Lewis & Clark: Journey to Another America

Topic 11: How Native Americans Viewed the Expedition
By Angela Cavender Wilson, Arizona State University

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The following text is excerpted from the essay in Lewis & Clark: Journey to Another America

A blanket of darkness was settling on the winter village. The children eagerly anticipated the setting sun, knowing then that they could approach their favorite storyteller. As the mothers instructed, he would by now be fed and well rested after arriving the previous day from a nearby village. Knowing grandmothers lovingly wrapped select pieces of meat, delicacies, and prized possessions for their grandchildren to bring to the visitor. When it was finally time, the children paraded into the council lodge and quietly offered their small gifts to the old man. After settling themselves into stillness so as not to disturb the orator, they knew the stories would soon commence as the old man slowly pulled out his tobacco pouch and his pipe. While it seemed to take ages for him to fill his pipe, the children beamed as the elder closed his eyes and began to smoke. At last, the stories would begin....

William Clark and Meriwether Lewis, along with others from their imperial
expedition, dutifully recorded details of their long journey by inscribing them on paper, using pen on field books and journals. Anticipating potential capitalist rewards resulting from this expedition, Thomas Jefferson directed the explorers, "The commerce which may be carried on with people inhabiting the line you will pursue, renders a knolege of those people important." Lewis and Clark recorded, then, what they deemed valuable information regarding the Indians of the West and the landscape they inhabited. In producing these material artifacts, these explorers and diplomats created an ethnographic record that offered a rationale for the expedition. For the infant United States, this journey of scientific exploration and discovery justified any underlying expansionist agendas. The Corps of Discovery, therefore, created an important record that facilitated capitalist enterprises and, ultimately, burdened native peoples in the West with the yoke of colonialism. Lewis and Clark's momentous journey and the records originating from it forever changed the lives of the native peoples they encountered.

The native peoples met by Lewis and Clark, however, left different records to the future generations. Native historical records, since time immemorial, were kept orally by carefully trained individuals, often assisted by mnemonic devices such as winter counts, pictographs, notched and bundled sticks, song boards, and numerous accouterments depicting war records or individual accomplishments.

Photo credit: Sacajawea Guiding the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Color lithograph after Alfred Russell, 1904. Missouri Historical Society Photograph and Print Collection.

1. Why is the Corps of Discovery celebrated by so many Americans? What American values are inherent in that celebration? Are these values Indigenous peoples are likely to share?

2. Who benefits from the privileging of written sources over oral sources? What is lost when oral accounts are denied?

3. Should explorers such as Lewis and Clark share in the responsibility for the subsequent invasion of Indigenous lands and conquest of Indigenous peoples? If so, how should they be remembered?

4. Given the devastation faced by Indigenous peoples as a result of contact, how do you think Indigenous peoples are likely to remember Lewis and Clark two hundred years later?

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Clark, Ella. Indian Legends from the Northern Rockies. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966.

Ferris, Warren Angus. Life in the Rocky Mountains: A Diary of Wanderings on the sources of the Rivers Missouri, Columbia, and Colorado 1830-1835. Rev. ed. Denver: Old West Publishing Company, 1983.

Hebard, Grace Raymond. Sacajawea: A guide and interpreter of the Lewis and Clark expedition, with an account of the travels of Toussaint Charbonneau and of Jean Baptiste, the expedition papoose. Glendale, Calif.: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1957.

Ronda, James P. Lewis and Clark among the Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. Reprint. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Ruby, Robert and John A. Brown. The Chinook Indians: Traders of the Lower Columbia River. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976.