The paper reconstructs the return party (Sheheke, or Big White, and his family; the Pierre Chouteau–led Osage delegation; Clark’s man York; privates Labiche and Frazier; and sergeants Gass and Ordway), the post roads they followed, and the long history of the Gap from Walker’s 1750 sighting through Daniel Boone’s Wilderness Road. It is a window onto Lewis the trained surveyor still at work, weeks after the journey west was over.

This summary is provided for reference on the Lewis and Clark Research archive; the full article by Lorna Hainesworth is available at the source link.

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Framing the sketches is a concise narrative of the war’s origins — from the embargo years through the treaties of 1815 — along with an appendix on the presidents involved. It is a useful group portrait of where the expedition’s people landed in the decade after the journey home.

This summary is provided for reference on the Lewis and Clark Research archive; the full compilation by Lorna Hainesworth is available at the source link.

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Letters before noon

Clark opens with a bad night and an early desk:

I sleped but little last night however we rose early and Commencd wrighting our letters Capt. Lewis wrote one to the presidend and I wrote Govr. Harrison & my friends in Kentucky and Sent of George Drewyer with those letters to Kohoka & delivered them to Mr. Hays

The first work of the recorded day in town is correspondence. “We rose early” and began writing; then the letters split. Lewis writes one letter, and Clark names the addressee only as “the presidend.” Clark writes to “Govr. Harrison” and to “my friends in Kentucky” — more than one letter on his side. He does not excerpt them. He does not say what Lewis reported, or what news went to Kentucky. The journal records that letters were written, who they were for, and who carried them.

The carrier is “George Drewyer,” sent to “Kohoka” to deliver the packet to “Mr. Hays.” Clark does not describe the crossing, the hour, or Hays’s office. Drewyer is simply the man who takes the letters. “Sent of” is how Clark writes the dispatch.

Dinner, store, tailor

The rest of the public day is two stops:

we dined with Mr. Chotoux to day, and after dinner went to a Store and purchased Some Clothes, which we gave to a Tayler and derected to be made.

“We” dined; “we” bought clothes; the clothes went to a “Tayler” and were “derected to be made.” Clark names the host “Mr. Chotoux” and stops there. He lists no other guests, no dishes, no talk. He does not name the store. He does not say what garments they ordered — only “Some Clothes.” After the return down the Missouri, the entry’s concern is that cloth was bought and left to be sewn. That is the whole of the social record.

The trunk

The last sentence is the only note on the collections:

Capt Lewis in opening his trunk found all his papers wet, and Some Seeds spoiled

Clark writes “all his papers” and “Some Seeds.” He does not say when the water entered, which papers, which seeds, or whether anything remained dry. He records no attempt to dry or save them. Lewis, who opened the trunk, has no published daily here to qualify the loss. The line stands as Clark set it down: wet papers, spoiled seeds, after the tailor.

What this page is not

It is not a two-voice close. It is not Gass’s arrival scene, which in this corpus belongs to 23 September. It is not an Ordway walk through St. Louis. Clark chose a sleepless night, the writing of letters, Drewyer to Kohoka, a dinner, a store, a tailor, and a damaged trunk. The usual furniture of the upriver dailies — miles, courses, weather, game, names of nations — is absent. The expedition is in town. The journal has become a list of errands and one wet box of paper and seed.

Clark’s spellings are the day’s other record: “sleped,” “Commencd,” “wrighting,” “presidend,” “Kohoka,” “Chotoux,” “Tayler,” “derected.” He does not regularize them. This page follows that text and does not supply the missing pens.

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The Apsáalooke — rendered in the journals as “Crow,” “Crow de Curbo,” “de Carbours,” and (for the river bearing their name) “American Crow” — are among the most consequential Indigenous nations the Corps of Discovery never formally encountered in council. Unlike the Mandan, Hidatsa, Shoshone, or Nez Perce, the Crow are not the subject of any speech, medal-giving, or extended ethnographic description in the captains’ notes. Yet they appear repeatedly across the journals as warriors of reputation, as horse-rich neighbors of the Hidatsa, as the namesake of streams and creeks, and finally — and most disastrously for the expedition — as the suspected thieves of every horse Sergeant Nathaniel Pryor was charged with delivering to the Mandan villages in the summer of 1806.

This profile assembles every reference to the Crow in the entries provided. Where the captains rely on hearsay or inference, that is noted; the journal record on the Apsáalooke is, by the captains’ own admission, sparse and indirect.

First Mention: A Sioux Tale of Slaughter (August 1804)

The earliest reference to the Crow in the surviving journals comes not from direct contact but from a story told to Clark about a Yankton Sioux warrior society. On August 31, 1804, Clark recorded the customs of a band of “active deturmined young men, with a vow never to give back, let the danger or deficuelty be what it may.” To illustrate their fatalism, his informant told him of a recent battle:

in a battle with the Crow de Curbo Indians out of 22 of this Society 18 was killed, the remaining four was draged off by their friends, and are now here… This Custom the Souex learned of the de Carbours inhabiting the Gout Noie or Black mountain

This passage is striking for two reasons. First, it locates the Crow as adversaries of the Sioux, with a reputation severe enough that an entire warrior society could be all but annihilated in a single engagement. Second, Clark’s spelling — “Crow de Curbo” and “de Carbours” — preserves a French-influenced rendering (probably gens des corbeaux, “people of the crows”) that he likely picked up from his Franco-Indian informants on the lower Missouri.

Crow Creek and the Naming of the Country (September 1804)

As the keelboat moved upriver into present-day South Dakota, the Crow appeared on the landscape in the form of place names. Editorial notes to John Ordway’s entries of September 16 and 19, 1804 identify “American Crow Creek” and “Crow” Creek along the river opposite Brule County. On September 19 Ordway noted passing “3 large Creeks (called the Souix 3 river pass) on N. S.” — streams that, the editor explains, included Crow and Wolf Creeks. Clark’s accompanying note that “all nations who meet are at peace with each other” at this place suggests the area was understood as a neutral ground frequented by Crow and other plains peoples.

The captains themselves seem not to have linked the creek’s name explicitly to the Apsáalooke nation in their entries; the connection emerges in the editorial apparatus. Their own “Corvus Creek,” named the same week for a magpie Lewis killed, is a reminder that the captains were eager Latinizers — and that on this river, the word “crow” did multiple duty for birds, streams, and a nation.

Crow Country as Hidatsa Frontier (Winter 1804–05)

At Fort Mandan the Crow re-entered the journals through the testimony of Hidatsa (“Big Belly,” “Me ne tar res”) visitors. On October 29, 1804, Clark noted that the old Hidatsa chief had “Given his power to his Son who is now on a war party against the Snake Indians who inhabit the Rockey Mountains.” While that particular war party targeted the Shoshone, the journals make clear throughout the winter that Hidatsa raids reached deep into Crow territory as well, and that horses circulating through the Mandan-Hidatsa villages came in part from such raids.

Clark’s references to “the little Crow” — for example on November 3, 1804 (“the little Crow loaded his Squar with meat for us also a Roabe”) and January 9, 1805 (“the little Crow Brackft. with us”) and January 16, 1805 (“the little Crow 2d Chf of the lower village came & brought us Corn”) — refer to a Mandan chief, not to a member of the Apsáalooke nation. This is a common point of confusion in reading the journals: “Little Crow” and “Little Raven” (“Ka goh ha mi”) are personal names of Mandan leaders. They should not be conflated with the Crow people.

The Plan to Speak with the Crow (Summer 1806)

It was on the return journey, with the captains’ separation at Travelers’ Rest, that the Crow finally became a deliberate object of expedition policy. On July 3, 1806, as Clark set out southward through the Bitterroot Valley with his detachment, he recorded the composition of his party in revealing terms:

I… Set out with ____ men interpreter Shabono & his wife & child (as an interpreter & interpretess for the Crow Inds and the latter for the Shoshoni) with 50 horses.

This is a specific statement in the journals about why Sacagawea stayed with the party. Clark expected — or hoped — to make contact with the Apsáalooke as he descended the Yellowstone, and Toussaint Charbonneau was being carried along expressly as a possible Crow interpreter. (How Charbonneau was supposed to interpret Crow, an unrelated Siouan language, is unclear; possibly Clark expected to chain through Hidatsa, which Charbonneau spoke and which is closely related to Crow.)

Down the Yellowstone: Smoke, Lodges, and Suspicion

As Clark’s party descended the Rochejhone (Yellowstone), signs of recent Indigenous presence multiplied without any direct meeting. On July 18, 1806, Clark wrote: “at 11 A.M. I observed a Smoke rise to the S. S. E” — one of several distant smokes he interpreted as signal fires.

By July 21, 1806, half of the expedition’s horses were gone. Clark sent Shannon, Bratton, and Charbonneau out to search; all returned empty-handed. Shannon reported finding “a remarkable large Lodge about 12 miles below, covered with bushes and the top Deckorated with Skins &c” — almost certainly a Crow ceremonial structure. Clark’s conclusion was direct:

I am apprehensive that the indians have Stolen our horses, and probably those who had made the Smoke a fiew days passed towards the S. W.

The editorial note to Ordway’s July 4, 1806 entry confirms this reading retrospectively: “the plan for Pryor’s parly was defeated through the theft by the Crow Indians of all his horses.” Sergeant Pryor had been detached to drive the expedition’s horse herd overland to the Mandan villages; the Crow took every animal, forcing Pryor and his small party to build bullboats and float down to rejoin Clark.

The Big Horn and the Edges of Apsáalooke Country

Clark’s descent of the Yellowstone took him through the geographic heart of what is today recognized as Crow country. On July 26, 1806, he reached and named the Big Horn River:

we arived at the enterance of Big Horn River on the Stard. Side here I landed imediately in the point… I walked up the big horn 1/2 a mile and crossed over to the lower Side, and formed a Camp on a high point.

Though Clark does not name the Apsáalooke in this entry, he was camping in the river valleys that would later be reserved as their homeland. His detailed observations of game, grass, and timber at the Big Horn confluence amount to one of the earliest American descriptions of the country the Crow nation would defend, with notable success, throughout the nineteenth century.

Reproach at the Mandan Villages (August 1806)

By the time Clark reached the Mandan and Hidatsa villages on the homeward leg, the picture of intertribal warfare he had hoped to alter was, if anything, worse than when he had left. On August 16, 1806, he scolded the assembled chiefs sharply, but the nations he named as victims were the Shoshone and Arikara, not the Crow:

I reproached them very Severely for not attending to what had been Said to them by us in Council in the fall of 1804… our backs were Scercely turned befor a party followed and killed the pore defenceless snake indians whom we had taken by the hand

The Crow themselves are absent from these final councils. The captains had carried Charbonneau and Sacagawea hundreds of miles partly in hope of speaking with the Apsáalooke; that conversation never occurred.

What the Record Does — and Does Not — Tell Us

The journal record on the Crow is genuinely sparse. Lewis and Clark did not visit a Crow village, did not give a Crow chief a peace medal, did not record a Crow vocabulary, and did not transcribe a Crow speech. What the journals do preserve is suggestive but secondhand:

• A Sioux memory of catastrophic losses to the Crow in battle (Clark, Aug. 31, 1804).
• The naming of Crow Creek and the surrounding peace-ground on the Missouri (Ordway, Sept. 16 and 19, 1804, with editorial notes).
• Clark’s deliberate plan to interpret with the Crow through Charbonneau and Sacagawea (Clark, July 3, 1806).
• The signal smokes and abandoned lodge on the Yellowstone (Clark, July 18 and 21, 1806).
• The horse theft that ended Pryor’s overland mission (editorial note to Ordway, July 4, 1806; Clark, July 21, 1806).
• Clark’s traverse of the Big Horn — the geographic core of Apsáalooke country (Clark, July 26, 1806).

Other entries in the corpus that contain the word “crow” refer to the bird (e.g., Lewis’s “carrion Crow or Buzzad of the Columbia,” Feb. 17, 1806; the magpies and corvids cataloged on Sept. 17, 1804, and elsewhere) or to Mandan personal names like “the little Crow.” These are not, strictly, references to the Apsáalooke nation, and have not been treated as such here.

The Crow thus enter the Lewis and Clark record obliquely, as a presence felt rather than met — a reputation in Sioux mouths, a name on creeks, a column of distant smoke, and finally a herd of horses vanished from a Yellowstone meadow. The captains’ failure to make formal contact was not for want of trying; it was a measure of how thoroughly the Apsáalooke controlled the country through which the Corps was passing.

The post The Crow (Apsáalooke) in the Lewis & Clark Journals: A Distant but Decisive Presence appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

The corpus of journal entries supplied for this synthesis contains zero references to Ninian Edwards. No narrator — not Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, Patrick Gass, John Ordway, Joseph Whitehouse, nor Charles Floyd — is recorded here as having named him. Any biographical sketch of Edwards drawn strictly from the Lewis and Clark journals must therefore acknowledge, at the outset, that the expedition’s daily record as preserved in this dataset is silent on the man.

Because the editorial brief for this series forbids speculation beyond the journal record, what follows is a careful accounting of that silence rather than a conventional biography. Readers seeking Edwards’s full life story — his Kentucky origins, his service as Chief Justice of the Kentucky Court of Appeals, his appointment by President James Madison as Governor of the Illinois Territory in 1809, his later U.S. Senate career, and his governorship of the State of Illinois — will need to consult sources outside the expedition journals.

Why the Silence Is Plausible

The chronological fit between Edwards’s public career and the expedition helps explain why the captains never wrote his name. The Corps of Discovery departed Camp Dubois in May 1804 and returned to St. Louis in September 1806. During that entire window, Ninian Edwards held no federal office connected to the Louisiana Purchase territory. His appointment as territorial governor of Illinois did not come until 1809, three years after Lewis and Clark had completed their journey and submitted their reports. The expedition’s correspondence with territorial officials during the journey was directed instead to figures such as Amos Stoddard at St. Louis, and ultimately to President Jefferson and Secretary of War Henry Dearborn.

The journals, when they do name civil officials, tend to do so at moments of departure, resupply, or return — the bookends of the expedition where the Corps interfaced with the settled administrative world. Edwards was simply not yet part of that world in any capacity that would have brought him into the captains’ orbit.

What the Journals Record Instead

Where one might expect to find a territorial governor named, the journals supply other figures. The handoff of Upper Louisiana from Spanish to French to American authority in March 1804 was managed by Stoddard, whose name does appear in the captains’ correspondence and in Clark’s Camp Dubois notations. The Indian agents, traders, and military officers who appear by name — Pierre Chouteau, Auguste Chouteau, James Wilkinson, and others — were the men actually positioned along the Missouri frontier during the expedition’s active years.

This pattern is consistent with how the journals function as documents. Lewis and Clark wrote what they saw, whom they met, and whose dispatches they received. They were not chroniclers of stateside political appointments that occurred after their return. By the time Edwards became a name to reckon with in Illinois affairs, the journals had been closed and their authors had moved on — Lewis to his governorship of Upper Louisiana and his death in 1809, Clark to his long career as Indian agent and later Governor of Missouri Territory.

The Edwards–Clark Connection Outside the Journals

It bears noting — though only as context for the silence, not as journal content — that Ninian Edwards and William Clark would later become contemporaries in the administration of the western territories, with overlapping responsibilities for Indian affairs during and after the War of 1812. Any documentary record of their interaction belongs to Clark’s post-expedition correspondence and to territorial papers, not to the expedition journals themselves. This synthesis cannot draw on those sources under its present brief.

Narrators Cited

None. No narrator in the supplied corpus mentions Ninian Edwards.

Direct Quotations from the Journals

None can be offered. Because no entry in the dataset references Edwards, there is no primary-source passage to reproduce in blockquote form. To fabricate or paraphrase a passage would violate the evidentiary standard of this series.

Assessing the Absence

It is tempting, when assembling a biographical entry, to fill silence with inference. The discipline of working strictly from the journal record, however, requires that absence be reported as absence. Ninian Edwards’s non-appearance in the Lewis and Clark journals is not a puzzle requiring resolution; it is a straightforward consequence of timing. He was not yet the man history remembers when the captains were writing, and the captains were no longer writing when he became that man.

For researchers using this synthesis as an entry point, the practical implication is this: to study Edwards in relation to the expedition’s legacy — its aftermath in Illinois country, its consequences for Indian policy in the territory he would govern, its place in the broader American occupation of the Mississippi watershed — one must turn from the journals to the Edwards Papers, to the Territorial Papers of the United States, and to the correspondence files of William Clark in his post-expedition role as Superintendent of Indian Affairs at St. Louis.

Conclusion

This entry is, by necessity, a record of what the journals do not say. Sources for Ninian Edwards within the Lewis and Clark expedition record, as represented in the dataset provided, are wholly sparse — indeed, they are absent. Future supplementation of the corpus with letters, reports, or marginalia not currently tagged to Edwards may alter this picture. Until then, the honest synthesis is the silent one.

The post Ninian Edwards in the Lewis & Clark Journals: A Figure at the Margins of the Record appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

Hunting, Fishing, Gathering

“So long as any of the lands ceded, granted, and relinquished under this treaty remain part of the public domain, Indians belonging to the above-mentioned tribes, and living on the reduced reservation, shall have the right, without any charge therefor, to cut timber for their own use, but not for sale, and to pasture their live stock on said public lands, and to hunt thereon and to fish in the streams thereof.” — (Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of the Fort Hall Reservation)

Present-Day Tribes

• Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of the Fort Hall Reservation

The post Agreement with the Shoshone and Bannock of Fort Hall, 1898 (ratified 1900) appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

Fountains and Springs

“The two tribes hereby absolutely and unqualifiedly relinquish, cede, and convey unto the United States a tract or tracts of land at and in the vicinity of the village of Sulphur, in the Chickasaw Nation, of not exceeding six hundred and forty acres, to be selected, under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, within four months after the final ratification of this agreement, and to embrace all the natural springs in and about said village, and so much of Sulphur Creek, Rock Creek, Buckhorn Creek, and the lands adjacent to said natural springs and creeks as may be deemed necessary by the Secretary of the Interior for the proper utilization and control of said springs and the waters of said creeks,” — (The Chickasaw Nation)

Present-Day Tribes

• The Chickasaw Nation

The post Choctaw-Chickasaw Supplemental Agreement, 1902 (Act of July 1, 1902) appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

Present-Day Tribes

• Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe of the Cheyenne River Reservation, South Dakota

Citations

Tiller 691

The post Presidential Proclamation, 1890 (Sioux Act lands opened; Cheyenne River agency tract reserved) appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

Present-Day Tribes

• Crow Tribe of Montana

Citations

DeMallie 695, 698

Tiller 476

The post Agreement with the Crow, 1890 (ratified by Act of Mar. 3, 1891) appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.

Present-Day Tribes

• Fort Belknap Indian Community of the Fort Belknap Reservation of Montana
• Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation, North Dakota

Citations

DeMallie 677; Tiller 591

Tiller 481

The post Agreement with the Arikara, Gros Ventre (Hidatsa), and Mandan, 1886 (ratified by Act of Mar. 3, 1891) appeared first on Lewis & Clark Research Database.