George Gibson
Private George Gibson was a skilled hunter and fiddle player who served in the Corps of Discovery. Along with Pierre Cruzatte, Gibson provided musical entertainment that boosted morale and helped establish friendly relations with Native peoples during the expedition. He was frequently selected for hunting parties and special assignments. Gibson suffered a serious fall from a horse during the return journey in 1806, which temporarily incapacitated him. He died in St. Louis in 1809, just a few years after the expedition's return.
Biography
George Gibson (d. 1809) was a private in the Corps of Discovery known for his fiddle-playing abilities — he and Pierre Cruzatte provided the expedition’s musical entertainment. Gibson was also a skilled horseman and hunter.
During the return journey, Gibson served in Clark’s party descending the Yellowstone River. He suffered a serious injury when he fell on a sharp snag while mounting a horse, driving a stick nearly two inches into his thigh. Despite this painful wound, he recovered and continued the journey.
Gibson was also one of the expedition’s salt-makers at Fort Clatsop, helping to boil seawater on the Oregon coast to produce the salt the party desperately needed for preserving food on the return trip.
After the expedition, Gibson died in St. Louis in 1809 under circumstances that are unclear. His death came just a few months before Lewis’s own death on the Natchez Trace.
Related Locations
Note: the longest gap between tagged appearances is about 8 months (Sep 11, 1804 → May 13, 1805). George Gibson may have been present in the corps during that span but is not named in the journals.
Journal Entries (95)
Cross-Narrator Analyses
Analyses that cite or discuss George Gibson — showing 5 of the most recent matches.
Forty Minutes Against the Wind: A Squall on the Missouri
The squall of July 14, 1804 produced redundant entries in the early expedition record. Five narrators preserve accounts of the same brief…
Four Pens, Four Rivers: The Expedition Divides on the Plains
By July 19, 1806, the Corps of Discovery had splintered into multiple detachments executing Captain Lewis's ambitious return strategy. The journals from…
Gibson Carried Home: Three Voices on a Sick Man’s Return to Fort Clatsop
The entries of February 15, 1806, capture a single event from radically different vantage points: Sergeant Pryor's late-day arrival at Fort Clatsop…
George Shannon: The Youngest Soldier of the Corps of Discovery
IntroductionGeorge Shannon was, at roughly eighteen years of age, the youngest enlisted member of the permanent party of the Corps of Discovery.…
Sergeant Nathaniel Pryor: A Steady Hand of the Corps of Discovery
IntroductionSergeant Nathaniel Pryor stands among the three non-commissioned officers chosen at the outset of the Corps of Discovery to lead a squad.…
From the Heacock Memorial Archive
3 lewis-clark.org articles that mention George Gibson, preserved here for Robert Heacock’s photography. The articles were written by that site’s contributing authors.
Researcher or educator?
Get help using the archive in your work, suggest sources we should include, or talk with us about collaboration and classroom use.
