Reflections From the Road

I am at perhaps the most beautiful camping spot yet, and the weather is mild and perfect. The bonus is that there are strong breezes, which means that no mosquitos will be bothering me. That said, the strong breezes foretell a slow-moving storm headed my way, so I want to make the most of the time I have outside. Sadie and I have returned from a walk about the campground and she took a dip in the Missouri River, which is wide and powerful here compared to what I’ve seen the last few days.

*Sadie enjoyed dipping her toes in the Missouri.*

*It was very windy and the water had whitecaps and was flowing swiftly, so I’m glad she didn’t go very far in!*

Roadtripping in 1804

The Lewis and Clark Boats

These deserve a mention on their own merit, but my devoting an entire section to them is due to my chance meeting with “Mr. Keelboat,” aka Butch Bouvier. Butch happened to be at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center in Nebraska City a few days ago when I stopped by. The Center is beautiful and worth a visit if you are ever in the area. What caught my eye as I drove up was the full-scale replica of the keelboat used by Lewis and Clark. This was the biggest of the three boats they used on this part of their journey. As I got close to it, I had trouble imagining the explorers dragging this big craft over sand bars, pushing it past logs drifting in its path, or managing it during a big storm. It wasn’t huge by today’s standards, but when you think about all it was carrying, it would have been pretty heavy and potentially unwieldy in the water, depending on what you wanted it to do. Going against the current had to have been difficult.

I had seen a couple of other replicas of the boat, but this was the first one I had come across that invited visitors to climb aboard and experience it up close. The person behind the visitor information desk, as she was telling me about all there was to see at the museum, mentioned that there was one of the smaller replica boats (pirogue) that had recently been brought back from obscurity and was being restored to its former glory by its original builder, who happened to be outside working on it that morning.

And that’s how I came to meet Butch, a delightful person who is well versed in the Lewis and Clark boats, mainly because he has been researching them extensively and building them all over the country for the past forty-odd years, and also sailing them up and down the Missouri and Mississippi. We shared stories about our mutual interests in Lewis and Clark. He pointed me to his book (which I purchased at the center) and I pointed him to my blog. We exchanged emails, and he signed me up for his monthly Lewis and Clark newsletter, and I signed him up for my intermittent blog. I could have stayed all morning talking to him and listening to his stories about his various adventures, but I finally tore myself away to continue on my trek. Fortunately, many of those stories are in his book, which I now have. Butch, if you see this, please know what a pleasure it was to meet you and share common threads!

This is Mr. Keelboat himself, who is mentioned by name in *Traveling the Lewis and Clark Trail*, which is one of my bibles that tell me where all the interesting stops are. The boat he’s sitting in is a replica of one of the two pirogues used in the expedition.

Stephen Ambrose in *Undaunted Courage* also mentioned the keelboat replica built in the 1980’s by Butch and a crew of volunteers. I met a celebrity!

There were three boats used during this part of the journey:

The Keelboat - this was the largest of the three at 55 feet long and 8 feet wide. It was referred to by the explorers as a “barge” rather than keelboat, which seems to be a distinction without much of a difference, given that they were both boats made to carry big loads on rivers. Lewis designed the one they used for the expedition, and Butch is convinced that it had a flat bottom, which would have been most practical for the rivers they were on. It was built and adapted to carry a large quantity of anything and everything - from weapons and ammunition, to tools and measuring instruments, to specimens of all size and type that were collected along the way, including dinosaur bones, to the extensive provisions they brought, to the large amount of items to be used as gifts to the tribes they met, and anything else you might imagine. It had special lockers installed that could also serve as walkways for the crew when they had to use poles to push the boat through the water, starting at one end and walking with the pole to the other end, then returning to the front again. It had a mast so could sail, or it could be rowed with oars from inside the boat, poled from the edge of the boat, or dragged from the shoreline. It was big and impressive and a heavy workhorse. The plan was to take the boat as far as the Mandan villages and then send it back down the river to St. Louis, fully loaded with all the specimens collected up to that point, along with the reports to President Jefferson, who was no doubt anxiously waiting for word from the travellers.
The two pirogues - these two boats were similar in size and looked kind of like large canoes, with flat bottoms and square sterns (Butch is very clear on this point). These boats were smaller and lighter than the big barge, and were generally more nimble and maneuverable on the rivers.

This is one of Butch’s keelboats.

He has built many boats over the years, and has a fascination for early pre-steamboat travel on the inland rivers of the United States. He is extremely knowledgeable, does his research, and is a wealth of information on the subject.

The Early Indian Encounters

(Note: I am using the term Indian throughout this blog rather than Native American, mainly because my primary sources for the Indian experience of Lewis and Clark and its aftermath come from the book of essays entitled Lewis and Clark Through Indian Eyes, edited by Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. and from The Truth About Sacajawea, by Kenneth Thomasma. Both volumes use the term Indian exclusively to describe the native, indigenous people and experience. My desire to use language respectfully demanded that I do the same.)

During the first months of the expedition, there were no encounters with the native population at all. As the boats progressed up the Missouri, however, the explorers knew that would not last. As I hinted in my last article, Lewis was instructed to tread a thin line between fostering good trade relations and making sure that the Indians knew who was in charge. The speech Lewis prepared before his first meeting with members of the Oto tribe, which occurred near Council Bluffs, Iowa (right across the river from Omaha, Nebraska), was a mixture of diplomacy and authoritarianism. On the one hand, Lewis wanted to foster good relations and be seen as friends and trading partners. On the other hand, he needed to make clear that the United States controlled the territory now and they could basically do as they wished as they followed the rivers.

In Lewis’s words, as reported by Clark:

The great Chief has commanded us his war chiefs to undertake this long journey, which we have so far accomplished with great labour and much expence, in order to cvouncil with yourselves and his other red children on the troubled waters, to give you his good advice; to point out to you the road in which you must walk to obtain happiness.

This was followed by an admonition to avoid problems in the future, lest by one false step you should bring upon your nation the displeasure of your great father, who could consume you as the fire consumes the grass of the plains.

Apparently, the speech Lewis spent the night preparing was long and rambling and tried to make clear that the region was now controlled by the “Great Father in Washington” rather than the French or Spanish. The Indians were told that as long as they honored the hierarchy of who was actually in charge, they would all be friends and there would be good trading (i.e. lots of profit) for everyone, and of course peace. Lewis had a French interpreter to help translate, but of course it is impossible to say what was actually said and what was understood. In any case that first meeting ended peacefully, and various gifts and good will were exchanged.

*Lewis’s dog Seaman was not the only canine in attendance at the first meeting with the Indians.*

A verson of this speech would be performed (with Lewis and Clark in full military regalia, flag waving, and their troops standing nearby at attention), numerous times on the journey, sort of an opening salvo to future relations, if you will. But by taking this domineering, benevolent father approach to building trade and economic networks, they completely overlooked the fact that these tribes they were encountering had been dealing with Europeans for many years, primarily the French. The French had taken a completely different approach to the issue of sharing space and economic opportunities. Theirs was a mutually beneficial, respectful, approach. The French traders coming down from Canada tended to embed themselves with the different tribes, learn the languages, marry and have children, and made a point to adapt their lifestyle to the tribal cultures. That explains why there were a number of mixed race interpreters on the trip who had French fathers and Indian mothers. They grew up completely comfortable in both cultures and spoke multiple languages. I wonder if the tribes who met Lewis and Clark thought they would be similar, only to discover quickly that was not going to be the case.

None of that was of any interest to Lewis and Clark. Their mission was clear, and they displayed no curiosity about the people they were meeting other than what they needed to know in order to establish their dominant position in the economic relationship and overall governance. In the journals they were referred to as “savages.” These early encounters were fairly nonconfrontational, although there were a few misunderstandings that had to be smoothed over with unintended gifts of precious whiskey and arms (which were being saved for later encounters with tribes further along the trail). That would change as they moved up the river into Sioux Territory. Not everyone would be as open-hearted as the Otos, Missouri, and Poncas had been.

Death on the Trail

Remarkably, there was only one death among the expedition members on the entire journey, both coming and going. Sgt. Floyd, one of the key members of the expedition, contracted an illness that couldn’t be treated, and died near present-day Sioux City, Iowa. He was buried with a marker on a bluff overlooking the river. A monument stands there today to mark the spot. Scholars believe, based on the description of his symptoms, that he died of acute appendicitis, an illness for which there was no cure in 1804.

Roadtripping in 2025

Thinking While Driving

Today as I was driving through the prairies on the byways of Nebraska and South Dakota, I thought about those early encounters with the Indians, and Lewis’s message of domination sandwiched between his messages of good will and profit-sharing. What he left out was Jefferson’s unspoken goal of empire-building. Even today the vastness of our country is striking, and it’s not hard to imagine the rolling hills of the prairies full of grazing buffalo. Today the roads stretch in straight lines for miles and miles and miles, with no towns, no gas stations, no stores. There is the occasional farmhouse, or maybe a small village or collection of buildings beside the road that consists of a mechanic or junk dealer, or perhaps a saloon or bar, and that’s about it. One “town” I passed through, Monowi, in Nebraska, boasted a population of 1. I have taken to making sure that I don’t let my gas tank get too far below half because I don’t know when I’ll get an opportunity to fill up.

*In 1804 this would have been endless prairie in all directions, dotted with buffalo herds.*

Given that even today it is easy to assume that the land is endless, back in the 19th century I’m sure this was especially true. I’m guessing that the Europeans coming west could not conceive that this enormous territory was anything but available for the taking, and it was first-come, first-served, especially after the Homesteaders Act was passed in 1862. The fact that there were people living on the land already was of no consequence. Driving through it I can see why the new settlers would think there should be enough land for everyone. European culture and value system put a premium on land ownership and boundaries, which meant that they had no understanding of a different way of living on and working with the land. The people who created the United States were a colonizing, agriculture-based society that depended upon land ownership as the foundation for all other rights. There was no room for anything else in the minds of the settlers who would be migrating west at the encouragement of the American government, and no one had any interest in learning about the Indian way of life and adapting their own needs and desires to a lifestyle that would allow more flexible living situations and boundaries.

Thinking about the wave that was started after the Revolutionary War ended, coupled with the goal of empire-building that Jefferson was so intent on, I believe the Indians were doomed from the beginning and there was nothing they could have done to ease the pain and torture and displacement they all eventually suffered at the hands of the American government. With the American legacy of slavery as the basis of your economic system, as it was for Jefferson in 1804, it is but a small step to take a superior and dominant stance when meeting anyone else who doesn’t understand the world order the way that you do. Without innate curiosity, and openness to different ways of being and living, there was nothing that could have prevented the end result of the westward expansion, and no amount of sugar-coating that Lewis and Clark did in their speeches changed any of that.

This is the yin and yang of the Lewis and Clark pilgrimage that I’m making. I’m awed by what they did, where they went, and what they accomplished, yet feel shame as a white American whose family benefited by the land grab of the 1800’s. At the time, I believe that the people on the expedition believed in the righteousness and morality of positioning themselves as benevolent overlords, but today we have the advantage of the passage of time and can see how truly naive and callous they were in how they thought about this expedition and its purpose. Not sure what it all means or what, if anything, needs to happen in today’s world, but there are lessons here we would do well to remember as we read the daily news.

On a Lighter Note: Other Tidbits I’ve Learned

I have a love/hate relationship with Google.

If you are going to rely on Google (against your better judgment), then don’t complain when it takes you off course and tries to add another hour to your trip even though you can see on the map that the red destination spot is just around the corner from where your van currently sits. And if you are going to turn away from that red spot following Google’s advice even though you can see the road to the red spot is clearly open and could take you right to it, then for heaven’s sake don’t let yourself go too far off course before turning around and ignoring Google. Google doesn’t know everything! (and I should know that by now)

On the other hand, sometimes it’s good to embrace Google’s quirkiness, like when there is a straightforward road to take you to the State Park but you didn’t check the atlas and maps first before starting the trip. In that instance, Google might reward your negligence by taking you on country roads in Nebraska that you may never have seen otherwise. You will gain an appreciation of the immensity of the corn fields that stretch out as far as the eye can see in all directions from your solitary spot on the dirt road that doesn’t seem to have any buildings anywhere in sight for miles and miles and miles. Google will eventually get you where you want to be if you just listen and obey, and it is always convinced that it is taking you on the fastest route, even when that couldn’t possibly be true.

2. Not all Lewis and Clark exhibits are created equal.

Given the multitude of Lewis and Clark parks, interpretive centers, historical road markers, monuments, museums, I have to make forced choices about which ones to visit. I try to choose based on what my L&C books tell me happened, and if it seems significant or particularly interesting, then I will go find it. What I’m finding is that they aren’t all worth the time it takes to find them, but you don’t know that until you go down the small winding road several miles off your path and discover a set of markers and monuments that look exactly like all the others you’ve already seen and doesn’t add anything to your knowledge of their trip. And no view of the river. Sometimes it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that anything happened at a particular spot that was relevant to Lewis and Clark, but that doesn’t stop various towns and parks from trying to capture the moment, any moment, from the expedition.

Or the town that marks the spot where Lewis and Clark first encountered the prairie dog, and there is a fun journal entry about how they tried to capture one by pouring gallons of water down the hole only to have it escape unscathed by going deeper than they could stick one of their poles down. This town supposedly had capitalized on the idea of the prairie dog adventure by creating handmade plush “dawgs” that you could buy if you stopped by. That particular tip must have been many years old because when I got to the town all I saw were abandoned, ramshackle buildings, with a couple of houses and no obvious place of business that was open, save for the post office and a corner gas station with one pump that looked a little sketchy. My plan to buy a souvenir “dawg” for my future grandson went out the window. I mailed a letter from the post office to prove I was there and Sadie and I went on our merry way.

Next Steps

I am making my way to Bismarck, North Dakota, where I will be for three nights. My next report will be from there.