Lewis and Clark Can Get Lost
ANNETTE ON THE ROAD Running into Great Men at a roadside restroom, Annette learns of their most humbling moment
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Note from Annette: Lewis and Snark
Greetings from snowed-on Wisconsin! Nonnies (paid readers) please note our upcoming online sip ‘n chat, set for this Saturday, March 21. Need the info? Check my March 7 post.
Lewis and Clark? My non-US readers are now likely looking at me mystified. But my US readers are settling down for a lovely session of “Hey, I know about this! I learned about them in high school!”
“Learned”? Well, Lewis and Clark were mentioned briefly, like everything else in the dreadful US survey classes that are inflicted again and again on young Americans, from third grade to college, like some hideous historical Groundhog Day.
Oh, wait. You're asking what I know about these two textbook stars?
{Cough} Well. Um. I meeeean . . . Technically, my PhD in early American history stretches to 1820. . . But, honestly, I lose interest after the British leave.
Just kidding! Maybe. But . . No, having a PhD in American history doesn't mean I've drilled down on everything in crappy textbooks until I mastered for life trivia like what color socks Lewis and Clark wore. Not how academic history works. 🙄
So unless you’re a total Lewis and Clark buff, you (like me) might need a little introduction.
In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson bought a large part of what’s now the western United States from France, in what’s called the Louisiana Purchase. The Louisiana Purchase should probably be called the Louisiana Supersale Bargain Blowout of the Century. Hey, I bet Napoleon even threw in an ABSOLUTELY FREE set of steak knives!*
*Of course, the deal was actually a scam. France may have claimed it owned the big chunk of land it was selling, but the land rightfully belonged to and was inhabited by many, many Native peoples, who would eventually realize that they had been ripped off— big time.
President Jefferson next wanted to see what, exactly, he had just Louisiana Purchased. He certainly wasn't about to cross the continent himself, of course. And neither was his vice-president. Or anyone else in his cabinet. No luxurious private jets in 1803. Who could Jefferson trust to do the job, a man who was honest, qualified, and yet also disposable?
Jefferson appointed the delightfully-named Meriwether Lewis leader of the grandly-titled Corps of Discovery.
Lewis was the President’s personal secretary, and former neighbor in Virginia. Living depressed and forgotten in lodgings in a far corner of the White House, fed up with tedious office work, Lewis was thrilled to accept the job. Awaiting him was a Western adventure that could make him famous! As it did.
To prepare for his new venture, Lewis signed up with professors for a bunch of crash courses in subjects ranging from astronomy to botany. He also decided he needed to hire a co-leader for his road trip.
Lewis’s choice was a no-brainer: His dearest friend William Clark, his senior officer from their army days, who may also have been his lover.
Laing . . . Wait, what?
Oh, you didn't hear that from Coach Grunt in high school history? Neither did the lads in the Lewis and Clark fan club, who got the vapors when historian William Benemann made a persuasive case for Lewis and Clark having been romantic partners.
Annette’s Aside: I learned about Benemann’s article from this excellent brief piece (written for the public in 2016) by a historian who, along the way, explains on behalf of the rest of us why it’s important that historians be allowed to ask awkward questions without being attacked for doing so. Yeah, good try, mate, but ten years later, we poor old historians continue to get attacked from both sides of the increasingly messy political spectrum. Sigh. Never mind. Onward.
Like any historian worthy of the name, I’m open to persuasive evidence-based history that calls Benemann’s thesis into question. But I have to admit that, having read the Benemann article, I was like, “Ya think?” Seriously, the lads in the Lewis and Clark fan club need to grow up and get a grip.
Reminds me of Miss So-and-So who gave me and my students a tour of Thomas Jefferson’s house, Monticello, back in 1993. She clutched her pearls at the vereh ideah that Mistah Jefferson could have had a sexual relationship with an enslaved woman. Which, in fact, he did. My students laughed at Miss So-and-So, as they should have. But I digress.
So: The Corps of Discovery was led by a fine upstanding American couple (seriously, ever hear Clark mentioned without Lewis?), their chests sticking out manfully. They were accompanied on their long coast-to-coast trek by Sacagawea, a young Shoshone woman. In American memory, Sacagawea was some random Indian gal who just dropped whatever unimportant Indian things she was doing, and set off with these guys to serve as their Knowledgeable Native Guide, showing them the way aalllll across America. This was not what happened.
I should mention here that Lewis and Clark, while absolutely worthy of being singled out for their skilled hard work, were not the only guys on the trip. A bunch of other blokes came too, including an enslaved man called York, owned by Clark, and Mr. Sacagawea. Of course there were others who came along! Otherwise, we might remember the Corps of Discovery as the Three People and a Baby of Discovery.
Between 1804 and 1806, Lewis and Clark (and Sacagawea) (and her baby) (and the other lads) traveled all the way from Washington DC to what’s now Washington State, and back. Along the way, Lewis and Clark took measurements, wrote up reports, checked out possible money-making opportunities for Americans, cooked (oh, no, wait, Sacagawea did that, because woman) and snapped selfies.
Yes, of course there's a ton more to know about Lewis and Clark, most of which I don't know— like almost every other historian! And for a long time, I was absolutely okay with that. I have plenty to read and think about, trust me. I don’t have to care deeply about everything. Honestly, I can’t. If you really want to know why, pop into the library of a research university, and take an elevator to where they keep the history books. Prepare to be gobsmacked at the sheer size of the space, and the breathtaking number of volumes.
On my travels, I’ve stopped occasionally and briefly at Lewis and Clark historic sites, and, boy, there are a lot of them. Not a shock, given how far the Corps traveled. Of course, they never really had a clue where they were going. Going was their job: To find out. But hey, they had Sacagawea to show them the way, right? Not that she got credit, right?
Um, no. In a future post, I’m going to show you in more detail why that’s nonsense. For now: Sacagawea was as lost as Lewis and Clark were. Which is not to say that she wasn’t important to the expedition, just not important in the way we tend to think.
For today, let’s see how lost were Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea, and all the others in the Corps of Discovery as they crossed an alien (to them) land. Let’s see what happened on one occasion when things seemed desperate, and why this little story might matter to us. Now, people are finally starting to grasp historians' point that the past only makes sense when we stop making it all about a few Great Men, and think about everyone’s perspectives. Of course, this is also a race against the forces of deliberate ignorance, who would rather we not know or talk about this. Ooh, I don’t mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist: That isn’t a partisan comment, either. It’s an observation about a tendency I have observed among privileged people who don’t think much of their supposed inferiors.
Annette’s Aside: Let Us Not Praise Famous Men
Biographies of “important” famous individuals (no, not just white men), rather than books focusing on people in broad context, have typically fallen out of favor among US academic historians. Not because we’re being woke (most historians roll our eyes at kneejerk wokery), but because we figured out that zooming in worshipfully on a handful of famous people isn’t the best way to understand what’s going on. Early Americanists have led the way on taking a much broader perspective, I’m proud to say, not least because we have no choice.
I'm not saying this broad perspective has always worked out well for historians’ popularity and public influence: We have farmed out most presidential bios and other narrowly-focused bios to popular historians (i.e. typically journalists), who make a lot of money writing stuff the public wants to read. That’s because people generally prefer the comfort of thinking things about history they have thought since Mrs. Grabowski’s fourth-grade class. Or they read a dodgy book, written by a non-historian and aimed at the public, gleefully pop on their Make America Woke Again hats, and look for every opportunity to celebrate their new identity. Readers of Non-Boring History are made of sterner stuff! You have to be. History upsets everyone in the end.
A Refuge at the Dismal Nitch
I wasn’t thinking of Lewis and Clark at all as Hoosen and I were driving along the northern bank of the estuary, the widest bit of the Columbia River (I suggest looking at a map). We couldn’t see the Pacific yet, but the width of the estuary suggested the ocean was straight ahead of us.
Actually, I didn’t care about that. I needed to find a loo.
A miracle! Lo and behold, here was a rest stop! A loo with a view! For my non-US readers, a rest stop is basically a public toilet with parking, found on every freeway and many major roads. Now, here, to my surprise, was an unexpected rest stop on this narrow road, crammed between estuary and cliffs. Yay! Phew!
Leaving the loo, I glanced at a tourist info panel, which featured a map, and text urging me to see a looooong list of Lewis and Clark-related sites. I didn’t even read the text, just swept my eyes across it, and took a photo.
Even if I were a Lewis and Clark fangirl (I’m obviously not), Hoosen and I weren’t sticking around. We had somewhere to be! We were headed to the seaside hotel we had booked at a spectacularly low April rate in Seaside, Oregon, half an hour to the south of us, and the afternoon was wearing on. Both of us were keen to get to Seaside, but especially the long-suffering Hoosen, he who gamely accompanies me to all sorts of museums. Hoosen loves loves LOVES the beaches of the Pacific Northwest.
No, not for Hoosen, lazing beneath a palm tree on the warm sands of some tropical beach with a frosty drink, while azure waves lap gently at the shore! No, Hoosen, bless him, wants to pop on a sweater, and stride purposefully down a rocky beach into the teeth of gale force winds and horizontal rain while massive dangerous waves crash onto shore. Much as I love him, I don’t get this.
Anyway, Hoosen—ready for the beach!—and I were ready to cross the Columbia River on the nearby bridge. By the time we crossed it, we would no longer be in Washington State. No wonder we were in a hurry, eager, like Lewis and Clark, to get on our way! Amazingly, the weather was cooperating in the notoriously rainy Pacific Northwest! We had an unseasonably warm day. Blue skies! Sunshine! Better get going!
An easy trip it would be. All we had to do was drive less than a mile, then turn left to cross the nearly four mile bridge to the small city of Astoria, Oregon. Then we would rush to get to Seaside on this unusually glorious day in the Pacific Northwest before the clouds come back. Sure, experiencing great crashy waves in the pouring rain worked for Hoosen, but this Brit loves a nice bit of sunshine.
Hang on. An unexpected development. Lewis and Clark now arrived at the rest stop.
“Excuse me, Dr. Laing?” Lewis (or was it Clark?) was saying. “How can you call yourself an early American historian and not be interested in us?”
“Watch me,” I said through gritted teeth. “Maybe I’ll find time for you one day, guys, but don’t bother pulling an attitude. My whole point at Non-Boring History is to show that we can’t understand American history just by focusing on a few celebs like you. So, enjoy your trip. Catch you later, maybe. Don’t call me. I’ll call you.”
I was not about to be guilt-tripped by tedious textbook prima donnas Lewis and Bloody Clark.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Sacagawea hoisting up her baby on her hip, and that gave me pause. Nope. Nope. I mean, what’s the point? We’re leaving. Heading south down the Oregon coast. Lewis and Clark looked disappointed. But they didn’t move. Just stood there. I swear that Clark (or was it Lewis?) tutted at me.
I looked again across the Columbia River. We must be near the Pacific, I thought, near the end of Lewis and Clark’s journey to the ocean at the end of the continent. Now I imagined the whole team, the Corps of Discovery, smoothly paddling canoes west to the Pacific, their final destination, along the slow river in front of me. They were all set. They had a nice day for their journey. Blue skies! River flowing gently!
Well, whatever. Everything was urging me back to the car. And then, as I passed the loo again, I saw a map outside the building with a short bit of text above it. Of course I read it. What did the text say? This:
DISMAL NITCH
Pinned here against the rocky shore, the Lewis and Clark Expedition took shelter from the waves, strong winds, and torrential rains of a Pacific Northwest storm. It was the first time during the long journey that William Clark described the situation as "dangerous." They remained trapped here with little food and worn-out clothing from November 8-15, 1805.
Wait, this loo/car park was itself a Lewis and Clark historic site? My rest stop had been their rest stop, more than two hundred years ago?
William Clark, So Much Drama
Standing there on that sunny day, I realized the weather had not been nice, not for Lewis and Clark. I looked again at the calm river under blue skies, and tried to picture it under heavy clouds, with violent rain and wind stirring up huge gray waves. I looked behind me, at the rocky, tree-covered cliff beyond the road. Yeah, good luck climbing that in a gale, hoping to find shelter and food at the top.
Nope. Lewis and Clark and their team, clothes falling apart, food supplies shrinking, and no real shelter, were now helplessly stuck in a tiny cove being lashed by wind and rain, in the worst moment of their entire journey. William Clark, the panel said, had never before called their situation “dangerous.” Wow.
It wasn’t rain and howling wind today. So, it really wasn’t a big deal for us to linger just another minute, for me to walk back and photograph an info panel I had skipped, which turned out to be one by the National Park Service.
So here they were. Torrents of rain. Trapped. Howling winds. Everyone soaked to the skin. Clothes rotting. Day after day after day. Everything feeling like death . . .
Suddenly, the text gleefully reports, five well-dressed Kathlamet salespeople turned up in a canoe loaded with fish for sale. And then comes the event depicted in this picture.
It’s a modern artist’s impression, and not a very good one. Some 19th century white guys in a tiny cove are meeting with Indians who are wearing the distinctive cedar hats of Natives in the Pacific Northwest. Lewis, or maybe Clark, or maybe someone else, offers the Kathlamets what appears to be a big condom. Huh.
Clark is quoted on the info panel, with his good old fashioned respect for spelling, meaning no respect at all:
"...This dismal nitch where we have been confined for 6 days passed, without the possibility of proceeding on, returning to a better Situation, or get out to hunt, Scerce of Provisions, and torents of rain poreing on us all the time."
—William Clark, November 15, 1805
I can just imagine the conversation as the rainproof-hatted Kathlamets clambered easily out of their canoe before the astonished eyes of Lewis and Clark and the Corps.
“Hello, guys! How are you all today? Honestly, you look like drowned rats. Look, you’re new here, I see that, so just to let you know, me and my colleagues do regular rounds in this area. We have some lovely fresh fish for you today, no cheap frozen stuff! What will you give me for these beauties?”
Okay, yeah, that didn’t happen. But it pretty much did, according to the info panel, just not in those words.
William Clark had for days been writing frantically in his journal of imminent doom. This storm that had not only driven the Corps’ canoes ashore, but stranded them all at this tiny cove, what he called the “dismal nitch”. They were soaked, shivering in strong winds and rain, running out of food, cue scary music . . .
Suddenly, these Native blokes calmly canoed in on their regular delivery rounds, and ruined the Hollywood potential of this dramatic story. They sold Lewis and Clark some fish, and then pushed off back into the Columbia River, no problem. Today, this might be like a DoorDash driver turning up with a pizza to experienced hikers lost in the wilderness of the Far West. Very welcome, a great relief, but also a bit humbling, to say the least.
Lewis and Clark must have felt like a right pair of numpties, I smiled to myself.
So did William Clark exaggerate the group’s plight? Was this all-American hero being all-dramatic? Did this Great Man feel a bit silly when Greater Men, Indians no less, showed up, doing business as usual? I had no idea. But it was fun to think about.
With that, Hoosen and I boarded the NBHMobile, and within the minute, we were on the very long bridge heading across the Columbia River where once canoes had plied their trade routes. Halfway across, we passed from Washington into Oregon, on our way to Seaside, far from thoughts of Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea and fish deliveries to rocky refuges. For much of the way, a seagull flew alongside the car. Lovely. Outta here, all of us.
Not So Fast
As Hoosen drove, as we approached the city of Astoria at the bridge’s end, I was reading on my phone. I learned that we were near the Lewis and Clark National Historical Park. Oh, well. Too late now.
But then Hoosen suggested that we visit the next day. How can we do that, I protested? We’ll be in Seaside. He pointed out that we were only staying one night, and that it really wasn’t a long drive back here. He had a point.
And that’s how I ended up spending the very next day in the world of Lewis and Clark.
But writing about that next day would absolutely be too much for today's Road post. The Dismal Nitch is story enough.
Join Me Down The Historian’s Rabbit Hole
As I started to write this post, I thought it would be interesting to see what else Clark wrote in his journal that day. Maybe I could check out the encounter with the fish guys in his own words, rather than rely on the National Park Service info panel. This is the problem with being a historian: We're trained never to stop being curious.
So I went to Clark’s journal. which is available online from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Big mistake. I was headed down a rabbit hole. As usual. I had to climb out fast or this post would never get done. But this, THIS is why history should never, ever be taught as it is in high schools and bad college classes for freshmen: Cut, dried, end of, one bloody thing after another, told in Cliff’s Notes format.
In academic history, there is no end to the digging and thinking and reading and writing. None. When we retire or die, we pass the burden to the next generation (and no, Artificial Intelligence CANNOT do this work, and it’s frustrating to watch us sleepwalk into that catastrophe so a few stupid and up-themselves tech boys and hanger-on investors can get rich). Times change, and although the past remains the same, history is not the past. It's the interpretation of the past. Like language and fashion and everything, history changes. Historians keep reading the massive supply of old documents, re-reading and re-thinking books.
That's why we know, all of us historians, that the history each of us (maybe all of us) writes will become obsolete, and we will be forgotten. Meanwhile, most of us never really retire until the computer mouse or the book is pried from our cold dead hands. I mean, I quit my tenured job more than fifteen years ago (because horrific corporatized good old boy institution in the Deep South, you can’t imagine). I can’t make a proper living doing history otherwise, and yet I never could let go of history. So, even though I no longer write history for a scholarly audience, I now write about history for you. And sometimes at Non-Boring History, I dabble in actually writing history. I go to the primary sources, the documents, and dive in, head first. Like now.
The more I dig, there's a danger I'll be lost to you, vanishing in some archive.
Well, here’s what I found before I cried “Enough!” (for fear I would end up spending the next year or two writing a scholarly article, or even a book): Clark’s quote on conditions in the Dismal Nitch was indeed from his November 15th, 1805 journal entry. But the encounter in the painting between Lewis and Clark and the visiting Indians did not happen on November 15.
No, I’m not going to bang on about “accuracy” in info panels. This wrong detail is absolutely no big deal. But this did mean that if I was going to read Clark’s version of the encounter with the fish salesmen, I first had to find out when the encounter did happen.
I sighed heavily. Oh, you wonder why NBH is my full-time work, and not just some crap I knock out on my coffee break, generate from AI, or outsource to assistants? There’s one hint. Here’s another:
So I skim-read the journal. I found the incident four days earlier, on November 11th, 1805. That was about halfway through the Corps of Discovery’s soggy, scary ordeal, trapped at the Dismal Nitch, the rest stop.
Not that the Corps knew they were halfway through their ordeal. Not to say that they weren’t soaked, shivering, hungry, and frightened. They were. But here’s what happened, according to Clark. I’m going to tidy up/lightly translate Clark’s words for you to make this easier for you, but the original is right here if you want to see it.
At 12 noon, the wind was very high and waves tremendous. Five Indians came down in a canoe loaded with fish of the salmon species, called Red Char. We purchased from those Indians thirteen of these fish, for which we gave them fishing hooks and some little cheap trinkets [cool imported stuff in exchange for a few boring fish— A.].
We had seen those Indians at a village behind some marshy islands a few days ago. They are on their way to trade those fish with white people which, they signed, live below round a point. Those people [the Indians, I assume, not the white guys nearby—A] are badly dressed.* One is dressed in an old sailor’s jacket and trousers, the others in elk skin robes.
*Says William Clark, the man dressed in soggy and rotting buckskins . . . —A.
Despite having learned that rescue was now possible, either by the Clark nonetheless carries on whining about his misery. Yet —look—he also expresses reluctant awe at the Kathlamets’ boating skills:
We are truly unfortunate to be compelled to lie four days nearly in the same place at a time that our days are precious to us. The wind shifted . . . the Indians left us, and crossed the river which is about five miles wide through the highest seas I ever saw a small vessel ride. Their canoe is small. Many times they were out of sight [hidden behind waves—A.] before they were two miles away. Certain it is they are the best canoe navigators I ever saw.”
Well, the local Native people were much better navigators than you, William Clark! And, in fairness, he admits that. Suddenly, the “Great Man” narrative, the forced hero-worship, is revealed as not the best way for us to understand what’s going on.
So, despite the romantic Thanksgiving overtones of the encounter, of Americans and Natives trading in peace, this story of magic Indians coming to the rescue of grateful white guys (think e.g. Pocahontas and John Smith), it’s clear that what is going on is complicated. A dramatic episode starring brave adventurers was actually just an ordinary day of catching and selling fish in crappy weather for local Natives, as they did what they had been doing for hundreds, even thousands, of years. We see now that Clark’s account is heavily tinged with his smug, unearned superiority as he traverses lands that are new (to him). Suddenly, I think of Americans who think they know Scotland better than Scots, when they've just come to stay for a week to pretend they're Scottish. Oh, did I say that aloud? Oops. Hey, I think I did that to Canada when I visited Vancouver. Oops. Sorry, Canadians.
So let’s skip forward once again to November 15, the day that Lewis and Clark decided to finally leave the “Dismal Nitch”, the rest stop where they had been camping, too inept as oarsmen to move, while Indians zipped handily back and forth across the Columbia River in full view of their resentful visitors.
On this last day, Clark wrote,
“Four Indians in a canoe came down with papto roots [no clue—potatoes? A.] to sell, for which they asked blankets or robes, both of which we could not spare. I informed those Indians, all of which understood some English, that if they stole our guns, etc, the men would certainly shoot them.”
Lewis and Clark, United States diplomats, making friends and influencing their way across America! In fairness, it seems that Natives may have pinched a couple of guns while the Corps slept, but, as I have learned, the Corps wasn’t above helping themselves to Native people’s canoes, either. Just saying.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a Native account of these encounters? Ooh, if that exists, I’m on it. But not today. Time’s up. And if you think I went on and on and on? Welcome to history. This was me being brief for your sakes. This is why historians don’t get invited to parties. If we could get away with it, we would never, ever shut up.
Instead, we pour our thoughts into massive long books, stashed away in university libraries, in an age when we’re about to outsource thinking to machines that, really, truly, cannot think like this.
P.S. Bite me, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the College of Ed and university administrator numpties who (as usual) jumped mindlessly on your bandwagon, and the scammers who are selling you to the public. Readers, if you think tech and those who shill it are trustworthy, watch Mr. Bates and the Post Office on PBS (watch it anyway, it’s great). This is the story of how thousands of decent people had their lives ruined by faulty software led by the same lazy greedy ignorant cretins who are ruining everything.
If you look at me skeptically, consider this: After Amazon closed its food stores, in which you could grab the food and leave without paying, it emerged that the hi-tech checkout system was actually thousands of desperately underpaid people in India, watching from cameras. They almost certainly did a better job than tech would have done, if it could. And anyway, is machines replacing your kids and grandkids—think about that— the future we want?
Yes, I really was at the Dismal Nitch. How do you know this photo isn’t AI? Folks, this is why community is vitally important in our weird age: Nonnies (paying annual and monthly subscribers) have opportunities to meet me, I have relationships with reputable historians, and they kindly vouch for me, I confess when I screw up. In every way possible, I work with integrity. Your paid subscription demonstrates your integrity: You care about the survival of Non-Boring History, my unique outreach.
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