A Brief History of South Dakota/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
LEWIS AND CLARK
Jefferson selected to head his party of explorers his private secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, a cousin of George Washington. Scientific knowledge was not very far advanced in America at this time, but early in the spring of 1803, a few days before the bargain with Napoleon had been made and months before it had been thought of in America, Lewis hurried from Washington to Philadelphia to take a brief course in the natural sciences and mathematics, hoping to gain enough to enable him to make scientific observations of the country through which he was to pass, and to determine the latitude and longitude of various places.
While Lewis was in Philadelphia, it occurred to him that it would be wise to organize the expedition in two parts, and keep two records, so that in case one record was lost there would be hope of preserving the other. He told Jefferson about it, and the President thought the plan a wise one; so Captain William Clark—a brother of General George Rogers Clark, the man who in the Revolutionary War had saved Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the United States—was selected to accompany Captain Lewis, and to enjoy with him equal rank in the command of the enterprise.
All of the remainder of that year was spent in preparation. In the summer the two captains set out for St. Louis, and not until they
Captain Meriwether Lewis
Statue at the Lewis and Clark Exposition, 1903
reached the Ohio River did they learn of the purchase of Louisiana by the American government. They secured the services of forty-one persons, all told—soldiers, guides, boatmen, and hunters—and encamped for the winter on the east bank of the Mississippi, opposite the mouth of the Missouri.
The 9th of May, 1804, was set for the formal transfer of Louisiana from Spain to France and from France to the United States, and Jefferson desired Lewis and Clark to remain at St. Louis for that ceremony, which they did. Therefore, it was not until three o'clock in the afternoon of Monday, May 14, that the little band set off up the Missouri. They had several boats, which they propelled with oars or sails, or towed with ropes, according to the condition of the river and the direction of the wind. They proceeded very slowly, examining the river and the country, and visiting the Indians, but without any event affecting the history of South Dakota until they arrived at the mouth of the Big Sioux River at eight o'clock in the morning of August 21, 1804. That night they camped on the Nebraska shore.
Sergeant Charles Floyd having died the evening of August 20, when at the site of Sioux City, the men were allowed to select a successor to him, and the choice, which was made by ballot, fell to Patrick Gass. This occurred on the 22d when the party was encamped at Elkpoint, and it may reasonably be assumed to be the first popular election in South Dakota. The next morning Captain Lewis killed a very large buffalo upon the bottom near Burbank, from which they salted two barrels of meat.
On the 24th they arrived at the mouth of the Vermilion River, and the captains took two men and went up nine miles to examine Spirit Mound, about which they had heard strange stories from the Indians, who believed that it was inhabited by a race of dwarfs, little people not larger than gophers, who instantly put to death any one who came near their home. It is needless to say that the explorers found nothing mysterious or alarming about the very ordinary mound upon the prairie. They did, however, find much that was pleasing to them. They say in their journal, "We saw none of these wicked little spirits, nor any place for them, except some small holes scattered over the top. We were happy enough to escape
Captain William Clark
Statue at the Lewis and Clark Exposition, 1903
their vengeance, though we remained some time on the mound to enjoy the delightful prospect of the plain, which spreads itself out until the eye rests upon the north-west hills at a great distance, and those of the north-east still farther off, enlivened by large herds of buffalo feeding at a distance. The soil of these plains is exceedingly fine."
It is noteworthy that Spirit Mound and other points along the Missouri in South Dakota then bore the names by which we still know them. This is one proof that the region was familiar to the French traders before Lewis and Clark came.
On August 27 Lewis and Clark came to the mouth of the James River and met some Yankton Sioux there, who informed them there was a large camp of the Sioux a few miles up the James. The captains, therefore, sent messengers to the Indians inviting them to a convenient point a few miles up the Missouri. They proceeded up the stream and made their camp on Green Island, on the Nebraska shore, near the site of Yankton. There they remained from Tuesday the 28th until Saturday, September 1, enjoying a grand council, powwow, and carousal with the Yanktons. They set up a tall flag pole over their camp and raised a beautiful American flag upon it. The days were occupied with feasting and speech-making, and the nights with feasting and dancing. The principal chiefs of the Yankton were Shake Hand,—known to the French as the Liberator,—White Crane, and Struck by the Pawnee.
One day a male child was born in one of the Indian lodges. Learning of this fact. Captain Lewis sent for the child and it was brought to him. He wrapped it in the American flag and made a speech in which he prophesied that the boy would live to become eminent among his people and a great friend of the white men. His prophecy came true, for the boy grew up to be the famous Struck by the Ree, chief of the Yankton tribe, who was probably the means of saving the entire settlement at Yankton from massacre in the War of the Outbreak in 1863. All his life Struck by the Ree took great pride in his Americanism, and in the fact that he was first dressed in an American flag.
On the 1st of September the party again embarked and proceeded up the stream. The next day they stopped to explore the embankment at Bon Homme Island, which they believed to be a prehistoric fort, but which has since been shown to have been but a bank of sand thrown up by the winds and floods. On the 8th they passed the Pawnee or Trudeau House which was established in 1797, and there was no other event of note for several days.
While Lewis and Clark were at the Vermilion River, their two horses had strayed away, and George Shannon, the youngest man in the party, had been sent out to hunt them up. Sixteen days had since elapsed, during part of which the captains had enjoyed their council and carousal with the Yanktons, and no word of the boy had come to them. They admit, in their journal, that they were becoming uneasy about him. Shannon had found the horses and set off up the river. During the first four days he used all his bullets and then he nearly starved, being obliged to subsist for twelve days on a few grapes and a rabbit, which he killed by making use of a hard piece of stick for a bullet. One of the horses gave out and was left behind; the other he kept as a last resource for food. Despairing of overtaking the party, he was returning down the river in hopes of meeting some other boat, and was on the point of killing his horse when he was so fortunate as to meet his friends, on the 11th of September.
The party now made their way up the stream, meeting no Indians, until the night of the 21st, when they were camped on the north side of the Big Bend, having almost completed its circuit. Between one and two o'clock in the morning they were alarmed by the sergeant on guard, who cried out that the sand bar upon which the party were camped was sinking. They sprang to the boats and pushed over to the opposite shore, but before they had reached it, the ground upon which their former camp had been had entirely disappeared under the waters. The next day they passed the Loisel post on Cedar Island, which they describe as being sixty or seventy feet square, built of red cedar, and picketed in with the same material; and on the 24th they arrived at the Teton River, where, as we shall see in the next chapter, they were to remain several days.