• What are the mysteries of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in Iowa?
• Did Lewis and Clark See Evidence of a Tornado During their Time in Iowa?
• What is Revealed about the Character of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in Iowa?
• About Clay S. Jenkinson
What are the mysteries of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in Iowa?
There are several.
Why did the captains decide not to send a map and dispatches back to President Jefferson from the mouth of the Platte River? That they intended to dispatch Corporal Warfington and his crew from the mouth of the Platte with such documents is certain. On July 23, 1804, at Camp White Catfish, Clark wrote, "I commenced Coppying my map of the river to Send to the Presdt. of U S. by the Return of a pty of Soldiers, from Illinois." A day later he wrote, "Capt. Lewis also much engaged in prepareing Papers to Send back by a Pirogue." The busy captains would not have taken the time to prepare these materials just north of the mouth of the Platte unless they believed, right up til the last moment, that a boat would be sent downriver from the confluence. For some reason, the dispatch mission was canceled at the last minute, and neither captain explained their reasons for the decision. It may be that finishing the intended reports proved to be too time consuming during prime traveling season. Also on a number of other occasions during the expedition, Meriwether Lewis expressed concern that by sending any fraction of his men back to civilization before the expedition completed its mission might "defeat the expedition altogether."
Meriwether Lewis's silence has perplexed all students of the expedition. Although President Jefferson clearly instructed his protégé to keep a daily record of his travels, Lewis appears to have failed to keep a journal for well over half of his transcontinental journey. Lewis was mostly silent during the Iowa interlude both in 1804 and 1806. He was a very busy man throughout the voyage—collecting and pressing plants, attempting to determine latitude and longitude, describing new or unusual animals, reflecting on the geopolitical implications of his mission—but Clark was equally busy and he almost never failed to write a journal entry. Some historians have speculated that Lewis was keeping a journal during the first year of travel and that it was either lost in a boat accident or misplaced at the time of his sudden death in 1809. The evidence of the journals, however, suggests that Lewis was indeed silent for extended periods of time, and that at some early point he and Clark determined that if one of them was keeping a daily narrative of the expedition's activities, that would serve as a kind of "captain's log," in compliance with President Jefferson's instructions.
Who was Mr. Fairfong? On August 2, 1804, a small delegation of Oto and Missouri Indians approached the expedition's camp at Council Bluff with a French trader whom Clark called "Mr. Fairfong." Attempts to identify this individual have ended in frustration. Some historians have nominated a man named Charles Courtin, but, as editor Gary Moulton says, "that would require a misspelling remarkable even for Clark." All we know is that Fairfong was a resident trader among the Oto and Missouri Indians, that he provided the expedition with considerable information about Indian language groups and Platte River geography, and that he knew something about the trade route between the Platte River and Santa Fe. Lewis and Clark met Fairfong twice, once at the Council Bluff on August 2-3, 1804, and a second time at Fish Camp (August 18-19), when Fairfong accompanied Little Thief and Big Horse to meet with the expeditionís leaders. The captains appreciated Fairfong's efforts enough to give him a parcel of goods before they resumed their journey.
Did Lewis and Clark See Evidence of a Tornado During their Time in Iowa?
Yes. Near the place the expedition designated as Council Bluff, near today's Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, on July 29, 1804, Clark wrote, "above this high land & on the S.S. passed much falling timber apparently the ravages of a Dreddfull harican which had passed oblequely across the river from N.W. to S.E. about twelve months Since, many trees were broken off near the ground the trunks of which were sound and four feet in Diameter."
What Clark called a "harican" (hurricane) was undoubtedly a prairie tornado. Clark believed that the storm had occurred a year prior to the arrival of the expedition.
What is Revealed about the Character of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in Iowa?
The journals for this period reveal that the expedition had settled into an efficient routine. The authority of the expedition's leaders was sure and almost entirely unquestioned. The shared command (the fictional co-captaincy of Lewis and Clark) appears to have presented no difficulties to the nearly fifty men of the expedition. The two leaders had already settled into their characteristic roles: Clark seems to have been handling the day to day business of getting the flotilla up the Missouri River. Lewis was the expedition's naturalist, astronomer, philosopher, and final arbiter. Clark kept the captains' log. Lewis played a more fluid role in pursuit of the Enlightenment goals for the expedition. If Lewis's journal silence is bewildering, Clark's effusions about the beauty of the Iowa and Nebraska landscape are charming and endearing. From all appearances, the partnership between Lewis and Clark appears to have been easy, natural, and relaxed.
Although Clark is usually seen as the down-to-earth and straightforward half of the leadership team, he was in fact capable of responding to the beauties of the landscape. Clark's Iowa and Nebraska journal entries sometimes read like a prose poem written by a romantic poet.
Clark took great pride in his ability with firearms, and throughout the journals he exhibits a reluctance to acknowledge that me might simply have missed a shot. The most famous example of this occurred on September 16, 1805, in the Bitterroot Mountains when successfully killing a deer could make the difference between hunger and semi-starvation. During the Iowa period, the stakes were not high as food was plentiful, but Clark could not admit that he might simply have missed the elk he was stalking. On August 8, 1804, he wrote, "Collin Killed an elk, I fired 4 times at one & have reasons to think I Kiled him but could not find him." A sentence or so later, Clark hints at a more rational explanation: "The Misqutors were So troublesom and Misqutors thick in the Plains that I could not Keep them out of my eyes, with a bush."
One of the most interesting elements in the character of William Clark is his propensity to believe that whenever there was a cultural misunderstanding with the Indians the expedition encountered, his more detailed explanation of the ways and means of the Corps of Discovery was automatically satisfying to his Indian hosts. When Oto leaders pleaded with the captains to show leniency to Moses Reed on August 18, 1804, when Reed was forced to run a gauntlet of his peers four times, Clark wrote, "After we explained the injurey Such men could doe them by false representation, & explang. the Customs of our Countrey they were all Satisfied with the propriety of the Sentence & was witness to the punishment." This pattern of believing that concerned Indians always and automatically accepted the Corps of Discovery's explanations of its principles occurred many times in the course of the expedition. Clark never once concluded that the Indians were simply unconvinced by his explanations, and he never conceded the slightest recognition that one culture's ways are frequently incomprehensible (or barbaric) to another, and that it may well have been the case that the Indians' concerns were just. In some regards Clark was more optimistic than the patron of the expedition, Thomas Jefferson.
Although Meriwether Lewis appears not to have kept a regular journal during the Iowa interlude, he was busy making celestial observations, collecting plant and animal specimens, and writing about new and unusual animal species. The absence of a regular journal throws into relief Lewis's deep curiosity about the natural world, the minute discernment of his eye, his attention to detail. Although President Jefferson conceded that Lewis was "not regularly educated," he realized that his protégé had extraordinary powers of observation coupled with the ability to articulate his impressions on paper.
When U.S. Army private Moses Reed deserted the expedition in August, 1804, the captains exhibited a combination of anger, vindictiveness, and concern for due process and the rule of military law. On August 7, 1804, they sent out a four-man "posse" of their ablest and most reliable men with instructions to bring in Reed dead or alive. They were not about to permit Reed to slip away onto the Great Plains with impunity. They knew that the long-term esprit d'corps of the expedition depended on a firm and unambiguous response to the Reed crisis. Even so, Clark notes that in instructing the "posse" to put Reed to death, if necessary, the captains "als[o] gave pointed orders to the party in writeing." In other words, the captains provided written instructions so that, in the event of the "posse" putting Reed to death, the four individuals would be protected from criticism or legal prosecution for their actions. The captains, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, were taking full responsibility for the severity of their orders. They were leaving no room for ambiguity.
About Clay S. Jenkinson
Clay Jenkinson is a North Dakotan. He is the author of three books on the Lewis and Clark Expedition: The Character of Meriwether Lewis: "Completely Metamorphosed" in the American West; The Lewis and Clark Companion (with Stephenie Ambrose Tubbs); and A Vast and Open Plain: The Writings of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in North Dakota (an edition of the journals of Lewis and Clark for North Dakota, where the Corps of Discovery spent a quarter of its time).
Mr. Jenkinson is a humanities scholar in residence at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and a recipient of the National Humanities Medal. He leads cultural tours along the Lewis and Clark trail and in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson, at home and in Europe, and he is considered the nation's leading historical interpreter of Thomas Jefferson and Meriwether Lewis, among others.
This chapbook is the second in a series by Clay Jenkinson. The first, A Lewis and Clark Chapbook: Lewis and Clark in North Dakota, was published in 2002 by the North Dakota Humanities Council.
Clay Jenkinson lives in Portland, Oregon, and Reno, Nevada. He is the father of Catherine Missouri Walker Jenkinson, who is nine years old.You may visit Mr. Jenkinson at www.th-jefferson.org
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