Enlistment and Place in the Corps
William Bratton enters the expedition record on May 26, 1804, when Meriwether Lewis issued his Detachment Orders organizing the messes at the start of the voyage up the Missouri. Bratton was assigned to the squad commanded by Sergeant John Ordway:
9 Sergt. John Ordway. Privates. 10 William Bratton 11 John Colter 12 Moses B. Reed 13 Alexander Willard 14 William Warner 15 Silas Goodrich 16 John Potts & 17 Hugh Hall
From this opening roster forward, Bratton appears intermittently throughout the journals as a hunter, blacksmith’s helper, saltmaker, and — for a long stretch in 1806 — as one of the expedition’s most worrisome invalids.
Early Service on the Missouri
Bratton’s first individualized appearance comes on July 20, 1804, when Clark records a small misadventure:
Bratten Swam the river to get his gun & Clothes left last night
A short time later, on August 7, 1804, Clark dispatched Bratton with a hard-edged assignment:
at 1 oClock dispatched George Drewyer, R. Fields, Wm. Bratten & Wm. Labieche back after the Deserter reid with order if he did not give up Peaceibly to put him to Death &c.
The party was also tasked with diplomatic errands among the Otoes and Missouris — a sign of the trust placed in Bratton even early in the journey.
On August 22, 1804, following the death of Sergeant Floyd, the captains held a vote of the men to fill the vacant sergeantcy. Clark notes the three highest names:
ordered a Vote of the men for a Sergeant of the three highest numbers a choice to be made Gass Bratton & Gibs[on]
Although Patrick Gass ultimately won the post, Bratton’s inclusion among the top three indicates the regard in which his fellow soldiers held him. Three days later, on August 25, Bratton was among the small party that accompanied Lewis and Clark to the "mountain of evel Spirits" (Spirit Mound).
Hunter on the Upper Missouri
Through the spring of 1805 Bratton’s name surfaces in connection with hunting feats. On May 25, 1805, near the country of the bighorn sheep, both Clark and Lewis recorded his success:
I walked on Shore and killed a female Ibex or big horn animal in my absence Drewyer & Bratten killed two others
Lewis adds:
Capt. Clark and Bratton who were on shore each killed one of these anamals this evening.
The Iron Boat and the Portage
At the Great Falls of the Missouri in July 1805, Bratton was given a key role in fitting out Lewis’s experimental iron-frame boat. On July 1, 1805, Lewis assigned tasks:
Shields and J. Fields to collect and split light wood and prepare a pit to make tar.
The next day, July 2, the work expanded:
Shields and Bratton seting their tarkiln, Sergts. Pryor and Gass at work on the waystrips and myself and all other hands engaged in puting the boat together
By July 11, Bratton was carrying messages between Clark’s canoe-building camp and Lewis’s encampment, despite a finger injury — Clark notes that he sent
W Bratten (who cannot work he haveing a turner rising on his finger) to meat the Canoes & bring from them two axes
The next day, July 12, Lewis confirmed the errand:
Bratton came down today for a cople of axes which I sent by him; he returned immediately.
Saltmaker on the Pacific
The winter at Fort Clatsop placed Bratton at the heart of one of the expedition’s most essential subsidiary operations — the boiling of seawater for salt. On December 27, 1805, Clark wrote:
Jo Fields, Bratten, & Gibson to make Salt at Point Addams
Lewis confirmed the assignment the next day. By January 5, 1806, Lewis reported that Willard and Wiser had returned with news that
J. Fields, Bratton and Gibson (the Salt makers) had with their assistance erected a comfortable camp killed an Elk and several deer and secured a good stock of meat; they commenced the making of salt
The Long Illness
By February 1806 Bratton had fallen seriously ill. On February 10, Willard returned to Fort Clatsop with worrying news:
Bratten was very unwell, and that Gibson was So Sick that he could not Set up or walk alone
The next day, on February 11, Lewis directed that
as Bratton had been sick we desired him to return to the Fort also if he thought proper
Bratton arrived at the fort on February 15, and Clark observed:
Wm. Bratton appears much reduced, and is yet verry unwell.
The captains tried a battery of remedies — Peruvian bark, Scott’s pills, niter — over the following weeks. On February 19, Clark noted:
I gave Bratten 6 of Scotts pills which did not work him. he is very weak and Complains of his back.
By February 20:
Bratton has an obstinate Cough and pain in his back and Still appears to be getting weaker.
The pain became chronic and stubborn. On March 6 Clark wrote:
Bratten is now weaker than any of the convalessants, and complains verry much of his back, all of them recovering Slowly in consequence of the want of proper diet
On March 7, Clark applied a homemade liniment:
I applied a bandage of flanel to the part and rubed it well with Some volatile linniment which was prepared with Sperits of wine, camphire, Sastile Soap, and a little laudinum.
Lewis added that he believed the affliction was rheumatism. The improvement was slight and short-lived. Throughout March the entries return again and again to Bratton’s lingering disability. On March 21, Lewis wrote:
Bratton is now so much reduced that I am somewhat uneasy with rispect to his recovery; the pain of which he complains most seems to be seated in the small of his back and remains obstinate.
When the Corps left Fort Clatsop on March 24, the captains purchased a dog at the Cathlamah village specifically
for our Sick men Willard and Bratten who are yet in a weak State.
The Sweat-Lodge Cure
Bratton’s recovery, when it came, was dramatic and unconventional. On May 24, 1806, in the Nez Perce country, Clark recorded the suggestion of John Shields:
W. Brattin is yet very low he eats hartily but he is So weak in the Small of his back that he Can’t walk. we have made use of every remidy to restore him without it’s haveing the desired effect. one of our party, John Shields observed that he had Seen men in Similar Situations restored by Violent Swets.
Shields then constructed a sweat hole — Lewis describes it as
a circular hole of 3 feet diamiter and four feet deep in the earth
— heated it with fire, and seated Bratton inside, water at hand to create steam. The treatment, an adaptation of Native American sweating, restored Bratton where European medicine had failed. The journals from this point begin treating his case as on the mend.
Character and Significance
The journal record presents Bratton as a steady and capable enlisted man — sufficiently respected to be considered for sergeant, sufficiently dependable to be sent on diplomatic errands and arduous craft tasks, and sufficiently skilled to spend the Pacific winter as one of the three saltmakers. His prolonged illness through the winter and spring of 1806 also makes him one of the most medically documented members of the Corps; the captains’ attempts to treat his obstinate back pain — and the eventual success of an Indigenous-derived sweat cure — supply some of the most detailed health entries in the journals.
The journals say nothing of Bratton’s life before or after the expedition; this synthesis is therefore confined to what the daily entries record. Within those entries, Bratton emerges as a quiet but persistently present figure — one of the soldiers whose individual labor, suffering, and recovery the captains thought worth tracking by name from St. Louis to the Pacific and back.
