Closed Captions Audio Described

Scott Mandrell and Peyton Bud Clark (great-great-grandson of William Clark) discuss their bicentennial re-creation of the Lewis and Clark expedition, including building replica boats, training crews, and retracing the original 1803–1806 route. They emphasize the expedition's multicultural composition and the crucial role Native American nations played in its success, framing the journey as a story of American diversity and unity.

Transcript

0:02 Ladies and gentlemen, please come join us. Uh, our 11 o'clock program is about to begin, and I'd like to thank you all for coming out this morning. We've got a beautiful day, nice little breeze blowing, and, uh, we're very happy with the temperatures.
0:24 We are part of the National Park traveling exhibit, the Lewis and Clark traveling exhibit, and we are following along in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark and stopping in towns and cities and reservations along the way to talk about the Lewis and Clark story. And when we talk about the Lewis and Clark story, it's not just their story.
0:49 It's a story of Lewis and Clark, the men that went with them, the woman that accompanied. Them on this journey and of all of the people they met along the way. So hopefully our 10 of many voices is a place where all of these voices can be heard and shared to tell the entire Lewis and Clark story and the stories of those people who have followed them and crossed this land as well.
1:13 So welcome to our traveling exhibit. While you're here, take time to go over and visit our exhibit tent. There's a 35 minute audio tour you can do. Of the exhibit we have our scale model keel boat and our Plains Indian TV out in the front so you can see some of the artifacts that Lewis and Clark would have seen on their journey that were used by the Plains Indians at that time. So today,
1:37 let's go ahead and get started with our program, and we'd like to thank you for joining us, and we'll have Scott Mandrell and Peyton Bud Clark here to talk about the journey of the 2nd cops of Discovery. So I'll turn it over to you all. All right, thank you. We don't have to hold anything. Great. Well, thank you all and I, uh, probably most of the people sitting here, what number of people already know
2:01 about who we are. There's a lot of uh small crowd that both we want to let you hear the story of our organization, um.
2:11 The plan of the bicentennial has been going on for a long time, I guess by a lot of different people, people who, uh, all across the country who had some different connection to the story or whatever, some places that are in excess of 30 years, people have been anticipating this bicentennial, which is really the bicentennial of the West, as many people have referred to it,
2:36 it's the bicentennial of everything west of the Mississippi River with. To the United States of America as a nation and one of the individuals who was keenly interested in taking steps to prepare for the bicentennial was a man by the name of Glenn Bishop, and Glen Bishop was from St. Charles, Missouri, and he was a contractor and businessman, and among other things he was
3:00 boat hobbyists that he had built wooden boats in the past and that sort of thing and had a real love for boats and particularly old boats, wooden boats, and they built a couple and uh living in Saint Charles, Missouri in 1979, I actually had the privilege in 1979 when I was a little kid of uh of attending the very first Lewis and Clark.
3:22 Heritage Day event that took place there 25 years ago in that town, and from that time on, roughly, uh, there was a deep commitment in the community of Saint Charles to tell their story as it related to the overall expedition in, in this chapter in American history. And one of the things that frustrated Glenn very much was the fact that despite the fact that in Clark's field notes from Wood River,
3:47 There had always been available to anyone who wanted to go and look and see, but there was a, an image of the keel boat that Clark had drawn in his ke notes. And yet everywhere you went across the country, every sign for Lewis and Clark had two guys in coonskin caps and a birch bark canoe paddling up the Missouri River. And this really irritated Glenn. He was a kind of a, he was a mild mannered guy,
4:10 but if there's one thing that was a bird under a saddle blanket, it was, it was this image of two guys in coonskin caps in a birch bark canoe. So he decided that in an attempt to set the record straight, that he would build a model of the original keel boat. So people would have an understanding of what this vessel was like. And you have to remember that 200 years ago, the largest vessel that had ever plied the Missouri River.
4:33 was the kill boat that Lewis and Clark had taken with them. This was, this was a massive boat by comparison to anything else that up there. There were 50-foot canoes, but they were dugouts and things like that and there were, there were large boats, but nothing like this on this order. So he built the model of it and in 1982, kind of showed it to the world as it were, and, and people were very excited. They thought it was neat and that model
4:56 still exists and it's really quite beautiful and all, but it was a 1 inch to 1 ft scale. So even though it was 55 inches long, which is pretty, pretty big. It did not, he felt communicate in full the scope of what this vessel was like, and particularly it did not communicate what this boat looked like moving on the water. And if you haven't seen our boats, you should,
5:21 they really are quite spectacular when they move on the water. And so he decided to actually start constructing a replica of the first boat based upon field notes from Clark and Wood River, based upon good information from the uh uh Maritime Museum, the Smithsonian Institute, and he studied a great deal about boats that were common and typical at that time. The man who built the original boat for Lewis,
5:46 we believe is a man by the name of John Walker, and there was a great deal of information about John Walker, who was a boat right on the Hill River, and using this very good research and having been both a carpenter in his own right as well as a boatwright. He was able to bring a lot of common practical understanding of what was needed to make this boat operational and that sort of thing.
6:09 So he started working in 1983 on building this boat in his backyard. If you're not aware, a boat has to be boats like this are built upside down. Well, it's a 55 ft long structure that's bowed and when he was making the frame of it, for the longest time, people thought that he was building this wooden greenhouse in his backyard, and he was kind of the object of ridicule in his neighborhood.
6:34 People would kind of laugh at him and thought he was kind of this eccentric kind of crazy old. And then one day as the planks went on it started to look like a boat and he flipped it over, then people really started kind of giving him a hard time and kind of poking fun at him because Bert had a big white beard and they used to sort of make Noah jokes, you know, and laugh at him, and, you know, this little guy thought he was Noah building this ark. That was in the mid 80s,
6:59 late early 90s. Then in 1993, we got the great flood and everybody stopped laughing. And uh at any rate, in '96, the boat was finally finished and we took a 1000 mile trip from Wood River, Illinois to Saint Joe, Missouri and back to Saint Charles. It took us seven weeks. And it it started out, it was only going to be a trip from Wood River up to
7:23 Saint Charles from the viceend for the uh for the Heritage Day's event. And it kind of grew and grew and grew and before you know it was 7 weeks and 1000 miles, and it changed many of our lives fundamentally, those of us who were involved with the project because we started to see not only the possibilities with regards to the bicentennial, but we started to have a much deeper understanding of the Missouri River corridor and what it represented.
7:48 us as a nation, environmentally, historically, spiritually, and as this, this great river coursed through the interior of our nation and all the, all the things that that commentated to us as a society, the Missouri River is more than simply a river, it is a, it is an idea in many ways. And it became a passion for many of us,
8:11 and we had started to plan on what we would do the next year. And again, we started working over the winter on the white Perro, the first of the two smaller boats, and we had that boat all framed out. And the last day I worked on that boat was the 30th of January of 1997. On the 31st of January of 1997, Glenn and another fellow, CJ Lanahan.
8:36 Who's been instrumental in our group over the years. They did some finishing touches, some touch up work on the keel boat because that next week, we were going to move the keel boat down to the Trans World Dome down where the Rams played football for a big boat show. It's gonna be a display item there of all the boats around it. And they were doing a little touch up on it on the 31st of January, and they left the warehouse that night about 5 o'clock.
9:01 Glenn got home at about 5:20, the phone rang and it was the fire department. The warehouse had caught on fire, and the boat that had taken him 13 years to build with his own hands by himself and about 40 minutes was reduced to ashes. It was a terrible, terrible thing. It was a devastating experience for all of us. And I remember the next morning standing in
9:24 the still smoldering embers of that boat. Completely 4 more. There was a tremendous sense of loss because this boat had come to sort of represent what might be. And when I asked Glenn, what are we gonna do, his response was, I was never completely happy with that vote anyway.
9:47 And that was the day, and I've said this many times before, but that was the day that I truly understood the meaning of undaunted courage. If a man can spend 13 years of his life by himself, his own money, building this thing that he only wanted to give as a gift to the American people by building it. If he could experience this tremendous loss and go forward without any, without any hesitation,
10:11 that was the kind of character and a man that I had tremendous respect for. And I swore my allegiance to him that day quite literally. And from that day on, our organization actually grew. It's sort of like sometimes when you cut a tree back or prune a tree back, it, it grows more hardy and healthy and that's what happened with our organization. And in 1997.
10:34 Countless members of our greater St. Louis Saint Charles community came forward, retired individuals, men who have carpentry skills or some other skill, and we immediately started working on the fleet of boats because our dream had grown by that time to build the whole fleet of boats. And we knew that we couldn't get the keelboat done in one year. So we started working on the white Perot because we knew that as important as the boats were,
10:58 just like the original expedition, the most important thing on the trip was the men. And it was important to train a crew. And if we had to wait until the kill boat was done, we would lose valuable and precious time training crews. So in 1997, we completed in six months the White Perot. And that year, we took that boat from
11:18 down the Mississippi from Saint Louis down and up the Ohio to Fort Massac on the Ohio. And then in 1998, we built the red boat in about 8 months. And in that year, we took the white and red row together from Yankton, South Dakota back down to Saint Charles pass by here that first time in 1998. In 1999, we began work on the boat, the second kill boat,
11:42 and now there were many hands to make the labor light and the work went much faster. And in addition to working on the kill boat, we took the two pirogues in 1999 from Louisville, Kentucky down to Fort Massat. On the Ohio River. And then in 2000, we took the two Perros, continued work on the keel boat, took the two Perros to Elizabeth, Pennsylvania.
12:04 We brought them down to Menami Hilla to the Ohio and down the Ohio to Louisville. And then in 2001, the kill boat was finished and we took it up to Pierre, South Dakota and brought it back to Yanks. So by 2001, we had trained on the entire water route from Elizabeth, Pennsylvania, where it began all the way to Pierce, South Dakota below I Dam.
12:28 But that was a tremendous amount of training. We had a very qualified crew by that time. In 2002, we were very worried. It was only a year away from the bicentennial and we were very concerned about putting our boats in the water and having an accident and then not having time to have them rebuilt for the bicentennial, but we wanted to continue to train crews, so we took 30 men and 5 dugouts.
12:52 I dugouts, not dugout canoes, no such thing. A dugout is a dugout is a dugout. It's a log, and we took 5 big logs and 30 men from Deacon Rock to the ocean to the mouth of the Columbia River, 140 miles to continue to train those crews. And so we were ready. The bicentennial was about to begin, and then it kind of dawned on me that Lewis hadn't rented a car from Hertz and ran out to
13:17 Pittsburgh to get the boat, and he had to get there some other way. And part of the story is about understanding how vast a nation we are, how big a nation we are, and how difficult things were for all of our forefathers as they moved across this great continent. And I realized that in order for the story to be complete, Lewis had to get to Pittsburgh. And so last year on the 5th of July, I mounted a horse in
13:42 Washington DC and rode to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The corps gathered in Elizabeth, Pennsylvania in August, and in August, we departed Elizabeth, Pennsylvania. We came down to Manongahi River to the Ohio, down the Ohio River to Cairo, Illinois, up the Mississippi to our winter camp at Wood River, arriving there on December 12th, just as the original corps had done,
14:07 day for day, wild for m. And then we spent the winter at Camp Du Bois and that fellow who had been helping Glenn years before, CJ Lanahan. He had dedicated the last 3 years of his life to building a replica of Camp Du Bois in Wood River, Illinois, a working functioning Camp Dubois that would allow us to train there over the winter and learn the skills necessary for what we were embarking on.
14:31 And over the winter, we brought men from our organization now. Up to 250 members from 36 different states, and we brought them there over the winter and we trained there and we learned infantry skills from the time and that sort of thing. We participated in the Tree Flags ceremony which changed the sovereign flags that flew over St. Louis 30 200 years ago in March when
14:56 Spain and France relinquished their claims to Louisiana. And then in May, we put the boats in the water on the 7th of May, and on the 14th of May, the same date in the same hour of the original expedition. Once again, we were underway and we entered the mouth of the Missouri River. And we've ascended the Missouri River now 691 miles
15:17 on a journey that this year will take us 1350 miles to Washburn, North Dakota and Fort Van Dam. And we will complete those miles in the same time frame of the original expedition date. It is a tremendous honor for us to share this story with America. But as we talked about today, this story is about much more than simply two individuals, Lewis and Clark. And for a long time,
15:43 that's been the way we refer to this story as Lewis and Clark. But Lewis and Park is like an icon on the desktop of your computer that you never clicked on. You know, it came with all that preloaded software that you never use. The one day you clicked on that icon and all those great applications were in there and you felt, wow, if I've known this was here earlier, I would have used it. That's what Lewis and Clark is like.
16:06 And while it's important to tell the story of the many tribes along the way, before we even get to the tribes last year, one of the big things we had to talk about was the many tribes that comprise the core itself. In 1803, this nation was not a homogenous nation. There wasn't a bunch of people who got up in the morning and thought of themselves as Americans. There's people who got up in the morning and thought
16:29 of themselves as Virginians and Pennsylvanians and New Englanders, and Kentuckians and Tennesseans, and they thought about themselves in a very colloquial way. Yeah, they had joined together to fight the British and gain independence and autonomy from the British crown. But a Virginian was a Virginian, and a Pennsylvanian was a Pennsylvanian, and they're the two meet.
16:53 Unless maybe in the case of the whiskey rebellion, and when they met there, they were on opposite sides. This story is about the moment when those eastern states started to understand that they were part of something bigger. And the men who comprised the core of Discovery were not one group of people, they were Scots and Irish and Germans and Welsh and French.
17:18 And it was an eclectic group of individuals to begin with. Some like Lewis and Clark from the upper class gentry, aristocracy as it were, some from the very lowest levels of society, poor dirt farmers from Appalachia. People who knew that this expedition and being on it would change their lives fundamentally. If they could go on this trip and come back that they would
17:43 reap the rewards that would change their lives and the family's lives. It would give them a chance to have a fresh start in the world, a chance to have a leg up, upward mobility. And it was very important for that group of individuals, but they were not a common group of individuals, and there was a tremendous amount of angst between them, which at Wood River we see played out. It was very difficult for the captains to bring
18:06 discipline and order to this group of unruly individuals. But they finally did. But then Lewis and Clark even complicated matters further because they went to Saint Charles and then recruited all of these French boatmen to help make the trip possible. Another chapter in the story of America, a melting pot and strength is in its diversity. in Clark, bring into the story Frenchmen who are not only
18:30 French and speak a different language but are Catholic, which is a very complex issue in the late 18th and early 19th century. And we see the eclecticism and the diversity of this group of people growing day by day as these people join the crew. And then ultimately as they make their way across the nation, so many times over and over and over again, the turning point in success or failure pivots on
18:54 the assistance that they are given freely and hospitably by the native nations that they encounter along the way. And that is the message of the model that this bicentennial continues to offer us and that we must embrace and share across the nation is that the story of this core of discovery 200 years ago
19:18 is a story that reflects the character of America today. It is eclectic, multicultural, and diverse, and that was its strength then and it is the strength of our nation today. It is a great honor for us to be able to bring the story to life. It's a great honor to be here with you today. I'm gonna stop talking and let Bud say a few words. Bud, as you know, is the great, great grandson. Park.
19:44 We have several descendants with us today, and it's tremendously it's a special honor for us to get to serve with them as we move across the country in this exercise, but it's also magical to be in places where we get to stand next to descendants of the original expedition once again grasping hands with the. of those native people who met them for the
20:06 first time 200 years ago and see evidence that once again there is an opportunity for the promise of Thomas Jefferson to come true that one day we can live in peace and friendship together, and this is the beginning of that age.
20:31 Andy Scott As Scott mentioned, we do have some uh other descendants here today. The uh Um, Bob, if you would stand, please, Bob Anderson, who is a collateral descendant of George Shannon and his grandson Josh. Josh Lotus. Um, Josh
20:52 is the youngest member of our organization making the entire trip, as George Shannon was, the youngest member of the original expedition. Also, church, my cousin Churchill is here, the back.
21:07 Churchill was part of our organization, planning to make the entire trip. Uh, you know, I think that very early on as students of Lewis and Clark, one of the first things we recognize is that uh perhaps the, the title Lewis and Clark expedition is sort of a misnomer. I think if I could change any of the written words that uh
21:32 my ancestor wrote, I, I would change that title and give it a name something like Uh, the core of Discovery journey through the lands of the Native Americans because in fact, that is exactly what it was. And one of the things that, that makes this event today so significant and, and so important and why we feel so honored to be here that quite frankly, with,
21:57 without the, the help, without the hospitality and the assistance of the Native Americans, there, there's a very good chance that I wouldn't be standing here. We can say with absolute certainty that the Lewis and Clark expedition would not have succeeded. How dismal that failure might have been, well, we'll never know because they had the assistance of the Native Americans and it did succeed.
22:21 And as we proceed across the country and travel through the homeland of the Native Americans, we hope that there'll be many more like days like this one where we can really enjoy coming together as a nation. And as we mentioned earlier this morning, that's, that is what we want our legacy to be. It's quite straightforward, it's really quite simple. When this is all over,
22:45 we want to stand tall and say, We were a part of bringing this nation closer together as a family, and we can see that happening on days like today, and it's magic, it's really magic.
22:57 I think Scott, first, did you wanna Yeah, I entertain questions now. I think that's probably best, yeah, why don't we do that we'd like to answer questions either about the original expedition if we can, if you have interest in something that happened on the original expedition, something about our expedition, something about the boats, um.
23:20 Just raise your hand I'll bring the microphone.
23:23 If you have questions, uh, wave to us. Angela's on that side, I'm on this side, and we'll be glad to entertain those questions for you. um,
23:32 maybe I shouldn't say, do you plan to do this, but will you do this? Will you write a book? Are you keeping journals as the original Lewis and Clark did and write a book to compare what they went through as compared to what you are going through?
23:51 OK, I, uh, my journals are online at Lewis and Clark.net. Um, uh, they are, uh, you get back, uh, I've been writing journals for this organization for many, many years. Our, our previous training exercises were brief, so those journals are shorter, but I have journaled since last year, since I left Washington DC last year.
24:14 That's a journal that probably might be a good historical document to compare. What happens on a daily basis. As far as books go. I don't know. On the 23rd of September 2006, I'm probably gonna put on jeans and a sweatshirt and, you know, try to think about something else, at least for a little while. Um, I know some of the guys are planning on writing books. One of the guys actually last night told me that
24:38 he's got a title for his book. they're all writing books. They're all talking to agents and publishers all the time. But the, uh, one of the guys I told me and Sergeant Pryor will appreciate this 11 of the titles that I heard last night that one of the guys is working on is Sweet Corn and Anarchy on the Missouri River.
24:56 like Yes, I'm sure there'll be a book out of it. I don't know whether the market can bear too many more though. Can't throw a stick without hitting a new book on Lewis and Clark.
25:07 You know, uh,
25:10 I Trying to keep the journal. I, I have to tell you, I, I have a newfound admiration for the members of the Corps of Discovery and their diligence in terms of keeping journals, men like Ordway and the White House and my ancestor, uh. I don't know how after those long tiring days, those physically taxing days that are,
25:35 that were, were so much, much more strenuous and taxing than anything that we experienced, you know, I get falling down tired of doing what we do and it's nothing in comparison. And I find myself thinking that I should be catching up on my journals, and it doesn't always happen, uh. In terms of publishing something later, uh,
25:59 I can tell you this. I, I did inherit one, trait from my ancestor, and that is the ability to spell extremely and creatively. In fact, uh, I have the talent and the ability to even stump spell check and get that sort of sinking sensation when I see that message, no suggestion.
26:25 So I'm probably more of a nuts and bolts guy than a, than an author, but I am trying to keep uh keep a journal. My kids bug me about it. You gotta do it, do it for your grandkids and they lay the guilt trip on me. Then I can't sleep at night because I know I should be out working on my journals by candlelight.
26:46 Louis, are you related to the actual? No, Lewis did not have any legitimate heirs. Now he did have collateral descendants, but he did not have a direct descendant. However, uh, we do believe that he may have, uh, a direct descendant, although not recognized, uh, not recognized through a formal marriage or anything,
27:09 but he may have had a child with the lower brewing woman when they passed through the Brewer. Uh,
27:17 And in, in late September of 1804 that he may have had a child in the spring of '05, uh, with, with her, and uh there's some speculation about that. I'm not a descendant of Mary Lewis. However, I'm curiously enough, when I was in active duty in the army, I am an Army soldier and uh when I was on active duty service, I'm in the guard now, and the unit that I served on, served with when I was active duty
27:41 was the unit that evolved out of the very same unit that Maryther Lewis served with.
27:48 Some other questions?
27:52 All right, let's give them all a big hand. Thank you very well. I To have the Discovery exhibition center with us and to have Scott and Bud with us to talk about the Discovery expedition. Thank you both so much and thank you all for coming as well. We have another program scheduled at 12 o'clock, so join us there.