Sacagawea 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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Chain of Communication

admin — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:47:16 +0000

Communication on the Lewis and Clark Expedition required a complex chain of translation that at times consisted of five or more people. Each person involved in these translations was vital, especially as there were times when the expedition relied on the aid or goodwill of the Native Americans with whom they were speaking in order to continue with their journey. The large number of languages and people involved in this process meant that simple introductions and an explanation of the expedition’s purpose could take hours, much less any trade of goods or information (Vinikas).

Neither Lewis nor Clark spoke languages other than English, and so they were reliant on the members of their expedition who did in order to communicate with the Native peoples. It is possible that, as a result, some of the intentions and nuances that accompanied their phrasing was not translated along with the words. For example, both men addressed the Native Americans that they spoke with as “Children”, though those Native Americans were adults and often leaders in their own right. This way of referring to the people they encountered has a patronizing tone that may not have been conveyed through the multiple languages necessary for conversation (Vinikas).

Following English, the next language in the chain of translation was usually French. Though some members of the expedition, such as French Shawnee tracker George Drouillard, also spoke some Native American languages or sign language. This sign language was a common language that allowed communication between differing peoples and communities. There are some regional variations of this sign language, but ultimately it facilitated interactions between peoples with separate spoken languages (Davis). At times, using this sign language, members of the expedition were able to communicate directly to the people, however, that was not usually the case (Skarsten). So, the captains would speak English to one of the French-speaking members of the expedition, often Drouillard or Francois Labiche, a French Omaha trader from Fort Kaskaskia among a few others (Francois). Depending on the Tribe they were engaging these men would then relay the message in French to Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian fur trader who was brought along on the expedition primarily for his valuable place in this chain of communication (Toussaint).

After being told Lewis or Clark’s words in French from one of the other men, Charbonneau would translate them into Hidatsa for his wife, Sacagawea. She was Lemhi Shoshone, and the expedition’s trade with her people during the journey proved to be invaluable. This was especially true when the expedition bargained with the Shoshones for horses (Francois). After listening to her husband’s Hidatsa, she would speak to the Shoshones in her native Shoshone. Once they had replied to her, she would relay that message back to Charbonneau and the words would travel back down the chain of translation in the other direction. This tedious process would continue until an agreement had been reached.

At one point in the expedition, the chain of communication stretched even farther, adding yet one more person, and the language needed to speak to them. While traveling with their Shoshone guide over the mountains in late 1805, the party met the Salish, or Flatheads, people with whom their guide was able to communicate. These people were called Flatheads despite the fact that they did not practice the flattening of children’s skulls as was common to other Columbia River tribes. So, after Sacagawea spoke to their guide in Shoshone, he would speak to the Salish and receive a reply to pass back (Francois).

Despite the complicated nature of this chain of translation, and the number of hours required for the most basic of conversations, it was clearly successful. In their journals both Lewis and Clark praised the valuable skills of their translators and referred to the vital goods and information obtained from their interactions with various Tribal Nations. The fact that these translators were able to successfully make their intentions known, ask questions, and even conduct trade across not only the many languages needed to speak between themselves, but the numerous dialects of the peoples they encountered was truly impressive (Vinikas). Without the knowledge and input of each person involved in this lengthy chain of translation, it is possible that the expedition would have failed to reach its goal.

Sources

Vinikas, Vincent. The Historian, vol. 67, no. 1, Wiley, 2005, pp. 127–28, .

Davis, J. (2017). Native American signed languages. Oxford Handbooks Online.

Skarsten, M. O. George Drouillard: Hunter and Interpreter for Lewis and Clark and Fur Trader, 1807-1810. University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 

“Francois Labiche.” Discovering Lewis and Clark, Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, .

“Toussaint Charbonneau.” Discovering Lewis and Clark, Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, .

U.S. Department of the Interior. (n.d.). Salish. National Parks Service. Retrieved January 31, 2022, from

Tags: French Language and the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Lewis and Clark, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, Lewis and Clark Trail, Charbonneau, Sacagawea, Sacajawea, Drouillard, Labiche, language,

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Sacagawea: A Historical Enigma

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 01:27:40 +0000

Kessler critically examines the historical record surrounding Sacagawea, the Lemhi Shoshone woman whose role in the Lewis and Clark Expedition has been both celebrated and mythologized. The article distinguishes between what the expedition journals actually document — her identification of landmarks, her gathering of edible plants, her crucial role in the encounter with the Shoshone, and her presence as a signal of the expedition’s peaceful intentions — and the romanticized narratives that grew up around her in the 19th and 20th centuries. Kessler addresses the longstanding debate over Sacagawea’s death, weighing the historical evidence for the 1812 death at Fort Manuel against the oral traditions supporting a longer life on the Wind River Reservation. The article also examines how Sacagawea has been used symbolically by various groups, from the women’s suffrage movement to Native sovereignty advocates, and how these appropriations have both elevated and distorted her historical significance.

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The Odyssey of Toussaint Charbonneau

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 01:27:38 +0000

This article provides a detailed examination of the life and career of Toussaint Charbonneau, the French-Canadian fur trader and interpreter who joined the Lewis and Clark Expedition at Fort Mandan in the winter of 1804-1805. Anderson traces Charbonneau’s origins in the Canadian fur trade, his marriages to Native women including Sacagawea, and his role as interpreter during the expedition. The article examines Charbonneau’s often-criticized performance during the journey, including the pirogue incident of May 1805, while also acknowledging his essential linguistic contributions as part of the translation chain between the captains and various tribal nations. Anderson follows Charbonneau’s post-expedition career as a trader and government interpreter on the upper Missouri, his relationship with William Clark, and his involvement in the fur trade until his death around 1843.

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Bev Hines on Sacagawea: Myths, History, and the Expedition

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:08 +0000

to you our next speaker uh Miss beev Hines of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation she is going to talk to us today about Chicago web so please join me and help me helping welcome be to the stage today I guess we’re all here and ready to go and we hope we don’t have too much traffic on the interstate and too many of them running Jake breaks I don’t want to break your hearts but I’m going to uh cut down some of the myths of saga Saka sakaka Saga and twice Clark called her Janie those of us in Iowa learned sakaa years and years ago the north dakotans say sakaka but not the Mandan Hada tribes some of you had your exposure to Sago waya from Waldo’s novel one of my friends said oh it was such a beautiful story about her that big thick book and I said the only part that was accurate was the start of each chapter where she quoted from the journals s way I didn’t speak English s way I didn’t have an affair with Captain Clark I’m taking all the fun it aren’t I let Legends and myths Die Hard and some of the myths have been that there was a second Saga that lived until she was close to 100 and then died and is buried on the Wind River Reservation but those of us who are Lewis and Clark people think differently this one could almost start like a fairy tale once upon a time there lived some stories in history should always start that way as far as I’m concerned but Saga was quite a young woman the only thing now is that the M Dan and the Shoni still don’t agree on how to pronounce her name you’re more apt from the Mandan Villages and amasa to hear Saga the shones will sometimes say Saga she may not even have been named when she grew up in the Shi tribe regardless of spellings or pronunciation she’s quite a remarkable young woman she has more statues 23 than I’m aware of that have been made her than any woman in American history she’s got all kinds of paintings she’s got mountains she’s got Rivers she’s got just about anything you can think of named in her honor many books about her and most of them aren’t accurate kind of hard to go back and get into the Indian history and and have the history come up with what she want according to the journal she was Lioni one of the snake tribe the salmon eaters her people were a semi nomadic tribe they were called the aaduki centered around today’s Continental Divide through the area of Idaho the lmh High River Val she was probably born in what’s now the tendoy area what we know is documented about where she was taken in Lewis’s journals for July um August of 1805 and Lewis wrote that when she was about 12 years of age approximately 1800 she was taken prisoner near the Three Forks Montana area by the Hada Indians they were a raing part the shonis did not have guns they had great horses but they didn’t have guns and the minaries would come in adasa minari group would come in the men would be off Hunting they would not take women they would not take old men they would not take the young boys they took the young women to be their slave early life as a child had been like well they were semi-nomadic as I said in the summer they went to the mountain rivers to fish for salmon in the fall they crossed the mountains to the Eastern PLS to hunt for buffalo in the spring they went to their C planes for the C rout she learned as soon as she could walk to take her little digging stick so by the time she was three she had a little digging stick and she learned how to dig for rots she learned which berries were edible which of the ground vegetables that they could find were edible she learned how to set up a tear down a t she learned how to pack for whenever they would travel to hunt or anything have to remember the men did the hunting and the killing and then they left the cutting up and all the rest of the work to the women small pox had already been through the area of the shies they were a weakened tribe they got their horses from the southwest from the Spanish and as I said they had marvelous horses just no guns the pl’s Indians really made the raids and took their toll on them when she was taken she was taken back to the m then area Village the area they headed east but they did did not go by the way that Lewis and Clark came West later they took the southerly route they went in along following the Yellowstone until a Yellowstone f up with the Missour so one thing I’m going to tell you is she was not a guide she was not a guide she was not a guide she did not know where she was going she did not point out to them take this route she wasn’t a guide her role key role was As an interpreter for the shonis a woman with a baby meant usually that it was not a war party and she helped them find food but when you see Sago way pointing no she did not know where she was going hate to tell you that imagine being a 12-year-old being taken by a tribe going across several hundred miles and going to live in another tribe where you didn’t know the language if they asked you your name you couldn’t even tell them your name because you didn’t know what they asked so we don’t know if Sako was her name in the shonis or not the shonis frequently did not give their children a name until there had been some major occurrence in their life so she may not have been had a name so today the Shon and the Man Dan still argue does saga mean bird woman or does it mean b boat launcher did she have a name back then but she went with this tribe to become a slave now being nomadic and going there not knowing the language and going into a tribe that planted pumpkins corn tobacco she had to learn to farm this is a totally alien world to this young woman they raised sunflowers beans corn squash and so the digging stick that she had learned to dig for things with became a digging stick like they used to plant things Amy moss and I had a long two hours in the airport one time and she said oh we didn’t take slaves hello yes you did the Indian tribes almost all of them took slaves I haven’t been able to ask any of our our uh deep historians who get into genealogy and lineage and stuff if this was a good way to bring in fresh blood to a tribe so that you didn’t have a lot of inbreeding you would steal from another tribe and bring them in and eventually you took them into their family and then married she was with them about 3 to four years before shano came along sharino had come to the Hada Villages as a Trapper and trater he spoke French he spoke Hada some say he won her in a card game the captains tell us in a in a journal that he purchased her now when you look at purchasing do you think as we do with some other tribes in the country and in the world a bride price he already had one Shoni wife with a small child he was probably close to three times her age thing I like about sharino is he kept marrying very young Indian women even when he was 80 he took another 15year old but he took her as his bride he worked As an interpreter when LS and Clark came he was an interpreter for them we’re told he was short dark loud rough and was always it seemed like in trouble and kind of chickening out on things during the Expedition what they said was a French man by name Shabana who speaks the big Bell the gr language visits us he wanted to hire and informed us his two SARS were snake shy Indians we engage him to go with us and take one of his wives to interpret the snake language no one says it in the journals nor in much of what I have read over the years as to why they picked Sak waya my own feeling is if wife number one had a 2-year-old and you’re going to take a Shon wife to interpret you’re going to take the one that’s got a baby in a cradle board not a 2-year-old that’s going to run around Camp when you look at how they had to interpret and the way that language is very interesting private leish who was half Onan and half French spoke French and did a lot of the interpreting so the captains would speak to him in English he would speak in French to shano shano would speak Hada Justa then when he got out to the show you had to add one more layer so trying to interpret and go back and forth could be an all day thing that winter at the camp at Fort Mandan they moved sharo and Sago waya into the fort itself so Sago waya was away from any of her women friends and the women who would help her with her pregnancy and on February 11th we are told that she was in labor with the baby painful violent and one of the Frenchman by the name of your said he had heard if you took a rattlesnake rattle and crushed it and put it in water and gave it to the woman she would deliver quickly well I’ve had three kids and I think if you threaten me with rattlesnake rattle I might deliver quickly also Clark had the rattlesnake rattle just s gave it to her they say in the journal she delivered 10 minutes later Captain Lewis was enough of a scientist to say he would have to see that many more times before he would believe in the efficacy of it so my nursing background said okay what is in rattlesnake rattle is there something like kosin like we use today to induce labor uh-uh my medical friends say oh B keratin the same stuff that’s in your fingernails it’s what’s in a rattle snake rattle I thought okay placebo effect you tell somebody long enough strong enough that this is going to work maybe it does she delivered on April 11th or February 11th of 1805 and on April 7th of 1805 the kbo went back Downstream 30 men of the Expedition chano Saga and the baby started West 55 days old baby in a cradle board a nursing mother 16 years 17 years old with the original disposable diapers a piece of leather filled with Cattail fluff or Marsh Grass at least it was by greatable the first time that they mention in the journals after leaving on the 7 that she did something for them was she was walking on shore on April 11th she found a pile of wood and she knew that the mice would hide things under the wood so she dug in under there and lo and behold wild are the chokes food for dinner they walked a lot on the shore not always in the boats and she would find The Rook vegetables the things that they could eat she gathered R and all the rest of the way with them now squa was not a derogatory word back then squa when used in context meant the wife of another man back East the Algonquin called the white men’s wives squa and it didn’t have a derogatory connotation it just meant you were the wife of another man on May 14th the white perose starts to tip they’re in the water of the Missour the wind comes up it starts to swamp sh no panics he doesn’t do a thinging the captains were walking on Shore cruzat blind in one eye and not seeing any the other the good River Boatman was at the runner he threatened shano to straighten things up help write the boat sh froze in the meantime Sago waya with the baby on her back is reaching in into the water picking up journals picking up boxes picking up papers and things as they float out everything they needed that was washing overboard she got most of it back cruzat got them to safety he threatened to shoot Charo if he didn’t Shape Up mistake was he didn’t do it LS wrote in the journal that she had the equal fortitude and resolution with any person on board at the time of the accident he praised her June 10th they are now in a camp near the Great Falls they have camped because they are trying to figure out where Falls what’s going with the river they’re trying to get the celestial navigation find out what they’re doing and Saga becomes very ill high fever intestinal pains Medicine of the time one of the things you did was to bleed a patient patient you know they gave you an a medic to make you vomit they gave you a diuretic to make the urine flow they gave you a perg up to clean out the bowels and then they would bleed you and in this case Clark bed her for 4 days she got worse Clark BL her again what the men say in the journals he BL her twice leis was on a side trip Clark wrote every day about her illness and she kept getting worse and she ran a high fever and this is the one place something happened in the trip that might have made a difference had she died on June 14th Clark wrote her case somewhat dangerous he had her swallow some bark Peruvian the powdered Peruvian bark came from the syona tree gave us our quinine but it was also the aspirin of the B so he gave her a dose of that by mouth and and he also put a pus of it on her abdomen she became worse he wrote she got into a depression somewhat dangerous June 15th she refused to take her medicine and so they Clark said to shano I want you to help me I don’t think shano really cared and Clark wrote that finally got her to take some but he wasn’t concerned about her health Clark said if she Di it will be the fall of her husband as I am now convinced leis F away he came back and by the time he came back to Camp her arms and her hands were twitching her pulse was very weak leis wrote found the Indian woman extremely ill and much reduced by her indisposition pulse weak and irregular he gave her two doses of farts and he finally gave her some Lum opium mixed with alcohol or water now that will make change in your pulse and it did help there is a sulver spring not far from there it’s called Sago waya Springs and Le sent the men for some of the sulfur water and he had her continue to drink the sulfur water for a number of days we don’t know if there was an electrolyte imbalance but they tested the water today and they say no there’s nothing in it that really would have cured her but a nursing mother what would have happened if she died good question 4month old baby would the men have chewed food and then spit it back out for the baby to eat you have to look at this and you think that could have been a catastrophe it could have been a catastrophe captains recorded every day of her condition took about 10 days for her to get better now what did they think that she had today the doctors say possibly post cartum pelvic inflam atory disease she probably had had diarrhea because theal diseases were among ands we look at that and we’d say okay do we want to tap it up to a child bed fever the Sago waya that the ls and Clark believe was the true Sago waya died in 1812 at Fort Emanuel 4 months after giving birth to a girl lazette and the fort settler whose name was wrote that the wife of shano who went with ls and Clark died today of putrid fever very much what she had 4 months after giving birth to baby pm to John Baptist they did the journey around the falls it took them three plus weeks to get around the falls and then on the 29th of June there is a flash FL there is this heavy rain Clark sharo sag Lea and the baby are in kind of a valley a gully and this flood comes running through now here’s where sharo panics again he scrambling to get up to get to High Ground trying not too hard to pull her Clark is below trying to shove her up before the water gets more than waste deep on him they managed to get to the top shelf of this area before anything happened to all of them but they lost the Cradle board they lost all of the baby’s clothes sharino lost his gun that rainstorm was so heavy and so bad that they had hail Stones between 1 in and 7 in in diameter were told in the journals that the men were beaten and blooded by those hail stones 24th of July now they’re seeing the Rocky Mountains I love the captains one of those things that you realize that at the time they thought that the country was balanced there’s Appalachians on the East Coast not too high you’re going to get to the West Coast you’re going to find something that matches I would love to have been a little mouse because I’m told the captains would not have use Square words but I want to know what they said when they started seeing the Rockies and then when they got out to the shies and all they saw was row after row after Row the Indians had told them they would see shining mountains snow on them but they didn’t tell them how much and I would love to have heard what they said we are now to the area where Sago waya is beginning to recognize landmarks getting out near the Three Forks area this is the land of my people and on August 14th shano hit Sago a and Clark reprimanded him for it now this is one of the thing that Shon tribes and her great great great grand niece Rosanne ninon says please always talk about the violence because there was frequently physical violence in these families Clark sto The Cho I know August 17th they are in the area of the shonis now and Sago waya sees a woman in the distance she said through sharo and such that she and a friend were captured by enemy Warriors her friend escaped and made her way home and the woman that she met was the friend her fingers in her mouth and she dances she is overjoyed to see this young woman when it came time for the meeting with the chieftain a woman is not normally an Indian woman is not normally in a circle with The Chieftains and when you are meeting with strangers if Saga was brought in to interpret she would come in with her head down she would keep her head down until she was to speak and this is where you go English to French to Vasa to show Shy and back and this is when Hollywood couldn’t have done it any better Chief kwe was her brother now we’re not sure if it was blood brother or Clan brother but it was her brother and it made it much easier to go and get the horses now the custom of the show time was that she had been promised to a young man when she was a child they asked her to stay with the shies this young man though did not want her for now he had two wives and children and she had another husband and she had a child by him so he didn’t want her so there was no reason for her to stay with him one of the things that came up was on the 25th of August kight’s people had been starving the members of the Expedition hadn’t had a lot to eat beforehand and though he had promised horses Kam was going to take his people to go on a buffalo hunt because they were starving and here is where shano is in trouble again because Saga overhears her brother saying that they are going to go on a buffalo hunt which wouldn’t let no horses for LS and Clark she tells shano and shano does not tell Captain Lewis at first not till later in the day the captains did though hold Choate to his promise of horses so on the 29th of August they got their horses and their mules even got a horse for Chicago whale through the bitter Roots starving I’ve often wondered how a nursing mother managed with the food supply that they had to keep enough milk for a young child but she apparently was given enough and managed to do that this is an area where they were Clark recognized her usefulness the wife of shano interpreter we find reconciles all the Indians as to our friendly intentions a woman with a party of men is a token of peace they recognized that through the mountains out to the coast there were a couple of times during the Expedition I would love to have been with them I would love to have watched all these men carting water to pour down a hole to get a prairie dog the other thing I would love to have seen when you read the journals is when the men do the Rapids of the Snake River and the Indians are watching and I’m wondering if the Indians are thinking those crazy white men do they know what they’re going to do but they got to the coast November 24th they are going going to take a vote for where to over winter York got a vote he voted for Overlook like 11 of the other men so that they could see what was going sakado WEA first woman to vote the Native American voted kotas and in the journals this is one of the places that CL called her Janie Janie voted poas root V vegetabl WAP where there is food has to be the practicality of a woman on the 30th of November Sago way had been hoarding flour to bake something for young pong she had gotten wet and it had started to sour so she baked bread and gave some to Captain Clark he said it was had not had bread for months so it was a treat and I say okay did she start the sourdough bread thing because that was Sour Dough Bread by the time she used the wet sour flour when they had the camp at Fort pla was the first time that cicago waya sharo and the baby had a room of their own all the journey traveling west they had used the large leather tent stayed with Captain leis Captain Clark George Jer the other interpreter shanoa and baby pal they had shared T all out one of the interesting things on this was from November 4th to March 23rd there were only 12 days it did not rain on the Oregon coast and only six of those days did the sunshine kind of a wet miserable winter Captain Clark’s note that they did Christmas gift exchanges on December 25th you know there’s nothing like a Christmas dinner of rotted elk meat they exchanged some handkerchiefs one of the men made a pair of moccasins for clar but Sak waya gave Captain Clark 24 weasel Tales how do you know what weasel Tales are when they turn white Herman she had brought them from the Shon when she was there with her Tri now I’m not saying she didn’t think a great deal of it because I think she did and he probably treated her better than Captain Lewis did but she gave him 24 white weasel taals that made marvelous decorations this woman had the captains take her belt of blue beads away from her to buy otter skin cake the Indians on the were ferocious Traders they’ve been trading with all the sailors for years and the other people coming through and they would hold you up for highway robbery and the captains in their journals did not speak too highly sometimes of them but she had lost her belt of blue beads for trade for that on January 6th they hear about the huge quailes over on the beach and sag waya wants to go see it she has come all way with the men she’s done everything the men have done and she wants to go see the big fish and what I would love to know is how did she make known through sharbono without stamping her feet to the captains that she wanted to go see that big fish she got to go it was a 3-day trip carting the baby in his in the Cradle Now by then he’s about 10 months old had to climb this one area to get over to where this big fish was and by the time they got there it was bones most of the glubber and meat had been taken but she was allowed to go she had gotten she wanted to see the ocean and she wanted to see the big fish they started back in March by the time in April the expedition was forced to pay very high prices for horses sharo took two of her leather dresses away from her to trade for a horse he also gave up one of his shirts but it wasn’t like taking her dresses again didn’t ask just took it in May baby pom became very ill high fever slowen at the back of his head and his neck those of us with gray hair probably remember the words of mastoid and the infections that we used to get before the days of antibiotics they said that he was cutting teeth and he had the LAX that means he’s cutting teeth and he’s got Di so what did they give him laxative he was the only one in the whole trip who got an enema and then the white man had the audacity to write but the child felt better they used a pus of hot onions as hot as he could stand they used a pus of beeswax pie and Pitch as warm as could be applied he did survive it it’s amazing when you look back at this and think of all things that happened to the men and everybody else we don’t have immune systems like that today no way they had them they put up with the bad water the half rotted meat of course then when they got disent they got Dr Rush’s Thunderbolts to clean them out and I think sometimes that may have been a help instead of all that the one time coming home that she was a guide the men had split Clark was going to go to the yellow store leis was going to go up here what is now cut back Montana area and she told Clark through interpreter that there was a pass in the mountains that her people took and if he went that particular way it would shorten his trip he could make it through there easier today we know it as Boseman pass and it is the one time in the journal that he calls her my pilot that is the one time yes she knew where she could tell them to go I don’t know if she pointed there but most of the time no she wasn’t a guy on August 17th 1806 sharino and the family left the Expedition sho got $533 he got the tent he got a horse one what’s K again Sil Sil no pay Clark expected I think to make it up to her later because the ricra village on August 21st he did write a letter back to sharino saying that he did not have it in his power at that time to reward her as she should be Clark asked to take the baby back to St Louis with him and educated not live with him but educate him and Saka said no he was not weaned yet he was 19 months old later Sago waya visit through this area down to Missour was in 1810 and she and Cho went to St Louis Cho tried to be a farmer he was given some land sold it back to to Clark went back up the River in 1811 racken Ridge and his journal had written that in 1811 shano and his Indian wife who had gone with ls at Clark to the coast were there on the boat that was going back up the river and that she liked the flight which made me think she was trying to dress as the white people did but her she was in ill health and they on their way back December 12th of 1812 Fort Manuel letting WR this evening the wife of sharino a snake squa died of a future feater she was a good and the best woman of the fort age about 25 years she left a fine infant girl lazette what sagaa did was fantastic feat accompanying the man doing everything that they did except the hunting but she was looking for Soldier food to coast and back it’s like that old saying you know Fred St was a marvelous dancer The Ginger Rogers did everything he did only backwards and then high heels and long dress well Sago waya did it in her moccasins and with a baby on her back a nursing mother Louis said she was happy to Lucky Clark called her uncomplaining and such a trait wouldn’t have been gotten such a compliment if it weren’t true ly took baby Lizette and another young boy down to St Louis arrived in 1813 applied to the court in August for appointment as a guardian for lazette as well as for a Tucson a boy about 10 years old in the court records his name has been crossed out and William Clark’s name has been sub ited so William Clark did the educating of John Baptist sharino and loette the children were educated in St Louis I love the things that John Baptiste we don’t know what happened to lazette we know that lazette there was a lazette carono at 24 there was a marriage license but we have not been able to follow anything beyond that we know that John Baptist could speak English French and hadassa was sent to school learn Greek and Latin went to Germany what is now Germany with Duke Paul of whartonberg can you see them with this young Indian warrior throwing a tomahawk in the Palaces of Europe for a few years and learned to speak German Italian and some Spanish and then came back to this country and over educated indan who then went to lead groups out into the West Clark’s ledgers were found in 1936 he had in the 1820s started keeping track of who was alive and who was dead of the Expedition between 1825 and 1828 the woman who wrote about the Saga waya the one pero the one who never said she was sagaa died before these were published but in his Ledger he had written 182 s dead and then below it SE way off dead when you look at the ways that the name was spelled in the journals about 23 different ways all total and D when he did the journals put in a j because he couldn’t read their G’s so you have sakaia Saka s and you keep going on and I still like Jamie whatever you end up calling her she was a marvelous young woman a feet I don’t know that any of the girls today would walk across the country in their moccasins with a baby on their back and do the things that they did whatever you do she’s a marvelous young woman she was not a guy but we are very proud and recognized that Lewis and Clark would not have survived or made the journey without the help of the Indians that they discovered along the way that they met up with from the Odo Missoura who gave them watermelons when they met down near what is now Fort Atkinson to the man B van where they exchanged metal and blacksmithing for corn sexual favors of veneral disease too to the show shies that gave them horses to the N Pur who rescued them after the Bitters and W said do not kill them this aged woman he said I have been rescued by white men and brought to my people do them no harm they never would have made it without the na of Americans and wouldn’t have made it without this young woman Saka the Shon young woman interpret interpret thank you I’ll take questions if you have any about five minutes left we can take questions any questions there are a few very good books out there’s a couple on Sago there’s a little pamphlet The sharo Family Portrait and Irving Anderson wrote that it’s ailable at our interpreter Center one of the ones I really like is um Chicago way up by Frank tasma and then Harold P Howard did both versions at the very end of the book he wrote the second one I have up here on the table there’s a book list of good accurate lisis and Clark books starting with inexpensive paperbacks and going on to more expensive ones and then there’s a sheet that says happy birthday captains Lewis and Clark it tells about their birthdays August 1st was Clark’s birthday August 18th was Lewis’s they had their best birthdays of all three years when they were along this stretch of the river so pick one of those up read how they celebrated here and read what happened the other two years on the trail and thank you

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Keith Bear on Native American Hospitality and the Lewis & Clark Expedition

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:07 +0000

they’re gone and we’re covered still standing there and that’s what I had in my hand so I took my saw I cut that fence post in half and I looked inside I need a solid piece of wood as we need a solid heart in all of us and I took my tools and I carved between those nail holes and I placed those two pieces back together and I shaped it and I started thinking this is much like our elders cuz when they got old they throw them away they put them away today in homes and different things in our way we take our elders into our homes and we keep them there to help with the children as the mother and father work how many of you grandfathers and grandmothers have talked to your grandchildren and tell them about the life here in America when you were young told them about the time of Lewis and Clark told them about the time of the pilgrims because it was my people the Native Americans as were called who greeted those first pilgrims with our Hands Held High and they did not understand us they took their sticks of fire and thunder and they scared us away and we watch from the rocks and the Trees of that first year as they walked over the food and the medicine that could give them strength and heal them we listened to them as they cried through the winter and their children died we saw them lay the bodies in the snow we thought if we can just be their friends but they saw something someone who is different they saw someone who spoke differently they saw someone different and so we watched from trees and in the spring as they buried their dead once again it was our children who went forward and it was a young woman who came out and said my name is Pocahontas and she greeted those men Pocahontas was not the little girl you see the young woman you see on the movie and Captain Smith was not that handsome young man you cannot always believe what was written but we believe what we have been told because our words have been true and passed down she was a little girl and he was an old man and they had respect for one another and today that little boat never sank today that little boat flies through the air today that boat is made of iron steel sometimes that little boat is an Ender tube coming here and it’s you the new Native Americans who must greet them from chesa Bosnia from the Middle East now from China it’s up to you to greet them to show them the way of this land to share with them the things that we have always shared with one another we had popcorn before oral Redenbacher ever got here and we like to share that thing this thing called food and this thing called medicine called friendship because as long as we look inside and we see what’s familiar does not matter what you look like on the outside but we learn from our elders how to be and what are you teaching your children are you teaching your children how to point a finger and see what’s different or are you teaching your children to open a hand and to feel what’s the same cuz you know hunger and you know death you know laughter and you know pain but we all need each other to be a Native American is an honor people are dying to come here to be what you have so their children can have what you were given and these things were shared by the people who lived here we call ourselves n the people we call ourselves in the southwest Denay the people we call ourselves a part of this land we have always welcomed those from different places cuz you have new songs and you have new things and it’s the Warriors those who have gone out in respect and honor as I stand here in a warrior shirt I have done things humbly for my friends and my relatives they have given me the right to stand here under this feather dressed as I am named as I am cuz as you hear these stories and you hear these words you’ve heard them before I’m just a new way to see them but if you feel these words you will feel your grandmothers and your grandfathers and if you listen to this song maybe you will find that Warrior Spirit within you also and this song is for us as Native Americans oh d at home I live in a place called dragswolf Village and dragswolf Village is built in a place where my grandmother my mother’s mother lived I wrote horseback over those Hills and I dug turnup in those Hills and I picked mint down by the river to make tea my grandmother sang good songs and had a beautiful garden and she told me that someday when I was a man I might be able to find a good woman and I’ve been fortunate but like I said I had to make sure that we weren’t related because my father is a Dakota soue from Montana but he has relatives is on Standing Rock my wife is from cheyen River on the Standing Rock reservation so I had to talk to her mother and her uncles are you related to and do you know so and so well how about this one do you know that one and we’re not related so I have a very beautiful wife and she is who I think about when I travel down the road and so as I come home from Journeys long Journeys short Journeys I sing songs she is one of those songs in my heart and so I made this song for my wife her name is nap it’s goodand woman she’s one of the best quill workers porcupine quill workers in this country she was asked to reproduce some of the things that you will see there in monello legance of the man and moccasins of the man and I’m very honored that she has given me a good life very honored that I can find this song that she put there and share it with you today and so This song is called when I come home H I’m coming home High H when I get there I hope that you be waiting for me honey wa oh when I get home we’ll be singing we’ll be dancing we’ll make love all night long when I get home we’ll be singing night long wa don’t you know that I love you I good hand woman don’t you know that I love you I do this flute was given to me by a gentleman who writes a magazine and I was very humbled and I took it as a challenge because I have a hard time playing one flute and this is three but it’s a lot like us as human beings cuz like myself I like to talk and we all have a friend who likes to talk and that’s what this one does we have a friend or somebody who always just nods our head and takes us in stride they’re just one monotone thing there then we have somebody who’s always kind of like oh yeah oh yeah oh you know they kind of make one or two noises and whether we like it or not they’ll agree with us and that’s what friends are about and that’s what this country is about that’s what this whole Lewis and Clark Journey was about cuz when those men came up the river we never expected them like tourists some of them were lost following the first tourist he was lost you remember that guy Columbus he was looking for another place where they have elephants didn’t stop and ask directions and he said look what I found when we landed in the airplane on Monday look what I found Richmond ho yeah you guys are going to have to move I’m going to bring my relatives out here but you know when we learn those men had men with them who were half black and half white they had one who was all black they had some who were half black and half Indian and half Indian and half white and we thought they were all Half Crazy coming up that River and we spent the winter with us and they took out their sticks and they rubbed them together and made the dogs cry and made them jump around too and they said it was dancing didn’t look like much dancing but then That’s How rock and roll is too is it doesn’t look like much it doesn’t sound like much and I’m makes me cry but that’s what they said about the Beatles and Alvis Presley too wasn’t it see music comes from the heart and those young men they gave their hearts to Lewis and Clark men that they trusted Warriors trusted by our leader of our country who was your country then coming into our country and we welcomed them with our hands open and they slept with us and they ate with us and we gave them food and medicine and directions cuz they asked so they went there on a great journey when they came back our young sister a girl that we had stolen not to make her a slave but to make her our keep our blood clean and that girl with Saga she lived in the lodge of Chief Bullseye and Bullseye is a clan relative of mine so I have that small claim to her as a relative to kaguya and so like those men and that woman when they came back they talked about things we had never seen she said in the Summer She said I walked through the hills and there was snow there I said oh yeah she said I came to a river with no other side really she said I even walked inside a fish the first fish story we ever heard must have come from one of them white guys you know but she saw mountains and she she saw an ocean and she walked inside of a whale and she came home and told us these things and they took her back here to the East and then she came home again she said there were lodges with lodges on top and they had stars on the walls to give them light we said boy those people must have some strange medicine she said she saw Lodgers Moving On Wheels we thought she was crazy but she was was very respectful and she worked in harmony with those men and that’s what we have to do we have to believe in our leaders we have to believe in those that we choose we have to give our children the strength and the confidence to go out there and to face the unknown because the unknown is out there now sometimes it’s just around the corner what do you know about your neighbors what do you know about your own families I can trace my family eight greates back and I know who I am I can show you where we lived and where we died your people came from across the water what did they do over there what did they eat over there and why did they come here are you thankful because it’s up to you now to greet those who are lost and hurt looking for a new home and when they come here we as the new Native Americans must greet them and teach them how to live in harmony with the Earth with the land the sky and the water cuz if we don’t respect these things how can we feed our children we must learn how to live in harmony and so this last song I want to give you is what I call Walking In Harmony and I want to say ma thank you very much for being here taking time out of your life to come here and to share what was shared in this country 200 years ago a dream and I hope that when you leave here you will be a part of my reflection the Northern Lights cuz the words that I have given you are only reflection of my family my clan My Tribe next week when I stand in Switzerland I will be representing you and so I hope that I do a good job and I hope that we can learn how to live and walk in harmony w ch e Mr Keith bear thank you so much and now we do have a core of engineers lower Connecticut River Basin office at Tully Lake in royalston he is the Lewis and Clark Vice Centennial coordinator for New England also now we wish to take you back the time is October 20th 1803 earlier this year the size of the territory of the United States doubled with the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon Ohio has just become the 17th state Thomas Jefferson of Virginia has been president for 2 and 1/2 years he and many of the 5 million Americans who are are burning with curiosity as to what wonders lie west of the Mississippi River you have come to hear a representative of the US Army who is recruiting men for an important but Dangerous Mission into these new lands Abner Davis first Infantry Regiment will explain the qualifications and some of the plans for the core of volunteers of the Northwestern Discovery please welcome from casasia in the Indiana territory private Abner Davis well thank you everyone ladies and gentlemen I have here a broadside in my papers which I thought I had pulled out earlier I don’t see it now so we’ll have to go by memory here it is now seeking young men seeking Adventure must be strong and healthy for arduous Expedition the United States Army is looking for young men of good character exceptional fortitude and possessing a variety of useful skills to accompany captain M Lewis us infantry on a voyage of Discovery to find the Northwest Passage between the Missouri River and the Oregon Country get to some of the other skills and qualifications later but how many out there are interested perhaps in joining the Army to to join this core of Discovery is there any potential volunteers very good a few of you oh wait I’ve already joined you have you’re wearing a funny uniform sir I I think I need another division another division uh I’ll have to get back with you okay of those of you who are interested are any of you gentlemen’s sons are you gentlemen Sons sir no sir I’m back here are you a gentleman’s son I I there’s a no okay does anybody hear a gentleman’s son sorry you’re not qualified we could have used you as an interpreter too the the the captain has instructed that no gentleman’s Sons would be allowed along because they’re not used to labor hard labor so we will leave them behind in Virginia uh let me think now what other qualifications would there be we would seeking exceptional fortitude hard labor I bet you’re wondering what the renumeration will be is this true back there yes usually that’s one of the first questions what’s the pay well as a private such as I you earn the princely sum of $5 a month the sergeant he gets $15 a month a Corporal 10 but we lowly privates get $5 a month however Captain Lewis has indicated that there will be double pay for those successfully completing this Mission when they return so double pay also you get a clothing allowance you get a uniform just like mine one one uniform for every year you’re enlisted in the service so when you’re in for four years you have four sets of clothes or you have the remains of four sets of clothes because they wear out in that time but you get clothing also of course food board get whatever you can shoot and uh you get to sleep in a tent or in more uh what would be the word better better quarters during the winter than a tent all right let’s see uh I have here in my in my notes some of the captain’s other qualifications and rumary oh I forgot one of the most important parts of the renumeration of course should you die in service your next to Kin will be notified and you’ll get a proper funeral I’m sure that’ll make everyone happy on the best part besides the funeral of course is the president has indicated to Captain Lewis that the those who volunteer and complete this Mission should receive a land grant that will be equal to the land grant of the volunteers from the late War so that will be in the new territories that’s a very good inducement to come in I W get back to qualifications here uh the captains have indicated they want to reject the weak ignorant and unmanageable for the strong the skillful and eager volunteers back here are you still an eager volunteer who are the volunteers back there this this seems to be a bright sun coming through over here changed your mind for $5 a month but it’s double pay sir you’ll get 10 if she should live yes there can you come up please right what’s your name Edward Edward you say you’re not a gentleman’s son you’re still eager to go on this Expedition very good um let’s see do you have any special skills well are you a good Hunter kind of you’re either good or you’re kind kind of how about good Woodsman not sure throw hatch what’s that you can throw a hatchet you can throw a hatchet you’re good with the tomahawk perhaps you’re that was an indication that you’d be a good Hunter good Woodsman we might sign you up how old are you 11 that’s you’re supposed to lie when you want to get into the army so w you might be a little bit young but we’ll see what we can do let’s see so what part of being a recruit do you like the best do you have any other special skills can I know can you write that’s a special skill you can write this is why would we want to be able to write most men in the Army aren’t very good at writing make a a log you mean those things that you’re using your Tomah Haw on to chop up oh oh a journal yes yes so you can you can write a journal in fact as probably everybody in here knows the it it’s supposed to be a secret mission but I found in this town everybody already knows about this secret mission the president has instructed that a journal a log as you say of what they find on this core of Discovery should be kept so you can help do that all right do you know anybody else back there who’s maybe shy who wants to be a recruit all right well well thank you for coming up any other special skills out there that might be useful for this Expedition you sir look like you might be an Outdoorsman do you have any other skills you can make things out of wood iron make knives do you possess blacksmith skills by chance now that is a valuable skill blacksmith so we we would need blacksmith on this Expedition uh any Carpenters out there no Carpenters any lawyers that’s that’s good we don’t need any of those yes see I knew somehow I knew that when you said you could make things if we were a little more specific we’d find out so we need we need uh artificers or blacksmiths we need Carpenters uh any fishermen out there we need we probably need a good fisherman yes I knew there was somebody else back there just dying to enlist in this Expedition uh let me think now so any other skills anybody can think of another skill we’ll need for this Expedition we can’t expect every man to do everything so we’re going to have to PE find people with special qualifications to join the Expedition what’s thatth health health and Medicine actually I believe Captain Lewis will be doing that himself because he’s an herbalist he’s well that’s that’s true I hope he thinks of that but the president has sent him this past past year to Philadelphia to study with Dr Benjamin Rush have you heard of Dr Benjamin Rush he’s a very famous doctor in Philadelphia and and Captain Lewis has learned some medicine from him uh one reason I’m not going is because I’ve heard of Dr Rush’s Thunder pills so I think it’s time for me to leave the Army rather than to take that treatment but any other so we have medicine any other skills that you can think of cooking cooking this is the Army why would anyone want to know how to cook I’ve wondered that myself it would be nice if we had some good Cooks out on the frontier in these Army units anything else boat build boat building and and just being able to operate a boat boats boatsmen this is a good qualification if we can’t find enough men with this qualification to enlist in the Army I believe the captains will sign some anges to go along when they’re in the um St Louis area yes sir sewing is a very good skill I it would be nice if there was a tailor along also to repair the uniforms and make new uniforms as as these wear out as they’re sure to do in on an expedition that’s expected to last maybe two years give or take a sewing anything else anyone can think of uh how about you would you be interested in volunteering have you any special skills that would be useful paddle also do you ride a horse somehow I knew that you would be be a good Horsemen so we need we need Horsemen as well as all these other skills she mentioned so she’s she’s you are did I say she you wouldn’t be qualified then but anyway you would be otherwise well qualified anyone here married if you’re married I’m sorry the captains will not take any married people along they want single men so that they’ll work harder and not be not be too distracted by what’s what they’re leaving behind yes musicians the the this person up here is wondering if if perhaps we should bring some musicians along and I believe that’s a good idea I’m only a lowly private but I believe the captains are thinking along those lines it’s perhaps possible that some of the anges these Frenchmen in the St Louis area I bet there’s some musicians amongst them plus a lot of men in the in the forts like Fort Massa casasia they also have well I don’t want to say talent but they uh they do like music small instruments and singing and dancing and so forth be nice if there were some better musicians along let me um back up for a minute does everyone know the reason that the president is sending this Expedition out there and is there any question about that of course as I said it is a secret mission so I can’t tell you too much or I’d have to kill you but but the president does sent this Expedition out and it’s to be a diplomatic mission to meet the Indians so it’ be good to have translators it’s also to be a scientific Expedition so we want men who have have a curious mind it’s to be a a discovery Mission so mapping surveying are good skills to have anybody think of anything else I’ll look on this broadside here and see if there’s anything else the captain have WR written recruits are sought with previous military training that’s always good this is an army Expedition after all curiosity and one or more of the following skills artificer blacksmith boatsman Carpenter cook fisherman gunsmith did I mention gunsmith it would be good to have a gunsmith along perhaps I’ll talk about the guns here in a moment herbalist Horsemen Hunters surveyors tailor Trapper and handw writing skills I think we hit most of them duration the Expedition is expected to last 2 years commencing in the spring of this coming spring 184 and if you are interested you can see me later or you can apply directly to Captain Lewis at camp duah for an examination I thought I thought I’d mention the the firearm this is you’ll have to if you’re not already familiar with with it you’ll have to learn to use it I’m not a very good soldier so I won’t go through the drill but this is a 1794 contract rifle but Captain Lewis has had special modifications made at Harper’s Ferry to the lock this is the latest technology this Harper Ferry lock and they’re interchangeable so that if one breaks they can take the parts out of another want to fix it rather than having to each individually be worked on it’s from Harper’s Ferry yes it’s something that that Captain Lewis has worked out with the superintendent of the Harper Ferry Arsenal in Virginia but it’s a trade contract rifle it might be it would be rifled uh are there any questions for any of the potential recruits or the the families of the potential recruits because the family members are always very curious of what their sons are getting into before they leave there any questions yes an artificer an artificer is a member of the military with a special skill in blacksmithing and now I will step out of character if you don’t mind so I can answer that a little better artificer from my my reading is similar to a modern warrant officer there was couple of blacksmiths along on the Expedition and Willard was termed as an artificer but for the purpose of the Expedition he was treated just as a private so M made the paper the paper trail easier or something but artificer was another word for a blacksmith and they were uh special qualification he would Willard was a member of the artillery Corps he was the only member of the artillery Corps besides Captain Clark himself who went all the way to the Pacific and back there were several on the return Journey from the artillery Corp and I’m wearing the uniform of the Infantry most of the members were enlisted from the Infantry when you see the guys in uniforms around here if they they’re proper or the pictures on the wall outside you can tell the difference between because the Infantry has white metal the officers would have silver buttons and we enlisted men would have peor and the artillery core would have yellow metal brass or gold trim and buttons so any other questions I like asking an answering questions rather than just being up here and talking because it’s more fun for me and I think more fun for you any questions back there for my my potential recruits yes you always dress like that do I always dress like this want me to go back in the character no okay um this was an Army Expedition and they dressed in army uniforms this is what they had in fact there was a big problem in the Army in those days of desertion so they made sure when they came into the army they had no civilian clothing so that deserters could be discovered very easily by the funny clothes they wear the um when they left on the Expedition as you can see from Gary Lucy and and Michael Haynes paintings around here this week and they’ve been working with the historians to do these work they were in uniform they would get in the dress uniform with all the fancy hat and so forth when they met an Indian tribe to do to do their um their welcoming ceremonies and and show the drill and so forth their normal fatigues would be to shed shed the coat shed the roach but keep the Hat on gentlemen in those days always went wore a hat that wasn’t until President Kennedy came along that men stopped wearing hats I believe but they they wore the uniforms until they wore out and the journals say that they took the uniforms took them apart and used those for patterns for the buck skin clothing that they had so if you look at the St menim portrait of Lewis very closely you can see that it’s it’s leather but it’s military cut it even has the welt down the side which in the original being infantry would have been blue but it’s its leather with the way it’s way it’s cut is all very military and talking to Steve Ali this week from the frontier History Museum he said that some of the captains were rather pardon the modern term anal but they would make the men take their pants apart periodically and bleach them and then sew them back together again so they were used to taking apart and putting together clothing something I wouldn’t want to do the other funny thing is that I’ve noticed is the pants at the time were white the regulation after Lewis and Clark got changed so they went back to blue pants I’d like to think that somebody talked to the quartermaster General after going across the country and back and said whoever came up with the idea of blue pants on I mean white pants for the the Army is nuts cuz it’s very hard keep these things clean and if you’re trying to show off every time you meet a new Indian nation and you I’m sure they had to um keep their clothing clean in fact the the regulation of the time was that they had to clean up every 3 days I’m not a very good soldier and uh I still have my beard but if I if I were to march with Steve Ali’s crew I would have to to shave because he insists and Bob Moore now from the park service insists that the the men of the Expedition were clean shaven the men in those days whether they were in the army or not were clean shaven they did not go bearded that came later in the 19th century yesal is this place bugged I’m with you I I enjoy having this argument with some of the his army historians yes I would I would think that after uh being away from civilization for two years certain things wore R like the razors and certain things also wore out like adherence to the regulations but at times they fell back upon them if they needed them it was a way of ensuring the success of the mission they it was we we would say that the Army values from today they didn’t articulate them in those days but they had them loyalty Duty those kinds of things and because they had those kinds of values it helped ensure the success of the mission President Jefferson had tried to send several other non-military Expeditions before and they had all failed of course it’s a failure when You’ send somebody who turns out to be a spy for the span Spanish anyway but they were a failure there was um we okay the qu the question is how many how many people went and um I work for the engineers I don’t have the head for the numbers person said it was 40 then I heard that 30 I heard only one person died with depend there is some controversy over the numbers but generally speaking about 50 total left Fort uh St Louis and went up the river when they got the first winner at Fort Mandan and now more North Dakota SE many of the men were sent back they never were intended to go the whole way they were to take the keelboat back with the things they had collected journals letters from the first year and also a couple of the the soldiers that washed out couple men who had deserted been recaptured and uh they were sent back so counting sakagawa and Tousan shano who were picked up at Fort Mandan there was 30 one who went to and and slave York Clark slave York 31 total um and one died one one man Sergeant Floyd died on the way up in what’s today Iowa right I have I don’t H that one’s missing too no here we go when uh here’s a good story I like telling when Lewis was in Philadelphia he was picking up uniform Parts cuz the regular army soldiers that he recruited would already have their uniforms but he was planning on getting some recruits Captain Clark in the Louisville area picked up several recruits which we now call the nine young men from Kentucky and not being already in the army they didn’t already have clothes so Captain Lewis I’ll this is too small for most of you to see but you can look at it later he had special coats made in Philadelphia now the story is is this coat here the regular issue Army coat cost 80 cents to make in those days the way it worked was every year the quartermaster General would put out a contract saying we want coats made blue wool here’s the specs and the contractors in New York and Philadelphia knew that in certain time we’re going to get this call for making coats and so they would go out and they’d buy up all the blue wool they could find in the United States Jack the price up and the price and then when the contract came out they say well gee we have to charge it $2.50 per coat quartermaster General got smart so he went out earlier in the year bought up all the blue wool then he issued the contract in two parts one was to provide the wool the other was to S them together same thing happened the guys come back the contract bids came in and and said well provide it but you know we can’t find blue wool it’s going to be expensive and he says no I already have the blue wool you just make the coats so that’s why this one was 80 cents when Lewis decided to make special coats he got this fine wool which is called drab not the color but we call this drab as a color now but that’s the finest English wool and he had a a tailor make him it cost $2.50 I believe per coat just for the Tailoring and it was something like $5 a yard for the material which in 1803 is a lot of money so so that’s why some of the men wore this uniform some wore and some wore this uniform they had the blue coveralls which came out of the stocks that were left over from previous when the Army built up during President Adams days so there were 31 and they were dressed in various different ways but they were wearing uniforms cuz one of the reasons they wore the uniform was to impress the Indians that these weren’t just another bunch of fur Trappers going up the river yes can you tell me when you were gathering your recruits and they were talking amongst each other kind of planning what would be going on what would they have been talking about U that they thought they would see as they got to the West what did they think they would see now this is all supposition but I’m not a lawyer I can do that right uh well one thing one thing as we know from from the letters at least the officers thought they might find Mastadon or Mammoth some of these giant elephant things that they’d seen bones in Indiana Ohio area so that’s one thing one thing they did not expect to see were great shining mountains they expected that once they got near the Pacific they’d find another Mountain Ridge very similar to this one over here piece of cake they did not expect to see the Rocky Mountains and I’m sure they did not expect to see great herds of bison and uh all this other Wildlife that they did see as we heard from Kay jenkinson the other night they had that theory that everything was balanced so I would extend that on that they just would expect more to see more of what’s already there we do that our eles until we get to a new place we sort of our expectations are based on what we already know so I until we get there you either don’t know what to expect or it’s just more of the same so there would have been a lot of surprises I’m sure they expected to find lots of Indians I don’t think they expected the variety of Indians they did they were used to Eastern Indians and then they get to see all these different cultures and how different each tribe is one from another and uh as a returned Peace Corp volunteer I’m my reading is there was a lot of culture shock going on they they one reason they were anxious to get back was there was a lot of culture shock they they had gone gone native so to speak but they want to get back to civilization they that’s a good question you have any ideas I guess I was just thinking that uh pretty much what you said about the mastadons thinking that um wasn’t there also like a lost tribe of Jewish people that they anticipated finding over there oh yes there actually two things they were looking for one is the Lost tribe of Israel and the other is the Lost tribe of the Welsh the U did even up to our modern day certain people in this country think that there some Indian tribe out there descended from the Lost tribe of Israel but um also there was a a a story that had gone around that a prince of Wales in the 13th century I believe had led many of his people when the English were coming into Wales he led them away in ships to the new world where they disappeared but the Europeans had this belief that they were still out here as a group as a tribe somewhere and um there’s some people who believe the mandans are descended from the Welch and and Jefferson had this idea that some of these tribes that he had heard about out west might have been descended from the Welch and that’s one reason he asked Lewis to find out as much as he could about the Indians he actually had a questionnaire that he for each tribe they were to fill out an included words they were to go in and do the vocabulary English to Mandan English to Shon and uh and so that the linguist back back in the United States and Europe could take these words and see if they were related to Welch or or any other language I don’t think that’s been followed up that well at least it wasn’t then but but it one of the if you’ve ever get a chance to read ronda’s book about Lewis and Clark among the Indians he goes into that quite a bit it’s pretty I think it’s fascinating another question up here to run with the mic oh okay well this isn’t so much about the Expedition but but come to the present and and as far as in the future uh you know with the B Centennial of the L and Clark expedition is it actually starting here I mean right here at U in charville and this is it I mean it didn’t start before we’re starting right in this you know locality this I think I’m losing the mic that’s all right with all the history and everything going over it the the bicentennial itself officially begins tomorrow up on the mountain but this whole week of events is the kickoff event for the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial when when when uh Jefferson sent the official letter was it to Congress yes okay yes that’s why this is all secret you know it was an official letter to Congress saying I’m going to send this Expedition please appropriate $2500 have you heard of cost overruns and by the way we plan on taking 12 12 men remember I said they took 50 or 51 they’re still arguing about a couple of the guys so the original plan Jefferson and Lewis were talking about is I think we can do this with 12 when Clark came in the picture he said well we’re going to need carpenters and boatsmen and you know all these people we talked about earlier with these special skills and the numbers went up was it uh May the 14th as far as the next year 1804 is that when they started oh we’re going to get in some this is good we’ll get in some controversy here um from those of us in the you right after you know the letter and it depends on where you’re from where it started okay if you’re from Louisville Clarksville area it started what was it October 180 August 1803 when it ever they going to do their signature event later this year if you’re from St Louis area it didn’t start until May of 1904 it’s a matter of opinion well how come people differ Lewis wrote in his journal when he left Pittsburgh my journal my Journey Begins here so there’s Pittsburgh’s claim the the the whole event started here when Jefferson wrote the letter to Congress Lewis and Clark came together first met in in in the Clarksville Louisville area the Great Falls of the Ohio so there’s their argument some of the men a few of the men Lewis brought with him from Pittsburgh many of the men joined in the with Clark others were recruited out of fort massic fort casc one thing I didn’t mention this character I portray as a recruiter of course is fictional I usually do this in New England several of the men of the Expedition came from New England so I try to bring in the fact that there are ties from New England to this whole thing George drer who’s somebody been around roaming around here earlier today but he was sent from casasia down to Southwest fort in Tennessee to recruit other men so there were recruiters sent out so these men all finally came together and and um trained at Camp Wood or Camp du now in Illinois across from the mouth of the Missouri River so you could say the Expedition started in St Louis those of us from the East look on the map and say Where’s the Line from Pittsburgh on the map but the park service by legislation their Trail so to speak starts in St Louis and goes west although now it has certain spots that are part of the trail in the East like Louisville and uh monello I believe I there’s a couple spots yes the young lady here with with the horses okay what is your opinion about ls’s death oh we’re really getting into controversy do you have an opinion well first of all are you from Tennessee is there anybody here from Tennessee oh I got to be careful then you don’t have an opinion does everybody know the story of Lewis’s death or do I have to repeat that right Lewis died in 189 after he became governor of of the upper Louisiana Territory he was in he was in trouble because he had certain political enemies remember I said there were cost overruns from his expedition new Administration came are you pointing to tent reach you can’t re right right you know it it I I’m from Massachusetts anybody here heard of the big dig that would be the modern equivalent of lwis and Clark’s cost overrun you know it’s fun to be out of character it’s a little more efficient isn’t it being out of character you you don’t have to pretend not to know right well actually this is my usual character being cynical so we’ll get into what was the question oh Lewis’s death and for those of you who may not be familiar with it Lewis died he was going from St Louis back to Washington to explain some of these bills that were still coming in from his expedition and probably some of his bills from being governor in St Louis also former President Jefferson was still saying where’s the journals we you promised you get them published so he was feeling under the weather and Lewis had other other problems he had a hard time readjusting back to civilization I understand when he got to a place in Tennessee called amongst other things grinder stand a gunshot rang out and he was found dying and soon died he was despondent there is a certain element of people mostly who live in Tennessee who believe he was murdered I believe every historian in the world who isn’t based in Tennessee believes he committed suicide his good friend and as it turned out executive William Clark believed he committed suicide because he was he suffered from Melancholy all his life that’s another way what we would say depression uh I’ve talked to people who say yes my wife I haven’t talked to the psychologist myself but secondhand I that the psychologist say he had all the all the symptoms of someone who had commit suicide President Jefferson believed he committed suicide and but people who commit suicide lack by definition good moral character and you cannot name a county after someone who lacks moral character so a couple decades later when the state of Tennessee decided to rename the county he died in Lewis County according to historians I’ve read that’s when the story of him being murdered for his money which he didn’t have anyway um came up so did was I diplomatic enough and and what I think happened to Captain were there others that were on the trip that had the same kind of problem re adjusting to life after the Expedition everybody heard the question I had a gentleman that today when I was wearing the other my other uniform here came up to me and it said he his last name is goodr there was a gentleman on the Party by the name of silus goodr and um this gentleman says I’m trying to find out if I’m related to him but I can’t can what can you tell me and he proceeded to tell me everything he knew about Silas Goodrich which was exactly everything I know about silus Goodrich because it’s everything that’s in Clark’s book the men of Lewis and Clark expedition written what in the 1960s and uh it’s ALS

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Chief Snider on Indian Perspectives of Lewis and Clark

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:36:06 +0000

good morning everybody how are you good good good welcome to core of Discovery 2 and the tent of many voices we’re a traveling exhibit been traveling for over 2 years have another year to go we’ll finish up in 2006 September 2006 so we have a full year and when we started over two years ago in Montello Virginia one of our first presenters was Mr Chief Snider he’s here with you today he’s here from the shinuk tribe he’s the honorary chief of the shook peoples from the mouth of the Columbia River so let’s give him a nice warm welcome nice introduction are you everyone as she said I am the fourth great grandson of Chief con Conley who met Lewis and Clark at the mouth of the Columbia in 1805 I was going to ask this question I thought I was going to be talking to third graders but you guys look like you’re about Juniors from Kendrick high is that correct okay I’m all right on there I went out and checked the buses says Hey to see where you guys were from so I’m I’m not too familiar with this area but it’s wonderful to see you we’re here to uh actually celebrate the survival of the Indian tribes on the trail and we’re here to commemorate Lewis and Clark on our Expedition I had to be part of that in lewison about five four or five years ago when uh people kept saying we’re going to celebrate Lewis and Clark we’re going to celebrate this and that and I took offense to that and said well I think you want to use another word because the Indians are not going to celebrate the loss of their land and the loss of their country and the loss of their culture and so what happened at that very meeting they decided to impude all unrecognized tribes on the trail at that time they had about 15 tribes and they went on and then right now we’re over 60 tribes on the trail recognized or Not by the United States government but don’t get me wrong we Indians who are not recognized like the monans at the beginning of the tra the Chinooks at the end of the trail we still recognize the United States government so I don’t want that to be confused now I wanted to ask you how many of you people have Indian blood 1 2 3 4 I’ve talked to some schools for almost 80% of the people of the kids uh thought they had Indian blood but they didn’t know how much they didn’t know uh what kind what tribe they belong to or anything else so I always encourage you if you do have some Indian blood because of college scholarships money and things that might be available to you to find out what your ancestry is and be very proud of your heritage when I was growing up my mother told me don’t tell anybody you’re part Indian because of discrimination other people have that same problem America today we think we’re perfect but we’re not so as I grew up I started catching passes Oregon State University I was floating feather and I was the only one on the stage that wasn’t quite I was the only Indian we didn’t have uh the black people playing football at that time and so I was kind of an odity but I want to tell you something now after working with the uh circle of tribal advisors nationally working with myin out of New York on the Confluence projects and visiting schools visiting teachers and everything else being part Indian is a plus not to say that if you’re not Indian you shouldn’t be proud of your heritage if you’re sweet go for it I always say that okay I just wonder um you know in your school have you kids uh been studying anything about lisis and Clark If you have raise your hands couple of you or some of you so you know the whole story so probably I’m just up here for nothing today but I I want to tell you some of the Indian story how many of you know how to speak uh some chinuk language or some Indian language you know any words well let me tell you how to how to say a couple by the way I want to recognize one of my great friends Rocky Rockwell he’s also known as uh Captain Clark uh really a lieutenant but we’ll call him Captain CLK anyway I I’m going to do this in three syllables for you the first one is CLA second one is how the third one is y and I goes CL how y that means in chinuk language hello or goodbye much like aloa is in Hawaii Hello Goodbye it’s just a greeting that you do on three 1 2 3 say it again whenever you see me on the road wandering around your bus or anything say how you Chief I know what you’re talking about okay in the old days we had a situation where uh president Jefferson wanted to explore the West he thought it might be good to explore the Missouri River and see if I went all the way across America and I any of the tributaries and who I think what was interested in was having some Commerce but the thing that happened was is that he’d never been on the other side of alany mountains we had Trappers back here mostly Franks and so forth that were wandering around some of these tribes but he hadn’t been there at all so he got leis and Clark and they got 30 31 men or whatever and and uh go decided to go across the country and see if they could find a passageway mainly for uh Commerce and or get the land so to speak uh so he was in uh making a deal with some people in Europe any of you know who uh we bought the Louisiana Purchase from anybody know he knows we bought it from the French you can imagine it all start a guy named Napoleon bonapart you ever heard of him about 18 cents per square mile he didn’t know how Jefferson didn’t know what he was buying he didn’t know how many trees uh who was out there he knew there were some Indians because the monan nation was only 40 miles away he knew there were Indians out there but he didn’t know whether they’re going to be friendly or Not by listening to Trappers he felt that they were going to be okay and that they would let him through well after they bought the Louisiana Purchase they doubled the size of America and did you know so at that time there were more Indians living on the west than there were white men living on the Atlantic coast can you imagine that they’re more of a population of course they only been there for 10,000 years as everybody knows about they didn’t come from any place great spirit the Creator put them there at the beginning of time the mountains and The Valleys plants and the animals and the lifegiving rivers no matter what relig you belong to or which one you pray for I use the word creator that encompasses anybody that’s higher than all of us or the great spirit so in saying I might use that term uh throughout my discourse well they finally got that sold and they bought and they so he’s added on the Louisiana Purchase well let’s start out well can’t go because it’s not finalized yet and the Spanish and the frch AR going to let you through so they started at Wood River and then when everything got done they went into St Louis and then on the way and my text today is how are they treated by the Indians and what part did the Indians play in their Journey Across America and they hadn’t hardly got out and they run into the kapoo most of you remember the kapoo joy juice whatever that was in that strip uh maybe you don’t but I know you do anyway kick the food geers they uh they traded uh some supplies with them begin the trading already for three deer and then they moved on but as she mentioned in the last one we started running into some Indians that weren’t quite so friendly sha e were friendly they let them to but we got to uh the yank and Sue the yank and Sue oh they greeted him came out wanted to carry him up into the village on a carrier with skins and of course they’d seen some Frenchmen up this time so everything was great and they were getting along fine they wanted to tell them about the great white father back there who now owned the land and I’m not going to get into that but they didn’t understand that at all this was their land it wasn’t really their land they belonged to the land the land was not owned by anyone so that was fine they parted and they say hey these Indians are okay we’re going to make it fine well they moved on a little further and I ran into back black Buffalo of the Teton suit and he wasn’t going to let them through that’s his River that’s his tribe’s uh place and he’s not going to let them anybody through there unless he wanted and then he wanted everything from him he wanted cigarettes he wanted liquor he wanted everything else they had to trade and so they finally got held up and as she mentioned last class it was a confrontation and it got down to the place where they were hanging on to the Rope on the boat and they weren’t going to let him go in the kill booat and dark he started to draw his sword and they had their guns up on the ship starting the train and these Indians after a lot of two or three different kinds of scuffles they wanted to show let their women come aboard and see what kbo was like and they wanted to spend the night on the boat but finally they got through all that nobody got killed nobody got injured so what happened then they just let them go on there was no to Fe they thought maybe that anybody coming down their river is going to have to pay that was their River and nobody else could go unless they said so so wow we got through that pass and on down the river to other tribes that they met there were over 60 tribes kind of on the trail I think it was 58 in my recollection and they got to the mandad Village I’m just hitting the high spots for you now because there other little tribes along the way but the M Dan was a very harsh winter the snow is put up to here it was freezing they built their Court over here the mandans were over here there also the raras and the Hiatus and they’re all one big family and uh those three tribes were looking for Buffalo and there’s nothing to be found so they had a big buffalo dance and the core decided to pits right in with them they got in on the dancing and they were out there some of these Indians didn’t have shoes and they’re snow clear up their knees but finally they did find some Buffalo they did survive that harsh winter and it was the longest that they had stayed in any one spot up to that point and it turned out there’s one of the two longest stays they had on the whole trip the other being at Fort plat at the end of the trail well there was Chicago there was saak joia and it depends on who you’re talking to how you want to pronounce it I always said saaka because in Oregon Washington we have statues and this A J then I go back and I talk to Amy moset as a man Dan and she’ll say it’s with a G it’s sh not sack we so like she said in her last performance if I say it one way one time and I say it another way next time you’ll have to excuse me because I’ve been using both on the trail the most famous woman in American history there are more statues of Sakia Chicago than any other woman in America history one of the most famous women in all the world and here’s a young teenage girl with a baby P John Baptist shardo and the dad taken along as guides and interpreters well they made it to that Winter thank God they got to their command an told them okay you’re going down the road you’re going to the river’s going to do this the river’s going to do that one of these days you’re going to run into this big hurling waterfalls and they’re probably talking about Great Falls as we know it today it’s it’s changed a lot since those days well that’s okay we’ll get around the falls and in a couple of days and be on our way that was about 3 weeks I’ve been there I know what it’s like I went up to the Buffalo Jump you know where they ran the Buffalo off the hill and uh and the Buffalo would die and they go down and they pick them up that was they just her them out over the sink and the gummy substance on the ground is so sticky that when you pick your feet up you got about that much mud on the bottom of your shoe and they had storms and the rivulets and they almost got drowned in a couple of them but you know that was the home of the the uh Grant and the uh asons some of those tribes and back and forth they finally discovered their way and they gave them directions all this time when we’re making our move we’re getting directions from the Indians Chicago we is trying to interpret the Frenchmen are trying to interpret because there have been some French Trappers in there some of these Indians have never seen a white person some of these Indians had seen a couple there were a couple that had married Indians and were living there and were used as interpreters to help them guide their way CU it didn’t know where that Missouri was going and finally they did they kept going and going and uh they got into a country where the Missouri just petered out and this on the way up they didn’t know whether to go to this River or that River or follow up this way and they finally picked the right direction they got down there and so wait a minute you see a couple Indians out here they see us they run back to camp they’re scared but we finally get into Camp did some trading proved that they were friends and who is there but Caya cay was saia’s brother so they’re brother sister and her sister also was there and SC remember was captured by the Hadas earlier uh 3 or four years years earlier and some of her relatives had been killed and that captured and so she’d come back and she now she’s okay and uh they decided to because they were friends Chicago we had decided to keep on going with them and so they went on they’re heading for what they’re heading for the bot mountains and they had to get across I was talking to Kevin the other day he says he’s gone over with a helicopter he says they took the only route that was available by helicopter looking down on it and getting through the mountains and getting to this place right here it’s the only way through the L path that they could have made and they had guides to help and there they were on top of the mountains with snow they had to kill their horses to have something to eat there was no food and so they finally made it over the way Perry and you guys had a big celebration over there yesterday I wish I could have seen it and finally into this country here thees Pier well thez Pierce hey look at these guys what are we going to do with them look at all those goods they have well let’s have a counsel they had a counsel and they said shall we kill them and take all those for positions they have guns they have everything medicine everything and ammunition well there was a lady there named wat kuis who is very famous and she’s in all the history books and what kise says I’ve been captured like Chicago Leah had been and I’ve been out living with the heights for a while and they’re good people don’t kill them don’t take their stuff but do them no harm and that’s the by word now in this people when I talk to Otis half moon when I talk to Alan pink and I talk to carag as in Miss Pi some of my ramblings they say well maybe the nest Pierce should have taken everything America would be quite different today if that had been the case anyway then what we going going to do we’re down the Clear Water you finally got across the bitter Ro down the clear water into the Snake River and then down to uh Tri Cities and I just been lucky enough to work with Mile in on the Le Park Trail remember sheisa gal did the uh Vietnam Wall in Washington DC and we’re doing uh seven projects on the rivers $22 million in the last two years all I have to do is get talk and we go to places and pick up money we picked up $18 million the last two years so when you get to Portland you folks you come down for these other events come look what we’re doing on the on the Louis clar table of the conference here well it’s all fine we got to the mouth of the uh Snake River now and who’s there they’re Indians there of course well let’s take a little trip up to Columbia now we know that we’re getting someplace it’s not going to be long before we’re going to be down at the mouth of the columia cuz they had known that the ships had come in in fact 28 ships had come into the river already and had been trading with a chook Indian at them up but the UPR River Chinooks had not seen a white man they’ heard about so they run into the wallala wal in they danc with the Walla walas had a good time saw the wanon the bills and the yamas and they came back and said well that’s not the way to go but we’ve met some real friendly animal and everybody’s got these fish dried salmon we part soon we got something to eat but we’re not too sure that we’re going to eat this every day but do you have some dog we like the dog better and so I think Park he didn’t like the dog too much but Lewis he did but all the guys just waiting for something like geese or whatever fevers whatever they could find at that point and they decided to go down the river and maybe you’ve heard the Umatilla Confederate tribes of the Umatilla were there and before they got the SL of CLS and I got five okay so I’m going to run run through this quick uh at the mouth there I saw an Indian with a s coat blue and red sailor jacket they saw s Indians with beads white man’s beads and so uh now we’re getting close then there’s cilo Falls and here are these Indians with flat heads remember Indians are not all one big monolithic group mandans are 6’5 Gerard Baker and tex Hall is 67 I say to them what part of white person are you we’re not white at all we’re full blooded Indians and they’re that tall they’re seeing a chook now that’s 5′ five wearing something wood eating salmon not chasing Buffalo not riding horses doing canoes and these Chinook SE them coming and they they started ringing their hands and crying out loud saying we’re all going to be killed oh there Chicago Le and there’s P so if you have a woman and a baby with your war party it’s not a war part it’s a traveling party so now the chinups had discovered Le part this point as you mentioned it’s just the other way around we’ve been here for 10,000 years and and by the way we did find a basket that was 16,000 years old made of Willow twigs and put together with pine pits when they were doing the dams in Oregon 16 that’s before the Brett’s floods remember the Brett’s floods when they were the top of our buildings in P so on down the river as swall Falls they were hoping that when they went through it was only 40 yard right from here that green can up there and the Indians had been fishing there dip Nets and things like that so what happened there was that the Indians would hope that these canoes would be turned upside down and they’d go and take whatever lands on the shore cuz stepen Ambrose who is one of my friends back east and when he wrote in his book he said that the S Indians were thieves but not really anything left alone was theirs for the tapable canoes hatchets fishing stuff medicine whatever they it isn’t that they borrowed it but he like to say that they were they were stealing it that isn’t the way the indans fell about it so on down the river Vancouver was sco show toes and Sue Vancouver and down to the mouth of Columbia that CH Indian tribe at the end my fourth great grandfather Chief K you see his picture in Charles Russell’s painting greeing the Sakia doing hand signals for the Chinooks and what I’m saying today I’m giving you the Indian viewpoint but I’ll tell you something there were no words spoken Chicago we could not interpret that chuk gutal language no way and so the painting shows them standing up in the canoe waving at each other here was stormy the trees were falling they had gone back into a niche and and the chooks gave them two or three salmon and I’m going to skip over some stuff because now they went down to the tree and carved the name in the tree they went down to the whale and saw where the whale was then they came back and they decided where are we going to stay for the winter and they took a boat York got the boat Chicago WEA got the boat first that time and decided to stay at Fort plet where the more El and they could see The Ships coming in but leave you with this while they there what a paradox it was that while they were there the ship lyia came into Port of Baker’s day and the chuks told them they had left and gone back so they missed the bus ride home so the rest of the story is that you know what happened the white man you mentioned that there one man died of appendicitis on the trail then there were three men who died because they killed two black feet uh pan Indians who were stealing their guns and their horses and I’m talking to a black man in Portland this last year not true at all he says the one the field stabbed died the one that Lewis shot while he was running away recovered and didn’t die so not one man died on the trail not three men died on the trail but two men died on the trail so I’ll leave you with that I say cop from my heart Kaka so it but I want to leave you with this seven chinuk directions never forget them they’re East and there’s West there’s North and there’s South there’s up and there’s down there’s a direction of your Hearts Kaka I’m glad you could come thank you Chief Snider and thank you for coming um before we let you take off at the top of the next hour at 11:30 we will be showing a film across the Divide for e

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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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Ron Snake: Shoshone Language, Culture, and Lewis & Clark Legacy

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:58 +0000

well good morning everyone and welcome to the tent of many voices the tent of many voices is part of the core of Discovery 2 traveling Lewis and Clark exhibit this is a multi- agency Federal exhibit with the National Park Service being the lead agency and what we do is we travel around the country primarily on the Lewis and Clark Trail and as we set up in these different communities we have this tenin voices where we can bring in a wide variety of presenters to share with us these different voices these different perspectives both on the Lewis and Clark expedition its Legacy but we also like to hear from the descendants of those indigenous Nations those American Indian peoples that have been living had been living where Louis and Clark traveled for thousands of years and that’s what we’re going to do this morning to start off we’re going to hear from Ron snake edmo Ron is a member of the sh shony banic tribe he is a uh veteran of the US Military and a warrior in the traditional sense he is a published author a poet he’s also a linguistic Anthropologist and he’s going to talk share with us some of the language and culture of the shishoni banak people so let’s give him a warm welcome here to the T mini voices thank you n DOA for Hall Knight I am a called snake I’m from Fort Hall that’s my introduction my language uh first off I would like to welcome you to uh this tent of many voices this tent is located in what we call Nua soia Nua means the people that’s what the Shian people call ourselves is the newer but other people call Shon and bionic and all that that stuff but our term for us is Nua soia means the mother earth Soo is the word for the land B is our word for mother and in our traditional ways we believe that the Earth is our mother we’re the same color we come from the earth we’ve been here forever archaeologists have gone down to the 8,000 foot 8 8,000 year level in their digs and it’s been been straight As shonan for that whole time there so we’ve been here for a long time when I was a child I was adopted out and lived away from my people for quite a few years when I was in my 40s I came back to my people and when I came back into our homeland I felt the spirits of my ancestors now uh we’ve lived our homeland our traditional homelands this is just one small portion of it our homeland stretched from from the Sierra Nevadas to the Black Hills from Canada to Mexico we have the largest homeland of any uh Indian peoples in this country but as you know now we only possess a small portion just a little drop of our homelands and that’s uh one of the things I’ll be talking about so anyway welcome to New hogia now I an anthropologist in other words I study cultures of different people I’m a ling istic Anthropologist so I studied languages how languages work what the meaning is and especially the part I work on is language preservation a people lose a portion of their culture if they lose their language now unfortunately English is the common language that all indigenous peoples in North America speak now some of us speak our own language but that’s not very many and that’s a problem because as our elders die they’re the last fluent speakers of our language when they die that knowledge is gone but we can only uh we can only express certain things in our language that can’t be translated adequately into another language because we translate not just the language but also the culture for example one of my poems is called on beichi beep in shishoni and that me that tells the whole story just the title of the poem itself and what it means is English translation of that title is stranger arrives when I write I always called the American stranger with capital S like John Wayne and his Pilgrim so that’s if you see my writings when I talk about stranger I’m talking about the American so andab beichi wo is a combination of two words a coined word it’s on the beach means people of another tribe and wo is enemy and until things change that’s how I have to describe the American but the second word bedp is a verb and our verbs are very active compared to English verbs and so Bida is the actual verb itself the p is the suffix but that what that p means is uh the Strang came the L and Clark expedition came into our homeland with just a few people but now that small group of people has grown into a large population so now we’re outnumbered by the visitors to our country so that’s I tell the whole story just with the title but in English of course I have to tell the story because there’s nothing there’s no equivalent in English of telling a whole story just one or two words which is unfortunate but English itself is a very complex language because has so many other languages that are a part of it that have been adopted or borrowed so it’s it’s you know even English itself is a complex language okay but what what is main thing is this this idea that we can only say certain things like with a couple words in our language or Express a whole concept but when we try to translate that word into English we have to tell the whole concept behind the whole culture behind it because like when I talk about soia to me she the Earth she’s my mother and when I die I’ll return back to her I’m of her I’m the same color as our mother and but when uh I but when I talk to people of different culture they don’t have that same concept now that concept is kind of coming into the American Viewpoint because of the environmental movement and the environmental movement is finally starting to get the message that we have to protect our mother we have to protect the Earth we have to protect the water that we drink we have to protect the air that we breathe and the closer you get to cities you’re going to find you can’t breathe the air because it’s so polluted uh you can’t drink the water in law places because it’s polluted with chemicals or other things so you know this is a concern for our people because we’re kind of stewards of the land because we’ve been here for thousands and thousands of years but our visitors that come into our lands it’s a concern for them too because they have to breathe the same air that we breathe they have to drink the same water we drink so you know you don’t want to poison your own self that’s essentially what that message is so the visitors that come into our land if they understand who we are are tied to the land then they can appreciate better what they’re seeing and like when you buy a piece of property you have a responsibility to protect that land you can’t just pollute that land you know there’s a responsibility because you’re only here for a short time and then you’re going to walk on to the next World and then somebody else is going to have that piece of property and it would just go in perpetuity but if you poison that land or you destroy that land then pretty soon it’s just Wasteland it’s not good for anything not even a plants will grow on it in some areas so this is things that we ask that everybody else that comes into our country to respect our land because we’ll be here we’re survivors and we’ll be here long after the American goes uh I don’t know what will happen that causes you go but it probably won’t be very good uh and since we live you live amongst us we’ll also be affected by that too so you know even though people pray we some of our people pray that you all disappear uh what would make you disappear will also probably make us disappear so you know it’s a a two-edged sword so to speak now another thing about culture uh the American government has tried to destroy our cultures over the years and even still going on today uh in my lifetime I was born 1945 in my lifetime I saw termination and relocation termination and relocation was a policy set forth in the eyes and how years and what that entailed was to remove all the Indians from the reservations move us to the cities and then take the land to give away to the non-indian people why they would want to take our lands from us what we got left is beyond me cuz they have everything else and another thing that was involved was taking our children from us from our people without benefit of law uh you could go in and just say I want that kid as a souvenir and take that kid that’s what happened to me I was taken by missionaries also uh we weren’t allowed to speak our languages in schools it resulted in severe beatings but we learned English and through the through the whip through that yard stick that those teachers used to have so this is so now for me it’s difficult for me to speak my language because I as an adopti I wasn’t around my people so I didn’t hear our language after I was 8 years old now today my hearing isn’t very well from being in war you know those artillery rounds and stuff like that they kind of ruin your hearing so to speak so now I can’t hear all the sounds when I’m trying to learn my language so I write my language better than I speak it or hear it because I can only speak what I can hear so I will never be fluent speaker because of that which is sad because I can’t pass on a lot of knowledge to my children and my grandchild so that means the elders today the 70 and 80 and 90 and 100 year olds that are still fluent speakers uh I if they talk to me I can’t understand what they’re saying because I I only have one good ear so that knowledge is lost when they die as linguistic Anthropologist one of the things that we’re doing we have a Shon language program at Idaho State University and we’re we developed a writing system we call as anthropologists and linguists call writing system orthographies know that’s a technical term but anyway we created an orthography that’s user friendly that can be used on a computer or if anybody still has them typewriters it was originally developed for typewriters but Technologies rendered those uh obsolete I’ve seen one typewriter in the last 10 years anyway uh our languages have never been written before so as a linguist we have to understand the rules of the language in other words we have to know what verbs know identify the verbs how they work identify the nouns identify the adverbs and adjectives and all that other stuff and then figure out how the sentences are structured and that is a the English and Shoni sentence structure is completely different English you have the subject your verb followed by the object that the verb is acts upon once sh sh we start out with the subject but then we have the verb I mean sorry we have the object and then we have the verb but the verb our verbs have a lot of prefixes and suffixes so you just we rarely use just the root verb itself but we modify that with uh uh the ad the uh prefixes and suffixes for example uh when we uh here is something or there is something uh we have different we have six different words that we use depending on the location of that object from the speaker it’s always from the speaker’s point of view in other words can touch something one uh word if it’s close enough but not close enough to touch then I’d use a different verb or different word location word like in In Crowd here throw there a different word then as far as I can see when I sorry they can’t hear you you’re covering up the transmitter here hold it up a can you can you hear me okay let me move this here not used to this new Fango stuff so anyway we have that distance uh verb or distance word that describes the location from the speaker’s position but in English there’s no you can’t tell where an object is located when you speak about it like I could say I’d have to say like okay on such and such a corner and salmon to give you a location but I don’t know my way around salon so I can’t give an example what’s where so anyway that that’s a a that makes translation difficult so we have to when we translate from shason into English we have to try to convey some of that distance that we’re talking about another word is to go somewhere well our word for go depends on the manner in which you go uh like if you go like I’m from Fort Hall right now that’s where my home is so I came here to Salmon but then I would return back to Fort Hall so I’d use one word for that to for go and so I like if I’m telling some I’m going to go uh somewhere but when I use that that verb to go they’ll know that I’m going to come back in a short time I’m just going to go do my business come right back but if I’m going to come here and then go to Missoula then build or somewhere else and then Yellowstone and then finally come back home then I’d use a different verb for that and you could tell just by that but again when I translate into English I’d have to say well I’m going to go to Sam and then to be and mulu whatever it was and finally back home again in about a month or whatever so that’s you know that’s what makes translation difficult along with the sentence structure itself we also have as far as person uh in English you have a singular and you have plural plural is two or more well in Shon languages we have three uh persons you have the singular then you have dual which is two and that comes inclusive and exclusive if it’s exclusive then say for example I use the Dual form and it’s exclusive then be just you two but not me but if I use the inclusive form then be you and me but he would be excluded then we have plural which is three or more and again you have that uh uh inclusive and exclusive and the inclusive means the speaker itself him or herself so again that that shows you the difference in our languages and so that again that has to be translated you know are we talking two people are we talking 20 people we have have to or three or more people we have to specify that in our translations then again certain things like soia our concept of our of the earth we have to explain the whole concept the whole cultural concept to people that don’t have that same uh Concept in their worldview in other words we have to translate worldview into a different worldview now if you’re a shy person that’s lived in the Shon land on the reservations your whole life and you’ve had very little contact outside of that then it’d be more difficult because in order to be a successful translator you have to translate into another culture but you have to understand that culture to do it so for me I thought it was unfortunate I was adopted but then it turned to be a positive thing because I understand the other culture Plus in my milit I was a Green Beret so I work with indigenous peoples throughout the world and so this learning a new culture uh was a benefit to me when I went to different different countries because working with indigenous people one of the things you have to do is do a cultural study before you go in so you know who they are what their uh belief system is what the uh government in their world is what their system is is there a conflict are we going to overthrow that government are we going to strengthen that government of course you know our government makes that decision but when we go in we do what the our government wants us to do but if you have people go in and they don’t have any idea about culture how important culture is then they might blow the whole mission and unfortunately the United States tends to do that quite a bit uh let’s see now also when I write in my language uh I can transform this is something I’ve been experimenting with in my Poes making Transformations from an Ordinary World to the spiritual world now in our traditional ways the spiritual world is just as valid as this physical world that we have here like we see some of us can see the spirits and hear them others they’re completely blind and deaf to that but I’m I don’t know if I’m fortunate or if I’m cursed but I I see things sometimes I hear things and things come to me so in that way uh some stuff I try to I can try to explain in my writing but others I just can’t do it because there’s no corresponding Concept in the American world but again so uh we live in two cultures you know we live with within our culture which is struggling but we’re also living within your culture but again even though like we have a town called Pocatello next to us but a lot of our people if they do go in town they just go in shop or unfortunately some go to drink but that’s the only contact they have with that culture out there but the people that live in poel 50,000 probably 90% of them have never been to the reservation so they don’t really know who we are either which makes it difficult because that causes problems because since we don’t know them and they don’t know us when we talk about a subject we might be thinking we’re talking about the same subject but we’re not so again uh we have to learn to talk with your culture and you have to learn to talk with ours to get good Communications and without communication you’re going to have hard hardship you’re going to have heartburn and everything else okay and what we’re doing right now in this location is there’s the Lewis and Clark expedition came through in the early 1800s and as they came through they met different Indian peoples and they went to find the Pacific Ocean find a way to there that was just the first of many non-natives to come into our country and there’s a legacy a result of that our the Legacy could have been different but unfortunately it wasn’t it was a more Legacy of Conquest so the Americans came in they took our lands they well basically what they happened they’d be on the Oregon Trail or California Trail and some just got tired and end up setting foot where setting up where they got tired at and then Town started growing then all these people like Fort Hall uh we have 50,000 people come through there in one year and when you think about that that is a big problem because when you have 50,000 people coming through on a On A TRU somewhere they have to eat so the early ones they find game right alongside the roads or the trails but the next group of people that come through they have to go a little bit further away and then pretty soon they have to go miles and miles and pretty soon there might not be anything for them to eat so a lot of these wagon trains the later ones they had lost starvation because there’s nothing to eat and like we were nomad so like we’d come to Fort Hall for the winter time and the lamh high people they’d be up here in the winter time because the rivers don’t freeze so you have water year round and the temperatures are pretty mild here compared to other places around here so we would winter here but then in the summer we’d be elsewhere we’d be out looking for sammon we’d be out hunting we’d be gathering berries C root and everything else that we need to survive the following winter or we be over chasing the Buffalo but when we come back all a sudden there’s a town here now what do we do we’re dispossessed without even knowing it so then we have to find somewhere else to live because if we try to stay here there’ll be conflict because we’re all competing for the same resource but where we used to Camp there’s a town so where we go and so that’s part of the aftermath of the leou Expedition the second aftermath is there is a we faced almost a century and a half of genocide and uh ethnic cleansing and part of was unintentional ethnic cleansing because like what just the example I gave you when we come back here uh there’s somebody else here and they are staying year round so we’re no longer here we have to go somewhere else or will be killed off because you know numbers count so that was the Legacy and then of course then the government wanted to assimilate us turn us into non-indians and so they took all of our young people and sent them to these boarding schools something like in the first 10 years of boarding school something like 20,000 kids died of disease and homesickness CU as soon as the kid went into a boarding school their hair was shaved off all the uh tradition additional clothing were taken away they were put in the uniforms and uh were forced to speak English males were forced to uh become uh laborers uh they try to teach them to farm uh the females were basically made into house servants but if if a a kid had a lot of intelligence unfortunately that intelligence was wasted because they were forced into menial roles so that the cultural uh genocide that was going on and unfortunately the boarding school system just ended in the last 20 years there’s young people today uh your age and younger probably that went to the boarding schools of course the brutality ended in the 80s or in the uh 70s in the 60s the brutality was still there God keep remembering about this and tan here so anyway that’s part of the Legacy but we are survivors too we have survived that uh and our population has risen since the 1920s 1920s was a bad time for us uh but that was good for anthropology because uh at that time uh the main idea was to Sage all the knowledge of the indigenous peoples because they was truly thought that we would become extinct because we’re at our lowest population uh tuberculosis is rampant uh people were starving to death because there was no food and of course right after the 20s came the the Great Depression and of course everybody suffered then not just Indian people but everybody and then you had another Mass migration with the the Dust Bowl occurring at the same time so you know there’s been a uh there’s been major Dynamics have occurred in our continent over the last uh few hundred years major uh pop relation shifts major uh land shifts and everything so and it’s still going on uh you probably all read about all these Californians comeing here to Idaho want to change things around to their way well if you go to California people as far as you can see if you go to the east coast it’s the same way it’s only in between that’s relatively empty but they’re filling up fast but where are they going to all go and they can’t big bu build big cities everywhere in the desert cuz there no water but again people are starting to learn well you you know you going have to start recycling the water because there’s only so much water available especially during a drought like we’ve had a seven-year drought here this is the wetest year we’ve had in seven years but we haven’t had any rain oh couple months now is this going to produce anything well for me I hope not because I have to ride my motorcycle through it but but we need that rain we need the water we we need everything cuzz I if I just read in the paper this morning the reservoirs are almost some of them are only a third full now and we’ve got a winter ahead before those things start filling up again so what’s going to happen you know are we going to run out of water again we don’t know so anyway you know our lives and your lives are all interconnected what about the future well I would like to to see the environmental movement become more educated about the world that they live in because some of them are really radical and they don’t really understand what they’re doing you know putting a spike in a tree to stop somebody from cutting it down is nonproductive uh poisoning animals so there’s no research that’s nonproductive you’re supposed to be trying to save the animals but yet you poison them or you put them let them out of their cages well these animals can’t live on their own because they’ve never known Freedom so you let a a a rat out of its cage well what’s going to happen is going to get eaten up by the first Predator that sees it so you know that’s some things you have to think what about uh things that you know what happens if the animal that you release if you’re one of these Peta people what if this animal is released has a communicable disease you might start a major pandemic so again you know the environmental movement has some crazes in that but those crazy es need to be policed by the environmental movement the environmental movement overall though is a good thing because government tends to be like a bulldozer they want to remove one tree but they destroy the whole Forest to remove one tree so and of course what happens when you do that you’ve destroyed everything that lives within that forest or is affected by it you uh pollute the water because the land that’s water that’s absorbed abbed in the ground now runs off and pollutes the rivers and eventually we have to drink that water so you know it’s important to have an movement what else do I see for the future I see the American people starting to think more like we do in other words being part of the world not being separate I see hopefully more tolerance of people other than yourselves I see hopefully the end to Wars unnecessary Wars some Wars are necessary to protect other people to stop an aggressor those are necessary Wars but like this current war that we’re in I think is totally unnecessary and I I’ve been to war I’ve killed people I’ve had I have people’s blood on my hands I have those nightmares those Ghosts of War will be with me rest my life and the people that decide to go to war should have that same experience because these are our children that we’re sending off to war now our grandchildren by people have never seen combat so it’s easy if you’ve never seen combat to say hey let’s go to war it’s big and glorious and you know we’ll project our power to some helpless people somewhere else well right now there’s close to 2,000 dead and I think I saw in paper something like 13 to 15,000 wounded but the UN the un uh counted wounds of that war are the ghosts that these soldiers male and female have to see their friends Blown Away the enemy Blown Away innocent people blown away and is there any real need for that war uh right now we’re kind of stuck in it but it should have never happened so I would you know that’s what you know my vision My Hope in F the future is that our Future Leaders will think many many times before they react with military force and of course as Native Americans it’s our Legacy to go to war no we’re warriors and a warrior doesn’t Sher his duty his or her Duty and so even though we don’t agree with the war we go because that’s what we have to do to be to live with ourselves but then one thing that happens with our peoples is when we come back we go through healing ceremonies which helps considerably I went almost 10 years before I got my healing but I still have the nightmares I still see those ghosts I will till the day I die but anyway I would like to uh conclude by welcoming you here and then also a question and answer period and how do we stand on time you got about 15 minutes so we have plenty of time for questions if you folks do have some questions uh please raise your hand I bring the microphone around that way everybody can share in the question we can hear them does anyone have any questions for Ron okay we’ll start right up here first of all it saddens me for the loss of the language and of course with the language is the associated culture um what is happening as far as are they recording or how are the elders and their language being archived and that well with language pre with language preservation uh it’s kind of been hdden miss years and one of the first things you do is you try to get a hold of the elders and tape as much as you can even videotape them and of course with new technology and stuff it’s getting easier and easier to collect information but the major problem there is uh in the 60s and 70s was termo turmoil for the whole country with that war and the uh hippie movement all that but the generation of anthropologists that are the teachers today or the old the oldtimers they were of the school where they’d come into the reservation and go right in people’s houses and and do their studies and they’re pretty arrogant as a result of that our elders today that were young people like my age back then they don’t want to talk to anthropologists and Native Americans going into anthropology there’s only a handful of us that are anthropologists and we will become the new anthropology new anthropologists know cuz who better study our people than us to explain our our cultures To The World At Large so but as but as we go in like if we we have elders and we know we need to record their stories we need to record the language and everything but some of them don’t even want to talk to us because of the abuses that occurred in the 60s and 70s so that’s the you know but that’s the first step is to collect that information the second step is to uh start teaching the language and all the different Indian nations have have these language preservation programs they teach but only the little ones the people my generation and my children you know who are in their 30s they don’t speak the language and we need to do it across all all age ranges not just that uh small you know the little ones and we only do it for a certain amount but see we’re write starting to write our languages but we have to write in our language and we have to have more than one or two people writing because if you teach people how to read and write but you have nothing to read and write you’re wasting your time and that’s the next step in language preservation is to develop literature in the language and that’s what I work on okay any more questions all right another question I’ll come around with the microphone do you know why the spelling of limh high changed from Li to l over the years that I don’t know in fact it’s that word was given by the the Mormons uh you know it’s one of their words our the people that lived up here they were called the AA in other words the salmon eaters they didn’t call themselves lamh high now today they call themselves lamh high but you know that’s not what they’re originally called it’s basically like you know that that’s came into common use you know in other words but it’s not what they would call if they had their choice they wouldn’t call themselves that uh a lot of things changed from the original spellings to today probably some person thought thought the I was a e so they wrote a e and yeah so you know like when you go from handwritten to typewritten somebody might have mistr know thought that was an e instead of a I so that’s how the lamh high came in then once you start having what lot of documents with that then that’s how it came in that’s probably how it happened I don’t know for sure but that’s why I’d speculate on all right do we have any other questions all right let’s please give a Ron a warm welcome or a warm thank you actually for joining us here in the 10 of many voices thank you again and remember folks we do have programs here in the tenam Min voices every hour on the hour our program schedule is located in the back please check that out our next program coming up at the

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