Jean Baptiste Charbonneau Archives - Lewis & Clark Research Database

Jean Baptiste Charbonneau: Son of Sacagawea

Andrew M — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:47:19 +0000

Striking out with his mother Sacagawea and the Corps of Discovery, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau played a unique role in the Lewis and Clark expedition. Having a child along with the expedition served as a form of diplomacy, as potentially hostile Native Americans welcomed the expedition upon realizing the corps had a child in tow (Anderson). Adopted by Clark shortly after the expedition, Jean Baptiste was educated in St. Louis. Charbonneau left for Germany in 1823 to work for Prince Paul of Wurttemberg. Charbonneau became a polyglot, adding English, French, Spanish, and German to several native languages that he spoke (Colby). Charbonneau returned to the U.S. in 1829 (Courchane) and entered the service of the American Fur Company (Historical Society, Utah State).

There is scant evidence of Charbonneau’s whereabouts in the years following his return from Europe. According to Reading, Charbonneau evidently helped find some lost horses for an employee of the American Fur Company. By the fall of 1830, he and his party became lost around American Falls, ID. He set out to find water and spent 11 days trying to relocate his party, only to find that they had been rescued by a Hudson Bay Company employee that came upon them (Historical Society, Utah State). Later, he helped Joseph Meek deliver a dispatch to St. Louis. According to Nathaniel Wyeth, Charbonneau was with Jim Bridger in 1832 (Reading). Jim Bridger was a noted mountain man, trapper, Army scout, and later owner of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. Later that year, Charbonneau traveled to Blackfoot country to trap beaver. William Smith wrote that a “Mr. Shabenare” traveled down the Platte River carrying pelts to St. Louis in 1839-40 (Reading). From 1842 to 1845, Charbonneau served at Bent’s Fort in St. Louis (Reading).

R. B. Sage, a 19th century American writer and journalist, commented on the man Charbonneau. He wrote that Charbonneau “proved to be a gentleman of superior information.” Commenting on his intelligence and multilingualism, Sage continued:

His mind, also, was well stored with choice reading, and enriched by extensive travel and observation. Having visited most of the important places, both in England, France, and Germany, he knew how to turn his experience to good advantage. There was a quaint humor and shrewdness in his conversation, so garbed with intelligence and perspicuity, that he at once insinuated himself into the good graces of listeners, and commanded their admiration and respect (Historical Society, Utah State).

One notable assignment was as a guide for the Mormon Battalion, in 1846, during the Mexican-American War. President Polk then instructed Secretary of War William Marcy to prepare the orders for the formation of a battalion of volunteers from among the Mormons in Iowa. The President hoped to “attach them to our country and prevent them from taking part against us” (Polk). The battalion set out in July of that year.

In August 1846, the battalion mustered under the command of Lieutenant Colonel James Allen. However, Allen would not go with the battalion, for he passed away from congestive fever on August 31, 1846 (Missouri Republican). Lieutenant Colonel Cooke later assumed command of the march in New Mexico. Shortly thereafter, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau joined the battalion as a guide on their journey to San Diego, California. On December 9, 1846, the Mormon Battalion crossed the San Pedro River in what is now Cochise County, Arizona.

Several days later, the Mormon Battalion arrived at another spot along the San Pedro River. Charbonneau would have been with the battalion during the only battle that the Mormon Battalion faced. During one event on December 12, 1846, the marchers came upon a herd of wild bulls. Sergeant Tyler described the events, which later came to be known as the Battle of the Bulls:

One small lead mule in a team was thrown on the horns of a bull over its mate on the near side, and the near mule, now on the off side and next to the bull, was gored. . .. One or two pack-mules were also killed. The end-gates of one or two wagons were stove in, and the sick, who were riding in them, were of course frightened. Some of the men climbed upon the wheels of the wagons and poured deadly fire into the enemy’s ranks. Some threw themselves down and allowed the beasts to run over them; others fired and dodged behind mezquit [sic] brush to re-load their guns, while the beasts kept them dodging to keep out of the way. Others, still, climbed up in small trees, there being now and then one available.

Brother Amos Cox was thrown about ten feet into the air, while a gore from three or four inches in length and about two or three in depth was cut in the inside of his thigh near its junction with the body. Sanderson sewed up the wound. Cox was an invalid for a long time, but finally recovered (Porter).

After guiding the Mormon Battalion to their destination in San Diego, California, Charbonneau held a number of jobs. For a short time in 1847 to 1848, he was mayor of San Luis Rey, north of San Diego. Because he refused to enforce the same harsh policies toward Native Americans than his predecessors did, Charbonneau grew frustrated and resigned his position (Historical Society, Utah State). In 1866, he joined the rush to mine gold in Montana. However, he died en route and was buried at Inskip Station, Oregon. Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, through a life of adventure during westward expansion across North America, left an indelible mark on American history.

References

Anderson, Irving W. “Sacajawea, Sacagawea, Sakakawea?.” South Dakota History 8.4 (1978): 303-311.
Colby, Susan M. Sacagawea’s Child: The Life and Times of Jean-Baptiste (Pomp) Charbonneau. University of Oklahoma Press, 2014.
Courchane, Chalk. “Toussaint Charbonneau in the Pacific North in 1805.” Retrieved from http://www.oregonpioneers.com/bios/ToussaintCharbonneau.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj4-rrtjlP3AhX2KEQIHdPKABcQFnoECAQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3j3dzoY1_yayzV3-_1u3Fi
Daily Missouri Republican (Saint Louis, Mo.: 1837) Daily Missouri Republican. St. Louis, Mo.: Charles & Paschall, 1837-1869. Vol. 15, no. 1168 (Mar. 14, 1837)-v. 47, no. 13 (Jan. 14, 1869).
Polk, James Knox. The diary of James K. Polk during his presidency, 1845 to 1849. Vol. 6. Kraus Reprint, 1910.
Porter, Larry C. “The Church and the Mexican-American War.” Nineteenth Century Saints at War, edited by Robert C. Freeman, Religious Studies Center, BYU, 2006, 41-76.
Reading, June. “Jean Baptiste Charbonneau.” The Journal of San Diego History. vol. 11, no. 2, (1965). Retrieved from https://sandiegohistory.org/journal/1965/march/charbonneau/
Ritter, Michael Lance. Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, Man of Two Worlds. CreateSpace Publishing, 2004.
Sorensen, Stephen B. (2008) “History May Be Searched in Vain: A Military History of the Mormon Battalion by Sherman L. Fleek,” BYU Studies Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 2, article 12, 161-66. (Book review by Sherman Fleek)
Historical Society, Utah State. Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. February 11, 1805 – May 16, 1866. Number 428. Idaho Commission for Libraries: Boise, ID. (2008). Retrieved from https://utah-primoprod.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid =digcoll_icl_ 39p16293coll3%2F5562&context=L&vid=MWDL&lang=en_US& search_scope=mw &adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=default_tab&query=any ,contains,Jean%20Baptiste%20Charbonneau&offset=0

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Ken Thomas on Sacagawea and the Lewis and Clark Expedition

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:03 +0000

good afternoon how’s everyone doing today that was pretty wimpy let’s try that one more time for a full house how’s everyone doing today that’s more like it I hope you’re all surviving the heat it is getting a little bit warmer out there isn’t it well we we might find if there’s some extra seats up here in the front row might be a little bit cooler I’m not a politician well welcome to the tent of many voices part of the lisis and Clark traveling exhibit core Discovery 2 200 years to the Future inside this tent we have many presentations if you have not received a um schedule to printed on yellow pieces of paper I come see one of the Rangers or myself and I can grab one of those performances for you today at this hour we have a special guest Ken Thomas Ma and he’ll be talking about sacka Joi and with saying that he wanted to give his own introduction so let’s give him a round of applause and welcome here to the Tent today here you go Ken thank you all right from Jackson Hole Wyoming live on the south border of Grand Teton National Park lived there for 28 years Liv my first 47 years in Grand Rapids Michigan I’ve been a teacher and a school principal for over 50 years I’m still a teacher traveling all over the country doing storytelling and writing workshops and schools for children and adults I’ve written 10 books nine of them historic fiction about Indian children for children help to enjoy one book nonfiction The Amazing Story for this afternoon let’s go back in our imagination 216 years 1789 we have a new constitution George Washington becomes our first president president the very same year thousands of miles to the West in a mountain valley in a place we now call Idaho a tiny baby girl is born Shon Indian mother holding little baby in her hands the first time never dreamed she’ll grow up to be one of America’s most famous women ever known worldwide Indian girl born to a tribe then faced with a life of work and hardship the men were the Warriors and the hunters the women and children did all the rest of the work little girl at age three would get training from her mother the berries to pick the seeds to gather the roots to dig how to cut meat in thin strips hang it over racks in the sun to dry had to help her mother fill baskets with food for winter without it they wouldn’t make it through a mountain winner little girl will be taught how to cut up any size animal and use every valuable part she’d learned how to take the hides of large animals and scrape them clean soften and tan the hides to make clothing and shelter she’d learn how to carry red hot coals from one campfire miles away to the next camp or the new Fire she’d learn how to care for children she would have to learn everything by age 14 that’s when she’d start having her own babies an Indian girl could not wait only plan on 25 30 years of life average any kind of disease or childbirth problems no medical help no one lasted long little girl and her people were being held hostage in the valley where they live afraid to come out on the Prairie and hunt the Buffalo which they had to do afraid because on the Prairie First Trade had begun hundreds of European Trappers came for every fur bearing animal they could get the best price then would come from the beaver pelt stack up the beaver hides by his Camp take him to the Rendevous in the summer and the Trapper Cashes in Indian men catch on fast they know they can go get a stack of these hides and take them to that Old Trapper for the one thing the Indian wants most of all rifle gunpowder and bullets what a h that Prairie Indian was with his rifle he had a special horse he called his Buffalo horse one that he could ride into a stamp heed and HT a buffalo the horse would not spook or shy let him sit there with that rifle and drop any animal usually one shot faster easier and safer than a bow and arrow you know what else he can do with his rifle come out here to the mountains where the Shon only had a bow and arrow shoot the Shoni men steal their horses capture their children and take them to sell them into slavery slavery common most everywhere they especially wanted to capture the girls the girl would bring the best price every Trapper was in the market for at least two Indian girls to be his slaves and his wives the Trapper wasn’t going to do the work the girls will do all his work and he needs two of them one of them’s going to die and have to be replaced and he never wants to be without help that little girl and her people had to come out of the mountains once every summer there was no choice because out on the Prairie where the grasses grew there were 60 million Buffalo grazing like cattle an Indian man drops one Buffalo he has hundreds of pounds of meat for his family he has bones for tools he can melt the hoes down and make glue and boy they wouldn’t make it without the old Buffalo robe you take a look at a buffalo robe fur is soft and curly and comfortable you take a look at an elk his is long and coarse and rough the Buffalo hide three times the thickness of any elk hiide they wrapped it around them and it broke the wind they rolled up and knees at night and slept they took the fur off of a bunch of hides and built sturdy tepes withstand tremendous wind no other hide would do what that old Buffalo hide could do the Buffalo Food clothing and shelter little girl grows up she she’s 11 years old she comes out with her people right through here on the way to the buffalo hunt they’re getting near where the great Missouri River begins we call it Three Forks Montana today there they were attacked by hadu Warriors many Shoni men shot and killed horses stolen this 11-year-old captured and hauled hundreds of miles east to be held until she could bring a good price year she was captured 18800 the year Thomas Jefferson became president is number three of our tiny little country 15 states now in the Atlantic Ocean struggling to keep going and Thomas Jefferson one of the greatest minds of all the founding fathers one of the few who was a college graduate could read and write well was a man of action and a man of vision Jefferson had a dream for our country one day our country would go from that Old Atlantic Ocean across this continent to the Pacific Ocean and be a vast land of many states where there would be peace freedom and democracy greatest experiment ever tried on the face of the Earth wasn’t happening Spain controlled all the south in California British and the Russians were in the Northwest France claimed all the land from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains this was all foreign land out here but Jefferson knew Napoleon was in trouble and needed money to fight England so Jefferson started working on a little real estate deal with Napoleon Jefferson wants to buy all the land from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and tooon wants to sell it and neither Jefferson or Napoleon knows what’s out there no one has ever seen the land a blind deal the Louisiana Purchase almost a million square miles double the size of the country in one deal for $15 million 4 cents an acre anybody want to buy Iowa for 4 cents an acre I’ll take hire Jefferson to be a real estate man he said to his private secretary Mr Lewis we will soon own all the land drained by the Missouri River and that expedition you and I have been planning has to go now we need to know where that River comes from when you’re in the little settlement of St Louis I want you to head up that River find out where the Missouri comes from we have rumors there are mountains out there somewhere you find some mountains get over them and find the best water route onto the Pacific Ocean Mr Lewis you have to make it your president your country counts on you 29y old Maryweather Lewis being asked to go where no man has ever gone he has no idea how far it is how long it’ll take how many men he’ll need tools supplies equipment gunpowder medicine gifts for Indian people it’s a Monumental job and Maryweather Lewis was the man to do it he made long lists of everything he could possibly think of they might need for years even needles needed to sew new clothing because their clothing had wear out president said to him now Merryweather you will be the captain of this Army Expedition I want you to pick a co- Captain one of you men dies or gets killed the other man can continue the leadership we must make it Jefferson building in some leadership insurance so Maryweather Lewis picks his old army buddy 33 year-old redhead freckleface William Clark living in that Kentucky Indiana country William Clark the right man for the job cuz he knew how to pick people for the Expedition William Clark rounded up nine Kentucky back woodsmen good hunters and great shots one was a blacksmith one was a carpenter those two men could make and fix anything out of wood or metal the heart of the Lewis and Clark expedition nine young men from Kentucky now Maryweather Lewis has only one more thing to figure out how will he get tons of tools supplies equipment gunpowder medicine gifts for Indian people all the way to the Pacific Ocean ah he has that all planned going to have a boat built a river boat 55 ft long and 8 ft wide it’s going to be so large if you stood it up on end to be as high as a fivestory building he has it built in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania beginning of the Ohio River all he’s going to do is float her right down the Ohio River there to tip Illinois make a right turn on the Mississippi and head Upstream to St Louis make a left turn on the Missouri and head West he doesn’t even need a map the road has been there for centuries left August 31st 1803 the Keel boat we think going 13 ton Ohio at low water mud flats everywhere they had to practically drag that thing through the mud to Louisville Kentucky it took them a month and a half gets there he picks up William Clark and the nine Kentucky back wisman they get to the tip of Illinois now they can hardly get the K booat up stream on the Mississippi against a 3 mph current they get to that St Louis area take one look at the mighty Missouri coming out of the high plains 6 miles an hour Lewis knows he’ll never make it up that River with 15 or 20 men so he goes into the little settlement of St Louis surrounding area starts recruiting men of the United States Army going to have captains and sergeants and privates he recruits enough men he has almost 50 and he marches them and they stand inspection they take turns on guard Duty Around the Clock 24 hours a day Lewis says men this is military we have discipline or we don’t make it left May 14 1804 out of that St Louis area headed up the old Missouri at high water snow melting in the mountains and plains banks of the river caving in they had to row that keelboat until their backs ACH they walked along the deck with poles pushing off the bottom of the river they had to get out with ropes and pull off the snags and sandb bars they had two 35- ft boats they were rowing Upstream at the big boat more men more tools supplies equipment more boats Captain Lewis wanted to be the mountains by winter ice on the edge of the river last week of October they’re only halfway in what we call North Dakota today average a little more than 10 miles a day of back breaking work they came to the largest permanent Indian settlement on the continent over 4,000 th Indian people living in one place Hada and Mandan tribes Trappers living with them Captain Lewis says men this is it Rivers freezing Friendly Indians we stay here for the winter we’ll start out again the spring and Men we’re going to freeze to death if we don’t have a shelter start splitting those cottonwood trees and build us a fort gave that order the first part of November November 4 up walks Tucan shano French Canadian Living with the Indian people a deer dealer shano wants to make some money he says to the two captains better hire me you start up that River next spring get out on the Prairie and meet some Indian people I’ll help you get along with them I know how to do it I live with Indian people he said see what I have standing over there there’s my woman if I go she goes I don’t go without her she does my work and she’s Shoni and you’re going to get out to the shining mountains and the Indian people in these Villages tell me you are going to hit a a lot of mountains you’ll never get hundreds of pounds of baggage and gunpowder over the mountains without horses and my woman speaks Shon they have hundreds of horses she’ll be a big help captains look that over okay sharbono you’re hired we’ll pay you $500 you get 320 Acres of free land when we get back the woman can go not a woman standing there it’s a 15-year-old girl it’s the 11-year-old who was captured shano won her gambling when she was 14 three times her age what was happening to her then could not happen today she would be protected by our child laws back then she was nothing three strikes against her Indian woman slave going to do what she’s told and never make a sound three months she’ll have her first baby that won’t make any difference she’ll pack the baby with her now president Jefferson’s great Army expedition to the Pacific Ocean takes on a new human feature to be assisted by a teenage girl carrying a tiny baby you check out your history books and see where that’s happened in the United States Army before or since it’s a unique feature of this Expedition next time you hear about the girl we call saaka she’s in the fort February 11 the girl is crying out all day in pain on one of these Buffalo robes she’s trying to deliver her first baby and the men said the pains were terrible and they went on all day she cried out for help there is no help there’s no doctor late afternoon Captain Lewis is worried he’s going to lose the girl and the baby this could be very messy finally one of the men living with the Indians comes up to him and says hey Captain Lewis why don’t you just do what Indian people do to help her they just take the rattle of a rattlesnake and grind it up put it in a little water have her drink it that’ll do it Louis says I have a rattle I going to send back to Jefferson let’s try it they grind up the rattle mix it in some water says the drink this she drinks the rattlesnake juice 10 minutes later Jean Baptist sharo is born beautiful black hair and sparkling brown eyes named after John the Baptist nickname in Shoni pump meaning leader or firstborn and all a men would call a little baby pompy tiniest member of President Jefferson’s Great Expedition to the Pacific Ocean quite a beginning for that youngster’s life and can’t you see Captain Lewis standing there thinking boy I can’t believe what just happened we get back to Virginia we’ll just get a bunch of rattle we’ll grind them up mix them in some water we’ll bottle that stuff up and we’ll sell it out of every drug store in Virginia no OBG YNS needed anymore ladies are laughing louder than you men next time you hear about little pompy he’s an eight-week old bundle his teenage mother straps him on her back sack steps into a boat on April 7 1805 and starts up the Missouri River with 31 men for the Pacific Ocean the teenager will carry the tiny baby almost 5,000 m round trip a year and a half and keep him clean and warm and well fed every day the men will have great respect for the girl and the care she gives the child they learned about her skills right away couple of days on the river and they camped out Saka sees a pile of Driftwood on the ground tracks made by mice she knows what the mice did in that wood pile pulls the wood apart takes out a big pile of wild drw AR choke roots theice put in there for winter food roast them up they’re sweet and delicious and good for you wild onions wild carrots Roots berries stems seeds they said that girl could find food all over the mountains all through the Prairie even in drifted piles they watched her make her own fishing tackle get her own bait take fish out of every Lake and stream provided all the food she needed for herself and her baby and extra for the men they wrote more in their journals about her ability to find food than anything else they wrote about her found out something else about her on May 14th they’re now in what we call eastern Montana going up the river where the Missouri was a mile wide captains walking along the bank looking out at their little flotilla men rowing through 35- ft boats upstream and six canoes they sent the old Keel boat back to St Louis in the spring weren’t going to drag it another mile 6:00 p.m. a Micro Burst of wind hit that River ched up waves three and four feet high every boat and canoe started to go over The Boatman know what to do you get your bow into the wave so you don’t get him broadside and head for Shore every boat and canoe turned except the captain’s main 35-footer didn’t turn shano had the tiller panicked screaming and French to God to save his life Pierre crad a man in the front of the boat picked up a rifle and pointed it at him and said shano you turn this thing or I’ll shoot you he finally made the turn but Lewis on the riverbank looked out in horror all of his valuables washed overboard a bundle like this wrapped in hide had the journals and the maps he and Clark had prepared for the president of United States losing their Irreplaceable documentation over went to Medical bundle they couldn’t get along without over went to tools reading latitude and longitude and making Maps Captain leou said he was ripping off his jacket going to dive in the river and swim 300 yards out there to save his precious items 300 yards of ice cold Missouri he never would have made it he stayed on the river bank and I’m sure he smiled as he sees out on the back of the boat the teenager watching it all happen the journals came first and she reached out and grabbed that bundle and pulled it back on board then she grabbed the medicine and pulled it back and saved it then she grabbed the tools for making the maps and saved them Captain Lewis wrote in his journal later that girl saved all my valuables and he added these words of High Praise on the stricken craft the young woman showed as much fortitude and resolution as any man on the boat good as any man were the marks the president secretary gave her 6 days later Lewis named a river coming from the north sack his River to honor her they knew they were going to come to a waterfall Indian people in the village during the winter told Captain Lewis you’re going to hit a waterfall get your boat down go around a he think she can do that in a day or two they could hear the Great Falls of the Missouri roaring in the distance they weren’t coming to one waterfall they were coming to 15 miles of waterfall deep catara in the river with water going over rock 5 10 15 20 one Falls they measured 87 ft High Captain Lewis described it as the most spectacular feature he had ever seen on earth going to cost him more than a day or two he says to Clark wait here I’m going to go take a look be back in a few days he left June 13 with Saka seriously ill terrible pain in her lower stomach she’s burning with fever pulse is weak no doctor to call but they have Dr Benjamin Russia’s medicine Captain Lewis went to Philadelphia to get medicine from Dr Benjamin Rush for the Expedition primitive Medicine Dr Rush probably says something like this here it is Captain Lewis I got the box right here all the bottles in here labeled so you know what everything is he explains what each thing is he says now Captain Lewis don’t worry nothing in here can hurt anybody try whatever you think might work if it doesn’t work try something else something works pretty good keep giving it to him nothing works cut him and bleed them and expunge the Bad Blood ladies and gentlemen we’re going to give you an IV today to strengthen your blood we’re not going to take it away from you you need it Captain Clark tried all the medicine two days later sagage way is on her back refusing medicine wanting to Die the medicine didn’t work so Clark cut her and bled her and the next day she was worse he cut her and he bled her a second time Captain Lewis said he came back on Sunday June 16th he said what he saw was pitiful the girl lying on the bottom of the boat on her back her body twitching uncontrollably he couldn’t find her pulse knew she was near death he said to Clark if that girl dies what happens to four-month old pompy and how do we get horses we can’t let her die Clark said I tried everything including bleeding and Louis says well I went by a mineral hot spring there’s bubbling hot water coming out of the ground smells like it has suer in it back in Virginia Doctors claim mineral water has healing power let’s try some they get some of that hot water and cool it down Sunday June 16th 3 p.m. he says I could to drink this she drinks some mineral water he says okay drink some more she drinks it he says keep drinking it after drinking large quantities of mineral water all afternoon the miracle happened that night the fever broke less pain in the lower stomach strong pulse strength enough to sit up and hold pompy the first time in days little boy happy to have his mother back modern-day doctors who read the symptoms in the treatment are absolutely sure she was dying of severe dehydration they believe caused by a common lower body veneral infection given to her by sharbono the fever going 104 five and then Clark drains away the blood needed to fight the infection and makes her worse the Journal Record says she was up walking around 2 Days Later the journal also indicates the girl and the baby nearly died four different times serving the United States Army to get around the Great Falls was Agony they had to drag their canoes even bigger than Steve’s out there up a steep Bank canoes made out of trees weighing hundreds of pounds get them up on the bank build wheels and axles out of cottonwood trees put the canoes across the axles load them with hundreds of pounds of baggage and gunpowder and push and pull and drag them for 18 miles none of it left wheels and axles breaking mosquitoes eating them alive prickly pair of cactus puncturing their moccasins and their feet a hail storm hit them on June 29th with ice so big cut the men’s heads open cut their arms they had to dive under the canoes to escape the falling ice that storm caused a flash blood nearly washed Captain Clark sharbono sag way and the baby right out of a ravine into the river and over the 87t falls to their death June 29 not what you would call a good day middle of July one month of back breaking work and swollen feet have paid off they’re around the Great Falls and headed up the Missouri again July 22nd saak Jo looks around realizes where they are let’s Captain Lewis know he’s almost the beginning of the mighty Missouri River she said it’s made by three small rivers coming together in exactly the same place Lewis announced that to his men and he said they began hooping and hollering and dancing with a Sage Brush two two long years of battling the old Missouri River and success is theirs they’re finding the source of the great Missour trouble is when they get there July 25 which river do they take they all three look exactly alike do they take the left one the middle one or the right hand one they’re going to take three days to try and figure this out send men up all three streams to check them out for Miles while they’re doing that s joa says to Captain Lewis I was captured on this River the one you named for President Jefferson it’s my people’s River they took the Jefferson they taken the Gallatin River or the Madison River they would have had to pay $20 to get in the elone national park that’s where they come from and nobody had a golden age pass one week on the Jefferson and all of a sudden it’s made by three small streams right over there by Twin Bridges is now what do they do they’re going to spend three more trying to figure this one out Lewis is going to try the big hole even those know the Middle River is or people’s River and there’s a good horse Ro next to it somehow they ended up on the Middle River surprisingly enough it wasn’t long after that a little more than a day that Sak is pointing at a rock up ahead goes up to the river almost 200 ft high and she said I know that rock I’ve gone by it many times when I was a little girl my people call that rock the beaver’s head because it looks like that animal to my people she said beaver’s head on August 8 and named everything in southwest Montana I tell this story all over about Dylan you go there Beaver beaverhead River beaverhead National Force beaverhead mountain range beaverhead electric beaverhead meets beaverhead Historical Society the phone book is full of beaver heads just beage away a said it on August 8 that’s why you’re beaverhead and then she left Captain Le know that her people are either on this River or at the source he goes to the Setting Sun he find her people and horses Lewis looked at Clark and he said that’s all I need to know we haven’t seen an Indian in a thousand miles dring our canoes over gravel and rock hundreds of pounds of baggage and gunpowder last us more than a year we’re all done right here if we don’t get horses and get them now you said Captain Clark my friend we’re not going to fail he said I’m taking three men I’m going to leave at daylight and I’ll walk a month if I have to but I will find the Indian people with the horses have them come back here we’ll trade goods out of canoes for horses he walked all day August 9 and camped right near Dylan August 10 August 11 August 12 almost 90 miles and he said stop Man Standing on the High Ridge Lewis says men this is the top of the continent the water in the valley we came from close to the Missouri River and the water in that Valley down there goes to the Pacific Ocean this is the top of the continent exactly right Continental Divide border Montana Idaho today lmh high pass a road is up there hope to stand up there and look down and see a river that would take him all the way to the ocean no passable River down there we know which one it is you can’t get down it and what he saw to the West shocked him for hundreds of miles Nothing But The Bitter Root mountains higher mountains seen in his life he’s faing an unbelievable barrier and failure rolled and tossed on the ground that night could hardly sleep next morning Valley and there they were 500 Shoni Indian people over 700 beautiful horses he gave them beads and mirrors and ribbon and an American flag and he said to them if you Indian people come back the river with me we have wonderful things in our canoes we’re going to give you if you just let us choose some of your horses to get over these mountains and he said if you help me father in Washington who loves all of his red children will come out here and Stop The Killing and the kidnapping and the stealing we’re all going to live in a great land and Peace and Freedom as brothers and sisters all you have to do is help me that’s a basic speech Captain Lewis gave to 40 Indian tribes begging for their help for three years the Shon are suspicious they’d come out a month before to hunt Buffalo were attacked by Warriors and many were shot and killed most of these people thought he was going to lead them out there to a trap so of the 500 people only 28 men and three women dare follow him for two days scared to death of an attack came to the old beaverhead up there by Clark Port canoes and the men and in the water sag helping the men pull a canoe over some gravel she climbed out of the river that morning and started walking toward the engine people and suddenly sacka joa broke into a run and out of the crowd came a 15-year-old girl running toward her they met threw their arms around each other jumping up and down laughing and dancing and crying sack let Captain Lewis know he found her people and this was her best friend said they both grew up together and when they were 11 years old were both captured in the same battle sag said I was one gambling by the man who owns me and my friend who escaped and came home alone I read that living in Michigan and I said wait a minute here 11year old girl weighing 60 lb 1,000 miles through wild animals enemy Warriors bad weather Crossing wild rivers going where the Explorers didn’t dare go alone because you can’t kill a grizzly bear with one shot the 11-year-old girl was willing to face death for her Freedom think about that for an American them Americans still face death for freedom I knew I had a great book to write didn’t know the little girls so I gave her a name in Shon this is girl and this is ran little book’s been out 22 years it’s now going across the world it’s in Danish and Dutch and Norwegian and Eskimo dialect for Greenland Bengali for Bangladesh in Korean in Japanese and we think going to be translated into Russian an amazing little 11-year-old girl facing death for Freedom next person her own brother kamate took one look at him and began crying hand to him her head on his shoulder sobbing her brother had no hair on his head one month before i’ cut it all off shony men and women don’t cut their long beautiful black hair they believe their creator in heaven allows their soul to live in their hair only when you’re broken and saddened by death would you cut your soul off and throw it to the ground showing your creator your sorrow we know what he told her that day sister you’re one month too late our family was killed at the bubble they said the girl cried most of that day a couple times tried to do some interpreting would break down when she could speak she did the greatest thing for the country she would ever do she said to her brother these are good men I’m with save my life to my baby stop my owner from beating me help them they’re good men wasn’t speaking just one of the 500 Indian people of the tribe speaking to her brother the chief of the tribe Captain Lewis had the chief sister with him I makers that told me for that to happen that moment in American history was Millions to one like winning the lottery Manifest Destiny and providential horse trading started right away but went slowly Captain Lewis would say something English leish he would translate to French for shano he would translate TOA for S she for kamate would answer to his sister in Shoni she would translate Hada for sharo he would translate engl for leish and leish should translate or in the French for leish and leish should translate into English so in a week they only had 12 horses and they needed 30 and the Shoni children have no buffalo meat to eat they were attacked a month before they’re starving starving children are more important to Indian men than trading horses and the Indian men plan to leave in the middle of the night and go on the hunt Next Day Lewis wakes up no horses he’s in big trouble saak joa knows what’s going to happen she could understand Shon and went right to her owner and said tell Captain Lewis my people are leaving in the middle of night going on the hunt no more horses there’s trouble Caro hears him in the morning and waits all day late afternoon he comes over hey Captain Lewis my woman over there she says her people are leaving in the middle of the night they’re going to go on the hunt Lewis says to shano when you tell you he said this morning and Lewis wrote in his journal that he reprimanded Sho sever something like this shano you knew this this morning and waited all day to tell me don’t you understand that these people have my expedition in their hands without the horses were finished why did wait C down over to kit and said kit did you promise you would trade me the horses I need when I came here did you promise that K said yes and leou says come wait where I come from by what he says and come wa you think the great father in Washington is going to be happy when I tell him you left he’s not going to do anything for your people you’re a good Chief and a good man you will stay and do the promise mark it Down August 25 saki joa did the greatest thing of all saved the day when the horse trading was going to fail and she was the only one that could do it indispensable Lewis called her well we know she uh did the job because the horse trading started right away and it went fast and they soon had 29 didn’t ride him load him with tons of bags and gunpowder give him Toby and his son to lead him through hundreds of miles of the bitteroot mountains over 200 miles up one Ridge and down the next slide rock climbing over dead trees on the low low Ridge in September with snow up to their knees ran out of food started killing young horses and eating horse meat wormy and rancid and smelly they all came out of the mountain scurvy and dissenter open boils Soares all over their arms and legs starving to death and they met the finest Indian people they were ever meet the NES Pur tribe saw the starving people and brought them fish and berries and roots and seeds the NZ Pur tribe helped those men take giant trees 40 and 50 feet long gouge and burn those trees out to make Dugout canoes so the men could Pile in their baggage all the way to the Pacific Ocean the na Pur agreed to take care of all their horses and have them fattened up and ready to go in the spring when they came back now heard 65 horses CU they kept trading for more all along the way Captain Lewis said we have met the findest Indian people of our Expedition the net first tribe they can’t do enough for us strangers middle of October they’re floating that beautiful clear water river you can ride us2 right next to it it’s beautiful it goes into the spectacular Snake River and the Snake River goes into Eastern Washington and hits the great Columbia River border of Oregon and Washington headed for the Pacific Ocean it goes through a deep deep gorge with volcanoes on all sides November 7 Captain Clark shouts ocean and view all the joy made it to the Pacific Ocean November 7 spend three and a half months of misery on the Oregon coast 130 days it rained 118 the clothes rotted on their bodies they hang their elk meet up with no freezing temperatures rancid and smelly in four or five days ate rancid elk and spoil fish washed it down with water filled up their fort with smoke every afternoon to get the fleas out so they could get night sleep all of them were sick when they left March 23 headed home GL had to be rid of the Soggy Oregon coast first week of May back with the npers horses all fattened up and ready to go but that low Ridge came up out the clear water over the mountains not ready snow Banks 30 feet deep they sat there for six weeks watching snow M I come from Jackson Wyoming we have some of the finest snow Banks you have ever seen and all of us locals Every Spring are sitting there in our lawn chairs watching them go it’s really exciting you got to do it sometime while they’re there little pompy is sick 15mon old boy throat up noral size they said he couldn’t swallow anything and could hardly breathe and they feared for his life the man men love him they don’t want him to Die the two Captain take turns holding a little boy in their arms trying all Medicine Dr r two weeks near death and they barely pull pompy through riding the Prairie one day his little face Was Bitten so badly by mosquitoes his eyes were swollen shut not easy for a teenage girl and a tiny baby to serve that expedition thousands of miles when they get back to North Dakota country to leave sakaj there head on to St Louis the two captains agree sack rendered great service to the United States of America they rote it right in their own and they said shano was a man of little Merit they paid him his 500 on the spot he would come to St Louis later and get 320 Acres of fre land anything they gave SAA he’d take it from her as soon as they left they had to keep him from beating her Captain Clark loved bpy and said to P way and sharo let me adopt this beautiful promising little boy I’ll give him a Wonderful Life Education many opportunities parents agreed the adoption as soon as he was old enough to leave his mother Captain Clark’s name is signed in the courthouse of St Louis he became pompy’s father one month after death 22y old mother dying Fort Manuel South Dakota same put fever she had at the great fall left behind a tiny baby girl four-month old is it wrote about her death in the fort wrote these words today the finest and best woman in our Fort died the wife of sharbono finest and best more High marks given her we don’t know what happens the little liette we think she only lived six or eight months but pompy goes on to live a wonderful life he grows up well educated by Captain Clark becomes a hunting guide for weal men from one as a prince from Germany invites them to come to Germany and live in a Royal Palace travel all over Europe for the prince does it for six or seven years he comes back and serves in a Catholic Mission outside of San Diego California he serves as a clerk in a hotel outside of Sacramento he’s a magistrate in the courts of California settling legal issues and he dies at the age of 61 on the way to a gold Russian Montana dying of pneumonia average age of a man then years today we have three wonderful things going for us nutrition hygiene Healthcare us are here lucky to be here and wasn’t pompy fortunate his young mother carried and old Captain Clark fell in love with him and gave him a wonderful opportunity for a great life St Louis was a dead end for Sak nobody wanted to hear about her or the naspers Europeans hated Indian they were killing Indian people Indian people were killing Europeans the tragedy would go on massacres genocide for almost 80 more years not a very nice chapter in the history of our country well we’re in the bicentennial now n started writing about secondy and they just wrote a some wrote dirty filthy pornography Hollywood made an awful movie we exploit I wanted you to know the truth about her so I picked out all the mention and Clark made of her in their two million words over 70 times and analyze it put the maps in so you know exactly what happened to her and the baby book came out of 1997 the same year the United States decided to have a new dollar replaces Susan B Anthony gold color smooth edge new woman I got involved with the coin right away when there are hundreds of women sent this book to secretary of the treasur reuin told all the things that she did in the Expedition and nearly gave her life with her baby serving the Army and we ended up getting s on the dollar coin then aishman wanted to take her off CU he thought she was some obscure Indian girl and we had to fight him in congress with the help of Senator enzy and Senator Doran of North Dakota we had to De beat legisl twice went to the White House where there was a huge out ceremony Indian drummers and Mrs Clinton was the host of after an hour and 15 minutes of celebrating design of the new dollar coin she said I’m going to pull back the curtain to show you the design will’ll be the new dollar coin you’re going to be the first to see it she said to all of us sitting there pulled back the curtain every television camera the ferary network was running she unveiled the beautiful sideway a dollar coin the congressman who didn’t like it that she was going to be on there said nobody would like it was dead wrong came out January 2000 people lined up for blocks to get the first hours 600 million of them disappeared immediately lady in Idaho Falls has 2500 of these stashed away she won’t let loose of them and I’ll tell you why for her it’s greed sa them long enough sell them for a lot more to collectors later pompy 8 weeks old asleep on his mother’s shoulder that’s the only coin in the world with a baby sleeping on his mother’s shoulder this is our only coin where the person on it is looking at you all the rest of profile and look at the Gold tin so nobody’s allowed to use it except the tooth fa ladies and gentlemen Senator eny tells me buying tons of paper and cottoned into linen and running through a printing press making dollar bills that don’t even last a year and a half and it’s costing us 700 million in tax dollars this is the first County ever to declare itself the sagua dollar County your your Commissioners did that way back in 2000 these coins will last 40 or 50 years we used to only use dollar coins in Montana when I first came here in 59 we need to 700 million to help our troops folks we don’t need to be wasteful Americans we could help our troops more if we didn’t waste we didn’t have such a deficit and like there’s no tomorrow so let’s not just put a sticker on our car saying we support the troops let’s do I have enough dollar coins in here to eliminate every dollar bill in the I’m going to go over to that little book store over here and sign books I want everybody who’s got a good conscience to come over with your dollar bills and start using these it would be wonderful if you did make happy I can’t get Congress who elate to dollar bill Canada’s done it Australia New Zealand pound England the Euro they’re all coins no brainer except for Americans White House ceremony was over at 4:30 150 of us go to the treasury Department across the street for a happy hour a ballroom full of goodies and I knew there would be a lot of small talk I didn’t want to do small talk I wanted to say something uplifting about what we did that afternoon so this is what I said3 years ago two captains of the United States Army stood on the banks of the Missouri River looking at a teenage girl in her little saying goodbye to her s gratitude for what s had done for them and the United States America they said their one great regret they couldn’t do anything to show her their appreciation I said today we Americans on the banks of the pomac river in Washington DC and country is doing something wonderful for that girl and her little boy and it’s the right thing to do thank you thank you very much Ken you’re folks all the boys and girls I got all the boys and girls are here I have a special gift for them uh set t one of my books I’ve read aloud word for word and I’m celebrating the continual by giving children a little gift and I they can take me home with them so to speak on cassette tape I’ll be over there by little book and you you come up and you’ll get their facette tape Ken now go over to the bookstore to meet Ken and he’ll be signing books and invited all of you over there right now we have to get ready for our next presentation which is about rattlesnakes by Roger s I’ve said rattlesnakes from the East Coast all you women children will be up in the Raptors by now you all are tough out here in so stick stay tuned for that we we do have to rearrange some of the chairs so in that meantime please go see Ken over there at the small um book store and he’ll be

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Peyton C. Bud Clark on William Clark’s post-expedition legacy

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:59 +0000

welome hey Walky bucks Victory song dancers go and dancing place heyyyy he right this time we’re going to post those colors up caring American flag is PFC William Clark US Army National Guard from oen Missouri Round of Applause ladies and genten next up head man dancer all the way from Tomo Wisconsin Mr Bobby bird Ho Chunk Nation our head lady all the way from maren Illinois representing Kwa Panka and Southern Cheyenne Tanya black Al Moore Round of Applause man keeping everything straight out there and helping me out from uh lame deer Montana Northern Cheyenne Mr Ruben littlehead big round of applause next up is our host Southern drum all the way from Kansas City or Kansas City Missouri Mr Max Neer Red Hawk singers keep things rolling along is our Northern drum all the way from Milwaukee Wisconsin the Young Milwaukee Bucks and our visiting drum all the way from Kansas is Wazi Chachi big round of applause to these guys ladies and gentlemen and I am your announcer I’m going to be keeping things running as smoothly as possible of Northern or poo from St Lis Missouri my name is Mr John White analou all right we’re going to go directly into in tribal dancers this time inter tribal going over to wzi Chachi take it away boys where way h oh guys so to go I God w all the great counil here at porage the Sue and touch briefly on some of the issues subsequent to that anyway get started here in just a second okay well William Clark was born in 1770 in uh Virginia in Caroline County right next to Thomas Jefferson his mentor’s home county of Al uh albamar County he was the ninth of 10 children there were uh uh no infant mortality in the Clark family which is when you think about it nothing short of miraculous at that point in time so he must to come from prettyy good stock he was uh no stranger to military life he grew up in a military family all five of his older brothers served as officers in the revolution his brother Jonathan was served as a colonel in the Virginia line was decorated by President Washington brother George the Hannibal of the West George Rogers Clark conquered for the us all of the territory west of the Appalachia captured casc Cahokia and marched on vinin uh the heroic march on vinin where caught um the hair buyer nestled snug in his winter quarters never dreamed that anyone would attempt such a feat but old George waited the swamps of Indiana and uh sent General Hamilton off to Virginia and chains in 1784 urged by brother George the Clark family migrated to the Falls of the Ohio and it was there the little William found a perfect setting for what was to lie in store for him growing up on the frontier he could sharpen his skills as a Frontiersman Woodsman a hunter and he became an excellent Marksman but there were a lot of other things to learn out on the frontier aided by their British allies the Native Americans were fiercely opposed to giving up their homelands and their home hunting grounds and by the summer of 1788 troubles between them the migrating settlers the Western movement into the Ohio Valley and the Native Americans erupted in fullscale war the Ohio Valley became known as the Dark and Bloody Grounds Clark joined the the uh militia the Kentucky militia and was serving in the IA at the time of St Clair’s terrible defeat the worst defeat in the history of American Military campaigns with the Native Americans with over 900 casualties over 600 men killed and fortunately we’re not it’s unclear why he was not with Sinclair’s forces but fortunately he was not or perhaps I wouldn’t be sitting here today telling you about this anyway uh young William became acutely aware Ware of the conflict The Clash of cultures between Western Civilization moving West and the Native Americans wanting to protect their homelands William served at the Battle of Fallen Timbers he led a rifle company there and shortly thereafter after the Treaty of Greenville a young enen joined his Elite rifle company his name was Maryweather Lewis and of course as we all know a a historic friendship was born and it would uh some years later of course lead to the Lewis and Clark expedition I’m going to in the interest of cutting this a little short I have a a knack of going off on a tangent things I like to talk about and I could be here all day if I do during the course of the Lewis and Clark expedition uh at the mouth of the bad River in the summer of’ 04 there was a conflict between the tan Sue and the core of Discovery uh we come to know it as the great misunderstanding and during this confrontation captain Clark on one occasion was confronted by Tans Su principal Chief black Buffalo and one of his main Chiefs the partisan after having Council during the day they were preparing to leave Shore and go back to the keelboat on one of the perau and the partisans men did not want to let loose of the bowon and heated words were exchanged and Captain Clark drew his sword and all the men stood ready and it could have gotten real ugly uh if one person made the wrong move it could have erupted into a wh scale battle but fortunately black Buffalo eased the tension took the bowel rope from the soldiers as they were known and handed it back to the Bowman things quieted down the next few days things seemed to go well the Tetons appeared to be friendly and they were hospitable but at the morning kbo prepared to leave things turned a little sour again and once again it was the partisans men who said in so many words that they weren’t going to allow the explorers to proceed up the river that they would have to pay more tribute the captains stood fast they were not going to be intimidated they held their ground and Captain Clark went forward and he took the port fire that’s the slow burning fuse they used to touch the cannon off he took the port fire from the Canon ear and he stepped alongside inside the cannon and in his journals he says I spoke so as to touch his pride and once again was a situation where the KBT being up against the bank of overhanging Bank of the Missouri the Tetons with B strong weapons drawn having decided advantage over the core of Discovery one wrong move on either side that set things off and the core of Discovery in all probability would have discovered eternity but fortunately once again it was black Buffalo that decided that it wasn’t worth Bloodshed and he defused the situation and allowed the explorers to continue on in the post Expedition years you know we tend to think we think of the Lewis and Clark expedition in terms of William Clark uh it’s like it’s almost like one word Lewis and Clark but actually in I think in the final analysis when we think of William Clark’s career in the service of his country which spanned another 30 years after the Expedition till his death in 1838 I think as more and more information becomes available just recently there’s two books that hit the streets in the last two weeks Lanny Jones’s book and uh Bill Foley both bios on William Clark both with a little different perspective but a lot of uh new insight if you will on his post Expedition career and I think as as we learn more and more about William Clark the Lewis and Clark expedition as as magic and as heroic as it was and as wonderful a story as it is in terms of how it impacted American history and western expansion and in particular how it impacted our dealings with the Native Americans it will stand in the shadow of Clark’s post expeditionary career for 30 years he served as the chief Federal Officer on the frontier in 1813 he was appointed Governor uh well he started out in charge of of Indian Affairs and Brigadier General of the militia in 18 13 he was he was appointed governor and served as all three officers in the war of 182 erupted William Clark was much involved in uh the defense of St Louis and the west and the settlers on the Western frontier he knew through his Trade Network his network of of fur Traders uh being himself involved with the formation of the Missouri Fur Company and much involved with the the highways of the time if you will the fur trade links the waterways up the Missouri the Mississippi and the tributaries he had a pretty good handle on what was going on and he knew that the British influence was uh in his mind what was encouraging the Indians to raid the settlers and propose it it presented a risk to St Louis they reached a point where the people in St Louis feared for their lives there was uh a gentleman on the upper Missouri excuse me on the Upper Mississippi Clark’s Alter Ego if you will redhaired no less by the name of Robert Dixon who Clark saw as the single bigest cause of the problem in terms of the British influence on the Native Americans and he had a stronghold on uh the socks and the fox and other Native American tribes he was located in the area 500 miles up the up the Mississippi of at pory Shu or Prairie Des Shan excuse me and Clark thought that all things considered that the best tactic would be to raise a militia build some gunboats and send uh armed boats and Men up to Mississippi to try to defuse Mr Dixon and take control of Cy Shu and he did coincidentally when he got there uh Dixon was off somewhere else and there was a skeleton Force there and it there really was no battle at all and they built a fort and assumed that they were taking control well they they made some wrong assumptions because shortly after they got back to St Louis a force of 650 British and their Indian allies arrived back at poru and promptly took it back so Clark once again uh found himself in a difficult position in 18 um was it 1814 when the Treaty of gent was finally signed and pred pred President Madison took over President Madison issues issues orders to his chief officer out on the frontier to meet with the Indians treat with them in the interest of peace and the treaty was the Clark’s orders were were to negotiate with the tribes to bring the tribes together and negotiate for peace this was not about uh Indian Removal or uh negotiations for land but rather just to quiet things down on the frontier okay and it’s interesting I wanted to share something with you it’s interesting that in the in the Missouri Gazette Clark published a proclamation consistent with the president orders in the Missouri cazette Gazette it was printed having been appointed Commissioners with full power to conclude a treaty of peace with those tribes or nations or Indians residing upon the missu and its Waters and where at which the United States at the time of the of the ratification of the late treaty with Great Britain we have concurred to hold treaty at the Village of Port Portage duu on the 6th of July next of which we have notified the Indians and invited them to attend and deriving precaution from a most unjustifiable attack that was made upon a party of Indians in 1812 on their way to the Council of Cahokia to which they had been invited we do most urgently enjoying it on our fellow citizens of the Missouri and Illinois territories to abstain from from any and every act injures to the Indians now invited or that might be calculated to prevent a successful issue to the negotiations okay in other words he’s issuing a proclamation telling all the citizens don’t mess with the Indians leave them alone they’re coming here at our request we’re going to try to make p peace okay in the same issue of the Missouri Gazette there is a much much lener article about a recent occurrence with the Missouri Rangers falling under Clark’s supervision as Brigadier General of the militia where a group of Native Americans attacked the Rangers and it talks about uh the battle that ensued and men being skilled killed and one man arriving back with a tomahawk in his head and he later died and of course people that read this are going to see this as one more case of Indian atrocities so here we have Clark right in the middle of this this conflict issuing a proclamation telling the citizens that we’re going to negotiate for peace and try to uh make peace agreements with the Native Americans while at the same time they’re hearing about in more Indian raids and more problems with Indians killing the white Intruders of course these articles always failed to mention that all of these battles occurred on the Indians own home ground okay in this same same time frame the people of s leis were crying for revenge and the Missouri Gazette again published uh an outcry he says let the north as well as the South be Jackson ised and the popular political position if you will was one of Vengeance what we need is not negotiations for peace not treaties what we need is more militia more army more guns and uh get them out way so Clark finds himself in a very complex situation once again I got to get back on on track here as the council at Portage to sue began on the 10th of July a group of Sue ironically including none other than black Buffalo and the partisan Clark’s old adversaries from the upper Missouri in o four the same among the Sue were some of the Tetons the same group of Indians that Clark had declared in his journals in ’06 the viest misre of the Missouri and that something would have to be done about them or our trade up to Missouri would never be secured well ironically these same Warriors steep forward when they arrived in this area and told the Commissioners that they were not like other Native Americans that took their gifts and their presents in their blankets and hid them away in their tepes and turned their back on the whites they said put something sharp in our hands that we may help ourselves and by so doing help you so it seems that this is another testimonial to the fact that Lewis and Clark failed ethnology one 1 and greatly misjudged the Tian suo the treaty here the council and the treaty signed here at porage to Su became a a pivotal Point not only for William Clark and his career but for Western uh expansion in in general even though the treaties here were signed in the interest of peace and it wasn’t about uh land removal giving away their Native American lands it’s it set a precedence it set it’s it set a procedure if you will for future negotiations and the treaties that would follow would be for the most part dramatically different and William Clark found himself uh the old proverbial uh between a rock and a hard spot he he realized that uh this this tidal wave of Western Migration was coming down the Ohio Valley people were spilling across the Mississippi by the thousands the population of the Missouri of the Missouri territories went from uh in the course from 18 14 to 1820 from 25,000 people and scattered around the entire territory to 65,000 people and William Clark recognized being acutely aware of what have transpired in the Ohio Valley he recognized that there was really only two alternatives for the Native Americans you can sugarcoat it you can try and spin it one way or another you can look at it from a 2004 perspective and talk about what should have could have but if we stand in his shoes back in 1815 and for the rest of his career and think in terms of what he should have done he really only had two Alternatives the Native Americans only had two Alternatives they could either negotiate for removal and relocation or as the government in their documents I have a number of their original documents and they they like to title them immigration of the Indians well immigration of the Indians meant we’re going to negotiate unfair treaties and kick them off their homelands so what was the alternative the alternative was what transpired in the Ohio Valley for the most part and that would be bloody conflicts and perhaps Annihilation and William Clark was Duty bound to make Indian reloc happened and he did he did a very good job of it and one of the reasons perhaps he was so effective at negotiating treaties and uh facilitating Indian relocation because it really served two purposes okay it Ser it served to satisfy the political pressure of the day the Jacksonian beliefs were coming into uh being politically correct if you will and again to to not sugarcoat it it was get the Indians out of the way we don’t care what happens to them we don’t care where they go we just don’t want them killing our settlers stealing our cattle etc etc but for Clark for Clark carrying his Jeffersonian beliefs keeping in mind that he is a product of Virginia Gentry his mentor Thomas Jefferson is on record with his beliefs that the Native Americans and Jefferson very clear about this that the Native Americans were equal to the to the white people in every way they were just lower in The evolutionary process they had not been afforded the opportunity to escalate to the point where the white people were but yet Jefferson made it very clear that he felt they had all the potential to do so they just needed to be given the opportunity and Jefferson along with William Clark saw that opportunity in the form of the factory system and a simulation that is to set up a chain of trading poster factories as they called as they were called would wean the Indians from the Native from the their dependence on the British and the trader the um British Traders fur Traders coming down from Canada and give them everything they needed make the things they needed and wanted more readily available from the US of a so that they would align themselves with the us and not with the British and at at the same time it would facilitate their ultimate ass simulation into Jefferson’s agrarian society for men like Jefferson and William Clark they didn’t think in terms of of will the Indians be assimilated it was the it was the only way they knew how to think it was only a case of when would they be assimilated not if but when so when we when we look at at William Clark’s career and we look at how effective he was at negotiating Indian Indian Removal we also need to be reminded that he he was an advocate of the factory system which about Midway through his career fell out of favor because it was contradictory to other American ideas like free enterprise and instead of the US factories getting all the opportunities with the Native Americans the free Traders would like to have those opportunities things haven’t changed was a lot of a lot about money but in any case Clark never changed in terms of those kind of beliefs and he became very frustrated over his situation in in 1825 he wrote a letter to his old friend Thomas Jefferson and rather than paraphrase it I’d like to I’d like to share what he wrote and I’ll read in part in my present situation of superintendent of Indian Affairs it would afford me pleasure to be enabl to the condition of these unfortunate people placed under my charge knowing as I do their wretchedness and their rapid decline it is to be lamented that the deplorable situation of the Indians do not receive more of the human feelings nation and yesterday the stone the historic marker that we unveiled at the 100-year rededication of Clark’s Memorial on one side of that stone is engraved it is to be lamented that the deplorable situation of the Indians does nation I think for William the the conflict the contradictions that he had to deal with must have been ex extremely frustrating and of course as history records uh unfortunately it would be many many decades in fact things probably got much worse before they got better um in fact they definitely got worse before they got better and we still have a long ways to go and as a memory member of the discovery Expedition few of my brothers are here today uh we we have a charter we have a charter that we often discuss and we make sure that new members recognize how we feel and in no uncertain terms what our message is that we intend to carry up the Missouri and across the country for the bicentennial and that message is that it’s way past time to hear the rest of the story it’s time to go forward with open minds and Open Hearts and encourage the Native Americans to tell not only their side of the Lewis and Clark Story which we’re very excited about and interested in hearing but it goes way way beyond that you know the the the bicentennial celebration can serve as a catalyst to he not only their side of the Lewis and Clark expedition but their side of a very dark chapter in our American history the period from the post Expedition days through most of the 19th century and having said that I don’t want to cast gloom and doom over what’s coming but I see that rather as a ray of sunshine the Gloom and is already there we just for the most part generally don’t like to talk about it especially in our educational system but the ray of sunshine is that the dialogue starts the healing process and if we start to talk about it and if we can talk openly about the bad side of our American history okay that dialogue and that healing process is going to bring us closer together and events just like this and many other events over the course of the next few years you know can help generate a legacy for the bicentennial uh a legacy that says we came closer together as an American family I hope we all can help make that happen I’d like to I would like to suggest that uh I’ll be here till the last dog is hung if you have any questions you’d like to discuss anyone wants to serve up something for discussion be it lwis and Clark or the meaning of life or whatever uh we’ll try to entertain it thank sir an there are um a number of ancestors here in the St Louis area not too many Clarks with Clark with the name but Clark descendants nonetheless I live in Dearborn Michigan near Detroit my first cousin Charlie lives here Charlie G Clark who is a member of our Corp also shares portraying the role of his ancestor on occasions especially here in St Charles or St Charles area but then the clan is kind of scattered from sea to shining sea at this point anybody got anything they want to kick around or question I would just like to say one thing I didn’t get to give Bud a proper welcome but we are very um honored to have him here in por tou he is patony Bud Clark the great great great grandson of the William Clark and he uh called he was excited about us having a powwow here and he was very interested in uh being involved in in Portage and as a resident of Portage T I am Debbie La um we are very very honored to have him here and I’m glad that everybody made it here to uh hear this wonderful talk that he gave today thank you okay so if anybody else has any questions yeah if you have any thoughts share them with us Now’s the Time to kick them around sure I think uh I don’t know I think that seems to be kind of typical you know you’re preoccupied with a lot of other things later in life I maybe it comes with wisdom you start thinking that it’s important to learn more about things that are important to your ancestry and you know to hey to our American Heritage and how things came together especially in terms of western expansion where did the par come from the United States frer on a Hunting Expedition and a tour of the West took a shine to Jean bapti number three kind of took him under his wing and encouraged him to come back to Europe with and he did so he went and lived in Europe for a number of years he spoke four languages fluently he must have been a very intelligent guy I have a hard time with one and uh uh led a very colorful life he came back to the United States um served as a uh a guide for a time with wagon trains hunting parties Etc uh went West was in California for a time and in a civil position out there and died on his way to the Montana Goldfield so his story is a very colorful story but I’d like to comment on his uh on his influence on the Lewis and expedition one of the journal Let’s uh let’s let’s use our imagination here for a minute try to it’s kind of it’s it’s kind of a matter of record that the core of Discovery came together as a family I mean they started out as a rat tag bunch of rowdies at Camp du where drinking and fighting was routine and Court Marshal and I mean these weren’t West Point grads and alter boys these were a bunch of Frontier routings and Soldiers on the frontier you know that wasn’t a promising career you know the the the guy you wanted your daughter to bring home for dinner was not a private in the Army on the Western frontier okay these these were often times guys that were there cuz they were on the run or undesirables in other ways although Lewis and Clark had a I’m sorry having an astute uh well being astute judges of character were were able to sorted out and by the time they headed up to Missouri for the most part they had a pretty tight-knit group but by the time they left Fort Mandan it evolved to more than that not just a tight-knit welld disciplined military group but they were coming together as a family group okay and when we read in the journals about the winter they spent at Fort CLA we know that it was wet and miserable almost all the time they saw the sun 6 days and the months that they were there the fleas were so bad that you could hardly sleep at night and there really wasn’t much going on there in a in a positive way in terms terms of Shoring up morale what they were really looking forward to was getting the heck out of there okay and poor elk was about all they had to eat they had literally walked out of all their clothing their clothing made from Skins would rot because of the weather so it wasn’t it wasn’t a fun place to be now let’s think in terms of on your worst day you just got a speeding ticket on the way back from making a charitable donation and just as you pulled away from the curb to get headed home again you had a flat tire and then you turned on the radio and your stock just dropped another 25% and you walk through the door wishing you owned a dog so you could kick it you know and unbeknownst to me to you your grand kids have come to visit and here comes a little 2-year-old or a one-year-old toddling across the kitchen floor and what happens to your miserable day think of what the presence of that mother and child had to mean to the core of Discovery okay think about that littlest Explorer and the role that he played and you can’t go to Molton and pick that out of the journals but if you look between the lines it it’s there and you can imagine how how that little guy shored up the morale of the men and lifted their spirits and certainly morale and the the the spiritual well-being of the core of Discovery is as much important to the ultimate success of the mission as probably any other single Factor that’s something I feel very strongly about personally much is said about husband what influence did he have on you know sharino gets a bad WAP because uh writers have taken uh editorial Liberties to out of context talk about what a buffoon he was at the helm that he almost sunk the pero on more than one occasion and uh on another occasion he’s he struck Chicago WEA and out of context they’ve painted sharbono as you know not such a good guy but I would argue that Syria student of Lewis and Clark recognizes that sharino was there for a reason he was there as an interpreter he was contracted to go with the explorers and serve as an interpreter they also enjoyed his fine cooking okay he wasn’t there because of his expertise as a waterman he was probably the worst Waterman on the planet okay and not to not to defend him for striking Sago WEA but to put it in context you need to look at that standing in Clark or Lewis moccasins in 1805 and put it in context you know not that it would ever be a good thing to do but it probably didn’t have the same stigma that it has from a 2004 perspective although Clark did chastise him for it that’s also in the journal okay you know since we’re on this track let me share something with you that again was interwoven into my talk but lessly omitted when when Lewis and Clark left when they left Tucson sharbono and uh Sago WEA and the little guy with the Hada or the mandans as Clark said in his journals Clark was really preoccupied with the order of business of the day keep in mind now these guys they are anxious to get home they are hitting sometimes as much as 70 miles a day down Missouri they were not anxious to spend a whole lot of time at the mandad okay however the captains were were very anxious to have some of the head Chiefs to have representatives from the hadat of the mandam the Rika come down the Missouri and go to was Washington to meet President Jefferson and they finally persuaded Shah uh the big white from the mandans to join them so in the mid in the midst of making arrangements for Shah and his family Clark is preoccupied with all the things that are going on and and the his journal entry for that day notes that he had asked sharbono and Chicago weia to take the little guy with him to St Louis and see that he was educated and that they had declined saying that perhaps after he was weaned they would send him down well two days later on down the river William Clark not the soldier not the Explorer not the courageous leader of the core of Discovery but William Clark the man just as much a human being as any one of us you know is tearing his heart out that family we talked about that evolved a big piece of it has just been torn away from him okay and it’s killing him and he’s he’s he’s wishing he would have been more assertive he’s wishing he could have persuaded sharino you know to come with him or at least let him take boy so he writes a letter and sends it back up River and when the first uh versions of the journals were published this letter was unknown it was unknown until it was found among what we refer to as the vor’s collection where most of the Missouri Historical Society Clark artifacts came from in that same stash of Clark stuff they found a letter and I’ll read it to you again I won’t paraphrase it I’ll read it to you literally in part and he sealed it and made sure that no one but sharino got a hold of you have been a long time it’s addressed to sharino you have been a long time with me and have conducted yourself in such a manner as to gain my friendship your woman who accompanied you that long dangerous and fatiguing route to the Pacific Ocean in back deserved a greater reward for her attention and services on that route than we had in our power to give her at the Mand Dan app as to your little son my boy pom fancy you well know my fondness for him and my anxiety to take and raise him as my own child I once more tell you if you will bring your son baptized to me I will educate him and treat him as my own child and he goes on to outline a number of alternatives for sharino he’ll set him up in business he’ll give him horses if he wants to go visit his relatives in Montreal uh if he wants to set get set up in the fur trade business it’ll set him up with say a parole load of goods uh whatever it takes just come and bring boy and he closes the letter wishing you and your family great success s c k s and with anxious expectations of seeing my little dancing boy Baptist I shall remain your friend William Clark clearly William Clark is deeply deeply in love with that little guy okay there is no question about it it is representative of how he felt about his family and how close family ties were and how much they meant to William Clark even in his in his complex and difficult life this in the post Expedition and a further testimonial to that will be found in Jim holberg’s book dear brother where you’re seeing the personal side of William Clark as opposed to any rights within the constraints of either military protocol or political and government guidelines if you will knowing it’s going to be read by whoever I think it’s a uh uh Heritage uh that was passed along to his children and through his children it’s it’s it’s a legacy that carried on and again I say that because there are a number of testimonials and family letters we’re in later years in fact uh a case in point one I was just reading the other day where it’s rather obscure and little known second-born son William Preston Clark in a period in Clark’s life that’s that’s uh rather obscure not a lot known about the last few years of his life when he made his last trip East to visit friends and family and William Preston Clark writes home to his brother George Rogers Clark my great great-grandfather and he says talks about their father’s he p is doing much better they call him P always the reference in the family letter sister to P say p’s Health oh my goodness it’s Clark hello sweetie I didn’t know you were coming here you say hi say hi wa wait minute minute minut anyway William Preston writes to brother George and he says PA’s health is much improved since we left Louisville and he goes on talking about his health and well-being and then discusses their plans to go on and visit New York and Boston and West Point and a few other points uh the closing of the letter is really neat because it shows that that William Clark uh in his last years had still not lost his sense of humor and not lost his his intimate relationship with his family William Preston closes the letter to the ARA pa pa says you should look out for future times and then he illustrates a riddle and he says figure how did he say it he says figure allegory if you can or understand this allegory if you can and he wrote his father’s message in the form of a riddle with little illustrations I showed it to a few guys in Camp the other night cuz I brought it with me and we still haven’t figured it out but uh I wish I had it with me you guys could help me but anyway it’s um what I’m driving at is there even in William Clark’s last years there is that there’s that close family bond how old was it he was 68 in that day and age that that was very old yeah that was an elderly gentleman William Clark buried four of his seven children he had he lived with a lot of personal tragedy his Angel Julia died young his second wife Harriet kenerly Radford Clark died on Christmas morning he buried all of his nine siblings yet he always seemed to have the strength and the perseverance to drive on there’s there’s no indication not to my knowledge at least although he was of course deeply saddened that he spent great lengths of time you know wallowing in misery if you will for lack of a better way of saying but rather that although he had you know it’s a matter of record that he had a very strong family bond uh in the face of tremendous personal sadness he was able to drive on I guess it indicative of his strength character anybody have any other thoughts they’d like to entertain no Greg you look like you got something on the tip of your tongue oh no no how is that why don’t you stay stand behind behind we would like to have this like you to have this thank you H Discovery Expedition that’s it that’s a winner a thank you a thank you guys I appreciate that bud hang on to that gu I will I’ll put it away than you guys I see you guys around here helping that’s cool I really last number is exactly yeah I uh I’ll be able to do different uh some of the larger maybe the Signature Events I’ll be able to fly in with the park service and be in ATT 10 to many voices and it just kind of depends on my work schedule at home too but uh uh the group

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Amy Mosen on Sacagawea and the Oto Nation

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:49 +0000

welcome everyone to the core of Discovery 2 and the tent of many voices for those of you who are not familiar with our project core of Discovery 2 is a traveling exhibit We are following the same time frame and path as Len clart did 200 years ago we will be visiting communities along the Lou and cl tra within our exhibit we have many things to offer over here is our exhibit 10 where you can take a 35 minute audio tour we have our kbo and in the far grass area we pay tribute to the Native American nations that Louis and C encountered along their Journey with our TV and and table set up also today another bonus is that we have the international tribal gam Society with us that’s people from various Nations T teaching about uh different traditional Native American games so that’s a good time over there as well just a few things to remind people of there’s no videotaping allowed in the tent of many voices so please put vide tapes away photography is okay today we have a special presentation and I’m honored to announce uh Amy Mosen he was a man manaza um member of the three affiliated tribes of North North Dakota she’s a national scholar interpretor and consultant on the life and legends of saga she’s been invited to the nation’s capital on four occasions to honor and celebrate cago in 2001 Amy accepted the mer military citation from President Bill Clinton which conferred the status of the honorary Sergeant on Chicago in 2002 Amy was presented with the National Guard bureau’s Indian award for her work with national Leon park by sentennial in 2003 she was requested at uh Monell’s Foundation she paid tribute to Sago waya at the commencement of the national leis and park B Centennial commission at the home of President Thomas Jefferson in Virginia Amy has been interviewed for numerous local National and international television and radio programs as well as her National publications related to her works with L and Clark Chicago waya and the Manda and Hada cultures she was featured as a host of North Dakota’s Prairie Public excuse me Lewis and Clark Pathways she was the principal Native American adviser for the National Geographics leis and Clark IMX film Journey great journey West and she was one of the only three nationally recognized Scholars interviewed by the National Geographic magazine for her feature story on Chicago Amy is a graduate of Minot State University and the University of North Dakota she lives um on the little Missouri river in North Dakota Badlands and resides with her family in twin bees and New Town North Dakota let’s welcome thank you it’s so good to be here with you all this afternoon and I would particularly like to welcome all of the people descended from the tribes that Mary will leis and William Clark encountered on their journey through all of our homelands especially the Kiku and the Shi and the people who were dominant in this area when Lis and Clark Trav this part of the world my name is the queen of the that is what Mya family calls me we are descended from a The Village on the south of the KN River and what is now the state of North Dakota we live about 1 hour north of the bmar or of the capital in bmar North Dakota today we lived in three Earth LOD Villages when Mary and William Clark provided in our homelands in October of 1804 we had neighbors down the river the Mandan and the Mandan lived on each side of the Missouri River one m on the west side one on the east side and Mary with Lewis and William Clark in the Northwest core of Discovery buil their winter quarters about halfway between those two mandam Villages I have relatives in that mandam both of those Mand Villages and my M relatives called me the o to the mar Lewis and William Clark embarked from here knowing that they were going to spend the winter with the man in North Dakota of course there was on North Dakota at the time but Mary and William Clark ascended up this River in the fall knowing that they were going to come to this place called North Dakota and knowing that they were going to spend the most severe months of the year in what is now North Dakota they would be there from October of 1804 until April of 1805 and you might find it very diff diffult to believe but Maryweather leis M Clark came to that part of the country at that time of the year on purpose it wasn’t an accident and I often wonder why now people probably wonder why would L come to that part of the world well we in Thea Village always said we think they came to that part of the country because of those menam women I think some people were laughing that that wasn’t intended to be funny but the man women were agriculturalists you know you hear so much about Thomas Jefferson’s Vision to this place called the Louisiana Territory he wanted Mary Lewis and William Clark to venture out into this land that had been purchased by the United States he wanted them to settle this land or to open it up for settlement he wanted this land to be F and his ultimate goal was that this part of the world would be the center of international trade but when you look back at the Mandan women they had been farming the land for hundreds of years hundreds of years before Mary with Lewis William Clark or Thomas Jefferson were even born the tribes on the Northern CLS were already engaged in international trade they were trading with the British from Canada they were trading with the French from Canada they were training with the French that were traveling up and down the Missouri River and they were engaged in trade with other nations the Lota the ARA the Ain the crow the tribes from what is now T and when Mary with leis arrived in our Villages our our our our Earth Liv villages we lived in permanent homes we lived in permanent log homes they were and when Maryweather and William Clark arrived in our Villages they would find islands that had been traded into our Villages some things directly other things indirectly but items that have originated from as far south as the of Mexico from as far east as the Great Lakes from as far north as what is now Northern Canada and from as far West as the Pacific Northwest this dentalium shell cave did not originate on Northern PLS it came from the northwest coast and when Mary with Lewis and William Park arrived in our Villages it was items like this that they would find but it wasn’t the material things and it wasn’t all of the Agricultural things that Mary withis and William Clark intended to obtain and acquired from us when they came to our Villages it was the information that was coming into our Villages from the West information about the people information about the land the rivers The Falls the animals in particular when they thought about the people they learned about all the people that LE and Clark would Lewis and Clark learned about all the people that they would encounter when they left our Villages the man down villages and Trav to the west of things that Mary W Lewis and William Clark probably found rather surprising is that the population of the m and villages in those five Villages combined exceeded the population of St Louis the population of our combined manad Anda Villages 200 years ago exceeded the population of Washington City the the population of our Villages was about the same as the number of people that gathered on January 18th 2003 on the lawn of Thomas Jefferson’s home out there in Montello on that cold Saturday morning and watch the kickoff of the 200 anniversary of the ls Park Expedition 4,500 people we have the largest agricultural Community anywhere on the west side of the Mississippi River we were already living what people today call Jefferson dreaming but I I didn’t really want to talk so much about me and my Village I want to talk about a woman who lived in our village a woman who today is the most celebrated woman in all of American History she came to our village when she was about 12 years old and and by the time Maryweather Lewis and William Clark arrived in our Villages this young woman s was already married to one of the French F traders who had become a permanent inhabitant of our village you probably don’t see this a lot in the journals but Mary with Lewis and William Clark probably don’t give enough credit to all of those French men that were living along the Missouri River with native tribes trading with them for many many years before par ever came up the river when they were in South Dakota and Southern South Dakota there were French men living among the Su and through them Lis and Clark were able to communicate when they traveled to the northern part of the river there were Frenchmen living among the Lakota there Lis and Clark to those French men were able to communicate with the tribes when they arrived in the mang Villages they found Gren Stone a French man who for many years had been married to M woman he would become their Mand interpreter and help Mary with Lewis communicate with the Manan leaders black cat on the east side of the river and white KY on the west side of the river between October and April and as they traveled up the villages they would meet to Shar another French man who had come down from Canada who was now living in our villages married to two young Shon women now what were sh women doing in our village they were capes 200 years ago that’s what we did we went to war and one of the things that we did was take captives but our captives were not made into slaves our captives were absorbed by our tribes because you see by 200 years ago the population of our people was already declining to the point that we were all related and to bring people in from other tribes to marry to our tribes because you can’t marry your relatives the younger Sant sho’s wife sagia was expecting her first child and this little boy was born on February 11th in 1805 about 5:00 in the afternoon they were now living at for and but you know this little boy was not given his mother had grown into Womanhood in this Village she had been adopted into a clan she had been given a name but this little boy was not given a name his mother was a Shon woman but this little boy was not given a Shon name this little boy was named after his French Canadian grandfather who was still living in Montreal Canada and he was called John bapti Sho and when this little boy was 55 days old he joined his mother a young Indian woman in her late teens and he joined his father a French Canadian fur Trader in his late 30s they joined Mary with Lewis and William Clark in their early 30s and they embarked on one of the most incredible Journeys ever undertaken by any American that time a journey that would forever change the landscape of this entire nation and why would they take this young woman Mary M Lewis and William Clark were so meticulous and seeking out only the right men for this Expedition they wanted men who were strong and Hardy and not afraid that they might not return anytime from this journey they wanted men who were single who did not have wives or children that they would be afraid to leave at home they did not want the sons of gentlemen that were not accustomed to difficult work so why on Earth would they take a teenage woman who had just given birth to a baby boy s was taken on this Expedition not as a guide but how many times have we seen her poting the West in every image that you see sagia is pointing West or leading the W SOA was taken on this Expedition and her purpose was to serve as an interpreter because while Mary with the ls and William Clark were in our village they learned from the hza the hza who traveled regularly to the West as far as the Continental Divide to fight against our enemies because 200 years ago that is what we did and our enemy at the time was tribe living out far to the south and west of what is now Montana the black people were also our enemy The Crow were our allies so was taken to serve as an interpreter because while Mary and William clker were at our Villages you know that they they learned that they would be Crossing these very treacherous mountains and if they did not have horses there is no way that they were going to get across those mountains before winter they needed to get horses from the Shon and they learned from the Manan Warriors who regularly travel to the West that the Shon had some of the finest forces of any tribe anywhere out there on the PLS and they were told if you’re able to obtain those horses that is the only way you will get yourself your men and all of your supplies over those mountains and that was the reason s went on this journey was to serve As an interpreter and this is incredible they left Fort M on April 7th of 1805 they traveled all across the entire state of Montana how many of you have been to Montana how many of you know how long it takes to get across Montana and that’s driving on the interstate with radial tires think about their Journey it took them from April of 1805 until August months to get across Montana but that’s not the interesting part of this what’s very interesting is that during that entire journey across all of those all of that land they did not encounter one single Indian don’t you ever wonder why it was probably because this young woman was traveling with them and by having cigara and this young child traving freely among them it was very obvious that this was not a war party this didn’t appear to be a military Expedition they were traveling through Indian country and it wasn’t until August that Mary little and William Clark finally arrived in Shon country and sag was brought in to interpret in the Shon language to assist Mary with Lewis and William Clark in obtaining those horses and why they her they needed her because to not Char yes he was an interpreter but he only spoke the souen languages he didn’t know anything about the languages that you would encounter once you got halfway across Montana all the languages all the way up the River from here North all the way into Mandan cow a c country are all Su when you get beyond the mountains the languages differ they’re as different as Chinese and Russian to not sharpen all would no longer be serving As an interpreter they needed surviv and how did they communicate when they sat down and they talked to that young leader Cy wa sh leader they spoke first from Mary Lewis in English to leish and he would ask him to ask this young leader if we are able to obtain horses from him and leish a French man would speak then in French to T Sho who did not speak read or write English and then in Kaza tant Charo who understood how to speak SE languages he would speak in hiza to Saga who had been living for 5 years among the hi she spoke and understood our language and he would tell his young wife you need to ask this young man your brother for was he was speaking in a suen language and then in turn to turn to her brother and they would speak in and as Tekken language completely different not a single word was the same as ours and she would ask him if they were able to acire horses and so this long chain of communication would go back and forth from sh and language back TOA a suan language back to French and then to English and they would pull back and forth how many horses do they need and then the message would go back the other way and then they would ask well what are they willing to trade for these horses we would like to have guns and then the message would go back and forth we were not giving any guns to any of the tribes at this time and the message went back and forth and they were with the Shon for 2 weeks and by the end of October or by the end of August they got their horses and before they left that in August Mary Lewis was so pleased with the assistance of s that he gave a red coat to just not sharo and he asked him to trade it for a horse to make certain that his young wife and child had a good horse that would take her and a few meager GS over those mountains and yes it’s true s left she continued on that Journey to the West Coast and they back in what is now North Dakota in August of 1806 during this time many things happened William CL became very very fond of sagia and this little boy because the sharo family traveled very closely with William Clark in that white hero William Clark saw this little boy John Baptist Charo grow up from the day he was born until he was 19 months old and it wasn’t just williiam Clark think about hardship and people say things like this woman imagine her courage and her determination because she went on this long extraordinary Journey thousands of miles she was Ill to the point that she almost died and all that time she was caring for this young child John Baptist who by now William Clark was Finly referring to as pompe my little dancing boy when he grew very fond of this little boy and on August 17th in 1806 when it came time to say goodbye to the Charo family William CLK wanted very much for his little boy to come back with him to St Louis he offered to not sharpen all many things he said he would give him a place to live he would give him land he said he wanted to take the young boy back to St Louis and educate him and raised him as his own son but this little boy was only 19 months old and sag and her husband decided that he was too young and they said when he’s older we will bring him to St Louis and we would be honored and pleased to have you educate him and by then you can imagine what they thought of William CLK he was a true leader and in this Expedition he he proved to be a true leader he watched out for sag many many times and then William Clark left and he embarked on the J and just as they were heading into what is now South Dakota William Clark wrote a letter back to cassant Charo to this man who did not read her right and in the letter a very long letter you can still read it today on August 20th 1806 William Clark must have realized the silence in that boat this little boy was no longer toling around or hanging over the side of the boat or wandering off into the trees probably chasing after that big black dog this little boy was not there and the Silence of the little boy’s absence must have been almost and he wrote a letter back up the river and he said to tant Charo to bring your son to St Louis and bring your wife with you so she can care for him until you arrive and when you arrive in St Louis I will provide you with land I will provide you with a home I will provide you with livestock if you want to serve as an interpreter I can if you wish to travel back to Montreal to visit your relatives I will care for your family until you return and he sent that letter up the river with one of the traders that were traveling up the Missouri to our Villages and I don’t know God be ever read that letter I I know she didn’t read it she did not read her right but I don’t know if anyone ever read that to her but I know that somehow she did get that message because s and her husband Cho and that little boy did make their way down the river in October of 1809 and in December of 1809 their son John Baptist chardo now 4 and2 years old was baptized near the Mississippi River by a j priest at a place called the old Cathedral his baptismal record is currently on exhibit Theiss and his Godfather was none other than August shelto the founder of St Louis and he would begin his education then under William Clark or under the guidance of William Clark and by the time he was a young man he was speaking six different languages he would serve as a scout and a guide and an interpreter up and down the Missouri River he would be a scout to General Steven Cary in the Mexican Wars he would travel to Europe and 6 years at M M time a castle 6 years as a guest in the Royal household he would travel West during the Gold Rush he would traveled North into Oregon and in 1866 at the age of 61 as he was traveling back out onto the plains he came down with pneumonia he died and he was buried at station in the Jordan Valley near present oreg his rededicated just a couple of years ago and his mother there’s so little that we know about her with absolute certainty but there are many things that we do know about her we do know that s has become the most celebrated woman in all of American history and when you travel across this country not only on the L Park Trail but throughout many many places you find more rivers and land mountaintops pars streams songs poems women’s organizations girls organiz girl scout organizations schools websites license plates statues named and in memory of This Woman’s honor Her Image is on the golden dollar coin this woman was a teenager she was Indian woman there are many tribes today who claim s there are many tribes today who claim descendancy to her the Shi the hza the Kami there are oral histories about this woman among the Lakota the N Pur the crow the M the black beast I am not a descendant of but I am a descendant of the village that she left in the fall 1804 and returned to in the summer of 1806 my relatives my relatives spoke witha my relatives walked to the garden with sagia they were there when John bti was born and my relatives have many stories about sagia they all end with this s was a young girl when she came to our village but she was a young woman when she left and in the spring when the ice broke up on the Missouri River we knew that she would be leaving we knew where she was going she was going back to her Homeland she was going back to her birth child which is showing our enemies and we never knew if we would ever see her again but we do know that when she left our Villages that spring she took something with her that we had given her it was something sacred it was something very very powerful it was her very own something that she would carry with her not only to the end of her life but into eternity would become part of her immortality it was her name we are the from the night Villages and we call her her thank you very much um the K the K tribe are going to come up and we’re going to do we’re going to open the up for questions and answers right now but before we do that or before I start taking questions I want to invite you tomorrow to a panel at 12:00 I’m going to moderate a panel at noon tomorrow if you’re able to be here that would be wonderful we have three of the most U knowledgeable um probably recognized National sism part Scholars from Indian Country speaking tomorrow and uh we have Roberta Conor who is from the illa um she’s from the confederated tribes of the Umatilla she’s with works with me on the National Council of listic Cl by sentennial and the circle of tribal advisers we will have um Alan P from the ners tribe the NES we I I shortened my program today because I I have some friends here that I met that I want to include in part of this program um I thought it would be more appropriate to do that elen P from the nesp tribe will tell you interesting things because the nesp tribes are the only tribe that welcome Le and Clark into their Village three times not just two like some of us but three times and we also have a very um very dis distinguished guest I think and I’m very honored and I’d like to introduce him and I want him to stand up he is the only true descendant of Cameo and chief tendo he is the only descendant of Shaga that we have here this our today and I would like my friend BR AR from the L High sh in the back of the please stand up right and and be recognized thank you for being here so please come back tomorrow and hear what we have to say um singers I have a chair um we’re going to introduce you here in just a bit let’s have a couple of questions here anyone lots of questions about have so be presentations weekend you know where she died or where she is buried I think most most Scholars and most historians and I believe most of the sh and most of us with the tribe anakota and South Dakota believe that she died in 1812 after giving birth to a little girl in the fall probably around August and 3 months later having developed the fever and complications following child birth she died at fortanel on the west side of Missi river near the borders of nor sou did children John bti was in Germany for six years and he it’s beli that he had a child in Germany um that died in infancy we don’t know about any descendants I don’t know any end that John Baptist had here in back in this country I don’t know a wife he had um Rod might have a different story tomorrow but I don’t I’m not aware of any descendants from John Baptist or theep who was any other questions one more at the beginning you were talking about your an you um part of our much of our is written down um I guess I guess it’s kind of fortunate that the m and were permanent and I think with our tries having been permanent for so long in one place it it wasn’t as difficult to trace all of our heritage back but I think if you as Native American person here today to tell you who all their ancestors are from that many many many generations they can tell you who they are my mother’s name is white juneberries her name is Sal young bear M her father’s name was Frank young bear Frank young Bear’s father’s name was young beara um his mother’s name was um or his father name was long arm and long arm’s mother was yellow um what was it it was yellow woman yellow woman was her name and yellow woman lived in to get out of the village I also I mean we can retrace our ancestry back to um our relatives who survived the 1837 small and I think that there were journals kept there were journals from 1738 on and those were the first time our history was being recorded in writing and much of those the 178 journals of course were all written in fren by lover who was in our homeland and in many other places so since that time our history has been recorded so we can find much information already recorded and recovered and also through oral history so it’s a combination of both what I want to do now we encountered many many cultures and you are going to encounter many many Native American cultures as you travel along the par trail and I think about how sag was young she was a teenager and it must have been an extraordinary experience for her to to meet and experience so many different cultures and I think for so many of us who have been working with L by sentenal for this long one of the greatest rewards is is to me only the Planters in the SCH par by Centennial but to meet the Native American descendants of all those people that leis and Fark encountered when they travel into throughout our homelands that has been the greatest joy for me the people that are here the Homeland tribes here in Illinois are the shauni and we just met the shauni nation last July great picture my friend from the Shi nation has done an incredible job working with Tom Wonder and Dale Chapman bringing the shie back you throughout the rest of this Vice sentennial you will see so many tribes coming back to their homelands and this morning we were in St Charles for that event and the flag song was was sung by the whistling wi singers of the kikoo tribe of Kansas who were removed after the L Park Expedition and it’s such an honor for me to meet the people from The Kiko tribe and they I’m I’m getting the rest of my time to the k because this is their Homeland this is not my homeland and I would like John Thomas um a leer of the kiko tribal Business Council is going to introduce the drum group and I want to tell you again that I am so pleased to see all of you here it’s an honor to meet you and it’s an honor to be able to meet so many new friends and learn about your culture too thank you so much good

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Amy Mossett on Sacagawea and the Mandan Nation

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:49 +0000

on behalf of the National Park Service I would like to welcome you to the core of Discovery 2 this traveling exhibit is making its way across the United States following the route taken by L par 200 years ago our next program here inent in any voices is going to be a program telling you little bit about the story of Sago we and our presenter for that is going to be Amy M she is a national consultant regard I’m going to turn the story over and Stage over to you thank you so much for being here and uh I want to thank the National Park Service and all of the staff from the National Park Service for traveling along this journey with us and for being such an important part of this whole B Centennial commemoration and having a venue that we can come to in all communities no matter what side to present the Lis CL story My name is actually I I I guess my name could be mentioned in a couple different ways I am Mandan andan I am from the northern PLS I live in in a m hiza Community today but my hiza ancestors met Lewis and Clark 200 years ago and from our village Lewis and Clark would obtain one of the greatest resources one of the greatest assets that you could never place a value on that was sadan Leah she joined the louison park Expedition from the village on the south side of the Knife River in present day North Dakota and The Knife River that sagia lived in that knife for a village that she lived in was called a and it was on the South Bank it was the Middle Village it was the center Village of those three hiza villages that l park would travel to occasionally when they came to our hi of leaders my Mandan relatives live 7 miles down the river where the where the Knife River meets the Missouri River and in the Mandan Villages there were two Villages at the time when Mary with Lewis and William Clark came to our part of the world and remember the Manan once powerful once the wealthiest most powerful Nations on the Northern Plains had been reduced to a mere 2,000 people with 1,000 people inhabiting each of those villages on either side of the Missouri River and Fort Mandan would be built in the vicinity of those Villages and would actually be named for my Mandan ancestors Fort Mandan my Mandan relatives called me Ste and my name in the traditional hiza language and it’s through the hiza through the hiza clan that I actually received my traditional name Ina my name is gabish and and our names come from I think a lot of the traditional names are similar to the people in this part of the world because your names come from your way of life and they our names come from medicine bundles they don’t just give you names it actually comes from medicine bundles and only certain people can give names and because we were an agricultural people much like the people in this area that Louis and Clark encountered our names came from bundles that were associated with gardening for example and my name is kza and the Mandan is translated into English as a Squash Blossom and it’s the yellow flower that blooms on on the squashes that we are growing still today but I’m not here to talk about myself I was here yesterday for some time and had a chance to visit with people and I talked about this incredible young woman who lived with my ancestors at Al I’m here to talk about sagua and there are so many things that can be said about this woman but today I’m only going to talk about four things I’m going to talk about her relationship with William Clark there are many Mysteries and a lot of speculation about saga’s relationship with William Clark as compared to her relationship for example with Mary wther Lewis so I want to talk about her relationship with William Clark I’m going to talk about saga’s relatives her descendants I’m going to talk about sag his name sagia that name that we still know her by today and then I’m going to talk just very very briefly about sag’s death and all of these things that I’m talking about today have for so long been filled with so much controversy and so many myths have AR have risen from the story of sagaia she’s she’s an incredible woman she is the most celebrated woman in all of American history and yet we know so little about her let’s get right to the story about sagah and William Clark and the reason I want to talk about this is people often wonder there’s a lot of speculation about her relationship with William Clark I I even had somebody ask me if that little boy John Baptist that little boy that William Clark so Fally referred to as my boy po some people have actually asked if that little boy was the son of William Clark well you need to know that Not only was William Clark nowhere near that area when that little boy was born he was also not anywhere near that area when that little boy was conceived that little boy Jean Baptist shano was born in the afternoon of February 11th 1805 he was born at Fort n William Clark was not there but then the father of the child was not there either je or to Sho the husband of sah had gone off Hunting William Clark was also out on this hunting party but you know who was there Mary W the Lewis Mary W the Lewis actually assisted or presided over in the absence of all of The Midwives that would have been there to assist in the delivery of this child pag we have been back at the Village William Clark he was sort of the the medical expert he was the man knew about medicine and memodies and treatments of the day his mother Lucy Marx was an herbalist his stepfather was a medical doctor and before they came out here on this journey Mary with leis studied under the finest doctors to learn about medicine and he would be the man mostly responsible for delivering or for treating people William Clark would do that also later on especially out to the west but during saga’s birth William Clark presided over that group along with another French Canadian fur Trader who had been living with my Mandan relatives his name was Gren you know when this little boy was born you really need to think back about his name there’s just this ongoing debate over what culture influenced Saga more than the other the Shon claim that sagia remember now Saga was born Shon she was Shon by birth and at the age of about 10 11 years old my hiza ancestors on one of the hunting trips to the West into the middle of what is now Montana captured her and some other young sh children and only two of those young people were brought back it was Saga and another woman another young child actually not a woman a young girl who was only a couple of years older than her well sagua lived in our village and her culture changed somewhat she had been born to the Shon and cultur in the Shon culture up until the time she was 10 11 years old and then she grew into Womanhood in this hiza Village and so the hiza will tell you well it was more the the hiza culture that influenced her decisions because now she was a woman but you know when this little boy was born he was not given a to show me name this little boy whose mother had grown into Womanhood now in a hiza village was not given a hiza name this little boy was named after his French Canadian grandfather who was a fur Trader from Montreal Canada this little boy was called John Baptist Charo and he was named after his grandfather who was still living in Montreal so this child was not the child of William Clark but William Clark loved this little boy he loved him so much that when this Expedition ended on August 17th in 1806 after they had traveled all the way to the West Coast and returned to our part of the country William Clark had to say goodbye to this little boy this little boy who he had watched practically every day the first 19 months of his life any of you who have children know that in the first year of a child’s life so many things happen to that child they grow from this little tiny bundle to a person they develop a personality they start learning to say words they begin they they do all kinds of things they learn how to walk they learn how to talk they laugh they smile William Clark watched that happen with this little boy the entire first year of his life and almost all the way into the second year he was very fond of this little boy and why William Clark and not Mary leather Lewis well remember there were two PES that headed to the west and the sharol family traveled in that white PE they traveled in that white PE with William Clark and the sharo family remained in close proximity not just physical but emotional everything else very close to Clark on many occasions I would guess that that William Clark would observe this little guy John Baptist on many occasions when a child is getting older and older and they’re starting to toddle and they’re very curious and they wander off away from their mother or they start hanging too far over the side perhaps in that boat he was riding in and my guess is that it wasn’t sag who constantly watched that little boy there were many men in this Expedition and William Clark I think watched over that little boy just as closely as his own father to know and if he was ever hanging too far over the side of that boat and if William Clark was right there my guess is that William Clark would have been the guy who reached out and grabbed that little boy and I think one of the most difficult things for William Clark was to say goodbye to John Baptist to S Cho and S and on August 17th in 1806 he asked them if he could take that little boy back to St Louis and educate him he promised that he would raise John Baptist like his son but this little boy was only 19 months old and the chardino family of sure were flattered that William clar this man who they held in very high esteem because of all that he had done for them this man was offering to educate their son in a place that was much more comfortable and a lot less dangerous than the place they were living in right then but because he was only 19 months old the Charan old family decided he would have to stay at a with his mother and father and they promised when he was older they would bring him to St Louis and they did in the fall of 1809 when the core of or not the core of Discovery but after Maryweather Lewis had hired 100 soldiers to open the Missouri River back up and return white Kyo a Mandan leader who had traveled south in the in the fall or in the late summer of 1806 white Kyle was part of this Indian delegation that they convinced to go back to meet the president of the United States they had to return him that was the promise when white pilot agreed that he would go south with the core of Discovery in August of 1806 he told them I will go with you only if you return me in one year they tried to keep their word they tried to return him in the fall of 1807 but the arra our enemies the enemies of the Mandan and the hiza the the enemies of the Mandan and hia not let anyone back up through that River and so white coy had to go back to St Louis and realizing how important that trade was on the Missouri River Maryweather Lewis had these soldiers hired and they returned white Kyle into his village and then in that time probably by October November of 1809 when they returned to St Louis the chardo family went with them and we know they went with them because that little boy Jean Shard now 4 and a half years old was baptized in St Louis at the old Cathedral right there by the Mississippi River a visiting Jesuit priest was in town and he baptized the son of T Shanah The Godfather of this little boy was none other than August Shoto the founder of St Louis and that baptismal record which you can still see today is written entirely in French and not that this little boy would then begin his education under the guidance of William Clark and by the time he was a young man he would be speaking six or seven different languages and because now Mary or William Clark was the superintendent or the commissioner for Indian Territory and he was he was engaged in business dealing with all of the matters of the Indians and people had to go to his office to get permission to go up and engage in trade with the Indians and they would often need a guide and a scout and an interpreter and who other would they get referred than John Baptist Charo he served as a scout and a guide and an interpreter up and down the Missouri River out to the West he befriended people of all nationalities all cultures many different walks of life he even was befriended by a prince who came here from Germany wanting to travel to the west to visit Indian cultures before they disappeared his name was Duke Paul he was the prince at brittberg and he sold his his relationship with John Baptist grew he took him back to Germany and so for six years the son of Sadia lived as a guest in the Royal household at vuran time and then he returned to this country and he continued to travel into the West he went West during the Mexican Wars he was a scout and a guide for General Steven Carney the stepson in-law of William Clark John up Sho traveled to the West during the Gold Rush he traveled North into Oregon and then he told friends in 1866 he was now 61 years old he said he longed to go back out onto the PLS to visit his relatives and he started that Journey but he didn’t make it out of Oregon because when he got to the Jordan Valley he came down with pneumonia he died and he was buried at at a place called The in station near pres B ganner Oran and that was really part of the life for brief history of the life of John Baptist chardel this young man that William Park called my boy p and speaking of Pop where did that name come from po the Shon will tell you that that name means something about a lot of black hair well you know every Indian baby 200 years ago and today has a lot of black hair and so the H on the other hand say that P was a pomy or boom is AA word and it means something about a stinky little boy well I’m not going to say all little boys we’re stinky little boys we don’t call all the little boys okay but there’s a loabi there’s a loabi that was sung that uses this word that’s similar to that but you know again I don’t think that word or that name H came from a Shon word and I don’t think it came from it h ODS the word I think it came from William Clark this little boy was called P he called him Pon it was actually a rather common slave name was Toby which was the name given to that she’s showing man who helped to guide them over the mountains it’s also as common as that other slave name Jamie that nickname that was given to Saga by William Clark but that of course takes us into this whole issue of slavery because these people were not seen as slaves in the purest sense when you think about what slavery was but they were just so common names that were just so common accepted at the time 200 years ago p is not a a word p is not as just SH word but you know William clarton named The Landmark after this young boy in July of 1806 when they were traveling back and Maryweather Lewis had taken the Missouri River and gone North William Clark and the Shanel family were on the Yellowstone traveling back east and they were now past present day Billings Montana and they came to this huge sandstone outcropping a place that the co people called a place where the mountain ler sleeps and that huge Sandstone outcropping is where William Clark carved his name deep into that sandstone and you can still see it today it’s all covered it’s protected and it’s probably the only physical evidence that remains today from the Louis par Expedition and that Sandstone Landmark was for sagia son was called Pomp’s power today it is known as Pomp’s pillar a National Historic Landmark William CL loved that little boy John Baptist shano but did you love sagia and did she love him I think she did I think sag love William heart because if you look at the relationship between the two of them I think she loved him the way any young woman would love an older brother or a relative who protected him her and if you think about all of the times and all of the events that occurred in this Expedition or throughout this journey you can see time and again how William Clark protected sagia when they were traveling to the west and on May 14th of 1805 when that c that white that they were traveling capsized when the wind caught the sail and it rocked it way to one side and the water was rushing over the side of that boat there were some exper expert French boatmen in that River and it’s true that tant shano was a French man but he was not a water man this man was afraid of water he panicked he had actually been in control of this V at the time and William clar and Mary where the Lewis were out there on the shore walking along when they saw this whole incident this episode taking place and I’m sure they were thinking about the carival that was in that boat precious caral things that they did not want to lose and all this and all this commotion with all the yelling going on and people trying to bail out that boat with pedals and everything else they could find sag the wheel was sitting in the back of that hero and you know when it walked it just hung to the side and the water was rushing in Pierre crat eventually pulled a gun and threatened to S chardo and told him if you didn’t get control of himself and that boat that he would shoot him well you know he would never have shot him but he was threatening him he was trying to bring this man back to his senses and in all this commotion there was Saga this young teenage Indian woman at the back of the boat her son was probably in his cradle board on her back and there were items that had drifted overboard some of the lighter things and as they floated past she grabbed them and she pull them back into the boat and both captains even Mary rther Lewis who usually didn’t have many great things to say about sag or he was mostly indifferent toward her even he praised her for her courage and her fortitude and only days after that on May 20th in 1805 they named a river after her or a tributary of the river after her out there in Montana and I think I am convinced that this is the first time that Mary whether Lewis ever wrote her name he wrote it exactly the way he heard it s and he wrote the translation of that name right beside it bird woman and they called that River bird woman’s River and the journey continued on and in June Sadia became very very sick and William Clark cared for her William Clark employed the most common treatment of the day because Mary Mother Lewis was gone on again he was sort of the doctor but the most common treatment of that day of course was to meet somebody to make an incision in the vein in their arm and just let the blood leave the body so that your body could create new healthy blood and this was by June 10th through 11 10 when he bled her and she got worse and he knew that he had to do something drastic to help her so a day or so later he bled her again and she was now death and a few days later it was William Clark who carried her and he put her in the back of that white P out of the sun to protect her because she was burning up with fever she was dehydrated and finally it was William Mary with Lewis when they returned who administered opium bark and those kinds of Medical Treatments and she recovered as they continue to travel to the West on one of these days that same month at the end of June this huge storm was brewing out there you can see it in the sky and William clar knew and again remember the shano family was in the white P Road and William Clark needed to get that boat off the water because just in looking at the clouds you knew you knew what kind of weather you were in for and they got this boat off the water they were going to seek shelter in a ravine but by this time the rain was already coming down out of the sky and then all of a sudden there came the hail and along with the hail and the rain the water was was causing a Mudslide and rocks were coming down off of the hills and before you knew it the water was swirling up around their feet and to not sharino this man who we know was a very timid water man was the first guy of phly be and I’m sure that as he was climbing up the hill he probably thought maybe he he came back to his senses a little bit and thought Oh my wife and turns back around and reaches for cigara who was cing to her little boy but it was William Clark who was behind her and he was pushing her up this Ravine getting her out of Harm’s Way and that day William Clark lost one of his measuring devices but it was a rather large Compass like thing and after that storm subsided they were able to go back and recover it but Saga that day lost John Baptist’s cradle board they did not recover that it washed away did they replace it no of course not because he was growing he no longer needed a cradle board and the journey continued to the West they were now in Shon country at the end of August and imagine this I have a hard time imagining her husband we’ve heard many things about tant Sho we’ve heard of what a scoundrel and what a rascal he was but he struck his wife there they were right in her own Homeland among her people night at supper time he struck his wife we don’t know why but it was William Clark who severely admonished this man who treating his wife that way and Mary or tat shardo knew from that point on after being rebuked by William Clark for what he did that for the remainder of that Journey he was expected to treat his wife with respect and dignity and I expect that that’s what he did from that point on especially when they were in presence of William Clark and the journey continued to the west and when they were out on the Pacific Ocean imagine this it was I think in January well first let’s go back to November as not long after they had arrived out on the west coast sagah was caring for her child that was that was probably the main the most important role the most important thing that that was on her mind from day to day but they had been on the north side of the Columbia River they had had been checking out the place traveling Up and Down the River trying to determine where they would build their winter quarters it was November of 1805 and by the end of November they needed to make a decision on which side of that columia River they should winter on this shanuk were on the north side of the Columbia River and the shinook invited them to Winter with them to engage in trade with them the shinook were very Savvy Traders they had been trading with with all kinds of non-indian people that were coming to their territory by bat they wanted to trade with leis and Clark but the land on the other side of the river on the south side of the river was a little richer in elk meat and they knew by this time that they needed this elk they needed the elk for meat but they also needed those elk hides for clothing because by this time their military uniforms would be become very tattered and warm they would have to make many pairs of moccasin for that journey home and they needed to make this decision and so they they decided to have sort of a vote and there’s a big debate on whether this was really a vote or whether it was just an opinion poll but they recorded the opinions of all the people in that expedition everyone was able to provide some input on this decision everyone including York William Clark’s black servant every adult member in this Expedition including sagia this young Indian woman who was probably not not yet 18 years old they all sort of voted to stay on the south side of the Columbia River a couple months later sa whe was hearing these stories about a huge gigantic creature that had come out of the Great Waters and the men had ventured on down the coast and they came back and they were talking about this huge thing which to her sounded kind of like a fish creature and she knew living out there in Western Montana what salmon look like she knew how big a salmon could get and over there at The Knife River I mean it’s not a very big river but we had fish in there there were catfish they they don’t get too big in that River there were little catfish that everyone call wol heads or something like that but they were little small and she had seen these fish but this fish that they were talking about was gigantic and she was determined that she wanted to go and see that animal or that creature and I’m sure that Mary wther Lewis and William Clark were quite amused that she was so insistent and this is probably the one time that she really asserted herself and told them that I have come this far and if you don’t let me go out there to see that animal that fish creature it would be very hard for me to have to go all the way back home without seeing it well she did go see that animal and I often think about the stories that she told my ancestors when she got back to the Villages imagine her telling the women sitting around inside the earth Lodge that she had seen the sea creature first of all even trying to explain to them what the ocean looked like because we had no ocean out here on the Plains and trying to explain to them that if you looked out into the horizon for as long as you could see it was water nothing else it was all water it was the ocean that would be hard to imagine I think but then to tell them that this creature had come out of the ocean and it was something like a fish but it was so big it was bigger than a buffalo and I’m sure that the women sing around inside that Earth boder on the fire were probably rolling their eyes but then she probably told them that this creature was so big that it could not fit inside this Earth Lodge well needless to say I’m sure that sagia had some real serious credibility problems after that we talk about fish stories we had them back then too but sagaa was out in the west at Christmas time and at Christmas time they were exchanging gifts the men were sort of celebrating Christmas or commemorating that day and you know have Christmas but s presented William CL with a gift she gave him about two dozen measel Tails which is really rather interesting because we don’t have Christmas we don’t know if she gave anything to anyone else I don’t think she gave anything to Mary Lether Lewis I rather doubt if she gave anything to tant shano but she cared very much for William CL and she gave him this gift and on another occasion she gave him this little morsel of bread that she had been saving for her son for a very long time it was a bread that was made with flour I think and I think William Clark noted in his journals that she must have been carrying it with her for quite some time because it you know it was kind of not that tasty but just the idea that this was the first marel of bread that he had eaten for a very long time sag gave that to him and then there’s this story about the blue bav belt it wasn’t William Clark who wanted that belt it was Mary W leis you didn’t actually ask for the belt but Saga had a blue beaded belt and of all the beads that William Clark and Mary witha the Lewis brought up the river they did not bring enough blue beads and you hear the story about how the women in all these tribes love blue beads why they had other colored beads they had white beads they had red beads they had all these different colored beads so what was the big thing about beads why were they so valuable we know blue blue is it’s a primary color it’s one of the first colors that you see it is the color most easily distinguishable to the human eye because on the light spectrum it sort of has the shortest wavelength and so you see blue first but out there in nature when you walk outside and you look at the sky and in the summer the sky is just the most beautiful blue different shades of blue but out there in the environment blue is one of those colors that you can’t touch and for many of us we could not replicate that color and when we colored porcupine quills to decorate our husband’s Buffalo robes and when we decorated porcupine quills to decorate our moccasins or our our chees or however we use that we could not make blue we could make yellow from Cottonwood and golden rod and sunflower and we could make brown from the rushes we could make red from all of these different plants Dogwood plum purple we had the most brilliant shades of purple from Sun from from choke cherries and all we had pink but we did not have blue and when they brought these beads and they were blue they were a treasure and so godu took off that blue belt and she gave it to her husband who gave that belt to to Mary L Lewis because there was a coat out there a seal skin or a sea otter jacket or a shirt that Mary was Lewis wanted and the only way that Indian man out there would trade it is if he if N Lewis offered more and the only the only way that trade was finally negotiated was with s well they did give her something in exchange they gave her a world coat it was so will love Willam Park and he had a special place in her heart because this man protected her and he protected her son and do you know how we are whenever there’s somebody of prominence who watches out for our children and provides them with an opportunity that we could never give them our children are always more important than we are William Clark found that place in sag’s heart for all the things that he did for her he protected her more than any in her entire life there was no man in that Shon Village that saved her when she was captured at the age of 12 there was no man in the hadab village who could save her or who would protect her if there was somebody who mistreated her perhaps no one protected her the way William parted and because of that she loved him saga’s name appears in the leou and Clark journals about 26 times it’s never written with AJ saga’s name was spelled 16 different ways in the Lewis and Clark journals not once with the J and in 1814 when Nicholas bidd edited the liis and Clark journals he put the J in saga’s name that J and her name did not come from the Shashi it did not come from the hiza it came from Nicholas B and it is true that on one occasion when when William Clark recorded his 1825 book that Saga wheel was dead he wrote her name with a G that looked like a j he doesn’t have a DOT on the top of it he also wrote letters to George Rogers Clark his brother and he spelled George on more than one occasion with a j or a g that looked like a j and it doesn’t really matter because George is George it’s a it’s a soft it’s a soft G it could be spelled with a J but he also wrote Wagon on one occasion with a w a g o n and that g looked like a j we are not going to change the way we pronounce wagon just because of that the J and sagu’s name was an error but it’s an error that has caused people to mispronounce her name for the last over 200 years Saga is a hia word for bird via is almost a universal SE word for woman sagia is if a word for bird woman sagia had a name a Shon name before we captured her in 1800 and by now even the Shon descendants will tell you that they no longer know what that name was but perhaps it doesn’t matter because if sagia had gone back to that Village and stay there she would have been given a new name a new to showing me it would not have been Saia it would not have been bird Saga died on December 20th in 1812 and she was buried near Fort Emanuel on a Missouri River on the west side of the Missouri River near the borders of North and South Dakota Fort Manuel was a fur trading post that was established by the Manu Manuel Lisa F trade Expedition Mary with tan sharo had Tred back to the north he had been engaged in trade with his friend renous s Sago had been at the Fort since about 1811 the bir trade Expedition had come up the River in 1811 and she was recorded in Henry bracken’s journalist being sickly or frail or ill and I don’t think that she was really sickly she may have been frail she may not have been feeling her best but I think her medical condition was car jeck of any woman who was expecting a child and when she died John led the agent at that for who recorded this entry in his journal that evening in December also made other comments about her he talked about what a good woman she was and he also said she left a very fine infant girl Saga has people or she has descendants all over this country there are people among the lenai sh tribe in Idaho who will tell you that they are the descendants of sodia and they are they are her only true genealogical biological blood descendants but they are not direct descendants they are the descendants of her brother came there are people among the kza tribe of North Dakota who will tell you that they are the descendants of sagia and they are but they are not her biological descendants they are her adopted descendants and there is a man if you look on this website that the three affiliated tribe maintains right now there was a man called buy a hiza man who said Saga was his grandmother and she was Bullseye is 100% kza Saga is 100% shash so how could this woman be will grandmother every one of the women that tant shano married including the kazza woman that he was married to before sagaia sagaia and Otter Woman these two shash women the aoin woman that tant shano married at Fort Clark in the 1820s every one of those women every wife of tant shol would be the grandmother of Bullseye all of those wom shared in common the title of mother to all of tant sho’s children and that’s the way things are in our family it’s the way it still is today but today people are misinterpreting and confusing all of these issues and they’re misinterpreting our own history sag did not die on the winder reservation in 1884 in April she was not buried on reservation there was a shy woman who was buried there by a reverend Fox the only name in the record on the day that woman was buried was that this woman she’s not even mentioned by name she was called Basil’s mother sagia did not have a son named basil and sagia never traveled to the Wind River Reservation she had long since been dead before this woman had ever lived the last thing I was going to talk about was we talked about William Clark we talked about saga’s name just a little bit we talked about saga’s family and a little about her death the one thing I wanted to say about sagaia is that when we continue this Bicentennial commemoration and we continue to commemorate all of the individuals of the Lewis of Park Expedition and when you travel from tribe to tribe to tribe you can continue to hear oral tradition stories that have been handed down from generation to generation to generation the one thing that you need to remember about all of the stories that we received from our elders these are stories that we don’t question and when your grandparents or your great grandmother is telling you a story telling a story to a young person that young person does not sit there and say well what about this and how come how come it’s that way and and and that’s not the way I heard it or so and so said something different When Your Grandparent is telling you a story you listen because that Elder is giving you a gift and you don’t question you don’t contradict what they’re saying in the case with sagaa all of these stories that you hear today are stories that have been passed down from and have mostly gone unquestioned which is why there are people among the Kaman tribe of Oklahoma who will tell you that they are the descendants of Sadia that she did travel to their part of the world that she did meet a commi man and that she did have herane children and that they did give her the name lost woman and they truly believe that and when you talk to the people among the lenai Shi tribe their stories about Saga are filled with passion and conviction because that is what they have been taught to believe and when you listen to Busey’s descendants they honestly believe that they are the descendants of sagua whether they are biologically or not there are oral traditions of saguia not only among those three tribes but among the Lota the blackbeat the crow the NZ purse my ancestors that our have stories and oral traditions of sagaia and the one thing I want to say about sagaia is that we all gathered together in National Statuary Hall in Washington DC last October and along with the state of North Dakota we dedicated our state’s second statue the national Statuary Hall it was a statue of sagadia the woman who posed for that statue was a kazza woman her name was Nick her descendants all live on the fort birfield reservation in North Dakota and some people question why if you know this was a Shoni woman why would you have a hiza woman’s image going to the nation’s capital to represent this woman well there are several reasons we have no idea what Saga look like and if Mary were the Lewis this man who could describe an event or or the the river or an animal so vividly that you could close your eyes and actually see that creature he would describe Birds the sound of a bird so vividly that you could almost hear the sound of that bird but he never told us what sad real looked like he could tell you the wingspan on that Condor and the length of the feathers the size and the color of its beat its height from the ground we don’t know how tall Saga was because nobody described her there has never been a painting a photo or a description of this incredible young woman but we sent this image of of a hiza woman to Washington DC because we decided what better image than that of a hiza woman because had it not been for saga’s life in this hiza Village she would never have met this French Canadian F trador tant shano she would never have had this little boy John Baptist shano she would never have met Mary wther Lewis or William Clark had it not been for her life in this hza community in what is now North Dakota she never would have been part of the lson park Expedition but most importantly think of that name sagia we gave that name to her and the one thing that we are proud of in North Dakota all of us descendants of our that at adza Village had it not been for her life with us there is not a soul in the entire universe who would have ever heard of this woman that we called sah thank you so very much we are um we are going to um I’m just answer a couple of questions here but before before we before we I take any questions I just want to again thank my friends Bud Clark descendant of William Clark um bud and I have had just an incredible journey sharing this story and one of the stories I I when we were in we were we have been to the nation’s capital on a number of occasions just because of this whole LS and Clark thing and in 2001 in January when William Clark was finally given his his commissioner he was finally acknowledged as um a captain um Bud Clark and his brother John accepted that citation or they accepted that certificate from President Bill Clinton and at the same time York and Saga were both given honorary uh commissions or honorary recognition as sergeants they were honorary sergeants in the Army and I sat right beside Bud Clark I was able to I was invited to accept the citation along with Rosanne abrahamson from the Shon tribe but I got to sit right beside Bud Clark in the front row in the East room at the White House and it’s memories like that you will never forget those those times and Bud was laughing at me because I was just driving him from room to room and we were taking pictures in the Red Room and the blue room and the East room and all of the um guards in the White House that it was kind of N and um but we had I mean it was a memorable time and Scott Mandrell is just an incredible person I was telling somebody earlier today that oh he has been with this thing he he rode his horse to where was it Harper fairy DC to pittsbur from from DC to Pittsburgh and I was telling somebody about that this morning but we are um looking forward to to your arrival on the Northern Plains in North Dakota we will make sure there’s a lot of wood uh for the players and we will see you there and I want to thank you for what you did here today with the tribe um we’ve been work I’ve been working with tribes all along the Lou and Par Trail and what what took place here this morning and presentation to the chairman here uh for the Omaha nation and all of the people in this community was incredible and I just want to say I think that all of you Scott and and um bud and the whole hor of Discovery rediscovery or the the what do you call your organization again the rediscovery Corp discovered Discovery Expedition of St Charles Missouri you guys are awesome thank you so much we do have time for just a couple of questions so if you do have a question go ahead and raise your hand we have a microphone to pass around so everyone can hear the question so go ahead and raise your hand if you have a question all right Mr Clark Amy I just wondered if you’ve ever had personal contact with descendants of Jean Baptist I’ve had many any um everywhere I go I get phone calls and emails from people who tell me that they are descend well not actually not of Jean Baptist but of tant shano with Jean Baptist the only the only instance that I have ever encountered anyone with any information about that was when I was in Germany and there a woman came up to me and she had done her master’s thesis on John Baptist shano and in the thesis she me she mentions a woman over there in in Germany or in that part of the country that had a child with Jean bapti Sho he lived there for six years and um the child according to the story died in infancy I don’t know of any other descendants of Jean Baptist we have new information being uncovered every day recently sagaia of course had two other children the set and perhaps another child and there have been b or baptismal and death records and there have been two death records found just recently for two girls we don’t know if either of those well the oldest of the girl died at 21 L set we don’t know if she had any children because that on her death certific her death certificate her name is written as Le Sho meaning she would have been married have you heard of any descendants from John Baptist I’m sure by 2006 they will be coming out of the woodwor I have um no matter where I go I meet somebody who tells me they are a descendant of tant shano and I believe it do you think that the incredible interest in Le and Clark will be sustained for two years and Beyond um I’m thinking of the Journey Back Down of course back to St Louis ibody was going pretty fast but what do you see two years from now and Beyond I think that what’s happened is that when this ends in 2006 and September of 2006 I really don’t think it’s going to end I think that right now we are all so involved in building legacies and creating Partnerships and I think that all of these legacies and all the Partnerships will get stronger all the time and they will be lasting and that that’s what this whole I think that’s the most important part of the whole Bicentennial commemoration is that this is not just one big party that’s going to end in 2006 this is a time for us it’s an opportunity for us to build lasting relationships between communities between Native Americans and non- Indian entities between all the governmental entities I mean there are major major Partnerships that are being established right now that that have never existed in the past they’re not going to end in September of 2006 they’re going to to be continued and the interest in Lewis and Clark in American history this is just going to spark more interest I think in American history I mean we are already talking to people who want to continue this because in 2007 they have to have a ball at the white house because Shah Shah white coyot the tribal leader was there and they’re already talking to us about I’m not going to say dragging this thing on but I mean continuing it and he was out at Montello and then of course David Thompson the fur Trader was up in this part of the country and they’re already working on plans to commemorate that and at the last trail Heritage Foundation meeting I was at they were they are looking at commemorating the next 100 years so no we’re not going to stop at anything here well uh on behalf of National Park Service and our traveling Corp of Discovery to exhibit I would like to thank Amy Amy Moss for coming and sharing her story of Sago we with us today and joining me in thanking her thank you so much our next program here in the tend director Allen director Allan Steve Adam

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Clark: September 7, 1806

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:37:57 +0000

Sunday 7th September 1806 as we were doubtfull that the two fieldses were
behind I derected Sergt. Ordway with 4 men to Continue untill Meridian and
if those men did not arive by that hour to proceed on. if we met with them
at any Short distance a gun Should be fired which would be a Signal for
him to proceed on. we had proceeded on about 8 miles by water and the
distance through not more than 1 mile when we Saw the fire of those 2 men,
I derected a gun fired as a Signal for Sergt. ordway to proceed on, and
took the boys on board. they had killed nothing & informed me they had
been Somewhat almd. at our delay, that the distance across from the little
Sieoux river was about 1 1/2 miles only, the bottoms thick and Grass very
high. we proceded on with a Stiff Breeze ahead (note the evaperation on
this portion of the Missouri has been noticed as we assended this river,
and it now appears to be greater than it was at that time. I am obliged to
replenish my ink Stand every day with fresh ink at least 9/10 of which
must evaperate.) we proceded on to a bottom on the S W Side a little above
the Soldiers river and Came too and Sent out all the hunters. they killed
3 Elk which was at no great distance we Sent out the men and had the flesh
brought in Cooked and Dined. Sergt. Ordway Came up & after takeing a
Sumptious Dinner we all Set out at 4 P M wind ahead as usial. at Dusk we
came too on the lower part of a Sand bar on the S W side found the
Musquetors excessively tormenting not withstanding a Stiff breeze from the
S. E. a little after dark the wind increased the Musquetors dispersed our
Camp of this night is about 2 miles below our Encampment of the 4th of
august 1804 ascending we came 44 miles to day only

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Clark: August 8, 1806

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:37:51 +0000

Sunday 8th August 1806 A cool windey morning I derected Shields and Gibson
to turn out and hunt this morning. at 8 A.M. Sergt. N. Pryor Shannon, hall
& Windsor Came down the river in two Canoes made of Buffalow Skins.
Sergt. Pryor informed me that the Second night after he parted with me on
the river Rochejhone he arived about 4 P M on the banks of a large Creek
which contained no running water. he halted to let the horses graze
dureing which time a heavy Shower of rain raised the Creek so high that
Several horses which had Stragled across the Chanel of this Creek was
obliged to Swim back. here he deturmined to Continue all night it being in
good food for the horses. In the morning he could See no horses. in lookg
about their Camp they discovered Several tracks within 100 paces of their
Camp, which they pursued found where they had Caught and drove off all the
horses. they prosued on five miles the Indians there divided into two
parties. they Continued in pursute of the largest party five miles further
finding that there was not the Smallest Chance of overtakeing them, they
returned to their Camp and packed up their baggage on their backs and
Steared a N. E. course to the River Rochejhone which they Struck at pompys
Tower, there they killed a Buffalow Bull and made a Canoe in the form and
shape of the mandans & Ricares (the form of a bason) and made in the
following manner. Viz: 2 Sticks of 11/4 inch diameter is tied together So
as to form a round hoop of the Size you wish the canoe, or as large as the
Skin will allow to cover, two of those hoops are made one for the top or
brim and the for the bottom the deabth you wish the Canoe, then Sticks of
the Same Size are Crossed at right angles and fastened with a throng to
each hoop and also where each Stick Crosses each other. then the Skin when
green is drawn tight over this fraim and fastened with throngs to the brim
or outer hoop So as to form a perfect bason. one of those Canoes will
carry 6 or 8 Men and their loads. Those two Canoes are nearly the Same
Size 7 feet 3 inches diamieter & 16 inchs deep 15 ribs or Cross Sticks
in each. Sergt. Pryor informs me that the Cause of his building two Canoes
was for fear of ones meating with Some accedent in passing down the
rochejhone a river entirely unknown to either of them by which means they
might loose their guns and amunition and be left entirely destitute of the
means of precureing food. he informed me that they passed through the
worst parts of the rapids & Shoals in the river without takeing a drop
of water, and waves raised from the hardest winds dose not effect them. on
the night of the 26th ulto. the night after the horses had been stolen a
Wolf bit Sergt. Pryor through his hand when asleep, and this animal was So
vicious as to make an attempt to Seize Windsor, when Shannon fortunately
Shot him. Sergt. Pryers hand has nearly recovered. The Country through
which St. Pryor Passed after he parted with me is a broken open Country.
he passed one Small river which I have Called Pryors river which rises in
a Mtn. to the South of Pompys tower. The note I left on a pole at the
Mouth of the River Rochejhone Sergt. Pryor concluding that Capt. Lewis had
passed took the note and brought it with him. Capt. Lewis I expect will be
certain of my passing by the Sign which I have made and the encampment
imediately in the point. Sergt. Pryor bing anxious to overtake me Set out
Some time before day this morning and forgot his Saddlebags which contains
his papers &c. I Sent Bratten back with him in Serch of them. I also
Sent Shannon over to hunt the bottom on the opposit Side. Shields and
Gibson returned at 10 A.M. with the Skins and part of the flesh of three
deer which they had killed in this bottom. I derected them to take one of
the Skin Canoes and proceed down to the next bottom and untill my arival
which will be this evening if Sergt. Pryor returns in time. My object is
to precure as many Skins as possible for the purpose of purchaseing Corn
and Beans of the Mandans. as we have now no article of Merchindize nor
horses to purchase with, our only resort is S kins which those people were
very fond the winter we were Stationed near them. after dark Sergt. Pryor
returned with his Saddlebeggs &c. they were much further up than he
expected.

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Clark: August 4, 1806

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:37:50 +0000

Wednesday 4th August 1806 Musquetors excessively troublesom So much So
that the men complained that they could not work at their Skins for those
troublesom insects. and I find it entirely impossible to hunt in the
bottoms, those insects being So noumerous and tormenting as to render it
imposseable for a man to continue in the timbered lands and our best
retreat from those insects is on the Sand bars in the river and even those
Situations are only clear of them when the Wind Should happen to blow
which it did to day for a fiew hours in the middle of the day. the
evenings nights and mornings they are almost indureable perticelarly by
the party with me who have no Bears to keep them off at night, and nothing
to Screen them but their blankets which are worn and have maney holes. The
torments of those Missquetors and the want of a Sufficety of Buffalow meat
to dry, those animals not to be found in this neighbourhood induce me to
deturmine to proceed on to a more eliagiable Spot on the Missouri below at
which place the Musquetors will be less troublesom and Buffalow more
plenty. (I will here obseve that Elk is Abundant but their flesh & fat
is hard to dry in the Sun, and when dry is much easirSpoiled than either
the Buffalow or Deer) I ordered the Canoes to be reloaded with our baggage
& dryed meat which had been Saved on the Rochejhone together with the
Elk killed at this place. wrote a note to Capt Lewis informing him of my
intentions and tied it to a pole which I had Stuck up in the point. At 5
P. M Set out and proceeded on down to the 2d point which appeared to be an
eligable Situation for my purpose killed a porcupine on this point the
Musquetors were So abundant that we were tormented much worst than at the
point. The Child of Shabono has been So much bitten by the Musquetor that
his face is much puffed up & Swelled. I encamped on this extensive
Sand bar which is on the N W. Side.

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Clark: July 23, 1806

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:37:47 +0000

Wednesday 23rd July 1806. last night the wolves or dogs came into our Camp
and eat the most of our dryed meat which was on a scaffold Labeech went
out early agreeable to my directions of last evening. Sergt. Pryor and
Windser also went out. Sgt. pryor found an Indian Mockerson and a Small
piece of a roab, the mockerson worn out on the bottom & yet wet, and
have every appearance of haveing been worn but a fiew hours before. those
Indian Signs is Conclusive with me that they have taken the 24 horses
which we lost on the night of the 10th instant, and that those who were
about last night were in Serch of the ballance of our horses which they
could not find as they had fortunately got into a Small Prarie Serounded
with thick timber in the bottom. Labeech returned haveing taken a great
Circle and informed me that he Saw the tracks of the horses makeing off
into the open plains and were by the tracks going very fast. The Indians
who took the horses bent their course reather down the river. the men
finished both Canoes by 12 oClock to day, and I sent them to make Oars
& get poles after which I sent Shields and Labeech to kill a fat
Buffalow out of a gangue which has been in a fiew miles of us all day. I
gave Sergt Pryor his instructions and a letter to Mr. Haney and directed
that he G. Shannon & Windser take the remaining horses to the Mandans,
where he is to enquire for Mr. H. Heney if at the establishments on the
Assinniboin river to take 12 or 14 horses and proceed on to that place and
deliver Mr. Heney the letter which is with a view to engage Mr. Heney to
provale on some of the best informed and most influential Chiefs of the
different bands of Sieoux to accompany us to the Seat of our Government
with a view to let them See our population and resourses &c. which I
believe is the Surest garentee of Savage fidelity to any nation that of a
Governmt. possessing the power of punishing promptly every aggression.
Sergt. Pryor is directed to leave the ballance of the horses with the
grand Chief of the Mandans untill our arival at his village also to keep a
journal of the of his rout courses distances water courss Soil production,
& animals to be particularly noted. Shields and Labeech killed three
buffalow two of them very fat I had as much of the meat Saved as we could
Conveniently Carry. in the evening had the two Canoes put into the water
and lashed together ores and everything fixed ready to Set out early in
the morning, at which time I have derected Sergt. Pryor to Set out with
the horses and proceed on to the enterance of the big horn river at which
place the Canoes will meat him and Set him across the Rochejhone below the
enterance of that river.

—

Speech for Yellowstone Indians Children. The Great Spirit has given a fair
and bright day for us to meet together in his View that he may inspect us
in this all we say and do.

Children I take you all by the hand as the children of your Great father
the President of the U. States of America who is the great chief of all
the white people towards the riseing sun.

Children This Great Chief who is Benevolent, just, wise & bountifull
has sent me and one other of his chiefs (who is at this time in the
country of the Blackfoot Indians) to all his read children on the
Missourei and its waters quite to the great lake of the West where the
land ends and the sun sets on the face of the great water, to know their
wants and inform him of them on our return.

Children We have been to the great lake of the west and are now on our
return to my country. I have seen all my read children quite to that great
lake and talked with them, and taken them by the hand in the name of their
great father the Great Chief of all the white people.

Children We did not see the ____ or the nations to the North. I have come
across over high mountains and bad road to this river to see the ____
Natn. I have come down the river from the foot of the great snowey
mountain to see you, and have looked in every detection for you, without
seeing you untill now

Children I heard from some of your people ____ nights past by my horses
who complained to me of your people haveing taken 24 of their cummerads.

Children The object of my comeing to see you is not to do you injurey but
to do you good the Great Chief of all the white people who has more goods
at his command than could be piled up in the circle of your camp, wishing
that all his read children should be happy has sent me here to know your
wants that he may supply them.

Children Your great father the Chief of the white people intends to build
a house and fill it with such things as you may want and exchange with you
for your skins & furs at a very low price. & has derected me to
enquire of you, at what place would be most convenient for to build this
house. and what articles you are in want of that he might send them
imediately on my return

Children The people in my country is like the grass in your plains
noumerous they are also rich and bountifull. and love their read brethren
who inhabit the waters of the Missoure

Children I have been out from my country two winters, I am pore necked and
nothing to keep of the rain. when I set out from my country I had a plenty
but have given it all to my read children whome I have seen on my way to
the Great Lake of the West. and have now nothing.

Children Your Great father will be very sorry to here of the ____ stealing
the horses of his Chiefs warrors whome he sent out to do good to his red
children on the waters of Missoure.

_____ their ears to his good counsels he will shut them and not let any
goods & guns be brought to the red people. but to those who open their
Ears to his counsels he will send every thing they want into their
country. and build a house where they may come to and be supplyed whenever
they wish.

Children Your Great father the Chief of all the white people has derected
me to inform his red children to be at peace with each other, and the
white people who may come into your country under the protection of the
Flag of your great father which you. those people who may visit you under
the protection of that flag are good people and will do you no harm

Children Your great father has detected me to tell you not to suffer your
young and thoughtless men to take the horses or property of your
neighbours or the white people, but to trade with them fairly and
honestly, as those of his red children below.

Children The red children of your great father who live near him and have
opened their ears to his counsels are rich and hapy have plenty of horses
cows & Hogs fowls bread &c.&c. live in good houses, and sleep
sound. and all those of his red children who inhabit the waters of the
Missouri who open their ears to what I say and follow the counsels of
their great father the President of the United States, will in a fiew
years be as hapy as those mentioned &c.

Children It is the wish of your Great father the Chief of all the white
people that some 2 of the principal Chiefs of this ____ Nation should
Visit him at his great city and receive from his own mouth. his good
counsels, and from his own hands his abundant gifts, Those of his red
children who visit him do not return with empty hands, he send them to
their nation loaded with presents

Children If any one two or 3 of your great chiefs wishes to visit your
great father and will go with me, he will send you back next Summer loaded
with presents and some goods for the nation. You will then see with your
own eyes and here with your own years what the white people can do for
you. they do not speak with two tongues nor promis what they can’t perform

Children Consult together and give me an answer as soon as possible your
great father is anxious to here from (& see his red children who wish
to visit him) I cannot stay but must proceed on & inform him &c.

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Clark: June 8, 1806

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:37:30 +0000

Sunday June 8th 1806 Drewyer returned this morning from the chase without
killing any thing. his horse left him last night and he prosued him near
our camp before he cought him. The Sick Chief is much mended, he can bear
his weight on his legs and recovers Strength. the Child has nearly
recovered. The Cut nose and ten or 12 came over today to visit us, two of
those were of the tribes from the plains of Lewis’s river whome we had not
before Seen; one of those men brought a horse which I gave a tomahawk
which I had exchanged for with the Chief of the Clahclahlah’s Nation below
the Great rapids of Columbia, and broken-down horse which was not able to
Cross the mountains. we also exchanged 2 of our indeferent horses for
Sound back horses. in the evening Several foot races were run by the men
of our party and the Indians; after which our party divided and played at
prisoners base untill night. after dark the fiddle was played and the
party amused themselves in danceing. one of those Indians informed us that
we could not cross the mountains untill the full of the next moon, or
about the 1st of July. if we attempted it Sooner our horses would be three
days without eateing, on the top of the Mountns. this information is
disagreeable to us, in as much as it admits of Some doubt, as to the time
most proper for us to Set out. at all events we Shall Set out at or about
the time which the indians Seem to be generally agreed would be the most
proper. about the middle of this month

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