Dreams of El Dorado

by H. W. Brands

  Lewis eventually learned the source of the Indians’ standoffishness. Smallpox had afflicted the region recently and decimated the population. Diseases exotic to America had been the scourge of Eastern tribes since first contact with Europeans in the sixteenth century; the wave of destruction moved inland as the line of contact advanced. Smallpox reached the Missouri by the late eighteenth century, and it left the tribes there vulnerable to enemies and skittish. Those on Lewis and Clark’s route weren’t sure whether the Americans came in war or peace and so approached them diffidently.

  ILLNESS CARRIED OFF ONE OF THE AMERICANS TWO WEEKS later. “Sergeant Floyd is taken very bad all at once with a bilious colic,” Clark wrote on August 19. “We attempt to relieve him, without success as yet. He gets worse and we are much alarmed at his situation.” The illness intensified. “Sergeant Floyd much weaker,” Clark wrote the next day. The corps made a start on the day’s journey, with Floyd suffering in one of the boats. “Sergeant Floyd as bad as he can be. No pulse, and nothing will stay a moment on his stomach or bowels.” A short while later Floyd breathed his last. “Sergeant Floyd died with a great deal of composure,” Clark wrote. “We buried him on the top of the bluff ½ mile below a small river to which we gave his name.”

  Floyd’s death—likely from a ruptured appendix—reminded all concerned how capricious existence could be in the wilderness. It also underscored the sobering fact that any change in the numbers of the corps would be by subtraction; a man lost could not be replaced.

  This fact inclined Lewis to be lenient in a case of desertion. Moses Reed tired of the hard toil up the river and concocted a story that he had forgotten a knife at a previous campground. Lewis gave him permission to retrieve it but soon realized his mistake. “The man who went back after his knife has not yet come up,” Clark wrote. “We have some reasons to believe he has deserted.” The captains allowed Reed another day to make good, and when he still failed to appear, they sent a party in search of him—“with order if he did not give up peaceably to put him to death.”

  Catching Reed took ten days, but eventually he was brought in. Lewis conducted a trial in which Reed confessed to desertion and theft of a rifle and ammunition. He threw himself on the mercy of the captains, requesting that they be as forgiving as they could be consistent with their oaths of office. “Which we were and only sentenced him to run the gauntlet four times through the party and that each man with 9 switches should punish him and for him not to be considered in future as one of the party,” Clark wrote.

  THE EXPEDITION ENTERED THE GREAT PLAINS AND ENCOUNTERED large herds of buffalo. Lewis looked for the most storied of the northern tribes that lived on these large animals—the Lakotas, or western Sioux. Thomas Jefferson had read of the Sioux in the journals of French traders, and he thought they held the key to American control of the upper Missouri. “On that nation we wish most particularly to make a friendly impression, because of their immense power, and because we learn they are very desirous of being on the most friendly terms with us,” Jefferson told Lewis. Events proved the president too optimistic about the desire of the Sioux to cultivate the Americans, but his assessment of their power was accurate.

  At first the Sioux kept away, hunting buffalo and raiding their neighbors. But eventually they made contact. Lewis and Clark learned that a Sioux village was nearby. “We prepared some clothes and a few medals for the chiefs of the Tetons bands of Sioux which we expect to see today at the next river,” Clark wrote on September 24. And so they did. “We soon after met 5 Indians and anchored out some distance and spoke to them, informed them we were friends and wished to continue so but were not afraid of any Indians.”

  They got no closer until the following day. “Raised a flag staff and made an awning or shade on a sandbar in the mouth of the Teton River, for the purpose of speaking with the Indians under,” Clark recorded. The five Indians they had seen the evening before approached. “The 1st and 2nd chief came. We gave them some of our provisions to eat. They gave us great quantities of meat, some of which was spoiled. We feel much at a loss for the want of an interpreter; the one we have can speak but little.” They smoked a peace pipe. Lewis started to give a speech but cut it short when he realized his words weren’t getting through.

  The chiefs were invited to board the keelboat. They examined various trade items Lewis laid out. He offered them whiskey and almost immediately wished he hadn’t. “We gave them ¼ a glass of whiskey which they appeared to be very fond of,” Clark wrote. “Sucked the bottle after it was out and soon began to be troublesome, one, the 2nd chief, assuming drunkenness as a cloak for his rascally intentions.”

  Lewis ordered the chiefs off the boat. They departed angrily, causing Clark to follow them in the pirogue in hope of assuaging injured feelings. This made matters worse. “As soon as I landed the pirogue three of their young men seized the cable,” Clark wrote. “The chief’s soldier hugged the mast, and the 2nd chief was very insolent both in words and gestures, declaring I should not go on, stating he had not received presents sufficient from us. His gestures were of such a personal nature I felt myself compelled to draw my sword. At this motion Capt. Lewis ordered all under arms in the boat.”

  A standoff ensued, with both sides glaring. “I felt myself warm and spoke in very positive terms,” Clark recounted. Patrick Gass, one of Clark’s men, recalled, “He told them his soldiers were good, and that he had more medicine aboard his boat than would kill twenty such nations in a day.”

  The Tetons probably didn’t get the details of Clark’s boast, which was unclear anyway. He might have been talking about bullets. Or he might have been suggesting that he would unleash an epidemic. The latter threat would have been extremely imprudent, as the experience of others who made such threats would show.

  But the Tetons definitely caught Clark’s angry drift, and the confrontation escalated. “Most of the warriors appeared to have their bows strung and took out their arrows from the quiver,” Clark recorded. The Indians wouldn’t let him return to the keelboat, yet he managed to get a message back to Lewis, who dispatched reinforcements. “The pirogue soon returned with about 12 of our determined men ready for any event.”

  The Tetons took stock of the situation. They decided not to test the Americans’ resolve and, after some final glares, withdrew. Clark and the others got back safely to the keelboat, which was anchored near a small island. “I call this island Bad Humored Island as we were in a bad humor,” he closed the journal entry for the day.

  HUMAN NATURE BEING WHAT IT IS, THE AMERICANS IMPUTED evil motives to the Teton Sioux. “These are the vilest miscreants of the savage race, and must ever remain the pirates of the Missouri until such measures are pursued by our government as will make them feel a dependence on its will for their supply of merchandise,” Clark recorded.

  At the same time, he acknowledged a logic in the actions of the Indians, who were protecting their monopoly of trade on the upper Missouri. “Relying on a regular supply of merchandise through the channel of the river St. Peters”—connecting the upper Mississippi with British Canada—“they view with contempt the merchants of the Missouri, whom they never fail to plunder, when in their power.” The St. Louis traders preferred to pay extortion rather than challenge the Tetons, which encouraged the Indians to persist in their racket. “A prevalent idea among them, and one which they make the rule of their conduct, is, that the more illy they treat the traders the greater quantity of merchandise they will bring them, and that they will thus obtain the articles they wish on better terms.”

  The immediate question for the Tetons, as for every other tribe that dealt with interlopers like these Americans, was whether their interests would be served better by tolerating the invaders or by attacking them. The Tetons outnumbered the Americans and could have crushed them, though not without suffering casualties of their own. But if this group of Americans was simply the spearhead of a larger force, killing them might be counterproductive. The Sioux had heard enough about th
e Americans to know that there were very many of them. Perhaps they couldn’t all be killed.

  Complicating the matter for the Tetons was a contest within the tribe for political control. Three chiefs—Black Buffalo, Buffalo Medicine and the Partisan—struggled for preeminence. The struggle, which became apparent to the Americans only gradually, caused the Tetons’ attitude toward the Americans to swing between confrontation and accommodation.

  Black Buffalo allowed Lewis to approach the Teton village, where a hundred tepees and their several hundred inhabitants attested to the force the Indians could bring to bear against the Americans. But then Black Buffalo and the other chiefs invited the Americans to a grand feast, at which they plied the intruders with great quantities of roasted buffalo meat, delicate cuts of dog, and platters of pemmican and prairie turnips. Male drummers beat a rhythm for female dancers, who waved the scalps of slain enemies in a salute to the martial power of the Sioux, another reminder that the tribe must not be trifled with. The culmination of the evening was an offer of female companionship to the American chiefs. Lewis and Clark declined the offer, to the puzzlement of the Tetons.

  Tension suddenly escalated again the next day when Black Buffalo alerted his people that an attack by hostile Omahas was imminent. Two hundred warriors leaped to the ready, armed and eager to fight. But no Omahas appeared. Lewis and Clark considered the matter, then concluded that they had witnessed a manufactured display of force. They didn’t let on. “We shewed but little sign of a knowledge of their intentions,” Clark wrote. Just in case, they conspicuously put their own men on armed alert.

  Captains and men kept vigilant till they got past the Teton territory. Lewis and Clark were pleased at having broken through the Sioux barrier. Yet they didn’t fool themselves into thinking they had accomplished Jefferson’s goal of establishing good relations with the most powerful of the upper Missouri peoples.

  3

  WEST BY NORTHWEST

  THE WEATHER CONTINUED FAIR, BUT THE NIGHTS GREW longer and colder. By mid-October, morning ice greeted the Americans, and Lewis and Clark began looking for a place to winter. They reached the villages of the Mandans at month’s end and determined to build a fort nearby. The warmth of the Mandans toward the Americans contrasted sharply with the chill of the Sioux, yet it had the same origin: the prospect that the Americans would break the Sioux blockade of the Missouri River. The Mandans, and their neighbors the Hidatsas, were famous traders; the great bend in the Missouri became a lively market in the late summer and autumn of each year as tribes of the northern plains and Rockies gathered with British and French Canadian merchants of the North West Company, coming from Canada, and intrepid American traders from St. Louis. Yet the Americans and their goods arrived less freely and therefore more expensively than the Mandans desired, on account of the Sioux blockade. And the lack of American competition allowed the North West Company to raise its prices. The advent of Lewis and Clark, with the message that the American government intended to open the Missouri to commerce, was the best thing that had happened to the Mandans in decades, and they did all they could to accommodate the explorers.

  The Mandan chiefs helped Lewis and Clark locate a favorable spot for building Fort Mandan, as the Americans called their winter quarters, near modern Bismarck, North Dakota. Mandan hunters and women brought supplies of buffalo, corn and beans. Mandans and Hidatsas wandered in and out of the fort almost at will. Many of the Americans, though apparently not Lewis and Clark, consorted with women of the two tribes.

  On New Year’s Day 1805, the Americans celebrated with their Indian hosts. The festivities began with a salute of arms. “Two shots were fired from the swivel”—a light cannon mounted on the keelboat—“followed by a round of small arms, to welcome the New Year,” Patrick Gass recorded. “Captain Lewis then gave each a glass of good old whiskey; and a short time after another was given by Captain Clark.” Charles Ordway, another corpsman who kept a journal, related the next phase of the fun: “Fifteen of the party went up to the first village of Mandans to dance, as it had been their request. Carried with us a fiddle and a tambourine and a sounding horn. As we arrived at the entrance of the village, we fired one round, then the music played. Loaded again, then marched to the center of the village, fired again. Then commenced dancing. A Frenchman”—a boatman hired by Lewis at St. Louis—“danced on his head and all danced round him for a short time, then went in to a lodge and danced a while, which pleased them very much. They then brought victuals from different lodges and of different kinds of diet. They brought us also a quantity of corn and some buffalo robes which they made us a present of. So we danced in different lodges until late in the afternoon.”

  The Mandans were intrigued to watch the whites cavorting, but they were amazed at the actions of the one black man in the expeditionary corps, Clark’s slave York. Many of the Mandans had seen white faces, but none had seen a black face, and most didn’t know what to make of this one. Some thought the blackness came from paint like that with which they painted their own skins at times, and tried to rub it off. York’s curly hair reminded them of buffalo fur. He was a big man, yet agile, and Clark directed him to join the fun. “I ordered my black servant to dance, which amused the crowd very much and somewhat astonished them, that so large a man should be active,” Clark wrote.

  DURING THEIR MANDAN WINTER, LEWIS AND CLARK ENLISTED the services of two people who proved essential to the success of the American expedition. Toussaint Charbonneau was a French Canadian trader who had lived among the Hidatsas for some years. One of his wives was a young Shoshone woman captured during a raid by the Hidatsas and then sold to Charbonneau; her name was Sacagawea. Charbonneau’s knowledge of the region and its peoples appealed to Lewis and Clark, who hired him for the journey west. Sacagawea enhanced Charbonneau’s appeal, being from a tribe whose territory they would be crossing. She knew the landscape and presumably the trails, and she knew the language. This was not quite the blessing it might have been, as the chain of translation would be awkwardly long: from Lewis or Clark in English to François Labiche, a private in the expedition, who would speak in French to Charbonneau, who would address Sacagawea in Hidatsa, who would communicate in Shoshone to the message’s ultimate recipients. By the time the reply returned through the chain of speakers, only the gist of the message, if that, might remain. But it was better than nothing, and preferable to the hand signs on which the expedition had relied with the Sioux.

  Sacagawea brought a bonus. As a woman, she cast a peaceful glow upon the American contingent. The two-score armed men otherwise looked like a war party; her presence offered reassurance that the intruders came in peace. Moreover, she was several months pregnant; when the baby arrived, the peace signal would be all the stronger.

  THE WINTER ON THE UPPER MISSOURI WAS THE COLDEST ANY of the Americans had ever endured. The thermometer fell far below zero; whatever was exposed for more than a few seconds risked freezing. This included fingers, noses, ears and body parts bared when the men answered the call of nature. Lewis and Clark served as the expedition’s doctors, treating frostbite, sometimes by amputation; the cuts and bruises inflicted by sharp ice and frozen ground; dog bites; digestive ailments; and assorted maladies resulting from the unbalanced, heavily carnivorous diet that carried the men through the winter. They also treated venereal diseases, which seemed unavoidable and accordingly inconsequential. “All the party in high spirits,” Clark wrote as the end of winter approached. “They pass but few nights without amusing themselves dancing, possessing perfect harmony and good understanding towards each other. Generally healthy except venereal complaints which is very common amongst the natives and the men catch it from them.”

  Patrick Gass said more on the subject. “It may be observed generally that chastity is not very highly esteemed by these people, and that the severe and loathsome effects of certain French principles are not uncommon among them,” Gass wrote in the edited version of his journal. Americans of Gass’s day, following long Engl
ish practice, blamed the French for spreading venereal disease. “The fact is,” Gass continued, “that the women are generally considered an article of traffic and indulgencies are sold at a very moderate price. As a proof of this I will just mention, that for an old tobacco box, one of our men was granted the honour of passing a night with the daughter of the headchief of the Mandan nation.”

  The men’s spirits rose further as the ice on the Missouri began to break up and they made ready to resume the journey. Lewis and Clark sent the keelboat back to St. Louis, since the channel of the river had shallowed sufficiently to make the big vessel more trouble than it was worth. The men fashioned canoes out of trees growing near the river, hollowing the logs with adzes and fire and rounding the ends till the crafts floated high enough to keep the water out and maneuvered well enough to make travel upstream possible, if not easy.

  The melting Missouri carried great chunks of ice. The Mandans conducted the oddest hunt—of buffalo—that any of the Americans had ever seen. “I observed the extraordinary dexterity of the Indians in jumping from one cake of ice to another, for the purpose of catching the buffalo as they float down,” Clark wrote. The buffalo in question had frozen upstream during the winter and their carcasses remained fresh and edible. Adding to the strangeness of the scene, pillars of flame and smoke arose beside the icy stream, evidence of the time-tested practices of the Indians in managing their environment. “The Plains are on fire on both sides of the river,” Clark noted. “It is common for the Indians to set those Plains on fire near their village for the advantage of the early grass for the horse and as an inducement to the buffalo to visit them.”