Closed Captions Audio Described

Curator Carolyn Gilman examines material objects exchanged during the 1805 encounter between the Corps of Discovery and Shoshone people near present-day Lemhi Pass. She analyzes blankets, flags, pipes, otter-skin tippets, and other gifts—exploring their meanings in Native diplomatic custom versus European interpretation, and how these exchanges created both misunderstanding and profound cultural connection.

Transcript

0:02 voices which is part of the traveling Lewis and Clark exhibit we are the only National Park that travels around the trail so thank you very much for inviting us to your community uh many of you have uh seen uh other presentations here so I'll keep the introduction short but we also have a keelboat and we also have an exhibit tent and in the exhibit tent if you would like to take a 37
0:27 minute audio tour uh that's a really wonderful audio tour if you want something shorter there are also long and short scripts and uh this tend of many voices allows different people to come in and share different perspectives on what happened on the Expedition and today we have um Miss Carolyn uh Gilman she's going to be talking about the
0:49 gifts of the Shoshone and she's from the M um Missouri Historical Society so let's give a warm welcome to miss Gilman [Applause] thank you thank you is my mic on can you hear me okay great great um I was the curator of the uh National Lewis and
1:12 Clark Bicentennial exhibition that was organized by the Missouri Historical Society um it is currently in Denver and it's going to be moving to Portland in November and then it will be closing at um the Smithsonian institution in Washington DC in 2006 um it's it's the um exhibit that uh brings together as many of the original artifacts as we
1:36 could possibly track down during seven years of research um so my job during the seven years that we were planning the exhibit was to um investigate all the objects that Lewis and Clark either brought with them or that they saw along the trail or that they collected and brought back from their Journey so my
1:58 perspective is from the perspective of um uh three-dimensional objects material things and that's really what I want to talk talk about today and how those can um uh reveal new things about a very um familiar story now when you read about the 19 days that the um the core of Discovery spent with the Shoshone Indians
2:22 in August of um 1805 it sounds like one continual exchange of gifts um gifts were really the the kind of universal translators between the two groups they were like social solvents that dissolved the cultural boundaries the now this really isn't a very surprising fact because in Indian
2:46 nations all across this country gifts were essential to all diplomatic encounters they were part of a a set of elaborate and formal Customs that had evolved in N native North America to br bried the multitude of languages and the multitude of tribal divisions tribes used symbolic objects like wamp belts
3:09 and pipes and um tomahawks in order to um communicate political Alliance and Military uh opposition to each other these gifts carried not only um messages They Carried moral obligations as well to accept a gift without reciprocating was dishonorable and so they um uh to
3:31 offer a gift was to offer an invitation to opening a lasting Mutual relationship accepting some gifts meant taking on obligations that could be legitimately enforced by insult or by arms other obligations were so grave um that Supernatural Powers could be relied on to um uh punish people who um
3:55 transgressed and didn't live up to their obligations now gifts between individuals could create what anthropologists call a fictive kinship now uh today we still have fictive kinship relationships if you think about it a little you can probably uh name a few um there's obviously adoption is a fictive kinship we still use today but
4:18 the most important one we honor today is marriage and just think of all the um the the debates that are going on today about the definition and the nature of marriage and you will see how um how very charged emotionally and culturally charged these fictive kinship relationships can be now Indian tribes had far more
4:42 fictive relationships than we do um there were father son relationships there were brother brother relationships there were Grand grandmother granddaughter relationships and all of these had were no less grave and meaningful than husband wife relationships and They Carried with them similar obligations and prohibitions Gifts were essential um to
5:06 establish these relationships and so in this context the presentation of a gift was um meant to express deep feelings of respect and benevolence and Brotherhood gifts also played a role in uh acquiring knowledge young people were taught to present a respected teacher with a gift in exchange for being taught
5:30 something even if the teacher was related to them so a girl who wanted to for instance know how to make a pot or weave a mat would give her mother a gift in order to be taught this skill young men who wanted to get songs um to help them in war or in hunting would give older men gifts for that privilege and these gifts taught
5:53 students to to Value the knowledge that was given given to them but they also respect they expressed respect not just for the teacher but for the sacred sources of all knowledge in in a way the gifts were given to the spirits who had revealed the knowledge to human beings and the teacher was only an intermediary gifts also had an important
6:16 role in establishing rank and power uh now in euroamerican societies um the accumulation of wealth was a symbolic sign of power the highest ranks were also the richest and and wealth was given respect it was exact opposite in Indian Society uh people achieved Power by showing generosity to their relations
6:41 and to their allies early European Travelers often commented on the fact that the Indian chiefs tended to be the poorest people in the village uh because they were obliged to give away all they owned but what such observers didn't understand was that those gifts came back to the leaders in the form of respect and loyalty and Allegiance now when Europeans
7:05 encountered the native people of America they learned to adapt to gifting Customs but often they interpreted them differently than the Indians did they assigned their own symbolic meanings to the objects and to the acts of exchange so in a given interaction between Native Americans and Euro Americans we often find two different interpretations of
7:28 what's going on I think that that's precisely what's going on during the time that the core of Discovery spent with the Shon what I'd like to do today is to show you some of the specific gifts that were exchanged and to encourage you to think about their meanings for both sides now first I need to make a disclaimer um there were no Shoshone
7:53 accounts of this encounter until years later when some fur Traders and missionaries interviewed Shoshone people about what they remembered so I cannot speak for um for the Shoshone um all I can do is to repeat what some modern-day Shoni people have told me and make analogies from other tribes that I've worked with and I do want to
8:17 acknowledge the help of several people uh Rosina George Rosemary deini snookums hona Reba tan Roseanne Abramson and Diane yup now I hope you can see this this um uh slide that's on the screen um the name of the painting is making presents to
8:39 snake Indians uh it shows a gift exchange between a euroamerican Trader and some Shoshone people that took place in 1837 and it was sketched by Alfred Jacob Miller who was the first major artist to portray the Shoshone now you probably all know about the events that led up to Merryweather Lewis finding himself in a similar
9:03 situation 200 years ago very near the spot where we are today Lewis and the rest of the core of Discovery were desperately searching for the Shoni Indians for two reasons first of all they needed horses in order to carry their tons of baggage and Equipment across the Continental Divide to what they assumed would be the navigable headwaters of the Columbia
9:26 River second they needed to ask directions actually they needed that a whole lot more than they realized because the navigable headwaters of the Columbia River were nowhere nearby so Lewis and three companions went out ahead of the rest to find the Shoni inexplicably leaving their translator Sakagawea behind them so
9:49 their first um sight of a Shoni man mounted on a horse presented them with a dilemma between the four of them Lewis Lewis's group possessed EX L one word of Shoshone and it didn't mean what they thought it did so how were they going to communicate with this very suspicious person when they didn't know his
10:11 language well in this crisis Lewis Hit Upon A an an ingenious solution he had to improvise so what he decided to use was use do was use a symbolic object and what he used was a blanket now this was this is not the exact blanket he used obviously but it's probably very much like it he got his blankets at the
10:34 Philadelphia Arsenal and this type which is called a rose blanket was standard military issue in 1803 uh this particular one probably dates to about uh the 1790s now this is how Lewis told the story I discovered an Indian on horseback about 2 miles distant coming down the plane toward us un loosing my blanket from my pack I made the signal
10:59 of friendship which is by holding the mantle or robe in your hands at two corners and then throwing it up in the air higher than the head bringing it to the Earth as if in the act of spreading it this signal of the robe has arisen from a custom amongst all those nations of spreading a robe or skin for their guests now you'll notice that Lewis is very certain that he knows the meaning
11:23 of this blanket gesture he's using despite this the very next thing he writes is this signal had not the desired effect he suddenly turned his horse about gave him the whip leaped to the creek and disappeared and with him vanished all my hopes of obtaining horses so we have to ask ourselves what went wrong well when you look into it you
11:47 find that blankets did in fact convey many meanings many messages in Indian Society but sometimes those messages were no more translatable than uh language was what I did was I put together a little quiz to see if we can do any better than Lewis did um in about 1905 an Omaha man demonstrated the robe
12:11 language of his tribe for an anthropologist and she took photographs now this is the first of the photographs now if you saw this man I hope you can see him um if you saw this man what uh message do you think he's trying to convey by the way he's wearing his robe what mood or um State of Mind do you think that he is um he's trying to uh
12:36 inform you of anybody any guesses humility humility is that what you said okay nonaggression non-aggression yeah hiding a weapon hiding a weapon okay so there is there's hidden aggression there so so some of you would be suspicious of this guy and um others of
13:00 you would trust him okay what the man said is that this shows a hesitant State of Mind to an Indian audience to an Omaha audience um this man is showing that he hasn't yet decided how to act he's arranged his blanket so that people can see he hasn't um decided what he wants to do okay here's another one any guesses about this
13:24 guy why would you react to him confid say confident he's confident okay anybody else leer a leader he's a leader okay you're getting this one much
13:46 better okay what this um shows is an orator who's about to um address his people with an admonition or a warning and he's wrapped his blanket in a Stern and formal way to show them that there's um there's a an admonition coming okay this is the hard one I would never know how to interpret this and if
14:10 you saw this what would you think anybody he's sick okay submission submission that's interesting if I I saw this I would think um mortification or
14:34 shame what this really shows is anger a man is hiding his face so that everyone will know that he is angry but he hasn't lost his cool in public um just think of how dangerous it would be to misinterpret the body language of somebody who is expressing anger this way um Louis and Clark often talk about how Indian men are go away mortified or
14:58 shamefaced after they' rebuked them and I can't help wondering if this wasn't what they were seeing well now we don't we can't be sure what the sight of Lewis flapping his blanket meant to that shony man but we can be reasonably certain that it didn't mean to him what Lewis thought it meant now Lewis's next attempt to
15:21 communicate was more successful this time he wrote we had not continued our route more than a mile when we were so fortunate as to meet three Fe female Savages they appeared much alarmed but seated themselves on the ground holding down their heads as if reconciled to die to reassure them Lewis tried the universal language of gifts he said I
15:45 took the elderly woman by the hand and raised her up I gave these women some beads a few moccasins some peer looking glasses and a little paint I now painted their Tawny cheeks with some Vermilion which with this nation is emblematic of peace well this time his choice of gifts was absolutely perfect elsewhere he called these items Trifles but they had far different meanings to the
16:09 differences to the Shoshone for instance take the Vermilion which may have been carried in a Leather Pouch like this now Vermilion is a Mercury based pigment that was imported from China was very cheap for Traders to stock but to the Shoshone it mimicked red ochre which is a rare and valuable colored herb that had sacred connotations to them on the plains uh
16:33 women colored the parts in their hair red in order to show that um they um had passed through the Buffalo ceremony and they were protected by that animal's power so for Lewis to anoint the women with Vermilion was very much like a blessing now the beads he gave them must have looked very much like these these particular beads were found in mitu
16:56 tanka which is the Mandan Village across from Fort Mandan where they spent the winter of 180405 and they date from the exact time that Lewis and Clark were there now the Shoshone used beads like these for embroidery but when they um crossed the mountains to trade with the Columbia Valley tribes they entered a trade zone where blue and white beads were actually used as currency they were just like
17:20 money and so these were as good as cash um it was as if Lewis had showered these women with gold now the mirrors he gave them caused quite a sensation years later when the Shoshone were interviewed about their memories of the visit it wasn't Lewis or Clark they remembered it was the mirrors a man named pharaoh who is probably a
17:43 child at that time um said they gave us things like solid water which were sometimes brilliant as the sun and which sometimes showed our own faces nothing could equal our wonder and Delight in Pharaoh's story The Med meeting with Lewis and Clark literally gave the Shoshone a new way of viewing themselves well it was lucky that Lewis
18:07 had um selected his gifts well because he soon needed the women's good um Goodwill before they'd gone two miles he wrote they met a party of about 60 Warriors mounted on excellent horses who came in nearly full speed armed Capa for Action well this was a pretty risky moment any slip could have result resulted in disaster once more Lewis chose to
18:32 communicate using a piece of cloth but this time he chose a piece of cloth that had great symbolic resonance in his own culture and this is what he chose a flag now there's a lot of debate about the exact style of flag that Lewis and Clark had with them and the simple answer is nobody knows if anybody tells you they know they
18:56 don't um they almost certainly had different style of flag um for flying in different occasions there's one style for their fort one style for the keelboat and a different style for presenting to Indian nations with whom they wanted to establish an alliance this one um this flag which is at Chicago historical society was probably a Indian presentation flag and it dates to about
19:20 1808 so I I would guess this is very close to the style that Lewis gave to cam this is how Lewis described what happened next when they arrived I Advanced toward them with the flag the women informed them whom we were who we were and exultingly showed the presence which had been given them the principal Chief cwe made a short speech to the Warriors I gave him
19:44 the flag which I informed him was an emblem of Peace among white men and now that it had been received by him it was to be respected as the bond of Union between us well now Lewis is being a little bit disingenuous here first since they had no translator cwe no more understood his explanation of the flag than he had understood cwe's
20:07 speech second his explanation leaves a lot out the flag was first and foremost a symbol of the National Unity of the United States the 15 stripes in the bunting field um symbolize the 15 states and the Canton had the Great Seal of the nation it was a tangible object that embody the concepts of national pride
20:31 and sovereignty here on the westernmost border of the Louisiana purchas raising this flag symbolized the United States claim to rule the shoson population and to own their land to accept it was to accept United States Alliance but also United States sovereignty you can't help wondering if kiawe would have touched
20:54 this dangerous gift if Lewis had fully explained what it meant well we don't know what cwe thought of the flag but it's very interesting to speculate the presentation of a piece of cloth a robe as a diplomatic gift would have not seemed strange to him uh many tribes practiced this in fact um Lewis and Clark themselves had been given a
21:17 gorgeously painted robe as a diplomatic gift by the Teton the previous year this is such a robe thought to have been brought back to Philadelphia by Lewis and Clark this gift robe like the flag had hidden messages the paintings on it portray the military prowess and Imperial power of the tribe that gave it to the Explorers
21:42 messages meant to warn and intimidate as well as to impress their new allies this is a Shoni version of the same thing uh from a later date uh this robe made of deer skins portrays the war record of wasaki the chief of the Wind River Shoni who was actually born in the bitteroot valley not far from here um
22:04 only the year before Lewis and Clark arrived now cawe was familiar with war robes and may well have assumed that the flag had similar messages as it did but there is one detail that might have struck him with particular Force look again at the Canton of the flag here the flag maker has portrayed a
22:28 symbolic animal kind of the totemic spirit of the United States it's an eagle grasping arrows in one claw and lightning bolts in the other now no design could have been chosen better to communicate with the um uh the tribes of Western North America in Native North America the
22:52 eagle was a powerful spirit being associated with the thunderstorm and War thunderstorm as in the lightning and War as in the arrows men who could evoke Eagle power to assist them in battle were the most feared Warriors in the west claiming Eagle power was something no one would do unless they um unless
23:15 they really possessed it was far too dangerous so when Lewis gave the chief a cloth portraying an eagle there was really only one way kamwe could interpret it a later visitor among the Dakota put it this way the United States emblem of the eagle with outstretched claws holding arrows and the lightning is regarded by the Dakota as an appeal
23:39 on our part to the Thunderbird and statements to the contrary are usually interpreted as white men's lies to deceive the Indians and to guard the power now the next object that the that was used in the Diplomatic exchange between the Shoshone and the Corps was just as resonant with meaning but now the was mostly on the Shoshone side
24:04 and Lewis understood only a portion of it let me read you what he says they introduced us to an old leather Lodge had which had been prepared for our reception here we were Seated on green boughs and the skins of antelopes the chief next began a long ceremony of the pipe he lit his pipe at the fire kindled in this little magic circle and uttered a speech of several
24:28 minutes in length at the conclusion of which he pointed the stem to the four cardinal points of the heavens First beginning at the East and ending with the north he repeated the same ceremony three times after which he pointed the stem first to the heavens then to the center of the magic circle smoked himself and held the pipe until I took as many as I thought
24:51 proper now what Lewis didn't know was the meaning behind these these motions that he recorded in such photographic detail tale kiawe was not giving a speech he was uttering a prayer or an invocation to virtually all tribes between the Mississippi and the Rockies pipes were sacramental vessels they were conduits of communication with natural
25:15 Powers pipe ceremonies were rituals of social communion which um adopted Outsiders into the very heart of tribal culture the smoke was a visible prayer that called called upon the powers to witness The Binding of those who smoked together George sword a Lota born about 1847 explained the spirit and the smoke
25:40 will Soo the spirits of all who thus smoke together and all will be as friends and all think alike it is like when the Christians take communion what is done in its presence is Solemn and binding this is Lewis's sketch of C's pipe it's the most ancient style of pipe in North America called a straight pipe
26:03 and pipes were usually um regarded as living things now there was also a bit of etiquette related to the moccasins um Lewis learned that he had to take off his moccasins in order to show respect to the pipe um these are not Shoni moccasins but they exactly match Lewis's description of Shoshone moccasins they're
26:25 um soft sold soft sold with um one seam along the outer edge now cit's people would normally have um showered their guests with gifts since that was customary but at the moment when Lewis encountered them they were in Desperate circumstances only weeks before they had been attacked by the black feet whom
26:49 they called pockies they had had to flee leaving all their belongings behind to be looted by their enemies now they were refugees and had almost nothing nothing to give and yet Lewis records how they presented the uh last remnants of food that they possessed to the young guests in order to make them feel welcome the most poignant story about
27:12 Shoni gifting was told by Clark a week or so later when he was leading a party down the Salmon River Clark came across an isolated family that knew nothing about the arrival of these visitors when they were surprised by a large party of armed men the desperate barents quote offered everything they possessed which was very little to us the first offer of
27:36 theirs were Elk's tusks from around their children's necks now to appreciate this you have to know that elk teeth were emblems of endurance and parents gave them to their children in order to express hope that they would bring long life so the Shoni parents were offering Clark the gift of long lives that they had given to their children in order to appease
28:01 him these elk teeth are probably Shoni but they date from a a later period now in better circumstances the Shoshone were well-to-do people who had the resources of both the Plains and the mountains at their disposal Lewis spent the next few days recording in his journal their styles of clothing arms horse gear and tools among the things
28:25 that he um saw were Roots folded in as many parchment hides of Buffalo by parchment what he meant was par flesh like this container which is painted in a typical Shoshone style a parf flesh was like a suitcase that they used to transport their many belongings when it was hung on a horse um the long fringes on this par flesh would swish elegantly to and
28:49 fro but LS had come for horses um and he needed to persuade the Shoshone to accompany him back across the Continental aide um to the headquarters of the Missouri where the rest of the expedition was laboring Upstream with all their equipment this was not very easily done rumors had been circulating that he and his men quote were in League
29:12 with the pakis and had come on in order to decoy them into an ambuscade so what he promised them gifts he told them that white men would come with an abundance of guns and every other article necessary to their defense and Comfort while the mounted men who set out with Lewis to meet the rest of the Expedition were still weary and
29:36 suspicious and as they neared the headquarters of the Missouri the Warriors began to criticize kamade for leading them into danger and even the chief himself began to suspect a trap So In This Moment of uncertainty kamit made a decision to test Lewis's character by giving him what may have been the most valuable thing kamama we possessed
29:59 it was a gift that um expressed both Brotherhood and caution at the same time after receiving it only the most dishonorable man would have betrayed him Lewis said the chief with much ceremony put Tippets about our necks such as they themselves wore I readily perceived that this was to disguise us
30:23 now there are no surviving examples of Shoshone Tippets from this period a tippet by the way is a mantle it's just something you wear around your neck fortunately in 1833 Carl bodmer painted a black feet man wearing a very similar garment um Lewis described it as the most elegant piece of Indian dress I ever saw it was made from strips cut
30:48 from the back fur of two or more otter and decorated with uh what LS called the shells of the Pearl Oyster you can see all the shells on the on the tipet on that this man is wearing uh but when this this one is fringed with um horse hair or human hair um but Camille weights had a fringe of 140 whole man skins formed into
31:11 rolls now I'm not certain about the significance of the tippet among the Shoshone but among neighboring tribes in the 1780s an otter skin mantle was a civil Chief's insignum of office whoever wore it was either the chief or or deputized to act for the chief so we can assume that its meaning to Kamia waight was as profound as its
31:36 value here is Lewis wearing it now we can be quite sure that Lewis valued this gift as highly as it deserved all the way to the Pacific and all the way back he carried it in his baggage when he got back to Philadelphia he wore it while the artist um St Memon painted his portrait Lewis then gave it to Charles Wilson peele's museum in Philadelphia
32:00 where it was mounted on a wax likeness of Lewis to preserve for all time the moment when he had received the gift now Lewis had nothing of comparable value to give to CIT in return but he did have something of comparable symbolism and this was it he wrote I put my cocked hat with feather on the
32:24 chief now an officer's hat called a shapo bra was also an insignum of office of command just like the otter skin mantle was it signified the rank that Lewis had attained and the respect his men were bound to Accord him his right to wear it showed his achievements and his dignity Lewis's hat was probably
32:48 decorated um right about here with a cade now the Cade probably had a silver eagle at the center as this one does if you squint really hard you might be able to see it the cockade was a a fabric Sunburst emblem it's a little bit reminiscent of the feather circle design on plain's Indian buffalo robes the
33:12 Eagle at its Center showed which nation Lewis belonged to symbolized by the eagle it showed the fact that he commanded an infantry unit which was symbol by symbolized by the Eagle's color and his rank symbolized by the metal the silver metal that the eagle was Eagle was made from the feather that Lewis mentions uh fitted into a socket that was behind the
33:36 cockade his feather looked something like this although the color of Lewis's feather was different this is an artillery plume Lewis was Lewis's was an infantry plume now the fact that Lewis gave his hat and feather to the chief suggests that he might have understood that camit was not just giving away a piece of clothing he was giving Lewis part of his
34:00 identity his honor to wear another person's clothing is an intimate act that connects people on a deeply physical level but clothing also conveys explicit messages about its owner and this is a point on which cwe's culture and Lewis's agree in particular a soldier's clothing revealed who A man
34:24 was and what he had accomplished for example take the feather now Lewis wore a feather to show his Rank and unit plain's Indian men also wore feathers that formed a complicated Ro code of Martial honor among the Lota any man who had fought in battle could wear an eagle feather suspended from his hair clothing or
34:47 implements killing or striking an enemy earned the right to wear it fastened upright to his hair a wound in battle earned an upright eagle feather col red one like this which is notched on the sides indicated that the man had done Deeds of desperate daring in the presence of an enemy and it was worn dangling from the for loock or from the
35:10 ear now this Feather by the way is from The Collection that includes the peel Museum artifacts uh lwis and Clark gave several Eagle Tail Feathers used in ornamental and warlike dresses to the museum and this could very well be one of them it's from the peab museum today now another symbol of heroism that Lewis and Clark collected was this
35:35 stunning necklace of bear claw it it's the one that was recently found in the store rooms of the Peabody Museum where it had been misc cataloged and so lost for about a hundred years um they just found it in December of 2003 now we don't know what tribe it belonged to but Lewis's main description of bearclaw necklaces came among the Shoshone he wrote
35:58 that they were worn only by quote Warriors or such as esteem themselves brave men it is esteemed by them an act of equal celebrity The Killing one of these bear or an enemy leis also described the Shoni war shirt which he called a commodious and decent garment now we have no shirts that we can positively identify as Shoshone from
36:22 this period but this shirt is the closest I've been able to come come by it matches is Lewis's description perfectly and it was collected by a cousin of the explorer Alexander McKenzie in the 1790s probably in this area now the paintings on it gave its uh owners War honors um from it we learned that this this fearsome man counted coup
36:47 on two armed enemies and killed 34 people with his spear The Fringe on the uh shirt is human hair symbolizing enemy scalps although often the hair was given by friends and supporters to represent the man's responsibility to his kin it would have been worn with leggings like this painted with horizontal stripes
37:11 symbolizing vanquished enemies Lewis and Clark collected a pair of leggings that must have looked very much like this now euroamerican men also went into battle dressed in regalia that symbolized their deeds and status this is a reproduction of the captain's uniform for the first US infantry um such as Lewis would have worn now it's
37:35 full of symbols of rank unit nationality and Heritage the epet the gor the shoulder belt plate the sash the sword however there's a significant difference from the Indian War regalia this was a uniform that is it was designed to make the Warriors of an
37:56 army look uni form more all the same it didn't advertise their individual Deeds so much as obliterate their differences their clothing shows the fact that when Europeans fought they acted not as individual Warriors but as a coordinated group following orders now the exchange of clothing
38:20 between Lewis and cawe was a critical moment at establishing trust between the core and the Shoni symbolically L and Kamia wa had done more than wear each other's garments they had exchanged identities this fact was confirmed later when Camille we gave away his name to his visitor Lewis seems to have sensed the profundity of the chief's gesture he
38:43 described himself in his Shoshone regalia and commented I wanted no further addition to make me a complete Indian in appearance The Men followed my example and we were soon completely metamorphosed listen to his Lang language here he is acknowledging a transformation in this moment he truly feels metamorphosed into a complete
39:07 Indian now I think that in this moment Lewis really crossed a cultural divide and it's very difficult to come come back from across a divide like that unchanged a weak immersed in Shoni world had left Lewis feeling uncertain of who he was or ought to be on his um 31st birthday 7 days after the first meeting
39:31 he looked inward questioning his life he wrote I reflected that I had as yet done very little but little indeed to further the happiness of the human race I resolved in future to live for mankind as I have here to for lived for myself now when Clark arrived with the rest of the Expedition there was celebration all around Sakagawea and
39:55 Kamia wa were um reunited food was now plentiful and more gifts changed hands Clark wrote that camir waight welcomed him into a council and immediately tied to my hair six small pieces of shells resembling Pearl which is highly valued by these people he was probably referring to Abalone show these Abalone ornaments were given by Lewis and Clark
40:18 to the American philosophical society and they could be the very ones that kamit gave to Clark this shows the perhaps the most useful gift that the the Shon gave to Lewis and Clark information this is Clark's root map showing fortunate camp where the meeting happened now the expedition's last gift
40:41 to kamwa was as loaded with meaning as their first one had been Lewis wrote we gave him a medal of the small size with the likeness of Mr Jefferson the president of the United States in relief on one side and clasped hands with a pipe and Tomahawk on the other we made them sensible of their dependence on the will of our government for every species of merchandise as well as for their
41:04 defense and comfort and apprised them of the strength of our government and its friendly disposition toward them all of these messages were embodied in the metal now how Saka jaia translated Lewis's speech we don't know if she was tactful she left out words like dependence in a way the whole episode had been one long exchange of mirrors
41:28 each party looked at the other and what they saw was their own faces reflected back in a new way sometimes their view was distorted by preconceptions but sometimes the participants saw themselves in a new light and this is really the gift that strangers can always give to us to see our own actions and our beliefs outlined
41:51 in stark contrast against the background of another culture it was the most important gift that cam weight gave to Lewis and fortunately it's a gift that we can still continue to give to one another thank
42:15 you is there time for questions yes if anybody has any questions uh just raise your hand and I'll be around with the microphone you can ask him Carolyn do we know where she would have sakaia would have collected the IR tales that she gave to Captain Clark at the Christmas at um Fort
42:38 classup no I'm afraid I have no idea um there's a variety of places that you can speculate she got them but we we just don't know another beautiful example of gift giving that was that was um according to um Euro American custom we give gifts on Christmas and and Saka jaia was was
43:01 conforming to to um the customs of the people she was among any other questions okay oh are all these gifts now in the Smithsonian Institute or will be no um the Smithsonian has only one uh in their permanent collection they have only one object related to
43:26 Lewis and Clark all the rest of these have come from other institutions and they're not going to go to the Smithsonian um if those museums have anything to say about it um it there were over um 60 institutions that loaned artifacts to our exhibition because the collection of Lewis and Clark has gotten just extremely scattered um uh and there's I have another hourlong lecture
43:50 that I give on why that is and um how they got scattered and where they are today um but just take it from me there in at least 60 60 institutions all across the country yeah how come uh there Statue of Saka
44:14 Jia was placed in the Rotunda of the of the C capital of the building oh we we heard about that in the previous in the previous lecture will you hear them um uh I I gather I didn't know about it but I gather that it was at the instigation of the Mandan Heda tribe and um I I would
44:37 like to defend the Mandan Hada um uh I mean in the previous lecture we we heard about them um in fact they um they do not claim that Saka jaia was Mandan orh Hada um that is there is an oral tradition among the Mandan that is true but um the the modern-day
45:01 people Tex Hall um the chair tribal chair and um Amy mset who is their RAB tourism coordinator um and does Saka jaia um impersonations they don't claim themselves that she was hia uh they they acknowledge that she was Shoni but um uh they want to honor her and they um they
45:26 persuaded the um uh every state gets two um statues in the in the capital and North Dakota elected to make one of their two statues sakaa that's how that came about okay well let's give another round of applause to Carolyn
45:49 Gilman coming up at 5 o' we have blackfoot um culture and music with Jack Gladstone so please stay around for that and in the meantime you're free to visit our other [Music] exhibit