![]() ![]() The Missouri was the route into the mountains, but which river was the Missouri? It took more than a week and two separate reconnaissance expeditions for Lewis and Clark to make up their minds. In June 1805 they came to a fork in the Missouri the Mandans had not mentioned. But beyond the Mandan villages they had only information gleaned from Mandan informants who knew the country. Lewis and Clark had maps of the lower Missouri, drawn by earlier fur trading expeditions. Did you know that Lewis and Clark got lost? Plains Indians never subjected their malefactors to public punishment. On one occasion some Indian chiefs present at one of these punishments objected to its severity, and Clark had to explain why it was necessary. Sleeping on guard duty was a capital offense. Except for the French engages, everyone on the expedition on the lower Missouri held military rank. This was a military expedition, operating under military discipline. Regulation courts martial were convened on the spot, all three men were found guilty, and one had to endure 100 lashes, dealt out over a period of four days. Did you know that the lash was the common punishment on the expedition for infractions?Īfter the Corps had spent the winter in the Mandan villages discipline problems more or less disappeared, but on the way up the lower Missouri during the expedition's first summer three men had to be punished-one for "mutinous expression," another for attempted desertion, and a third for sleeping on guard duty. She was useful as a translator when they came upon her people, and her presence was a signal to other Indians that the expedition was peaceful-no Indian war party ever traveled with an Indian woman and her child.īut Sacagawea did not guide Lewis and Clark west, as has sometimes been claimed. Sacagawea also knew her home grounds, the Shoshone country in western Montana. They called her Janey, and Clark was so fond of her he offered to educate her little boy, and did. She was cool in a crisis and helpful in identifying edible greens and roots in the High Plains. Did you know that Sacagawea did not serve as an official expedition guide?ĭid you also know that there are reportedly more statues of Sacagawea in the United States than of any other woman? Everybody on the expedition apparently liked and admired her. He couldn't bring himself to eat dog meat. But dogs would do if dogs were all that they could get. Their favorite foods were always elk, beaver tail, and buffalo, and when they were struggling up the Missouri the men ate prodigious amounts of it, up to nine pounds of meat per man per day. In the dry areas of what is now eastern Washington, in fact, where there was little if any game and the only other choice was dried salmon, usually impregnated with sand, the men came to prefer dog. Puppy chops haven't made it into any of the recent cookbooks offering recipes from the Lewis and Clark expedition, but the Indians ate dogs and so did the members of the expedition when nothing else was available. Did you know that the Corps of Discovery frequently ate dogs? In the 1870s a blue-eyed, blond-haired Nez Perce told the Western photographer William H. Old Indian traditions claim that the expedition left children behind as well. Previous encounters with French and British traders had infected many Indian women with syphilis, and Lewis and Clark had to treat some of their men for this disease, for which there was no cure then, only the dubious palliative of mercury pills. York made out like a bandit.īut sex with Indian women had a down side, too: venereal disease. The Indians Lewis and Clark encountered had never seen a black man. Clark's black slave, York, was even more magical to them. One young member of the Corps of Discovery was offered four Mandan women in a single night. Nobody seemed to have more power than a white man, with his guns, his ability to work metal, his technological prowess. By sharing their wives, they could appropriate the power of the other person. Plains Indians believed that spiritual power passed between people during the sex act. The tribes of the High Plains had very different attitudes from white men about these matters. In fact there was a lot of sex, and the offers had nothing to do with fellowship among men. ![]() There's nothing like a little sex to cement relationships among different cultures. Did you know that men of the native tribes that Lewis and Clark encountered frequently offered their wives and daughters to the whites? Did you know that men of the native tribes that Lewis and Clark encountered frequently offered their wives and daughters to the explorers? Or that the Corps of Discovery frequently ate dogs? That Lewis and Clark got lost? These are only a few of the little known oddities about the famous expedition of 200 years ago.īook editor Anthony Brandt highlights some of the oddities about one of the greatest adventures in history. ![]()
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