บทถอดความฉบับเต็มของ SYSK Selects: How Lewis and Clark Worked

of it. And uh, in between all of this, we send Lewis and Clark to go check out what had just been bought. And this expedition was going to happen anyway, but we thought that we were going to have to ask for permission to go through this area. But now all of a sudden, it was America. And that added a facet to this expedition that hadn't been there before, which was basically informing the Indians that they were now living in America and they had um a new great father, which is how Meriwether lew Us put it. How he described t J. Yeah, you have a new great father who lives in a lodge in Washington, d C. And you can come visit him and see, like how great it will be to live under his patronage. But not really right, sign this treaty. Uh so uh he named he was his private secretary. Lewis was his kind of personal aid. And he knew what kind of dude he was. Maybe drink a little too much, was prone to depression, but he he sort of gave him this job to help him out. He thought he'd be good for it. Don't get me wrong, right, he groomed him for the position. But yeah, he he thought it would be. He had he had invested interest in the man. And he's like, this is gonna be really good for Lewis. Is what he needs. He's twenty nine years old, which is remarkable to me. Uh good sharpshooter. He said, you pick your partner. He picked William Clark, who was his former captain I believe in the army, a couple of years older, and he looked up to Clark quite a bit. It was like, I need you, brother, because you compliment you complete me, right, which, by the way, we should probably say there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Lewis and Clark were ever gay. Clark definitely wasn't. Yeah, there's a lot of conjecture about Meriwether Lewis was. He courted several women and was rejected by all of them. He was a total eligible bachelor, never married, never was engaged or betrothed or anything. So of course as time war on, people were like, well, he must have been gay, and yeah, there's been a lot of a lot of conjecture, and they have come up with the idea that he probably wasn't gay, but that he was um by know that he had um something of an aversion to women that was not necessarily based on any kind of sexual orientation. He just didn't know what he was doing and he didn't feel comfortable around women. Yeah, and we'll get to that. Um. The main goal, well, there are a couple of main goals. The main goal for Jefferson was, Hey, I want to find this all water route to the sea that's really important for trade. And also, hey, let's check out this thing. We just bought and go out and record as much of it as you can. Animals, plants, people, uh, what the heck is out there? Basically come back and tell us. Right, And Lewis wasn't exactly a slouch when it came to this kind of stuff. His mother was a celebrated herb doctor um in Virginia. Yes, she knew what she was doing, and um, she kind of raised him in the woods, so he was he was pretty good at botany. But to just kind of further his education and not just that, but all sorts of other things that would come in handy on the expedition, Jefferson sent him to the American Philosophical Association, which was the first learned society in North America, and basically he underwent this like grueling crash course of everything from astronomy to cartography to geology, medical training, everything everything you could you would need. They basically just filled Lewis's head with and he in turn philled Clark in on a lot of it too. Yeah, also a lot of what they might encounter in ways of uh, we'll call them Indians for the purposes of the show, because that's what they called them, right, And Jefferson's like, and don't forget to call me great father. It's awesome. So, um Lewis is in Pittsburgh or in Philadelphia getting this training. He writes to Clark, says, please join me on this. And you were my captain. I'm a captain. Now we're gonna be co captains on this. Just so there's not any kind of weirdness or anything like that, Like, I'm I was chosen to lead the expedition, but I'm choosing you for help. But let's do this evenly, which is unheard of. And it actually even more unheard of. It worked out really well. Yeah it did. Like there wasn't any kind of like backbiting or problems and they actually ran it a bit like a democracy too. Yeah. In the end um the they were kind of described as a family, like really really tighten it. I kept waiting for the story to go off the rails, but it didn't. They really hung together and stuck together. After some initial discipline problems once they kind of weeded out, I think from summer to fall they kind of weeded out some of the bad apples. Well, what's funny. One guy got um discharged for mutinous acts and another guy got discharged for desertion, but they they this happened in the middle of the the first leg of the trip, so they had to stay on and so they could get them to a place where they could go back. So they just had them doing hard labor the whole time. Wow. Uh so um, they brought along a couple of people of note. One Clark took his slave, York, that he had had since he was a kid. He was only only black guy and only slave on the on the party, right on the adventure party, we'll call it. He was Um, he was technically a man servant I guess, like a valet or something like that to Clark out eye of the expedition. But on the expedition, York was basically just a member of the party. Yeah, he was a member of the party. Um. He played a really great role in diplomacy because, uh, the American Indian was had never seen black people before and they didn't have hang ups obviously like white people did. So they're like, this guy is awesome. He's huge, and he's strong, and look at that like amazing black skin that's even darker than ours. Like they really thought he was great and I'm you know, I'm sure all the white people on the they were like, well, yeah, look at me, Look what about me, my pale white skin. I'm friends with the great

father. But he played a great role in diplomacy, um, and like you said, was generally treated pretty well, um, although he did get sort of sort of some of the crap duties well. Plus he also got royally screwed over at the end of the expedition. Oh yeah, we'll get to that though, okay. Uh. And so we have York with Clark, and then um, Louis purchased a dog for twenty dollars name saman And they used to think it was scanning because these guys um handwriting was so bad that for yeah, basically a century, like everybody thought it was scanning two centuries. And then somebody figured out, well, wait a minute, why is one of these rivers called Siemens Creek right, And then they realized, wait, that's the dog. That's the dog. Everybody, by the way, had something named after them, and they had trouble coming up with names for everything, like York, the York Islands in Montana, like everybody on that tour had something named after them, which is kind of neat. So he was a Newfoundland dog and he made it the whole way. We're happy to go ahead and spoil that one. Yeah, which is great because they ate dogs. By the way. At some point on this trip they had a lot of horse. Yeah, they did. So, like you said, they started in Pittsburgh, but the official start was really in St. Louis in December of UM three and they're like, all right, let's hit the river. The Missouri River. Well, that's where they assembled camp and wintered and started all their people and ran them through like army training and took the best of the best. They officially started in May, the falling spring. Of course, you wouldn't start in the winter. Uh. So they had a big keel boat and a couple of smaller canoes and said let's hit the river. And they did so. They said let's do it because again, ultimately Jefferson was looking for a northwest passage across the continent to the Pacific, and he wanted to see if you could basically ride a river all the way across the country. Yeah. By the time, I think they were about forty five people at first. But when they eventually whittled it down. The official Corps discovery was thirty three people. Right. So they head out and they start going upstream up the Missouri River. And it was rough going at first and literally pulling their boat out from outside the water waist deep by tow rope against the current. Again. Yeah, they're going upstream the whole way to the source of the Missouri River. Yeah. So the first Indians they encountered, well not the first, the first situation they encountered where the Teton, Sioux or the Lakota. And they're actually warned by previous American Indians, like, watch out for these guys. They're basically the mafia of the Missouri River. Like they'll demand payment, they won't. Uh, they'll take your goods. They'll control the trade. Yeah. They wanted them to trade exclusively with them. Yeah. And they had done this to the French in the Spanish for years. Uh. And they I think Lewis called them the pirates of the Missouri. But um, when they did reach them, it came to a standoff over a canoe that they they gave them their gifts. The first thing they would do whenever they encountered a new tribe was to like give them these trinkets, tell them about the Great Father, give them like handkerchiefs and things like we come in peace and um with with the Teton Sioux, though, there was a standoff over a canoe that they wanted and they're like, we're not giving this canoe, and it literally came to a point where guns were raised and like hundreds of Indians had their arrows pointed at them and it was about to go down, and uh, chief Black Buffalo intervened. It was like, you know what, lead our women and children toward your really cool boat that we've never seen and meet all you guys and then y'all can have safe passage. So they managed to get through their unscathed. But that was their first like run in where they were like, man, this could go down pretty badly. And luckily that was one of just a few I think as far as cross country unchartered expeditions, uncharted expeditions go, this one about as good as you could possibly hope for. Yeah, I mean it was super peaceful. Um, they were than the Core Blood. Well, they only shot one bullet in anger the entire trip. It's pretty remarkable, man, that is neat. So they hit the great planes and that might as well have been Mars to them. Um, if you think about it, if you'd never been west of I think there's a saying that a squirrel can jump from tree to tree until it's the Mississippi. And so when they hit the great planes, they had never seen anything like it, Like there were no trees, there's just planes. It's just planes, and it was just you know, they were absolutely blown away by this. And uh, there they encountered the Mandan and Minotari or Hidatsa Indians, right, and they decided, all right, this is pretty good place to build. The camps sit here for a few months, and they built Fort Manden, which they named after the local one of the local tribes. And um, and they were buddies. They had like lived together in harmony, right they got they they forged friendships. They were visited by locals, and uh, something big happened here in Okay, Chuck. So we're at Fort Manden, which is where in South Dakota I think Modakotas. They were having a good time hanging out, having lots of sex with the local ladies. Yeah, there was a big problem with venereal disease on the expedition because like they were having a lot of sex with Indians, and the Indians um had syphilis, which was something that was unknown to Europeans, and Europeans contracted it very easily. So that was a big thing. Well that was another thing about Louis too. Apparently like everybody else in the expedition had sex with Indian women, and he was like he stayed away from it. His journal entries about like Indian sexual practices were very like snide. I think is away one person put it um. Yeah, it's just he's an odd duct. I get what if he tried to put on loan that he was

just you know, cleaning up. And they're like, Louis, it doesn't hurt when he peas like something's going on, It doesn't burn. I don't think he's having sex. He says he had sex with all those women. Yeah, burns when I burn, win you be doesn't burn when Louis pas. Yeah. So apparently burning when you pee like was a big thing unsure on this core of discoveries discovered syphilis too, all right. So the other important thing that happened here, which is I think what you were getting to, was they hired a French Canadian trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau. But they really what they were doing was hiring his wife. Yeah, so Icago way or Icago Wea. I didn't mispronounce it. You didn't mispronounce it. There's a lot of pronunciations, yeah, but there's only one that's right, and they're the right. One is based on the journal entries of Louis Clark everybody else on the expedition. Because this was an expedition, everyone was expected to like make notes and and yeah, they were all journal stuff down right. And Soccagea is mentioned dozens of times in these journals because she did do some outstanding stuff. Um, and she's mentioned phonetically, so it's Socca go wella. Also, at some point it's also mentioned that her name is Shoshone for bird woman, and the Shoshone Scaga is bird and Wea is a woman, So it's Chicago Wea, not Socca joeya. That's right. Well, I mean that's a big point. It's true, although the kN Burns thing, these historians all pronounced it differently, which was sort of frustrating. Well, yeah, there's such a cowaka yeah, and then sca joweyah. Yeah. One of the ladies called her straight up Sacawa and I was like straight up, so we right up. So she was very important because A she was a translator. B she was essentially a white flag everywhere they went. Um and I don't think we said this, but by the time they broke camp to leave, she had a baby. Yeah, she actually gave birth to her first child. Um. And Fort Manden Jean Baptiste Charboneau, yeah, who was pretty cool, grew up to be pretty cool. Yeah. Sure, But Scagia, if we say Sacajawea too, I think that's fair. Okay she Um, she was sixteen at the time and she was married to Charbonneau. She was one of two of his wives. Um and I didn't hear anything about the other. Um Shoshone woman? Did she not go along? I don't think? Okay, all right, so um she John Baptiste and Toussaint were a family, even though Sacagaia was Tusson's slave wife, like he purchased her. But she was Shoshone. And the reason why she was so valuable is because the expedition leaders had found out that the Shoshone were known for their horsing abilities, and the expedition had two horses that they set out with, and we're like, we're gonna need a lot more so we need to trade with the Shoshone when we make it to the Rockies, and we will need this woman. And she comes in handy to a spectacular degree in this sense. Yeah. And not only was she a white flag, she was just great for the spirit of the camp to have a woman there. Uh. And baby was a charmer too. Oh, of course. You know, you can't pull up with a woman and a baby and say like we're warring people exactly, you know, apparently across all tribes along the plains, if you have a woman and a baby in your party, you're automatically not a war party, and therefore you come in peace. Yeah, and she was also pretty awesome. Charboneau himself was described as quite average, but Chicago Ay was the real deal, like one of the bravest members of the expedition. And at one point one of the boats overturned and they lost We're losing a lot of their important records and things. And she was the main one that was like boom in the water retrieving the stuff, while Charbonneau was I don't know what he was doing. Who knows what Charbonneau was doing. But psyche Awa was swimming, retrieved the stuff. This is after she'd given birth. This is while she's breastfeeding, walking scores of miles and in a given week, she was pretty tough. Yeah, and you know, we'll go ahead and spoil this. That baby, like we said, lived it made it all the way there and back. This brand new baby, uh to the age of about I guess two and a half. And he just stole William Clark's heart. He ended up adopting him, he did. Yeah, he adopted him and educated him in St. Louis. After she died, he adopted both her kids much later. So um, but yeah, his name was Jean Baptiste the baby, and he was nicknamed Pompey because of his pompous little dancing. Antics like Clark found him to be quite the little dancer. Um. So. The other way that Sca Gawea was helpful to this expedition was that she was a translator. She could speak um Shoshone obviously um. She could also speak data and so her husband could speak Hadata. So if she was speaking to a Shoshoni, let's say they encountered a Shoshoni person, the Shoshone would speak to sacagawey she would say what they said in Hadata to her husband. Her husband would say in French what had just been said in Hadata to another man, who would in turn tell William and uh Merryweather what had been said in English. That was the translation line and Sacagaweya was the pivotal point of this as far as speaking to um plains tribes. Point. Yeah, and you would think that's setting it up to say in like big problems arose because of it. But it really worked pretty well. No, because they're also trained in plain sign language to Apparently there was a lot of um gesturing that was fairly universal. That a lot of the people who were recruited in St. Louis originally were familiar with two. So they got along pre well. They did all right. So after the Mandon villages, they broke camp and went on um to the confluence of the Yellowstone with the Missouri and entered the land where they started seeing, like when they hit the planes, they started seeing these crazy animals they've never seen before. Uh, it's important to say they didn't discover anything. Yeah, it's very important to say that they were just the first white guys to record it for science. Um.

But prairie dogs and elk and buffalo by the tens of thousands, Uh, antelope, all kinds of things to them that were just these weird animals. Um. They actually sent a live prairie dog back to Jefferson, which is pretty neat. It's hilarious and it made it all the way. Grizzly bears they encountered those for the first time on this expedition. Yeah. They were warned at the grizzly by the Indians and they were like we we've hunted brown bear and black bear. And then they were kind of like, holy crappy. In their journals, they were like, I've never seen anything like this. It took ten shots and we almost died. And the grizzly bear, to be reckoned with Lewis said something like, um, I'd rather fight two Indians than one grizzly bear. Yeah. So here we are in early June. Uh. They reached the point where the Missouri divided that they didn't they weren't told about this, uh fork. So they're like, huh right, what should we do here? In equal parts north and south? Yeah, I mean it was like a hardcore left and right that was uh, basically everyone in the party agreed on one direction except Lewis and Clark. They were like, we were old school, we like in sync. Yeah. So they despite the fact that everyone disagreed, they followed them, and that just shows like how united they were. They were like, you know what, we don't think you guys are right, but we're going to follow you because you are our captains and we want to see your faces when you realize you're wrong, which actually would happen, but it wouldn't lead to like eating each other like the dinner party. No, huh um. So they keep mosying along and they're doing pretty well. They apparently they got to a point where, um, Clark looked down one day, I think it was Clark, it was possibly Lewis too. It was Lewis and he realized that a little stream at his feet was running west and he realized that they just crossed the Continental Divide. Yeah, that was the mouth of the Missouri that they were literally straddling with their feet. Yeah, and they that meant that now they had just left the Missouri and we're going to hook up. First, they went onto the Snake River, but that would take them to the Columbia River, which, by their reckoning, would take them to the Pacific Ocean. So they'd made it like a substantial amount of distance. Yeah. That was a depressing moment though for Louis because he he thought when he reached that ridge that he would look and see just downhill to the ocean, and what he saw was rocky mountains Nevada. Yeah, and he was like, oh man, this is not going to be very easy. No, we didn't know out the rocky mountains and even uh even still, when they finally do think that they see the ocean, they still were twenty five miles away from it when they finally get to that point, yeah, which we'll get to. Oh sorry, that's right. Uh. So what they ended up doing they made a mistake because there was a shortcut they could have taken. They would have taken four days, and instead they had to go work their

way around the Great Falls of Montana, which took uh fifty three days of portage. Uneasy portage, yeah, because this portage was like carrying these boats. But also these guys were wearing like moccasins and stuff, and they had a huge problem with prickly pear, Yeah, which would just go right through your moccasin. And it's basically like stepping on nails the whole time while you're carrying a very heavy boat. Yeah, and all your supplies whiskey and you know, food, salt. Uh So on July twenty they arrived at another fork. Three forks. They named them the Gallatin for the Secretary of Treasury, the Madison for the Secretary of State, and the Jefferson, and decided to follow the Jefferson because there was more to it. I think, yeah, And I think they were like, this is the one that is going to head west, so they follow that. I think at this pointer, either right before or right after they they meet up with the Shoshoni. Have they met the Shoshoni yet? Uh? Well, at this point Louis went off by himself, um, and a couple of more people to find the Shoshoni, including Sakaway right or No, she wasn't there yet. I don't think she was there yet. But he did find them, and um he basically said, hey, we come in peace. We have a camp back here. We want you to come hang out at. Well, they were in bad shape. Apparently the Shoshoni were. Oh they were. Yeah, they were pretty worse for the wear and very docile as a result. Um. So he met these women and children and told them all that stuff, and they came back and hung out with them, and at Camp Soka Goea recognized one of the women. Yeah, that Clark. Was that Clark or leew Us I think at this point it was both who who they came back with and said, hey, we found some Shoshoni And she said, hey, that's actually my bff from first grade. Yeah, because remember Psychic away I had been um kidnapped and sold. So there were still members of her tribe living around the rockies and um she actually met up with them and with her brother who was now chief. Yes, she was like your chief, you know it, little sister. Anyway, you're married to a French trapper. She's like that guy. Not really he bought me, uh which is not funny at all, you know. Um So then they proceeded across the continental divide to the main village with the Shoshonees and uh hard on a tour guide old Toby, which is a great name for an Indian tour guide, and said Toby said, you know, I'll lead you through these mountains but we're gonna need some horses to eat because it's gonna be rough and to travel with. Right, But this is where they were really eating a lot of horse meat. Yeah, the Bitter Root Mountains. It was pretty rough through Montana and Idaho. Uh and that was when you know their spirits were never broken, but that's when they were dampened for sure. So um, when they make it through the Bitter Roots, I don't remember why they did or where, but there was a point where they said, we can't use these horses anymore. I guess it's when they got onto the Columbia River. Right. Well, maybe is this where they were eating salmon and the salmon was making them sick? Yea. So they come to a pierced village with old Toby I believe it, at the lead, and um, they're celebrated, welcome, they throw a feast for him, and it makes everybody violently ill in the expedition, like this salmon is awful, yeah, or these roots or whatever. I'll bet it was the roots that got them. Yeah, I think it was. Um. So every apparently everyone recovered. Um. But they say, okay, well here's the Columbia River. We can't really use these horses anymore. I think one of the things that's very much overlooked in the history of this expedition is just how much the core discovery relied on friendly tribes. So like when they hit the Columbia River, they said, hey, Shoshone or no Nez Pierce friends, will you watch our horses for us? And then as Pierce said, yes, yeah, you guys go to the Pacific Ocean. When you come back, we'll have your horses. Go ahead and brand them so you know which ones are yours, and they did. They left their horses with the Nez Pierce. Yeah, I mean it was. It was kind of the best case scenario story for most of the trip. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Uh. And that is actually too where they were where they traded for dog to eat, which was one of the only disappointing parts of the story for me. Um that and what happened New York. All Right, So at this point, it's uh, mid October, and it floated down to the Great Falls of the Columbia which is now Solilo Falls. And think about how much easier it was at this point, Like they're not going upstream any longer. They get with the current true, but it was the Oregon territory, so they were getting rained on constantly. I mean it was pretty brutal conditions. Um, but you're right. It wasn't like slugging through in the summertime, pulling that boat up stream, stepping on prickly pear exactly. Uh. So this is where on November seven, they thought that they saw the ocean. Uh, it's actually a bay about twenty five miles inland, and said ocean in view O c I N I love the ocean O T E A N. In this the same paragraph they misspelled ocean two different ways. Give him a break, come on. Uh. Finally, finally, finally, by mid November, they strode upon the sands of the Pacific. And this is the really sad part is that Merryweather called it tempestuous and horrible. Like he wasn't like, oh we made it. He was he was depressed, and he was like, this isn't like the Atlantic Ocean. This is rocky and beating us with waves, like the Oregon coast is rough. Uh. And he didn't cotton to it, um. But what he did cotton to was being an accurate dude by dead reckoning over the course of over. He was only off by forty miles in charting this this ride. That is pretty amazing. He's pretty remarkable, so U Sokawa Um. One of the reasons she signed on, aside from being a slave to her husband who signed her on UM, was that she wanted to see the Pacific. She'd heard about the Great Waters and yeah, and so when

they were getting closer um, she petitioned Lewis and Clark saying like, there's no way you can't let me not come with you to see the Pacific Ocean itself. And they let her come along. They had word from some local tribe, I'm not sure which one it was that there was a monstrous fish on the beach, and Lewis and Clark like, but they're talking about a whale. We should go get some blubber and sea ways like, I'm there, I'm coming with you. So they took her along and they all got to go see the Pacific Ocean and it was personal that first time. Yeah, they got a bunch of blubber and oil and stuff from it, um, and it died first, So you can keep liking Lewis and Clark um. So uh. They camp there on the Pacific for a full four months. Yeah. Basically they were trying to two things. They were trying to decide what to do, and they were technically they were waiting for a boat to come by, to say, a letter of credit from Jefferson that said, hey, if you're a boat, give these people a ride back and we'll pay you like good money. Right. I read that they never seriously thought that they were going to take a boat back. Well, that was the deal is technically they were supposed to be waiting for a boat. What they were really doing was just sort of weighing their options as to how best to go back and win. And this is the really cool part. They put it to a vote. They did put it to a vote. Um, and then it was a vote that included an African American and a woman and a Native American. Yeah, and it was a whoaa and york both both their votes were given equal weight to everybody else's. It was very cool. Where to camp set up camp for the winter. Yeah, So they elected to cross the river to the south Um where they were informed that there was elk and deer. You can hold up here, you can hunt all winter, And they did and prepare yourself with the return journey home. All right, So here we are at Fort Clatsop, Oregon. Yeah, named after the Clatsop tribe. They were hunting, They were storing up, they were getting their provisions in order, getting ready to go back, and they hauled butt on the way back they did. Yeah, you know how it is sure it Plus it doesn't take as long because now you know how long it's gonna take. Yeah, And they weren't stopping to record everything they did. Actually we've already seen it. Yea been there. Um. But the group wasn't as happy. Uh, they were irritable, especially Lewis. He kind of fell into a depression on the way home. He didn't Did he come out of it at all while they were at the Pacific or did it just stick the whole time? Well, I mean I think it was up and down. Basically. They believe when he was not recording in his journal he was depressed. Um, but he is remarkable and that he soldiered on like this is a manic depressive who was still like getting up every day and doing this and like the worst thing he did was not journal you know. Um. Actually the worst thing he did was on the way back. He stole a canoe at one point, which is really out of character, and he was described as kind of like cracking at the seams at this point, which is really sad. So in March six, they started back up the Colombia with these new canoes, bartered for some horses, and camped with the Nez Pierce for a month, and then they got their horses back from the Nez Pierce, those horses that those were there before they got back there to the next piers. They bartered for some horses and then eventually hooked back with the next Pierson camp for like a month and got their horses back and got their horses back. I think that's your favorite part of this, Mordin's. They're like, hey, guys, were you hanging onto this for They also sunk their canoes at a certain point and then went back and got those to keep keep the canoes from being sent down river. They just sunk them and then they came back and got them. It's pretty cool. So they basically retraced their trail through the Bitter Roots um only one retrograde march on the entire journey, which means you have to double back basically, which is in itself pretty remarkable. Uh. And then on July six they separated, Um back where they were at that original shortcut that they should have taken, and said, hey, let's send off some different factions here and do a little bit more exploring and a little bit more recording of things. They're like, we we've slacked off. Well, yeah, because they were kind of, like I said, they were holl and butt on the way home. Um, this is where Louis where they ran into their first kind of violent episode with the black Feet Indians, and Um, a dude shot at Louis. He shot back, hit the guy in the belly. Another guy stabbed the black Feet Indian or is it a Blackfoot Indian? I think? Okay? And Um they rode away like the black Feet did, but two of them died, and it was you know, it was sad they had gone all that way without violence and they finally kind of had to their hand was forced, essentially. Chuck. Also, Um, there was another shooting that took place during this period, but this one was accidental. Um. Louis was actually shot when he was mistaken for an elk while he was out hunting with a member of the expedition Pierre Cruzette and uh cruzat Um didn't fess up to it immediately. He was like, oh, I guess from Indians. It must have been those black feet and uh Finally, when they searched the area and found no sign of black feet, cruise I was like, I'm sorry, I thought you're an elk. I'm blind in one eye, don't forget. Yeah, but I'm the fiddle player and everybody loves me. And Louis was like, we'll just let it go and apparently was really in a lot of pain. It hit him in the try and like he had a very long and difficult recovery for the rest of the time. But it was about this time when everybody came back together. Yeah, and this, you know, we're sort of simplifying this part of the story. But they eventually did all meet back up um pretty remarkably. Like I think the story is one of them around it a band, and right as they did that, the

others were rounding the band and they're like, oh, hey, it's you. Like it's you out here in the middle of nowhere. Uh. So they eventually went back to the Mandan villages that is where the Charbonneau family, UM left the expedition um and that is where a private John Coulter, who was one of the men, said, you know what St. Louis like, I didn't like it there. I really like it out here. Can I can I go back? And they're like, sure, man, go go west, young man exactly, and he did so he did. He he was going to um work with some French trappers and they had a following out pretty quickly after. And then this guy Coulter, Yeah, he went off on his own. And they think he was the first white person to enter what's now Yellowstone Park, and he was. He was the first to recount the geysers and even um still there's part of it called Coulter's Hell. Oh cool, the guys are area of Yellowstone very cool. Uh So reportedly, the only thing they did not run out of on the way home was powder, lead, paper, and ink, or at least that's what Kiinnburn says. You know how they put a little cherry on top of everything, right. Uh. Finally, in September of eighteen o six, on the twenty three, they arrived victorious in St. Louis and the river was lined with people cheering for them shooting their guns in the air, and like we should point out everyone thought they were dead. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean for a long time, like they were sending messages back in Prairie dogs. But then at a certain point that just wasn't possible. So even Jefferson had given up hope. They've been like they've been gone for two and a half years, like we're not going to hear from Lewis and Clark again. And then they did, and then they did. And UM covered about eight thousand miles over two years, four months and nine days, discovered I'm sorry not discovered, recorded hundred and twenty two animals that they had never seen, hundred and seventy eight plants that they had never seen, and did a pretty darn good job of cartographing. Cartographing is that even a word? Ye drawn maps? UM describing the Rocky mountains and Jeffery was like, rocky mountains, I have mountains, Now, what are those? And they were like they're snow capped even in the summer, and they were, you know, they had never seen any of this. They were blown away. So um after this, uh, Clark sets up shop in St. Louis. Yeah, they doubled everyone's pay, which was nice, and gave everyone a bunch of land. Right, you got I think three d and twenty acres and some Clark got six d each. But the rest of the guy's got like almost the rest two people did not get any land or any money, and that was Skagwaya and York. Yeah, um, which sucks. He had. Apparently York had a difficult reentry into slavery, I can imagine. So could you think about like living like that and then going back to being a slave. Yeah, And so he asked um Clark for his freedom. He was like, I know I don't get land all the stuff, but how about my freedom? And Clark was like no, And not only

that, he wrote his brother a letter and said, you know, York is being kind of uppity since he got back. He's not he's not being a good slave of and he's having trouble and uh so I had to beat him. No, Yeah, that was that was the one time I was like, oh man, yeah, that's pretty awful. It was like really headed in the good direction. And all that had to happen was he could have just said, yes, you are free, and then it would have been the best story ever. Man. That's that's really awful. I had no idea about that. Yeah, and then there were there are various accounts that he might have been freed a few years later or perhaps escaped. No one is quite for sure, even though I've noticed kin Burns does a lot of factual stating of things that are disputed. Like he just said straight up that he was freed five years later, and I read up on it, and people like maybe not. Ken Burns just does whatever his haircut tells him. I'm a sucker for those things, though. I mean, I know a lot of documentary filmmakers kind of poopoo him. Yeah. Well, I mean it takes a certain interpretation, and that's that exactly Like you said, Wait, hold on, I'm really disappointed in Clark. I know that stinks. What do you want me to do? I don't know. I guess to talk about Lewis. Yeah, I mean, Clark went on, we should say to have like a very successful rest of his career. Well, hold on, you want to go bright side? Bill Clinton in two thousand one gave a posthumous um rank a sergeant in the army to York. Oh great, So that's kind of nice and um way to go. Clinton. Today, there are some statues commemorating York. One in Louisville, Kentucky. I think there's one at Lewis and Clark College in Portland. In Kansas City, there's one. So he's he's definitely been smiled upon historically as like a great man and adventurer by everyone but William Clark. Yeah, and his family, who was like no. So Louis had some difficulties upon returning home. He's made governor appointed governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory and thinks started out well, but then he kind of got into financial trouble. I think his territory got into financial trouble, right, and he wasn't going to Washington. He wasn't able to complete. The big thing was that he wasn't able to complete what he was supposed to do, which has come back and write about the whole thing. Yeah. Those weren't published until eighteen fourteen, which is eight years after they returned, and even then they were published after his death. Yeah, so he was. He was, by all accounts, pretty depressed. He was on his way to Washington, supposedly to to plead for more money. For the territory. Yeah, to kind of he had been called out on some finances and he wanted to go clear that up. And supposedly he had some some of his journals that he wanted to turn in. Gotcha, It's like here, I've got this right. And he fell out of favor a little bit with Jefferson because of all that, which is you know, kind of stinks. It is because he was groomed by Jefferson. There was

a family friend, like they were friends. So, um, Lewis, I guess he's on his way to Washington. He's following the Natchez Trail, Natchez trace, and he stops in Tennessee at a place called the Grinders in Yeah, near Nashville, and that's where he died. He was he was found well apparently crawling toward the innkeeper's wife, shot bleeding, asking for water, and she just like screamed and ran away. Yeah, and this is another disputed thing. Was he killed or did he commit suicide? Uh, if you google death of Meriwether Lewis, that comes up suicide, but it is definitely in dispute. Yeah, and Ken Burns straight up said he killed himself, and it was very sad Well, the reason why it's in dispute because he was shot in the abdomen and in the head. It's also an expert marksman. Yeah, and the suicide people I think reckon that back then with guns, Like if you really wanted to do it, you would point one at your chest and one at your head and squeeze at the same time. Yeah, Like I hadn't ye, um, but I mean I said he was murdered for money, and what were you gonna say? Nothing? Okay? Uh. Sadly, even though this story had a happy ending, it was sort of the beginning of the end of the American Indian Um. It's a pretty big thing to point out. Yeah, there was a great quote from one of the people in the documentary. It said they left his students, came back as teachers, and sadly America failed to learn the lessons that they had brought back with them, because if everything had gone the way of Lewis and Clark, it would have been awesome. They were basically like, hey, got the great Father, Like we said, we're gonna live in harmony, and they believed him and they believed themselves. You know, they weren't like pulling one over on him. Uh, and it's just sad that it went down a different way from that point forward. Basically, you know what I'm saying. There was one brief moment when it could have gone in a different way. Yeah, and that was it. Yeah. But Clark and Lewis also, I guess, kind of paved the way for the idea of manifest destiny, although that wasn't coined until about forty years after the expedition. They are always held up as this idea, and this is an idea that people subscribe to for a very long time, that America was destined to take up the area between the Pacific and the Atlantic. It was our destiny, and therefore anything that stood in our way should just fall before us as we swept outward towards the Pacific Ocean. That in justifies the means, and Lewis and Clark was like, look, they're they're an example of that. Yeah. Clark eventually died of natural causes in eight most of the rest of the party sort of just faded into history. Um Jean Baptiste, while yeah, he didn't. He became like, Okay, the court is not a courtisan that'd be a lady a quartier, right, Yeah, he was princes and German Prince with German Prince Prince Wilhelm. Okay um and uh, I think the oldest survivor lived to be nine, lived all the way to the Civil War, and at the age of ninety volunteered to fight for the Union. And I don't know if they took him up on it or they're just like, we get it, your legend, but we got this. Who knows. So that's the Lewis and Clark expedition, the core of discoveries. The dog lived, the baby lived. Yeah, the dog made it all the way. They only lost one person on the entire trip, Charles Floyd, and he died early on of what they believe was probably appendicitist first Appendix. And uh, it's pretty amazing. Yeah, they didn't have to eat each other. No, they didn't even eat the guy who died of the first appendix. No, just dog and horse. Uh. If you you got anything else, No, If you want to learn more about Chuck's favorite story from American history, you can type in Lewis and Clark in the search bar. How stuff works. And since they said search bar, it means it's time for a listener mail, I'm going to call this diplomatic community. Hey, guys. Last week, the Dutch police arrested the Russian diplomat Dmitri Borrowdn in his home. They were called in by concerned neighbors because the diplomat was drunk, hitting his kids, dragging them by their hair through the house. The police arrived as and was witnessed to the brutality against the children and also established that Mr Borden was extremely drunk. They had no choice but to arrest him to protect the children from further abuse. Immediately, the Russian government came into action and putin the devil incarnate. If you ask me, this is from Jasper, demanded his release and apologies from the Netherlands. UH. That same afternoon, I started listening to the latest stuff you should know Lo and behold it was about diplomatic community as a podcast drouwe to a close. I received a news update on my phone that the Dutch government had apologized to the Russians for the arrest because it violated the Treaty of Vienna. Immunity one out again UH. Since then, UNA SEF has issued a statement that the well being of the children should be more important than diplomatic community. Maybe something will finally change, Probably not personally. I hope we declare Borden persona non grata, but that seems unlikely anyway. Wanted to share this actuality of your podcast with you. It's pretty weird that it happened when it did, and luckily it wasn't about floods or earthquakes. That is from Jasper in Amsterdam, one of my favorite cities. Nice. Thanks a lot, Jasper. It's pretty interesting. I love it when things happen like sympatico, like that confluence. Yeah. Um, well, if you have a confluence email you want to send us, you can send us an email the Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com. You can also hit us up on Facebook. We have a page at Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. We have a Twitter handle. We're verified now. It's pretty awesome. Uh. That's s y s K podcast and you can join us at our good old home on the web. It's called Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff Works dot com