded the Piankashaws, Potawatomis, Omahas, Kickapoos, Osages, Sacs of Missouri, Foxes, Ioways, and Sioux groups, including the Tetons, Sioux of the Lakes, Sioux of St. Peter’s River, and Yanktons. The commissioners distributed solid silver medals to the chiefs and $20,000 worth of trade goods, including blankets, flags, knives, rifles, fire steels, flint, pow-der, tobacco, pipes, and needles, to seal the negotiations.61

The formal language of the Portage des Sioux treaties



does not do justice to the tense negotiations that took place between government officials and tribal representatives. When chiefs from the Sac, Fox, and Kickapoo tribes did not bother to come, Clark was vexed. He called them “miserable” because they had followed British advice in warring on Amer-icans, and he said that now there was no English trader among them, nor would there be in the future, because the United States was going to build forts all along the Mississippi. Clark demanded that the main Sac and Fox chiefs—Lemoite and Black Hawk—come in to negotiate within the next 30 days, or they would be considered hostile to the United States. He took several Sacs as hostages to ensure that the other tribal leaders came in to counsel with him. Clark dispatched agent Nicholas Boilvin and an interpreter to the upper Mississippi for a series of councils with the bands. Boilvin was successful in persuading several groups of Sacs to go to the council talks, but not all of them arrived at Portage des Sioux before the commissioners had adjourned.62

In the spring of 1816, a Sac deputation led by Chief Lem-oite arrived. The Sacs did not approve of Clark’s treatment of Lemoite’s tribal members. The chief was not happy that his warriors had been held under arrest with the threat of death if he did not appear. The Sacs were not the only ones who were late to arrive. Between May and June of 1816, ten tribes who had not appeared at the council the previous year signed peace treaties in St. Louis, including the Win-nebagos, the Ottawas, and eight more bands of Sioux. Still, Clark’s heavy-handed method of taking Indian hostages had created resentment among the Sacs and Foxes allied with the British that continued to strain relations between the United States and the British band of the tribe.63

Clark’s blunt treatment of the hostile Sacs and Foxes can be juxtaposed with his much friendlier discussion with the majority of those at Portage des Sioux. The tribute shown by the full military burial of Lakota chief Black Buffalo and the eloquent funeral oration of Omaha chief Big Elk helped to assuage the sorrow affiliated with his passing and fur-thered efforts to conclude treaties.64 Moreover, after making an example of the Sacs and Foxes, Clark conveyed to other nations a clear notion of the position of tribes who refused to make peace with the Americans. He is reported to have said, “It requires time and a little smoking with Indians, if you wish to have peace with them.”65

Clark served as commissioner for 25 treaties during his tenure as territorial governor, approximately half of which were signed at the Portage des Sioux Treaty Council in

1815. These important treaties maintained Indian alliances or neutrality, helped end frontier hostilities after the con-flict, and established tribal trading arrangements at nearby government factories. When Clark had first arrived in St. Louis in 1803 to explore the Louisiana Purchase, St. Louis was a sleepy little French fur trading depot hugging the Mis-sissippi River, and most of the European population lived along the river. By the end of his terms as territorial gover-nor less than two decades later, the immigrant population had swelled to nearly 66,000, with American settlements from Fort Osage to Boone’s Lick and across the state. From when he first took the oath of office in 1813, the number of counties had tripled from ten to fifteen. Missourians clam-ored for statehood, and on March 6, 1820, a law provided for a constitutional convention with the election to be held in August. Clark became a candidate for governor.66

In an open letter to Missouri newspapers announcing his candidacy on July 2, 1820, Clark told the people of Missouri, “During the last seven years I have been Governor of the Territory, and the period has been one of uncommon danger to the inhabitants, and of peculiar difficulty to the execu-tive department. Our country was engaged in war with the British and their Indian allies, and this remote and isolated territory was exposed to a more than equal share of the com-mon danger, and with a less than equal share of the common means for defense. It presented a frontier of many hundred miles in circumference, thinly sprinkled with inhabitants and surrounded with Indian nations stimulated to war by their own love of blood and plunder and the wicked arts of British emissaries.” Clark concluded, “I flatter myself that this country has enjoyed comparative safety and suffered less than any new country has ever yet suffered during the prog-ress of an Indian war.” Clark’s nephew, John O’Fallon, cam-paigning on behalf of his uncle, told the people of Missouri, “The personal character of Governor Clark contributed to this comparative security. He is better known to the north and Western Indians than any man in America; and known to them under a character which commands their fear and respect, as a man courageous and skilful in war; mild and just in peace.”67 Unfortunately for Clark, the majority of the voting population arrived after the peace treaties of Portage des Sioux, and their principle interests had been acquiring land from the land office, where they had favorable dealings with the other candidate, Alexander McNair. Ultimately, Clark’s friendship with Indians and his high-profile attempts to protect their lands from white encroachment eventually


cost him the state’s first gubernatorial election in 1820.68

Clark generally liked Indians, and they generally liked him. Over the course of his life he met hundreds of them and knew many of them very well. Although he was not al-ways able to help them according to their own interests, his actions symbolize those of a sentimental imperialist. Clark built an Indian museum behind his St. Louis home on the southeast corner of Pine and Main to house his collection of Indian curiosities, including Indian headdresses, toma-hawks, breast plates, bows and arrows, peace pipes, and so on. His home was a crossroads of information, with govern-ment officials, traders, Indian delegations, and townspeople constantly visiting. His five-decade public career spanned a lifetime of public service from his enlistment as a private in the Kentucky militia in 1789, a lieutenant on the Lewis and Clark expedition, to a breveted brigadier general of the Missouri Militia during the War of 1812. In the decades fol-lowing the Portage des Sioux treaties, Clark conducted oth-er treaties that ultimately dispossessed and removed nearly all the Indians from the Missouri and Arkansas territories. From 1807 until his death in 1838, Clark fostered friendly Indian-white relations as Indian agent, Missouri territorial governor, and superintendent of Indian affairs. Over those decades, William Clark occupied the central position in a territorial government aimed at implementing federal policy. He was the fulcrum within a triangle consisting of Indians, settlers, and the federal government, each pulling in a differ-ent direction. Public lands, military affairs, and Indian affairs all fell under his jurisdiction, and although he was vested with a great deal of discretionary power, the conflicting poli-cies relating to those three areas proved difficult to balance. ❚

Jay Buckley is an associate professor of history at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Formerly the editor of WPO, he is the author of William Clark: Indian Diplomat, and the co-editor of By His Own Hand?: The Mysterious Death of Meriwether Lewis. He is a frequent contributor to WPO.

NOTES1. William Clark, September 25, 1804, Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001), 3:113. The Lakota encounter between September 24-29 covers pages 107-28; James P. Ronda, Lewis and Clark among the Indians, (Lin-coln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 27-41; James P. Ronda, “Tough Times at the Bad,” We Proceeded On 28, no. 2 (May 2002): 12-21; Craig Howe, “Lewis and Clark among the Tetons: Smoking Out What Really Happened,” Wicazo Sa Review 19, no. 1 (2004): 47-72.

2. Samuel G. Drake, Biography and History of the Indians of North America, 11th ed. (Boston: Benjamin B. Mussey & Co, 1851), 633.

3. I am grateful to Jerry Garrett and Mark Kelly for helping me locate and visit many of these War of 1812 sites in Missouri and Illinois.

4. The historiography for the War of 1812 has grown significantly over the past decade. Lorna Hainsworth, “The Corps and the War of 1812,” pro-vides information on the Corps of Discovery’s members and their involve-ment in the war (copy in author’s possession). Additional scholarly publica-tions include: Jeremy Black, The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009); Donald Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds., Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1997; 2nd ed., 2004); Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989); Jon Latimer, 1812: War with America (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007); Robert Malcomson, Historical Dictionary of the War of 1812 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2006); J. C. A. Stagg, The War of 1812: Conflict for a Continent (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010).

5. Colin G. Calloway, Pen and Ink Witchcraft: Treaties and Treaty-making in American Indian History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001); Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Wiley Sword, President Washington’s Indian War: The Struggle for the Old Northwest, 1790–1795 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985); Robert J. Miller, Native America, Discovered and Conquered: Thomas Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, and Man-ifest Destiny (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006); Robert J. Miller, “The Doctrine of Discovery: Manifest Destiny, and American Indians,” in Why You Can’t Teach United States History without American Indians, ed. Susan Sleeper-Smith (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015): 87–100.

6. Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001); Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, with Related Documents, 1783–1854, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978); James P. Ronda, Lewis and Clark among the Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984).

7. Meanwhile, other expeditions explored or attempted to explore the other major rivers of the new territory including the upper Mississippi, Platte, Arkansas, and Red rivers. Jay H. Buckley, “Jeffersonian Explorers in the Trans-Mississippi West: Zebulon Pike in Perspective,” in Zebulon Pike, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, eds. Matthew L. Harris and Jay H. Buckley (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012), 101–38.

8. Examples of Jefferson’s public and private view on this policy are Jefferson, “Address to the Wolf and People of the Mandan Nation, December 30, 1806” and Thomas Jefferson to William H. Harrison, February 27, 1803.

9. Charles J. Kappler, ed., “Treaty with the Sauk and Foxes, 1804,” in Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, 3 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904–13), 2:74–77; Robert M. Owens, “Jeffersonian Benevolence on the Ground: The Indian Land Cession Treaties of William Henry Harrison,” Journal of the Early Republic 22 (Fall 2002): 405–35; Robert M. Owens, Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer: William Henry Harrison and the Origins of American Indian Policy (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007); David Curtis Skaggs, William Henry Harrison and the Conquest of the Ohio Country: Frontier Fighting in the War of 1812 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. See also Clarence E. Carter, ed., Territorial Papers of the United States, vol. 13, The Territory of Louisiana-Missouri, 1803–1806 (Washington, DC: Govern-ment Printing Office, 1948).

10. Russell M. Magnaghi, “The Belle Fontaine Indian Factory, 1805–1808,” Missouri Historical Review 75 (July 1981): 396–416. For a thorough description of the factory, see Clark, Description of the Factory Buildings, Belle Fontaine, March 6, 1809, M-6, RG 107, National Archives.

11. Jay H. Buckley, William Clark: Indian Diplomat (Norman: University of Oklahoma press, 2008). See also Harlow Lindley, “William Clark: The Indian Agent,” Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society 2 (1908–1909): 63–74, and Proceedings of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, 1908–1909 (Cedar Rapids, IA: 1910), 2:63–75; John L. Loos, “William Clark: Indian Agent,” Kansas Quarterly 3 (Fall 1971): 33–37; Jerome O. Steffen, William Clark: Jef-fersonian Man on the Frontier (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977).



12. Thomas Jefferson to Henry Dearborn, August 20, 1808, quoted in James Anderson, “Fort Osage: An Incident of Territorial Missouri,” Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society 4 (April 1948): 174–76.

13. An Act for the Establishing Trading Houses with the Indian Tribes, T-58, RG 75, NA.

14. Kate L. Gregg, ed., Westward with Dragoons: The Journal of William Clark on His Expedition to Establish Fort Osage, August 25 to September 22, 1808 (Ful-ton, MO: Ovid Bell Press, 1937; Ann Rogers, “Clark’s Fort Osage Journal,” We Proceeded On 25 (August 1999): 24–28; Andrew C. Isenberg, “The Market Revolution in the Borderlands: George Champlin Sibley in Missouri and New Mexico, 1808–1826,” Journal of the Early Republic 21, no. 3 (Autumn 2001): 445–65.

15. Clark to Dearborn, September 23, 1808, in Clarence E. Carter, ed., Ter-ritorial Papers of the United States, vol. 14, The Territory of Louisiana-Missouri, 1806–1814 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1949), 14:224–28; Anthony F. C. Wallace, Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 271–72; J. Frederick Fausz, “Becoming ‘a Nation of Quakers’: The Removal of the Osage Indians from Missouri,” Gateway Heritage Magazine 21 (Summer 2000), 35; Gregg, Westward with Dragoons, 40–41, 59–60, 64–68.

16. Clark to Dearborn, September 23, 1808, in Carter, ed., Territorial Papers, 14:227.

17. Clark to Jonathan Clark, October 5, 1808, in James J. Holmberg, ed., Dear Brother: Letters of William Clark to Jonathan Clark (New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-versity Pres, 2002), 154.

18. Grant Foreman, ed., A Traveler in Indian Territory: The Journal of Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Late Major-General in the United States Army (Cedar Rapids, IA: Torch Press, 1930), 56.

19. Fausz, “Becoming ‘a Nation of Quakers,’” 37.

20. “Tecumseh Speaks Out Against Land Cessions, 1810,” quoted in Samuel G. Drake, Biography and History of the Indians of North America (Boston: Anti-quarian Institute, 1837), 5:21–22. Tecumseh conveyed similar sentiments on his nationwide tour. John Sugden, “Early Pan-Indianism: Tecumseh’s Tour of the Indian Country, 1811–1812,” American Indian Quarterly 10, no. 4 (Fall 1986): 273–304.

21. James Madison and James Monroe, Appointment of Clark as Governor of Missouri Territory, June 16 and July 1, 1813, Clark Papers, MHS; Carter, Territorial Papers, 14:679; John Armstrong to Clark, April 8, 1813, in Carter, Territorial Papers, 14:655–56.

22. Clark to Morrison, July 10, 1813; Morrison to Clark, July 15, 1813; Clark to Chouteau, July 16, 1813, Superintendency Records, KSHS.

23. Forsyth to Clark, July 20, 1813; Boilvin to Clark, July 25, 1813, Superin-tendency Records, KSHS.

24. Carl Benn, Native Memoirs from the War of 1812: Black Hawk and William Apess (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 46; Patrick J. Jung, “Toward the Black Hawk War: The Sauk and Fox Indians and the War of 1812,” Michigan Historical Review 38, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 27–52. See also Colin G. Calloway, Crown and Calumet: British-Indian Relations, 1783–1815 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987); Robert S. Allen, “His Majes-ty’s Indian Allies: Native Peoples, The British Crown and the War of 1812,” Michigan Historical Review 14, no. 2 (March 1988): 1–24; John P. Bowes, “Transformation and Transition: American Indians and the War of 1812 in the Lower Great Lakes,” Journal of Military History 76, no. 4 (October 2012): 1129–46. Clark to John Mason, December 13, 1813, T-58, RG 75, NA. Most depredations, including those of the Winnebagos who killed two Americans and robbed a trading facility near Prairie du Chien, simply show the unpre-dictability of where attacks would occur and prompted Clark to seek more effectual measures for the protection of the frontier. See, for examples, Carter, Territorial Papers, 14:518–20, 691–98.

25. The last occupied American fort west of Lake Michigan, Fort Madison, had been under constant threat of attack since its establishment in 1808. As early as 1809, Clark reported that his spies had learned that Sacs and Win-nebagos were intending to attack the fort and destroy the factory. Since Clark had helped establish Fort Osage, he had not been involved in the Fort Mad-ison site selection. Upon visiting the post, he declared that it was in “a bad state of defence, the pickets being so low that the Indians could with great ease

jump over them, and no Blockhouses for Defence.” Clark to Secretary of War, April 5 and 29, 1809, in Carter, ed., Territorial Papers, 14:260–66. Although it had withstood countless assaults by Winnebago, Sac, and Fox war parties, it was deemed indefensible because a nearby height of land allowed besiegers to look into and fire upon the fort. The troops from the fort withdrew, setting it on fire before they floated down the Mississippi. With the loss of this fort, Missouri’s northern flank was fully exposed. Donald Jackson, “Old Fort Mad-ison-1808-1813,” Palimpsest 47 (1966): 1–63. John Hansman, “An Archeolog-ical Problem at Old Fort Madison,” Plains Anthropologist 32, no. 117 (August 1987): 217–31; “Fort Madison,” Annals of Iowa 12, no. 3 (July 1874): 236–39.

26. Clark to Eustis, February 13, 1812; Howard to Eustis, March 19, 1812, quoted in Julius W. Pratt, “Fur Trade Strategy and the American Left Flank in the War of 1812,” Missouri Historical Review 40 (January 1935): 251. The regular troops were located as follows before their removal: 134 at Fort Belle-fontaine, 63 at Fort Osage, and 44 at Fort Madison; Robert W. Frazer, Forts of the West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), 70–74; R. Douglas Hurt, Nathan Boone and the American Frontier (Columbia: University of Mis-souri Press, 1998), 78–108.

27. During the War of 1812, the Missouri Territory supplied 1,556 cavalry men, the majority of whom were paid with bounty land in Arkansas, Illinois, and Missouri.

28. On April 17, 1810, President Madison had appointed Benjamin Howard to serve as governor of the upper Louisiana Territory (later renamed the Mis-souri Territory). In 1812, Howard resigned his post to serve as brigadier gen-eral over the Eighth Military Department of American forces. Howard fell ill and died on September 18, 1814, and was eventually interred in Bellefontaine Cemetery. He is the namesake of Howard County, Missouri.

29. Julia Clark to George Hancock, February 27, 1814, Eleanor Glasgow Voorhis Collection, MHS.

30. Wilbur M. Shankland, “General William Clark: Last Territorial Gover-nor of Missouri,” talk given March 14, 1964, manuscript in the War of 1812 Papers, Missouri Historical Society.

31. Larry E. Morris, “The Corps of Discovery: 200 Years After the Expedi-tion,” American History (April 2003): 44–56, 58, 60; quote from page 58. Larry E. Morris, The Fate of the Corps: What Became of the Lewis and Clark Explorers after the Expedition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 120–21.

32. Sister Marietta Jennings, A Pioneer Merchant of St. Louis 1810–1820: The Business Careers of Christian Wilt (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), 107–10.

33. Clark to Secretary of War Armstrong, January 16, February 2, and June 5 and 28,1814, in Carter, Territorial Papers, 14:727–28, 738–40, 768–69, 775–76.

34. Clark to John Comegys, November 20, 1813, Clark Papers, MHS; Mis-souri Gazette, September 4, October 2, and November 6, 1813.

35. Missouri Gazette, May 28, 1814; Clark to Secretary of War, April 17, 1815, Clark Papers, MHS.

36. Clark to Secretary of War Armstrong, February 24 and December 18, 1813, in Carter, Territorial Papers, 14:632–33, 723–24.

37. Kate L. Gregg, “The War of 1812 on the Missouri Frontier,” Missouri Historical Review 38 (October 1938): 3-22; 38 (January 1939): 184-202; 38 (April 1939): 326-48, pt. 3, 328–29.

38. Clark to William Eustis, February 13 and March 22, 1812; Benjamin Howard to Eustis, March 19, 1812, quoted in Pratt, “Fur Trade Strategy,” 250; Carter, Territorial Papers, 14:745–48, 762–63; Gary C. Anderson, Kinsmen of Another Kind: Dakota-White Relations in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1650-1862 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 86–95.

39. Missouri Gazette, June 18 and July 23 and 30, 1814. Clark’s brother George Rogers congratulated him on the results of the Prairie du Chien campaign. George Rogers Clark to Clark, July 30, 1814, Clark Papers, MHS; Missouri Gazette, May 21 and June 4 and 18, 1814.

40. Quoted in Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, Dictionary of American Biog-raphy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937), 4:143.

41. After the Treaty of Ghent, the British abandoned the fort in the summer in 1815, burning it to the ground. Clark to Secretary of War Armstrong, July 31 and September 18, 1814, in Carter, Territorial Papers, 14:781, 786–87.


42. The Treaty of Ghent was signed December 24, 1814, but news of it did not reach America until after the Battle of New Orleans, which was fought January 8, 1815. President Madison signed the treaty on February 16, 1815, and the Senate ratified it the following day.

43. “Treaty of Ghent, 1814,” Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America, vol. 2, Hunter Miller, ed. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1931). The War of 1812 officially ended on February 16, 1815, when President Madison ratified the Treaty of Ghent.

44. War of 1812 Folio, General Orders, MHS; Secretary of War to Clark, March 11, 1815, in Carter, Territorial Papers, 15: 14.

45. Christian Wilt to Uncle, August 6, 1814, Letter Books of Christian Wilt, No. 125, MHS.

46. Carter, Territorial Papers, 15:23.

47. Monroe to Clark, Edwards, and Chouteau, March 11, 1815, Carter, Territorial Papers, 15: 14–15.

48. John J. O’Fallon, “Brief Notices of the Principal Events in the Public Life of Governor Clark,” St. Louis Enquirer, August 9, 1820, 14.

49. Governor William Clark, “A Proclamation,” December 4, 1815, in Carter, ed., Territorial Papers, Louisiana-Missouri Territory, 1815–1821 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1951), 15: 192.

50. Resolutions of the Territorial Assembly, January 22, 1816, “To the Hon-ourable Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress,” in Carter, Territorial Papers, 15:106–07; Resolutions Concern-ing the Indian Title in the Counties of St. Genevieve and Cape Girardeau, Carter, Territorial Papers, 15: 235.

51. The Chouteau family, led by Auguste and his brother Pierre, who had served as the agent to the Osages, proved invaluable in keeping certain tribes peaceful or at least neutral during the conflict. Chouteau, February 21, 1816, in Grant Foreman, ed., “Notes of Auguste Chouteau on Boundaries of Vari-ous Indian Nations,” Glimpses of the Past 7 (October-December 1940): 119-40, esp. 122–40.

52. Monroe to Clark, March 11, 1815, Clark Papers, MHS.

53. Other exceptions included the Indian-removal treaties of the 1820s and 1830s. Vine J. Deloria, Jr., and David E. Wilkins, Tribes, Treaties, and Consti-tutional Tribulations (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000), 59–60; Monroe to Clark, Edwards, and Chouteau, March 11, 1815, and Monroe to Clark, March 25, 1815, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, 2:6.

54. Monroe to Clark, Edwards, and Chouteau, March 11, 1815, and Monroe to Clark, March 25, 1815, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, 2:6.

55. Clark to William Crawford, December 11, 1815, Clark Papers, MHS.

56. Missouri Gazette, April 29 and May 24, 1815.

57. Gregg, “War of 1812,” pt. 3, 345–46.

58. Spanish Lieutenant Governor Zenon Trudeau and François Saucier estab-lished Portage des Sioux in 1799 in reaction to American plans to build Fort Belle Fountain. The French name derives from the overland route between the Missouri River and Mississippi River used by a band of Sioux who por-taged their canoes two or three miles over the narrow neck rather than pad-dling 25 miles downriver to the confluence and then upstream.

59. Daniel Bissell to Andrew Jackson, July 2, 1815, Bissell Papers, MHS.

60. Robert L. Fisher, “The Treaties of Portage des Sioux.” Mississippi Val-ley Historical Review 19 (March 1933): 495-508; Francis P. Prucha, American Indian Treaties: A History of A Political Anomaly, Berkeley: University of Cali-fornia Press, 1997), 133.

61. Three other commissioners, William Harrison, Duncan McArthur, and John Graham, treated with Indians of the Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan ter-ritories. In September at Spring Wells, near Detroit, they made treaties with the Delawares, Chippewas, Ottawas, Potawatomis, Miamis, Senecas, Wyan-dots, and Shawnees. Fisher, “The Treaties of Portage des Sioux,” 501–2; American State Papers: Indian Affairs, 2:6–12; Missouri Gazette, July 8 and 15, 1815; Kappler, Indian Affairs, 2:117–18.

62. Fisher, “The Treaties of Portage des Sioux,” 502–3.

63. Indian Commissioners to William Crawford, June 17, 1816, in Carter, Territorial Papers, 17:352–56.

64. Landon Y. Jones, “The Council That Changed the West: William Clark at Portage des Sioux,” Gateway Heritage 24, no. 2-3 (2003-04): 88-95, esp. 92–94.

65. Quoted in John L. Loos, “The Career of William Clark.” MA thesis, Uni-versity of Nebraska (Lincoln), 1940, 71.

66. Walter R. Smith, “General William Clark, Territorial Governor of Mis-souri,” Bulletin Washington University Association 4 (1906): 45–69; Jerome O. Steffen, “William Clark: A New Perspective of Missouri Territorial Politics, 1813–1820,” Missouri Historical Review 47 (January 1973): 171–97.

67. John J. O’Fallon, “Brief Notices of the Principal Events in the Public Life of Governor Clark,” St. Louis Enquirer, August 9, 1820, 12.

68. William Clark, “To the People of Missouri,” St. Louis Enquirer, August 9, 1820. William E. Foley, “After the Applause: William Clark’s Failed Guber-natorial Campaign,” Gateway Heritage 24 (Fall 2003–2004): 104–11. Clark was defeated by Alexander McNair.


The Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation (LCTHF) has established the Dr. Gary E Moulton Lecture in honor of Gary Moulton, longtime member and editor of the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Dr. Jay Buckley will give the inaugural lecture on Saturday May 12, 2018. At the invitation of Mark Weekley, superintendent of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, the lecture will be delivered at the Trail headquarters at 601 Riverfront Drive in Omaha, Nebraska.

The LCTHF has also established the Moulton Lecture Fund. Contributions may be directed to the Moulton Lecture Fund through the LCTHF website at lewisandclark.org or mailed to the LCTHF, PO Box 3434, Great Falls, Montana 59403. Please call 888-701-3434 or 406-454-1234 for more information.

LCTHF AnnouncesInaugural Moulton Lecture


During the wee hours of December 16, 1811, a series of violent shakes roused inhabitants of the mid-Mississippi valley from their nighttime slumbers. Those initial tremors and the sporadic ones that followed for nearly two months reshaped the landscape, altered regional settle-ment patterns, and prompted unnerved residents to contem-plate the mysterious forces of nature capable of wreaking so much havoc. The New Madrid earthquakes were big news even though they struck at a time when war with Great Britain loomed on the horizon and Native Americans were struggling to defend themselves against the demands of a land-hungry United States government.

River travelers on the Mississippi experienced the full force of the cataclysmic 1811-1812 earthquakes. William Leigh Pierce was en route to New Orleans on a flatboat when a violent and convulsive agitation awakened him in the dead of night. He rushed on deck where he and his anxious fellow passengers sought to determine the source of their peril. Ini-tially, they suspected that hostile Indians had caused the mis-chief by unleashing their tethered vessel from its moorings, but a succession of shocks soon alerted the youthful Pierce to the true source of the mayhem.1 At dawn’s first light he beheld the full extent of devastation wrought by the nighttime shocks: “the earth, river &c torn with furious convulsions, opened in huge trenches whose deep jaws were instantaneously closed: there through a thousand vents sulphureous streams gushed from its very bowels leaving vast and almost unfathomable caverns. Every where Nature itself seemed tottering on the verge of dissolution.”2

John Bradbury, the English naturalist, explorer of North America’s interior, and recipient of Thomas Jefferson’s ac-colade as “a botanist of the first order,” had no such hes-itation about the cause of his boat’s sudden and powerful convulsions on that fateful night. Amid the deafening din of crashing trees, collapsing riverbanks, and screaming wild birds he sought to reassure the frightened crewmen eager to abandon the boat for the perceived safety of the shore. Brad-bury wisely opposed that course and after dispensing glasses of spirits persuaded the uneasy crew to remain on board and continue down river in deep water.3

On land the impact of the earthquakes was no less hor-rific. New Madrid resident Eliza Bryan vividly recalled the

awful noises of the first shocks replete with the distant re-verberations of hoarse and vibrating thunder, the cracking sounds of falling trees, and the river’s thunderous roar, all punctuated by the smell of sulphur. Another local citizen echoed her sentiments: “we were awakened by a most tre-mendous noise, while the house danced about and seemed as if it would fall on our heads.” As the earthquakes per-sisted the river town’s terrified inhabitants fled their rolling and jostling homes and established encampments on higher ground to avoid the dangers of flooding. At nearby Little Prairie the devastation was so severe that the town’s entire population abandoned their settlement and headed north-ward, where the damage was rumored to have been less se-rious. When the nearly 100 refugees reached New Madrid on Christmas Eve, they were dismayed to find its inhabitants camping in tents in open fields.4 St. Louis, farther removed from the epicenter, escaped with toppled chimneys and a few cracked stone and brick walls. Joseph Charless, editor of the Missouri Gazette, momentarily thought that a volca-nic eruption further west might have been responsible for the clamor of windows, doors and furniture in motion that interrupted his sleep.5

Turbulence and TerrorThe New Madrid Earthquakes, 1811-1812 By William Foley

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The December 1811 earthquakes were merely a prelude to what lay ahead. A second series of tremors started on Jan-uary 23, 1812, and the final and most severe set of shocks followed on February 7. The temblors currently estimated to have been somewhere between 7 and 8 on the Richter scale were felt far beyond New Madrid and its environs. Residents throughout the Ohio valley and people in plac-es as distant as Columbia, South Carolina, experienced the tremors to varying degrees.

When the earthquakes finally ended the areas most ad-versely affected were in shambles: buildings had collapsed, great fissures appeared in the earth’s surface, some land sank and other land uplifted, rivers and streams altered their courses, the Mississippi River itself briefly reversed its flow, large new lakes were formed, and entire forests had been toppled.6 Subsequent accounts that placed the death toll at a mere handful attributed the scant loss of life to a sparse pop-ulation, but historian Conevery Bolton Valencius maintains that those numbers grossly underestimated the full death toll by failing to take into account countless unreported ca-sualties and deaths on the river and in the region’s populous Indian communities.7

By late spring the aftershocks had gradually diminished, but in the forlorn New Madrid district from which the in-habitants had scattered in every direction, only the hardiest souls remained. The exodus alarmed territorial secretary Frederick Bates (Meriwether Lewis’s nemesis), who worried that with all of the adverse publicity about earthquakes, In-dians and epidemics, Missouri would soon “be nothing but a place of exile for Robbers & Outlaws.”8 Bates exhibited no such concern for Native Americans previously displaced from their eastern homelands and now forced to move for a second time to escape their suddenly uninhabitable lands along the St. Francis River. The relocated refugee Cherokee bands once again abandoned their farms, cattle, and property and headed farther west where they encountered resistance from the nearby Osage Indians. As Valencius aptly observed, “The earthquakes helped accomplish environmentally what American officials failed to accomplish politically: moving Cherokees farther west.”9

In American settlements and on Native ground alike, people debated the earthquakes’ causes and struggled to dis-cover the cataclysm’s larger meanings and purposes. Native people generally viewed the tremors as signs of the Great Spirit’s displeasure with their impure ways of living and the continuing American encroachment on their lands, but they

chose to respond in widely divergent ways. Some pursued the combative intertribal militancy favored by Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa the Shawnee Prophet during and after the War of 1812, while others opted for more accommoda-tionist strategies true to their own unique cultural frames of reference.10

American evangelicals employed earthquakes as signs of God’s wrath for sinful behavior and a catalyst for Christian conversion and repentance. “Earthquake Christians” who flocked to frontier revivals and swelled church membership rolls sometimes exhibited a curious amalgam of belief sys-tems. When John Bradbury entered a house near the Chicka-saw Bluffs where he observed an open Bible on the table, one of the occupants attributed the cause of the recurring shocks to the comet that had appeared a few months earlier. Accord-ing to his reckoning the earth had become lodged between the comet’s two horns and was now attempting to dislodge itself. This backwoods claimant of spiritual knowledge feared that these ominous occurrences might portend the approach of the end times. Bradbury, who viewed these events from a scientific perspective, chose not to challenge the settler’s firmly held beliefs.11 Attempts to link the bright and long-ap-pearing comet of 1811 to the onset of the North American earthquakes were commonplace among Euro-American and Native American observers alike.12

The US government did not provide victims of the de-structive earthquakes with relief until the War of 1812 had ended. In 1815, Congress belatedly authorized persons own-ing lands damaged by the New Madrid earthquakes to relocate at no charge on the same quantity of land on any US public lands available for sale. The law limited such claimants to 640 acres of new land, and it prohibited them from relocating on mineral lands. In the spring of 1815, speculators poured into the New Madrid area seeking to purchase titles to damaged lands from unsuspecting residents before they learned about the new federal compensation law. Although the relief mea-sure had been designed to alleviate suffering in the devastat-ed region, most Missourians believed that the law’s principal beneficiaries had been the speculators.13

William Clark and expedition members John Ordway and John Bratton witnessed the New Madrid earthquakes first hand. Clark, then serving as US Indian agent, was in St. Louis in 1811 when the initial earthquakes began. Busy with family matters and business in the Indian Office, Clark failed to take public notice of the earthquakes. The tremors had ended by the time he escorted his family back to the safety

Turbulence and Terror


of Virginia on the eve of the War of 1812. Three years later, while serving as Governor of the Missouri Territory, Clark sought to take personal advantage of the recently enacted New Madrid relief law. In other words, he became one of the land speculators who took advantage of the federal re-lief effort designed to assist people whose lands and homes had been destroyed by the earthquakes. Ever mindful of his own economic interests, Clark contracted with Theodore Hunt and Charles Lucas to purchase titles to damaged land for him at depreciated prices, which he then expected to ex-change for more valuable tracts of public lands elsewhere.

When such abuses of the relief measure roused public ire, Missouri’s territorial delegate Rufus Easton tried to tarnish Clark’s reputation by circulating documents tying him to the controversial speculations. Those allegations further en-flamed the political partisanship that contributed to Clark’s eventual defeat in Missouri’s 1820 gubernatorial election.14

William Bratton, who while on the expedition stoical-ly faced and overcame a painful and life-threatening back problem, capitalized on his experience on western rivers and entered the keelboat business in 1811. Bratton was traveling on the Mississippi somewhere in the vicinity of New Madrid at the time of the December earthquakes. He maneuvered through the treacherous waters and made it to New Orleans safely, but the subsequent outbreak of the War of 1812 ter-minated his transport business. He later moved to Indiana where he married, raised a large family, gained prominence in his community, and perhaps regaled friends and family with stories of the Pacific expedition and his perilous en-counter with the great earthquake.15

John Ordway, keeper of one of the expedition’s journals, was not so fortunate. Following his return from the shores of the Pacific he had been a member of the party that ac-companied the Mandan leader Sheheke (Big White) to the national capital. Upon his return to the Louisiana Territo-ry in 1807 he took up residence in New Madrid. Ordway utilized his land grants (part of the compensation package a grateful Congress passed after the expedition’s return) to purchase land in the Mississippi River settlement and soon acquired 1,000 acres. He advised a brother that he was breeding horses and cattle and had “two plantations under good cultivation peach and apple orchards, good buildings &c. &c.” His success and favorable reports of the quality of the land persuaded other members of his family to join him. He continued to prosper until his world literally came crashing down when the tremors leveled the place he so

loved. He never recovered his fortune and died in virtual poverty sometime around 1817.16 Ordway’s misfortunes were an all too familiar legacy of a natural disaster that re-made an entire region and captured a nation’s attention. ❚

William E. Foley is professor emeritus of history at the University of Central Missouri. He is author of Wilderness Journey: The Life of William Clark, as well as numerous other books and scholarly articles. His Genesis of Missouri: From Wilderness Outpost to Statehood is essential reading for students of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Notes1. On William Leigh Pierce and his account of the earthquakes, see Conev-ery Bolton Valencius, The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 17-50.

2. William Leigh Pierce quoted in Valencius, Lost History, 27.

3. Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis, August 16, 1809, in Donald Jack-son, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents: 1783-1854, 2d. ed. 2 volumes (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 2: 458; John Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810 and 1811 in Early Western Travels, Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed. (Cleveland: The Arthur Clark Company, 1904) 5:204-211.

4. James Lal Penick, Jr., The New Madrid Earthquakes, rev. ed. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1981), 31-34, 38.

5. Missouri Gazette, December 21, 1811.

6. William E. Foley, The Genesis of Missouri: From Wilderness Outpost to Statehood (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989), 218-19.

7. Valencius, Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes, 36-37.

8. Frederick Bates to William C. Carr, July 31, 1812, in Thomas M. Marshall, ed. The Life and Papers of Frederick Bates (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society, 1926) 2:232.

9. Valencius, Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes, 59-62, 97.

10. Jonathan Todd Hancock, “A World Convulsed: Earthquakes, Authority and the Making of Nations in the War of 1812 Era,” PhD dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2013, 129.

11. Bradbury, Early Western Travels, 5:209.

12. Valencius, Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes, 45, 119.

13. Foley, Genesis of Missouri, 250-51.

14. William E. Foley, Wilderness Journey: The Life of William Clark (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004), 209-10.

15. 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), 98-101.

16. Morris, Fate of the Corps., 101-05.


Editor’s Note: This is the second installment of the WPO interview with Dr. Elliott West. Because this issue focuses heavily on the War of 1812, I begin part two by asking Dr. West a few questions about what historian Donald Hickey has called “a forgotten conflict.”

WPO: What was the effect of the War of 1812 on the exploration and development of the American West?

EW: If you mean the far West, not much in the short run. The peace terms (status quo ante bellum) did confirm our claims to the Pacific Northwest established by Gray and the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and it cleared the way for renewed attempts in the western fur trade.

But the long term consequences were enormous. The war ended for good British efforts to keep the nation con-fined largely east of the Appalachians. Most of all the war was absolutely catastrophic for eastern Indian peoples who had posed the real barriers to expansion. The extraordinary effort at a unified Indian front led by the Shawnee Tecum-seh and his brother Tensketawah (The Prophet) collapsed and Tecumseh was killed. To the south, Andrew Jackson crushed the most powerful native military force, the Creeks (Muskogees).

This, with peace with Britain, led to the avalanche of new settlement—one state per year admitted between 1815 and 1820—that took the nation beyond the Mississippi and set up eastern Indian removal. Thirty-three years after the Treaty of Ghent, that momentum would carry the United States to the Pacific.

WPO: Did the United States win the war?

EW: When your opponent burns your capital, it’s hard to argue that you’ve won. But in a wider sense than battlefield losses, the War of 1812, just as it set loose westward expan-sion, contributed greatly to the longer-term rise to national greatness. The conflict is sometimes called the “Second War of Independence,” quite rightfully, I think.

Remember, ours was the first successful colonial rebellion of modern times, and many, certainly many English, never expected the nation to survive. After 1783 they did what they could to hasten our collapse, and generally they treated us with something very close to contempt. Our “victory” consisted in our holding on until a stalemate in 1814-15. That won for us a measure of respect and acceptance—and with Jackson’s vic-tory at New Orleans it fed a burst of national pride.

Parse, for a moment, the words of the “Star Spangled Banner,” written about the English failure to capture Fort McHenry during the war. Can anyone name for me another people whose national anthem has as its theme, “Huzzah! We didn’t lose!”

The War of 1812 confirmed us as a nation in another way. The Revolutionary War was what its most famous document said it was—a declaration of independence. It declared what we were not—that we were not part of the British empire. Which raised the question: “Well, then, what are we? Who are we?” Besides westward expansion, the war set loose what we might call our “Declaration of Identity” between 1815 and the 1850s.

Those years saw the first distinctive American fiction (Cooper, Irving, Hawthorne, Melville), art (Cole, Bingham, Moran), poetry (Longfellow, Whitman), philosophy (Emer-son), our first historical societies, and what H. L. Mencken showed was our greatest flowering of a distinct American language. Webster’s monumental American Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1828, just two years after the death of Jefferson.

Dr. Elliott West Second of Two Parts by Clay S. Jenkinson

Dr. Elliott West


Our Second War of Independence opened the way for us to pronounce who we were as Americans. Interestingly, much of that pronouncement told us to look westward into the new country for our answers.

WPO: Theodore Roosevelt famously blamed Jefferson and his lackey Madison for disarming the country and mak-ing the War of 1812 first inevitable and then difficult to win. What do you think of that critique?

EW: What, I’ve always wondered, what would he have had them do? The new republic was stumbling along econom-ically. It was politically de-centered and bitterly divided espe-cially over policy toward England. And England was a true superpower with the most powerful navy in history. Building up an army and navy was politically unlikely, and if they pulled it off, I can’t see that it would have made much difference. It’s like criticizing Guatemala today for not beefing up against the US And all in all, I think we performed pretty well.

WPO: How soon after the War of 1812 did the “special relationship” begin between the United States and Britain? Isn’t it the case that relations were tense well beyond the Civil War?

EW: Our relationship with Britain was on and off until after the Civil War. To use an admittedly simplistic anal-ogy, we were like a bunch of twenty-somethings who, having finally stepped away from the folks, were feeling our way to full independence, sometimes bristling at Mom and Pop and resenting memories of the home place. There were some genuine reasons of course, like Britain’s flirtation with the Republic of Texas. Then, after the Civil War, yet another American “revolution,” we grew into a confidence and assur-ance and Britain had more reason to keep us close. At that point our friendship became the unquestioned foundation of our foreign policy.

WPO: What was the effect, if any, of the New Madrid Earthquake on frontier history?

EW: By most accounts the New Madrid Earthquake, a few hundred miles from my house, was the most power-ful ever recorded in North America. They were actually a series of quakes from the fall of 1811 to spring of 1812, just preceding the declaration of war. The Mississippi River famously (or rather, supposedly) flowed briefly backward. Whole forests were leveled and parts of northeast Arkansas were depressed and flooded to become the “sunk lands” that remained undrained swamps for decades. There were geysers of sand that spurted out fossilized bones of ancient animals.

There is one intriguing tradition relating the quakes to the war. In his campaign for Indian unity, Tecumseh was said to give each native group a bundle of sticks. They were to break one at each new moon. When they broke the last stick, they were together to proclaim their unified Indian coalition. God would endorse it by making the earth shake and the trees wave. The effort was aborted by the Battle of Tippecanoe, but, the tradition has it, the New Madrid quakes came when the final stick would have been broken. Sounds pretty pat to me, but who knows? Pure rationality only takes us so far when we explore the traditions of Native American culture.

WPO: Let’s return to the Lewis and Clark story. Jeffer-son had a notion that there might be a magical height of land from which all the rivers sprang. He believed in the non-extinction of species, the possibility that the Mandan were Europeanized in some sense or another, that they were perhaps Madoc’s Welshmen. It was a myth landscape that he sent Lewis into.

EW: He did not think of it as myth-based, but we now know it was. And it was one in which he was imposing not just mythic ideas, literally mythic ideas like Madoc, but also this fascinating and bizarre view of life that was the Enlight-enment mindset. The role of symmetry. A continent like North America was like a Rorschach Test, where you spill ink on it and then you fold it in half and one half is exactly like the other half. Balance. Rationality. As if the geogra-phy itself is somehow rational. All of these notions are incor-rect, but they are deeply held beliefs that are then projected westward with Lewis and Clark. And there is that famous moment when they get to the top of Lemhi Pass, and they look over–I call it the “oh, drat” moment–and see that the West is not what they were told.

WPO: If you’re Lewis or Clark and you’re carrying some of this myth-stuff with you because Jefferson told you it’s there, at some point out in Montana you have to start realiz-ing that it’s not like that at all. There’s no mountain of pure salt and there’s no mammoth. How much of a reality check did the expedition turn out to be?

EW: In certain ways it was. In the most immediate sense, the expedition fails in its goal number one. There is no easy passage, there is no water route, so certainly it’s a reality check in that way. To what extent was it a reality check in Indian relations? That’s another fascinating question. To what extent did Lewis and Clark get it? Did they understand the kind of


dynamics that we can look back on it, starting with Jim Ron-da’s work [Lewis and Clark Among the Indians], and see that something very different was going on than they expected.

Did they see that? Or did they come back with the news that, “Yes, things are great? They want us to trade with them, they want to have friendly relations. We had the occasional problem, we had this thing with the Lakota, but basically they like us, and they want us to come out there.”

There was some of that, but it was a far more complicated story. I don’t think they really got it. I don’t think they really understood the Native American situation or the Native American reaction to their visit. So to that extent, it was not a reality check. It was a perpetuation of misunderstanding. It was a confirmation of what they expected.

WPO: Do you think the captains shared that view? Did they think alike or was it Lewis the Jeffersonian and Clark the realist?

EW: I think it’s the difference in Lewis and Clark. Clark, if you look at his career as a Superintendent of Indian Affairs, learned a lot out there about the complexities of relation-ships that he would use later in his career. But was that some-thing he could make explicit when he got back? Or did he feel the pressure to give the news that people wanted, the news that Jefferson and others wanted?

WPO: We understand that Lewis is a problematic char-acter and a little screwy in some ways. But what did Lewis bring to this thing that is so important to you as a historian?

EW: He had a passion for certain things, certain aspects of science, and he pursued that. He had an element of curi-osity that was not necessarily there with Clark. The very fact that he was this loner and that he simply couldn’t stand to be around people for lengths of time adds to the story. I also think it was useful at certain times, his going ahead, trying to puzzle things out. There are ways in which his problem-atical psychology worked to his advantage. Some see him as a manic depressive or obsessive on certain points. But that could be useful, and I think it was at certain times.

WPO: What about Lewis the writer? How valuable do you regard his journal entries when he’s writing?

EW: They’re invaluable. They’re critically important, but they also raise questions. When were these entries writ-ten? When he stopped writing, why did he stop writing? Like everything to do with Lewis, you ask the question, you peel it back a little bit, and you find yourself up against some mys-tery, some fascinating but probably unanswerable question.

WPO: If we made a list of the 30 greatest passages in the journals, 26 belong to Lewis. It’s night and day with him and Clark in the capacity to write classic American adventure prose, exploration prose.

EW: There’s no doubt about that. And when he stops, something about the journals deadens a little bit. To the extent that they are great American literature, it’s Lewis that is the main author.

WPO: What are the books that have really shaped your thinking about Lewis and Clark?

EW: Donald Jackson’s work, and Jim Ronda’s work, which was published quite a while back now [1984]. Dugat-kin’s book, Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose, that’s fascinat-ing to me. River of Promise by David Nicandri is a wonderful book. John Logan Allen, of course. Those are the ones that stand out.

WPO: If someone said to you, “We’ll pay you whatever it takes to drop everything right now and write a book on Lewis and Clark,” what is the book you would want to write?

EW: First, not going to happen. I think I would go back and looking at the Indian story. It’s one that has all kinds of potential for our understanding, not just of what’s going on with Indian peoples but what’s going on in the West gen-erally, with other imperial powers, with the Spanish, the English. I think there’s a lot to be wrung out of that.

WPO: You’re doing these seminars for teachers now in Missoula.

EW: The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American His-tory in New York, a wonderful institution, sponsors the seminars. Richard Gilder, who named it for himself and his dear friend, Mr. Lehrman, funded it. These seminars started years ago, and there are now about 35 of them every sum-mer. There are seminars on various topics of American his-tory, and they try to cite them, if possible, at a place that fits the topic.

I’ve done these now for 15 years. I did one for many years on the Great Plains. Then I did one in Santa Fe at the Insti-tute of American Indian Art on the Indians of the Southwest. This is the fourth year now that I’ve done one on Lewis and Clark at Missoula. This one is co-sponsored, with Gilder Lehrman on the one hand and the Lewis and Clark Trust on the other.

I made it clear at the outset that I’m not a specialist on the expedition. My interests really lie elsewhere. But it’s a

The WPO Interview


topic and a subject that I’ve studied for decades, one that still interests me deeply, and I knew from the other seminars that these are fun.

We meet with different folks in that region. The last two years now we’ve worked with representatives of the Tribal Legacies Project, which is this fabulous project with the National Park Service. It’s great fun, and it’s in one of the most beautiful places on earth, which doesn’t hurt as well.

WPO: What happens to these teachers? They come in from all over the place, they have a week with you and oth-ers, and then what occurs? What’s the transformation?

EW: We keep track of them, we keep track of a lot of them over the years. Most of them have never been to the American West. If nothing else it opens their eyes to this extraordinary part of our nation. Beyond that, what they seem to take away most of all is how fluid and dynamic our understandings of these particular topics are. They experi-ence how our understanding continues to evolve, and how they can use this to get across to their students how much these stories have to teach us about what it means to be an American. The best and the worst parts of it. How these are really insights into who we are as a people.

WPO: Please talk about the expedition as an expression of the Enlightenment.

EW: We talked before about the importance of science on the expedition, how it was a window into Enlightenment ideas about the nature of life itself, about geography, about the rationality of life.

It’s no mystery given who hatched the expedition in the first place. It’s important also to see this even more broadly, as an expression of global exploration. Lewis and Clark was going on at a time when the world was well into this explo-sive effort at exploration, an effort that would continue throughout the 19th century. Lewis and Clark were in a very active but also a very early stage of that. We have to keep that in that perspective.

I’ve written an essay about an extraordinary coincidence. The Lewis and Clark Expedition overlapped exactly in time with another expedition on another continent, the expedi-tion of a Brit named Mungo Park on the Niger. His goal, his order, was to trace the course of another river, a river in West Africa, which coincidentally is within 100 miles of the length of the Missouri. His group of men was almost the same in number as the Corps of Discovery.

The instructions he was given are strikingly similar to those that Jefferson gave to Lewis. These paired expeditions are a reminder that this was happening all over the world. And they both kept journals. You can choose a day and go to the Lewis and Clark journals, and you can see that this par-ticular thing was happening out in the Northwest, and then you can go to that same day and see what was happening in West Africa. And what’s really insightful is that the expedi-tions had two dramatically different endings. No one sur-vived the Mungo Park expedition. Everyone died. There’s the famous book about medical aspects of Lewis and Clark by Chuinard, Only One Man Died. If there had been a com-parable book on the Park expedition it would have been, Nobody Made It.

Lewis and Clark were part of this global effort. Lewis and Clark and the United States had certain advantages that oth-ers did not. They were entering into an area that was of no threat to them in terms of disease. The great killers of the Park expedition were the fevers. Mungo Park and his men were entering into the belly of the beast in terms of what was dangerous for people of his northern European background.

WPO: James Ronda has said it’s time for us to get out of the river. We Lewis and Clark types spend too much time won-dering what kind of buttons they wore on their coats, how many grains of powder in the pan, and so on. This is all fas-cinating, but in Ronda’s view it’s time to get out of the river and explore Alexander Mackenzie and Hunter and Dunbar, to study the reports of these Chinese and Russian explorers. Dr. Ronda said you can never really master this story unless you place it in a context much wider than the narrow ribbon of the Missouri River.

EW: I could not possibly agree more. My job is then to step back and say, “Okay, what’s going on here in a larger sense? What can we learn about Enlightenment thinking by looking at Jefferson’s instructions, by looking at these maps that are being used? What can we learn about Jefferson’s thinking about different peoples, or even more importantly, what can we learn about the basic similarities among all peo-ples and how all peoples are on this road to progress? What can we learn about global exploration, about the role of dis-ease in all of this?”

WPO: You’re encouraging your students into a wider and wider and wider context in which to understand this?

EW: That’s the way I see my role. I was clear from the outset that this was what I would like to do. I can’t really


do the other. I can help by contextualizing all of that in the broadest terms possible. One of the things I do is to look at the West before Lewis and Clark. It’s easy to get the impres-sion that Lewis and Clark were entering this world before history, that Western history started when they poled their way out of St. Charles and headed up the Missouri.

WPO: That they entered a kind of Eden frozen in time, where nothing has ever happened?

EW: There’s the famous journal entry of Lewis, when they leave the Mandan villages, where he writes, “We were now about to penetrate a country at least two thousand miles in width, on which the foot of civilized man had never trod-den.” Well, not exactly. In fact, they were entering the West at a time of extraordinary turbulence. Relations among Indian people were in dynamic change, and the ambitions of other powers, such as the Spanish to the south, had been bubbling up for decades.

WPO: We all agree that this is a valuable thing. We know what we gain in terms of our understanding of the larger dynamics of the Europeanization of the globe and so on. But what do we gain in our understanding of Lewis and Clark by traveling outside the river?

EW: I think we gain a far better understanding of the state of America in the Jefferson-Jackson era, of the world of global expansion at the time. Looking at Jefferson in partic-ular we get an understanding of how the leaders of this par-ticular period were envisioning America’s future, and what part the West and its people would have in it. In my course in Western History at the University of Arkansas I call this period “The Declaration of Identity.” The generation before was best described by the title of its most famous document, the Declaration of Independence. The war against England was fought to say what we were not, that we weren’t English. With the second war for independence, the War of 1812, our full sovereignty was established. Now we’re on our own, we’re independent. What in the world does that mean? Who are we then?

This is where we begin to define ourselves in terms of our political institutions, in terms of our literature, in terms of our art. All of our distinctive cultural forms are shaped during that time. Part of it is episodes like Lewis and Clark, trying to decide where we will be as a peo-ple in a few generations. What will that mean, and funda-mental to this story, what place will the West have in that? What will the West mean to what we become as a people?

WPO: But in the upper Missouri we’re not going to see settlement until the 1850s and 1860s, much later really.

EW: Much later as well, yes. I think it’s a matter again where we’re getting back to the mythic. I think you begin to get a sense of the West as playing out, at least in Jeffer-son’s mind, as a place of American possibilities. He didn’t follow up on them, but he very definitely sees this in the most immediate sense as a place where we can compete with the English and Spanish, and he’s acting on that assumption. He’s also thinking in terms of ultimate settlement. He sees the Louisiana Purchase first of all as a place for dumping Indians, but also sees it as this place of ultimate possibili-ties for the yeoman republic, for the quintessential virtuous Americans.

WPO: Why can’t Lewis re-enter? Clark comes back and everything works out pretty well. Lewis comes back and it’s a downward spiral.

EW: There seem to be so many reasons. Disastrous per-sonal relationships. He can’t seem to find a woman that he cares for, or rather he can’t find a woman who cares for him, one that will put up with him. There’s also the importance of honor. At one point there are allegations that he might have been part of the whole Burr conspiracy. He was a pride-ful man at a time when personal honor and personal repu-tation meant something far more powerful than it does for us today.

Also I think you have to face up to the fact that he had a very troubled psychological makeup. Ultimately he snapped. At the outset of the expedition Jefferson seems to have had this great faith in him. This is ironic, having great faith in the troubled Lewis and then exhibiting less enthusiasm for hiring the man [Clark] far more capable of leading the expedition. It’s clear that by the time Lewis starts up the Natchez Trace, Jefferson’s patience with him is pretty much over. Besides, Jefferson, his mentor, his patron, is now out of office, and Madison is president. I think Lewis ultimately realized that all the possible roads seemed to be closing to him.

WPO: Do you have any significant doubt that he commit-ted suicide?

EW: No. It’s one of those ongoing questions. John Guice is the man most committed to the murder theory today, and there were earlier folks like Vardis Fisher. John is my old-est friend in the profession, and he and I love to argue about this. He has good points, but ultimately when you get down to it most of the points he makes are perfectly answerable. It

The WPO Interview


seems to me when you look at the evidence, when you weigh it reasonably, I can’t see any other answer but suicide.

WPO: For you, what’s the Lewis and Clark place where you feel their presence as much as one’s going to feel their presence as a serious historian?

EW: I think it’s at Three Forks.

WPO: Why?EW: I’m not sure I can tell you why. Part of it is the his-

torical resonance of that spot, or the geographical resonance of it. To stand there at that place and to think about where this river goes, and all the hundreds of hours we’ve all spent along it or on it. Then to pivot and look in the other direc-tion, and to think about how the story unfolds going from there across the mountains. And the whole cultural story there too. Maybe it’s metaphorical, threads coming together, the three rivers coming together.

WPO: What if someone came to you and said, “What book should I read before I even touch the journals of Lewis and Clark?” What would you suggest? What’s the book you need to come to terms with before you start thinking about this journey?

EW: That’s a great question. I think it would be a good biography of Thomas Jefferson himself. Or a selection of the writings of Jefferson. Ultimately that’s where it all starts. It was Jefferson’s baby. It all came out of Jefferson’s brain, Jef-ferson’s perceptions, Jefferson’s understanding. It was Jeffer-son’s view of the world, of life. All of that is where it all starts.

WPO: What’s the burden of being Jefferson’s protégé?

EW: Maybe it was to ultimately fail. It’s one of those questions you wonder about. To what extent did Lewis take this on as a kind of a son’s obligation to his father, to his virtual father, his political father? Maybe ultimately that is what he couldn’t face, going back to dad with some really bad news.

WPO: One theory is that Lewis never came home. We think that you get to St. Louis on the 23rd of September 1806 and you’re home. But you’re not home until you’re in Char-lottesville, that where Lucy is, his mother, and that’s where his spiritual father is.

EW: But it wasn’t just that. I think that everything else had fallen apart. His life was a mess. His public reputation was in question. And I think at some point he just said what

the hell. Your point is a great one, and it reminds me of something that I’d like to emphasize. The Lewis and Clark Trail really starts in Charlottesville. And it starts in Philadel-phia. It doesn’t start at St. Charles. It has many threads that come together at that particular spot and then fan out across the Northwest. It all starts there in Charlottesville and that’s the place that Lewis was headed to truly make this a round trip, to bring it to an end.

WPO: If you look at the history of explorers, Park, Cook, Magellan, Columbus, Lewis, there’s a pattern of people who don’t get home. The homecoming is an incredibly problem-atic thing for the true explorer. Lewis belongs in exact par-allel to Mungo Park.

EW: You see that in other figures in American history. Jedediah Smith was arguably the greatest explorer of the West. He covered 26,000 miles out there, and then he tries to go home and can’t do it. He ends up going back to become a guide on the Santa Fe Trail, and he’s killed by the Coman-che out on the Cimarron Cutoff. Like Bridger and others, he can’t do it. Something happens to them when they’re out there. You can see why. It must have been in many ways a transforming experience. Which in a way brings us back maybe to Clark. Clark did go home. He was able to re-inte-grate and had a highly-successful career, a successful family life. What was it? What psychological strength did he have that Lewis didn’t? ❚

Note: WPO intends to feature interviews with great scholars and others who bring insights to the Lewis and Clark Expedition. If you have thoughts about individuals who should be interviewed, contact the editor. Not all of the interviews will be published in their entirety; a few words have been adjusted to preserve clarity. Thanks to Russ Eagle, the former record holder for the Lolo- Wendover trail hike, for assisting in the transcription. Ed.


LettersDear Editor,

I am not impressed with part one of the interview with this Elliott West. Like Stephen Ambrose and his over-rated book, Undaunted Courage, Dr. West answers questions with another question. I left Pompey’s Pillar after eight years as a volunteer guide inter-preter. Because it is now owned by the BLM and the Department of Interior, they play political correctness. We know there exists a long paper trail of Sacagawea’s life and death. The BLM, like Dr. West, wants to say to inquir-ing visitors, “We don’t know what hap-pened to her or her life after the expe-dition.” BULL! Read the journals of Captain Clark before and after the journey. They have revealing proof of what happened to Sacajawea. A clerk

who worked for Manuel Lisa at Fort Manuel Lisa recorded that a young Shoshone woman named Sacagawea died of putrid fever in December, 1812, leaving behind a baby girl, Lisette. Clark had Jean Baptiste Charbonneau in St. Louis already. Sacagawea would never abandon her children. Indian women breastfed. Lisette was still breastfeeding when her mother died. No record of any visit to her grow-ing children in care of Captain Clark exists. Her son never mentioned his mother in adult life.

You want a tip? Follow the jour-nals these men left behind. They were there and lived through the expedition. Patrick Gass, Charles Floyd, and John Ordway also left excellent journals for us to read.

Seaman is another issue. I mean arguments about Meriwether’s dog’s name. Lewis mentions Seaman and so does John Ordway in his journal, so why do some still have arguments with the facts? No, I will not run out and buy Dr. West’s books. I want facts, not re-churned butter that melts when confronted with evidence. Stick with the journals for advice and what happened. Example, in the journals Sacagawea clearly says and expresses the fact she is Lemhi Shoshone. In the journals it is related that she spoke only Shoshone and Hidatsa, the language of her capturers. Her husband spoke only French and Hidatsa. ❚

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ReviewsScenes of Visionary Enchantment: A Photographic Journey Along the Lewis and Clark Trail by Jeffrey P. Havens Helena, Montana: Self-published, 2017, 192 pp. photographs, captions, two maps, and index. Softcover, $59.95. Reviewed by Steve Lee

Once again, a photographer has been taken in by the beauty of the nation’s most scenic national trail. However, this book has a number of flaws that detract from Mr. Havens' intent of showing off that beauty.

For example, the photos of the dis-play cases from Camp Dubois to Great Falls detract from the book. Photos of the individual items would have been much more attractive than glass and wood cabinets.

The author should be commended for including the 1806 return route which is often neglected. The return route includes great scenes such as Pompey’s Pillar, the Yellowstone River, and the Big Hole Valley, all in Montana.

Most of the pages feature a sin-gle scene. However, in the section on the portage around the great falls, no less than five photos are crammed onto one page. Another detraction are the photos which show interpre-tive signs and plaques from a distance. They are usually too distant to be read. The Choteau County (MT) camp-site is a good example of the problem. The campsite photo for September 19, 1805, includes a distracting foot-bridge inartistically cut off on the right. Yet another poor photo selection is of Weippe Prairie shot complete with dis-

tracting structures and a close-up of a fence post. Another photo that should have been edited out was the one at the Knife River Hidatsa Indian villages (ND) that actually shows the photogra-pher’s shadow! The most confounding photo in the whole book is the one the author included of the broken inter-pretive sign for “Bear Oil and Roots” campsite (ID). Is the author showing the beauty of the trail or the need for increased trail maintenance?

Most of the photographer’s images feature very broad expanses. While this shows the impressive broad vistas, the reader’s attention would be better retained with a greater variety of images, including some close-ups. Variety is the spice of life and the sheer number of images in this book calls for it.

The biggest flaw in the book is the inclusion of two unrelated photos: the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone in Yellowstone National Park and Glacier National Park’s Grinnell Point. The author should be congratulated for hav-ing taken these beautiful images of two of the grandest scenes in the American West. However, they are out of place in a book on the Lewis and Clark Trail and should not be showing up twice, including on the back cover. Their inclusion in this book is a disservice to this amazingly beautiful Lewis and Clark Trail and its incredible scenery. Neglected scenes that could have been

depicted include the Clearwater River and its perfect reflections (ID), the vista from the “Smoking Place” (ID), and the majestic Trapper Peak in the Bitterroot range (MT)--all neglected in this book. Other missing images include plant and flower specimens such as fields of light blue camas, the majestic bear grass, and most certainly the Bitterroot bloom (Lewisia rediviva), first collected by Meriwether Lewis himself. The Bit-terroot gave its name to a valley, a river, and a mountain range.

The author did a great job on identi-fying each picture and its importance to the story. This constituted the narrative of the book. Each photo was identified by the location in the county and the state where it was taken. However, the author took the title of the book from a journal citation yet failed to quote the journals in any other location. Had he done his homework with the jour-nals the captions could have been even more creative and informative.

This book could have used some editing on both its photograph selec-tion and the composition and quality of many of its photos. Page numbers would make the book easier to navi-gate. Those who know the Lewis and Clark Trail expect something more of a book with such a lofty title. ❚

Steve Lee served as treasurer and president of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Trail Foundation. He also served on the Idaho and Washington governors' committees; and served as president of the Idaho chapter.

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LEWIS AND CLARK TRAIL HERITAGE FOUNDATION · 2 We Proceeded On E Volume 43, Number 4 November 2017...

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