St. Louis Archives - Lewis & Clark Research Database

River Bluffs, 1320 Miles above St. Louis

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:46:26 +0000

Catlin’s small oil shows a stretch of the upper Missouri River where wind- and water-cut bluffs rise above the channel. The composition is horizontal, with the river occupying the foreground as a broad pale band, a low shoreline of scrub and sandbar in the middle distance, and the eroded bluff faces filling the upper register. Catlin renders the formations in soft ochres, tans, and dusty greens, with light cloud cover overhead. There are no figures; the scene is purely topographical, recording the character of the bluffs as the artist observed them from a passing vessel. The brushwork is rapid and thin, consistent with field sketches worked up in oil rather than studio compositions.

The painting was made in 1832 during Catlin’s ascent of the Missouri aboard the American Fur Company steamboat Yellow Stone, which traveled from St. Louis to Fort Union at the mouth of the Yellowstone River. The title’s distance marker — 1,320 miles above St. Louis — places the view in present-day South Dakota or southern North Dakota, the same reach of river Lewis and Clark had traversed in 1804 and described in their journals as a country of striking eroded formations. Catlin’s 1832 trip was the first major journey of his career devoted to documenting Native peoples and the western landscape, and it produced the core of what he would assemble as his Indian Gallery.

Catlin (1796–1872) trained as a lawyer before turning to portraiture, and he conceived the western project as a systematic visual record before, as he believed, Native life on the plains would be altered beyond recognition. The river-bluff studies, of which this is one of many, served partly as topographical notes and partly as backgrounds against which he could imagine the tribes he had encountered. The painting entered the Smithsonian American Art Museum through the 1879 gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr., whose husband had acquired Catlin’s Indian Gallery from the artist in the 1850s after Catlin’s financial collapse in London. The Harrison gift forms the foundation of the Smithsonian’s Catlin holdings and remains the principal source for studying his Missouri River work.

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York’s Account of the Lewis and Clark Expedition

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:56 +0000

everyone welcome to the core of Discovery 2 tene voices if you folks could this program does get filled up because uh the program you’re about to hear is very good if you don’t mind there’s a space uh SE in between you to sit close together if you can um just so we can get more people in here uh during the program I would appreciate that for those of you who are not familiar with us we are a traveling exhibit we’ve been traveling the Lou and Clark Trail since January year of 2003 and we finally made our way Westward to the Pacific Ocean and we’ll be doing the return trip again next year back to St Louis like L Clark did 200 years ago well 200 years ago on the Expedition Captain Clark brought along his slave York and today York is here to tell his side of the story to be told for the first time so please help me welcome York we have been away from the eyes of the whole world almost 3 years thousands of miles away from civilization lifetimes away from the madness all them civilized men called slavery there was me a young Shoni woman named sag C Lewis C Clark and more than three dozen what I call volunteer Patriots now our mission seem simple enough all we had to do was cut a path through the Savage Northwest Territories all the way to the Pacific Ocean cross 4,000 mil of the highest mountains and fastest rivers in the americ ever seen before President Thomas Jefferson called us his core of Discovery and every day we live is the day we all prepared to die just on the word of the president we left St Louis a small army of men 3 years later we returned more like a Band of Brothers not one day went by that every man was tested past his limits only way you survive that kind of pain if every man willing to give what the one beside him need to stay alive well when had said in hard on us talk around Camp was if our luck didn’t change we might be looking at starvation soon one day C Le called me up says y want you to go out there try your gift for hunting see what relief you can bring to us now I took that request more like an order gathered up my rifle and started out early only been gone by an hour so before I come across some fresh tracks look kind of like Bear Tracks to me now I don’t know how many yall Tred bringing down a b before let me just tell you anything a man goes through with half a heart anything a man goes to with a whole mind either if you ask me but we was desperate I was determined to show Captain Lewis that his faith in me was well placed I thinkig you since the wind was blowing in my face been doing so all morning I might to follow these tracks out the ways without that obey but knowing was coming and if I was to catch up to him we’d have to see where was what so I follow some tracks out a mile or so come over to he and there was way off in the distance now that was a slow moving giant of a bear but by that time I’d already made up my mind and folks that know will tell you once your make up his mind there ain’t nothing in this world set to change it so I found a good size tree laid out my shot and powder and I showed him a rifle I was adjusted for the long range of the shot about to pull up a little more to account for the wind been blowing in my face all morning about that time I realized the wind wasn’t blowing in my face no more mostly kind of that old B on his nose and he let how to grow Sho the tree right beside me I knew my time for thinking was done boom that first shot fell between the shoulders gr on this come charging back in me CLA and face so I du back behind start pring the whole time I make my first mistake with rle right there I was pretty sure it was going to be my last mistake with that rifle it seemed like it took me about I to get that neck shot Lord the whole time I think the B must be beating right down the back of my neck I can’t hear nothing cuz my heart is beating so fast and loud sound like Dr in my ears somehow I got that neck shot loaded I come around the tree I was pull the tricker before I even seted up boom that second try to hit him in the arm it didn’t even slow him down and I knew there wasn’t going to be a third shot so I L my rifle Ste out and smoke to the right side of the tree and I pulled my Axe and my knife and I waited for him see I waited cuz it don’t make no sense a man trying to out run a wound and Angry Bear all that’s going do get you cut up from behind way I see it my best chance maybe my only chance is to Stand My Ground and face him like a man so I waited for him said a quick prayer for my wife and family back to L I said a couple longer prayers for myself mind you then I waited boom boom about that time a do report come from my left side it turns out K Clark sent a couple boys to check on my success and I was so glad he did both shots po that old b square in the chest by that time it must have been nothing but pain and rage prob through that great big body of his that finally give out on him that’s in 10 Paces Where I Stood waiting I took a second to gather the whis thank them boys for their good timing thank them for their better shooting and we set the skin that to clean as much of that bear as we could as fast as we could because with all that smoke and Noise with all that blood see we knew the Wolves was coming and that is the last place a man wants to be when the wolves come so we packed as much meat as we could carry and headed back to Camp arrived like conquering Heroes that night we feasted like kings and the laughter that have been abent from our fires for weeks slowly returned as hard cold men began to speak more farly of home of families their dreams and that night thousands of miles away from this civilization on hard Cold Ground I slept asleep of the day dreamed of my wife and family back in Louisville praying to God please W don’t you just let me see see her face one more time these old eyes of mine before you decide to tear me out of this here World yours my name is York just y it is the name that my daddy carried before me I was born a slave no I was born to be the slave to be the property of another man and that is the shame my daddy carried before me but I have seen a world that few white men might ever dream of I have climbed to the top of snow capap mountains swarm Rivers so Swift that the Buffalo lose their foot watched whales Dan across the Cool Waters of two oceans and and I have walked among the people those Americans you call Indian have welcomed me into their land with open arms like some long lost brother and now I ask you hear of the things that I have seen so that when I am gone from here my name my voice my story does not die here with me for that is the way of the people that is the only thing of value I have left to give now the hardest part for me was always the not know him see many times before Master thought and I would go on adventures sometimes leaving home for months at a stress but always with the understanding we was coming back once we sell from New Orleans all the way around to New England took us 9 months at Sea soon as we touch ground we headed for home there’s something different about this mission of Discovery well everybody talking about where we going and what we doing ain’t nobody said a word about when we coming home and that concerned me that in the fact when nobody ever asked if I wanted to be part of the president’s grave mission of Discovery if I wanted to lay my life down for this nation cuz I was just a slave this even funny thing is you know that if I were a free man I could not have volunteered to lay my life down for the president but but since I was just a slave nobody cared to ask but once we crossed over Missouri River but for me it was like crossing over the river Jordan found myself the other side a changed man to the Indians we met many had seen or at least heard of a white man before but they ain’t never seen nobody like me start to give me names like black Indian or Big Medicine some even said that I was a gift straight from God you know I kind of like the way the Indians is thinking out there now we set our second win camp at the Manan Village called it Fort Mandan for meaga and her husband shano now I called him her husband but we all heard how this Indian girl was stole from her family when she was young how this old Frenchman shano bought her and trade from the adop Indians then decided to make her his wife and maybe that’s why we so close me and her kind she’s the only one out there know like I know what it means to be called the property of another man she was great with child give birth a little poy over the winter I sit outside the lodge waiting for him to come into the world when I hear him crying I told C clock I says C clock as long as that girl that baby with us you ain’t got to word for whatever it takes to keep him safe I am prepared to give it even if it cost me my life and it show as I’m standing here today we all best believe I kept them safe now that winner is also with metal one ey chief of the H Indians now he refused to come and visit for a long time kind of the hadashi Indians had supported the British doing that Revolutionary War I guess we all know how that turned out for him anyway they say that word of the black man finally got the old one he couldn’t take it no more had to come see what everybody been talking about so he come to the Fort demanding to see me I stood there in front of him and the first thing he did was to lick his thumb good and start to rub as hard as he could thinking he might take the black right off of man he said he was afraid it might be another trick by the white man and he had to be sure but when it didn’t come off but that’s when he start to look at me like the others like I’m somebody special and then I did what I always did with a new Chief or tribe I stripped my shirt down bare and I stood there before him with my arms out as far as I can hold them and I let two sometimes i’ let three indian warriors get up in each hand and then I pick them up till all their feet was off the ground and let me tell you something well they Ain never seen a man that powerful before said that a man like that they said that this black man right here had to be touched by God and C CLK he was quick to agree with him he say surely you ought to respect a man with that kind of power he says but if you respect this man then you must respect the white man cuz before the white man come along this York and All His Kind they were nothing but Savage animals and the white man captured him and the white man tamed him the white man made him a slave if you’re going to respect that kind of power then ain’t you got to respect the man that can take that power and make it his slave and then sometimes c l will file the air gun once or twice to get everybody’s attention back and that’s when they start to explain to him how they’re going to be part of a new tribe now called the United States how they going to have a new Chief and great father now we call the president they have this Duty protect the president’s Warriors in your lands or suffer dearly for it now I don’t know how many times I heard him tell one Chief or another tribe that story before I understood what it was they were saying what they was telling all them Indians is they going to be American not like y’all get to be American they was going to be more colored Americans and by my figuring well the kind of misery I call life ain’t got room for more souls I wish I could have made myself so ferocious I could have scared them all away or at least one but I don’t speak the languages besides who was I just y slave of Master William Clark so sometimes I just excuse myself from the lodge go out to the cold night air and you know what the little Indian children that they always follow right behind said they knew that a gift like this could stay with him forever so they want to be as close as they can until God decide to send them on his way and sometimes I’d ask God one day he might forgive this man what he couldn’t do for all the men and children but we stayed with the man Dan the GE been flying North about 3 weeks when the ice started to break on the Lakes the captain agreed it’s time for us to make our push for the Rock Mountain now the man that say any man got a hope of making them mountains need three things good supplies better horses and a man that knows the way they say the Shon Indians is the best place for all three so our mission changed before we can go to the mountain we got to find the sashon Indians we got to find the snake people for the next few weeks moving up Riv we had no contact and finally Captain Clark says maybe a small detailer then working Inland from the water have better luck so when he called the name of the three that would accompany him well my name was on that list because he knew when the step he could take that I wasn’t prepared to follow so he walked 5 days almost 75 miles by the end our boots were tore through and our feet blooded had to wait for the others to catch up when they did well Captain Lewis drew a fresh detail of in and they proceeded on few days later we got word they finally met the Shon we was to get there fast as we could on kind there was a lot of concern a lot of agitation well this many armed white men so far in the Indian country was making everybody nervous but they told him was traving with an Indian girl and a baby was s me eat some fig no self-respect the man going to go to war when not with women and children but they say the word of black man already made himself up River they all just standing around waiting to see what everybody else been talking about so when I step out the boat everybody gather around me like the others then C Lewis called Chicago over to translate with words seeing she speak the language to all that hand talking JW are so good at now that’s when we got our real surprise remember I told y’all this Indian girl was sto her family when she was young how this old Frenchman Sho bner decided to make it his wife well she say she don’t remember much about being a child all but what she do remember is her big brother his name KEH away turns out when a man be Shashi called chief he carrying that same name without even trying to we found a way to bring a family back together now I don’t know about where y’all come from but in my life whenever the change of R tear family apart ain’t nothing sort of DME going to make it right this right here was a miracle God working well he give us a good reason to celebrate at least made it easy to trade for supplies and horses kamway was so pleased he give us his best tracker an old man he say know them Ms like nobody living now the old man’s name was awful hard to pronounce c Le say is cuz civilized tongu were never meant to speak such Savage words just called the old man told me be done with it he said now I was with the Mind well I figure any man going to lead me through the mountains I’m looking at here and promise to keep me alive the other side well I figure a man like that ought to be called whatever he like to be called but nobody asked me what I was thinking and I wasn’t up for volunteer so old Toby lead us into the bitter rot before we got in good we come across the Flathead Indians now they was like all the others except maybe more so when it come to me see the Flathead Indians tell us that an Atri when a man goes off to war and he is brave when a man goes to battle and he is strong The Greatest Warrior on the field they say that’s the only man done earn the right to paint his skin black with the cold from the warfire so when you come back to the tribe everybody know without asking which man among them was The Greatest Warrior which man among them was the strongest which man was touched by God that day so the Flathead figure if God took it to mind to make a man black like that for good ain’t that got to mean he great I sure like the way him Flathead was thinking out there but we only stayed with him a short to sh cuz we had this mountain now if I was to Never See Another Mountain until the day that I die it still be about 10 days too soon for me only thing I knew about the mountain we looking at here is ain’t no way a man going to make it out the other side of life it’s going to save us a brave market for the president’s brave men of discovered and I wouldn’t the only one thinking it but we couldn’t turn back we had ourselves a mission from the president we either complete or we perish in the attempt so we pushed on to the bitter once we got in good a storm come out of nowhere dropped 10 hard inches of snow we lost our path started throwing packs and losing animals got so bad we had to put down two coats we shot them dead and we ate them whole as we were staring we were dying in those mountains finally C Clark says maybe the only chance we got to small detail and working way the other side of this mountain hard as they can gather whatever they can gather and coming back for the rest it’s only chance he said now when he called out the name the five or six men he trust to compy him on this Mission will you best believe my name was on that list because he knew when it come to his life this mission of the president ain’t nobody breathing he ever counted on more than me so we push hard against that mountain until they finally give us way in the other side and the next person they was kind enough to trade us for roots berries and sand we gathered everything we could carry and went back in for our friends now once we made it out the other side we stayed with the next first several weeks took a few days just to feel the bones and our bodies again we were that cold while we healed up we made new canoes now the Indians taught us how to fire boats out see always before if a man want a good canoe you take a tree trunk you put the axe to it and you call yourself a boat right but the envian taught us how to fight you take that trunk lay red hot Co across it and you burn away one layer at a time so when you’re done you got a boat that run smooth in the water you got a boat ain’t got no leaks you got a good craft the Indians taught us that and a lot more they kept us alive out there once we all healed up the captain say it’s time for us to make our run for the ocean we left our horses and a few supplies with the next purse on the promise of returning and we proceeded on now the next few months it was much of the same thing new Chiefs new tribes tell them about the United States and the president C CL even named a group of islands after me called him York’s eight Islands ain’t that got a nice sound to it and then one day we come down the colia and the captain start to shout Ohan oh Ohan we had made it to the Pacific Ocean 4,000 miles of high mountains and fast Rivers all that way all of that suffering and pain and we only lost one man but he was a good man his name was Sergeant Charles Floyd come with us up out of Kentucky he grew up in Louisville but his family figur the god they know and love ain’t never intend one man owning the soul of another man say they don’t want no part of the state that make it the law so he move across the river to Indiana to to free country I was with s Floyd from die I did my best to keep him comfortable I cried with him I cried for all the men might never know one true God loving soul on account of him early passing this world and all but we made it to the ocean you see so we had our own reason to be celebrating now the first order of business at Station Camp was to set our last one of Fortune and the captains put it to a vote which Sal we settle one better for hunting the other good for building and supplies and every man went around saying one way or the other what he thought it ought to be and they got to me and everybody looking at me like I’m supposed to say something here now y’all know better than I do with the law of this nation say a negro man ain’t got the right under the Constitution or under God to put his word up beside a white man C clock well C clock says it took took every man his blood and his sweat and his whole heart to get us this far on the most important mission for a nation for a president the way I see it means every man will earn the right to say where we go from here y it’s time to put up your word it’s time for you to vote so I voted right there beside all all them white men I put my word up and it counted for something and some say maybe that made me the first negro man this whole country to vot Legal beside a white man don’t know if that’s true but I know it felt good it sure felt right so we decided to settle the south side of the river and we set to build in Fort Clon now for the next few weeks I was putting my back into it some days I was holding trees as big around as my body all by myself I wanted to show all of them men how much I deserve that vote see I couldn’t leave no room for questions C Clark as I was working so hard I fatigued my body was made up a few days but I think I made my point clear once we said Camp we start making regular Journeys down to the ocean sometimes just to bring water back to boil down for salt to have something to put on that awful food we’ve been eating for 2 years and some days we sit at that water for hours y’all ever seen the whale before well have you the way move across the water so smooth you can hardly see him there they don’t bring that body all the way out and see just how great he is before he dive down and disappear all together I would sit at that water for hours watching them whs trying to see in my head where it be like if a man had that kind of Freedom if a man could run as far as he want around and nobody telling it’s time to come back or you ain’t got a right to be there just CU of the color of your skin you know I couldn’t even see it but that kind of Freedom would look like one day C clar come through he says y’ it’s about time for us to put our mind back on civilization our mission for the president’s complete our success will be going home soon now them words I’ve been waiting to hear since before we left St Louis me the only man out here away from the world got a wife and family back home able to give them up a dead by now I couldn’t wait to get home one night Cam Lewis call us all around the fire say been think about what he might tell the president of these United States about his brave men of discovery about these men that sacrific more than any Patron ought to volunteer for his Nation about these Heroes that made a president’s dream come alive and he start to call out the names one after the other like he might presented to the president and after every name that be a ho or Hollow cuz I started theid we was having ourselves a good time we was having so much fun that I don’t think anybody even knows I mean besides me maybe they just didn’t notice see after C Le finished calling out the name of those brave men sacrifice more than any Patriot volunteers Nation to we finish listing out the name of them Heroes make the president’s Dream Come Alive well my name wasn’t on that list you see and maybe that’s when come clear to me what it is C CL been saying all this time he say YK it’s time for us to put our mind back on civilization he said y it’s time for us to put our mind back on walking three steps behind and not looking a white man in the eyes when you pass y it’s time for you to put your mind back on not speaking let somebody tell you to speak it’s time for you to put your mind back in change boy cuz cuz we going to civilization cuz we going home now folk ask all the time they say if you had so good out there with the Indians they treating you like God and all then why would a man come back to living like this well I had my reasons my wife my family see a man can’t run away pretending he free if he ain’t got the ones he Lov beside him cuz that ain’t Freedom besides I figure all them children need to know what it was I seen they need to know there’s a place that this country people see you coming they don’t run you off to the corter they don’t spit in your face instead they ask you to come and to sit down right beside them they ask you to eat the food off of their plate because it means they have been touched by God I figure if I didn’t tell them they might never know that they was more than slaves so I had to come back now the truth be told I fig it’s only a matter of time us coming back to civilization me gaining my own Freedom before we left on this mission for the president Master Clark freed Ben went on and on about see as how servitude for life is against God’s Will and against the natural order of mankind I’m giving men his freedom for faithful service for Ben a good boy you been with us a while but not like me I doing Master Clock my whole life more than 30 years by his side without fail I fig after the last three years we didn’t had all he got to do is make it home and he going to make me a free man so I could not wait to come back starting back up River we was making such good time like we was walking on water if we try we get too we trade more horses for both the faster we go by the time we got back to the next person C order us trade everything we don’t need to survive he said trade it for root I don’t know if y’all ever had root before well it ain’t the best tasting thing in the world the truth is it is the worst thing I have ever put in my mouth and that said a lot after the three years out there dog and horse included but we know that R will keep a man alive all we had to do was survive this in Mountain we was going home C L he cut the buttons off his uniform and give them to me to trade all told I come back with 20 bushes of fruit we had more than any man ever want to eat his whole life and once we cleared that mountain we started back for home past sh and the the M the the Sue all the way back into civilization we got to St Louis look like a parade started up folk line the road as far as I could see and most of to give us up a dead years ago for a few days they stopped me on the street asked me about the president’s mission of discovery about the Indians we met the great things we see I went back to my duties I tried to smile and to not look a white man in the eyes when I passed him on the street but it was hard to lower my head again and finally it was time to go on home when I got to Lille I sent the word out when the word day through and all the chores was done everybody’s the around and if it take all night best be prepared to sit all night I tell them everything I can remember about the last 3 years and I told them everything now most of them they couldn’t even believe but I told them anyway and then it was time to go on to Washington report from the presid he give every man 320 Acres of good farmland for his hard work every man double duty pay in gold coin for a sacrifice every man the appreciation of an entire nation for making the president’s Dream Live I was in the slave cours waiting to be called before the president but that that call never came for long it was time to go on home Master Clock say he been promoted to General Chief Indian agent for the the entire nation I fig he deserved it he’s a good soldier like his brothers before but he said to carry out his new duties he was going to be moving his house to St Louis permanent say can’t see himself going about new service in a Strange Land without his most prized possession without his most favorite slave you’re right there beside him so I asked him I said Master Clark if we move to St Louis for good then then what about my wife what about family and he asked me he said what about him I can give you a lawful order he says not expect you to follow without question it’s time for you to be done with that wife y she said I order you to be done with that wife there are plenty of slaves in St Louis I’ll find you a new wife there now I couldn’t believe them words coming out of his mouth like that see the whole time we out there away from the world he going on and on about Miss Julia Hancock of Virginia how he can’t wait to get back to this civilization and take her hand can’t see itself growing old without the woman he loves standing right there beside him so I thought that meant he knew how a man needs somebody he can run home to when the world been standing on his back all day a shoulder that he can cry it if he got to somebody tell him long as you know somebody love you tomorrow got to be better than today I thought he knew what it was for a man to give his heart away here he tell me he ordered me to be done with my wife like she some stray dog I found on the side of the road so we packed the house Master Clock went by boat and I left the slaves and wagons overline to St Louis when we got there I come up with a plan I went to Master Clock I says Master Clark seems to me you got lots of business interest still attend to in Louisville re you need somebody you can trust to handle all that see as I took care of your business most of our life together figure I’m the right man for the job you can send me back to Louisville I’ll take care of your business and be close to my wife and family sound like a good plan he said he can see what I was getting that he wasn’t going to stand for much of that kind of talk but he allowed me back to Louis for four or five weeks to finish up his business and to sell his boat for St Louis when you return he says I expect you to be done with that wife of yours set to get back to your duties as an obedient slave in my house four or 5 weeks for a man to throw his heart away well about 5 months later he sent word to his brother I must have misunderstood his orders cuz I’ve been gone four months too long but some yall know about that when a lot of misunderstanding see sometime a man got to do what’s right by him instead of what another man tell but I knew if I didn’t sell that boat for St Louis directly that’ be the devil to pain Master CL thre before to show me what real slavery is like he said he sell Me Down New Orleans they say a man find himself a slave down New Orleans he ain’t never going to see nothing he love again the rest of his short painful life they got ways down there of crushing a man’s Soul then they grind his bones into the dirt I done seen it you don’t want to find yourself a slave down new ORS so I had to sell that boat for St Louis now before I push off my wife come down the water and see me she say the man she call M well he decided to move his house further south in the slave country she said well if you plan on selling that that boat back to St Louis well I reckon you best turn on around here y’all turn around here now okay one last long look at you why cuz the chances is he ain’t never going to lay lies on again now them few words them few words almost dead but the hardest three years of my whole life could not do almost stop my heart beating dead in this test M but I knew if I did not sell I was going to lose everything I ever loved I didn’t have a choice here slaves don’t have choices so I had to sell for St Louis but when I got home I made up my mind to see and folks to know tell you and said once you don’t make up his mind there ain’t nothing in this world set to change it so I went back to master CL said Master CL since we’ve been together our whole life more than 30 years by your side we was little boys we used to wrest together hunt fish ride horses all day long up and down the rivers when we was older well I went about my duties with respect you ain’t never have to question my loyalty to you or your kid and when you fell down I picked you up and when you were sick I made you better and if somebody was to threaten your life don’t you know that I would kill a man with my bare hands or I would lay my own life down just to see you safe and for three years me and you we stood side by side against the whole world that up there and I did get one acre good farmland for it and nobody dropped the gold cord into my pocket and President Jefferson he don’t even know my name Master CL Billy way I see it you’re the onlyest man in the whole world got the power to give me what I need most right now you can make me a free man Billy you can save my family I thought Master F going to hurt himself count of how hard he was laughing what it was I had to say he said he thought it funny me believ in any service I my whole life more than 30 years by his side was more than what a slave does for his rightful Master under God said if he was to ever see such immense surface he’d be the man to rewarded but it ain’t come yet besides he said you much too valuable piece of property for a man to just let go like that that’s what he said much too valuable a piece of property for a man to just let go if any was to ever ask me what my thoughts was of Master William Clark of the Clark family i’ been quick to say that he was honest but he was fa in the right company I would I would have called him my friend for life right there he made it clear more than 30 years almost every day of his life he ain’t never looked into this Brown face of mine and seen nothing but a slave so I fig if it’s about my value well I can do something there started to agitate doing things just enough wrong he can see it was by my choice so he knew what I was getting that it wasn’t going to stand for much but mind you I tried to smile and to not look a white man in the eyes when I pass but I couldn’t lower my head again so Master Clark had me strapped to the poster he paid a man good money to beat me until I could not see and after I healed up I tried not speaking let somebody tell me it’s my time but I couldn’t hold my tongue so Master Clock had me locked in the jail house 30 days that beat I took ain’t nothing compared to how they break you in the jail house I guess somewhere in all that M CL figure whatever broke in me wasn’t getting fixed fast enough so he decided to go on and send me home to L now I don’t know what the letter read he sent on to his brother I can’t read but I can guess figure that letter says that it’s time for y’all to know what it is to have a severe Master know how good his life have been till now what it is to be a real slave I think that’s what the letter says cuz that’s the lesson his brother said to teaching me they sold me out to man dressed me in rags threw me in the field and he St the big old bull plot across my back and for 2 years that old man tried to grind my bones into the dirt and for 2 years I ain’t heard one word from Master Clark and finally news come through his nephew he decided to go and give me my freedom only been 10 or 11 years now since we we come back on this Mission and most dayses don’t ever see Freedom especially in my age but everything I’m fighting to be a free man for is out of my hands my wife my whole family is gone and how I’m free and I’m all by myself in the world so Master PA give me a wagon some horses set me the drives business running Freight from Richmond Kentucky to Nashville Tennessee folk ask all the time what sense it make a free man ride headlong to the slave South trying to do business well I had my reasons F somewhere along them roads somebody seen or heard tell that family that’s holding my wife if this business of M was worth anything a man might have enough gold in his pocket one day to buy his hard back but there things they don’t tell you about the slave South how they got these laws that say a free man ain’t got the right associate with slaves kind he might be telling that slave what it’s like to be free they might get a mind they want some of the same business wasn’t too good I guess it didn’t make sense white man hire somebody like me it didn’t look good for the slaves to see that kind of thing going on those that did hire didn’t always pay cuz the law say negro man ain’t got the right and the Constitution or God to go into court and swear out against the white man even if his life depend on it my hores started dying I think they was being poison got so bad I had to hire myself in a hard nebor a whole year but I’m done with it now and I ain’t never going back see I know some things now I know now that I ain’t never going to see my life again except every night when I Clos my eyes she right there telling me long as you know somebody love you y’all but the M got to be better than the day but I not ready to die yet and I know now that a man can’t live like this so I come up with another plan I figure if I can make it up to the Missouri and out to Indian country things would be different somewhere out there maybe a man could walk down the road people ask him to stop a while but children ask you to throw him into the air and catch him with the strong hands cuz it means they have been touched by God maybe somewhere out there a man could live a man could die like a man and I a to find that place or I expect to perish in the attempt now before I go I was hoping maybe y’all could do me a favor if you was of the Mind way I see it one day somebody might ask you what you know of Captain Lewis and Captain Clark of the president’s Brave mission of Discovery and you could tell them you could tell them that you know a man with skin as dark as night that you know a black man who walked stride for stride who suffered pain for pain with the greatest heroes this nation might ever know you tell them that my name is your just your it is the name that my daddy came marri before me and although I was born into change you tell them that I am not now tell them that I have never been the property of another man and I ask you this so that when I am gone from here my voice this story does not die here with me but that is the way of the people sad truth is these two words they are the only things of value that I have left to give son has set my friends and now my journey must begin God’s me the S Davis ladies and gentlemen he will be speaking again tomorrow at 1:00 if you have friends or family that think e e e

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Lewis and Clark Journals and Archives Overview

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:55 +0000

the journals of Lewis and Clark notebooks loose sheets of paper in the lie and I’m talking about the whole of the party not just the two c 90% are the American philosophical Society in Philadelphia the next largest call is at the Missouri Historical Society in St Lou and after that then you get a bit of piece here and there new liary Newberry library in Chicago Illinois the Miss uh Wisconsin State Historical Society in madis so you have a few pieces around then if you want to include Botanical specimens and Maps it even gets more complicated so the whole Corpus of leis and cl materials Maps journals Botanical specimens and other artifacts are fairly voluminous and you may have seen that the Missouri Historical Society mounted an exhibition of many of the artifacts and it was a beautiful thing and very complicated and involved so uh it’s hard to just say a set number of journals a set number of maps of Botanical specimens because there’s always some ambiguity there thank you again oh well we’ll still do something here in a second but um I just want to say you know I I’ve heard Gary talk and a number of times as all of you have I even eded did some of his videos but um I’m always and I I I think you’ll agree with me the ability he has to paint a picture to help us visualize as well as to challenge us to think in different ways about the exposition it’s just phenomenal really thank you guys and we hope that um you and F will continue to be friends of mouth of the plat and in order to do so we hope that you will find pleasure in wearing these right all right thanks for coming uh we hope that you’ll come for our Christmas event it’s going to be here and uh the bar will be open there’ll be plenty of Christmas Che e

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Four Nez Perce Warriors’ 1831 Journey to Saint Louis

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:35:51 +0000

good afternoon ladies and gentlemen welcome to the tent of many voices this tent is part of a traveling exhibit that has been following the Lewis and Clark Trail since January of 2003 most of you have been here before and you know that we are a traveling exhibit following the trail and we’re delighted to be here and thank you very much for inviting us we do have program schedules out on the back of our Sandwich Board and we also have some schedules for the event that’s going on the uh get our program schedule up here a summer of peace with the new meoo so be sure that you pick these up look at them don’t take them as totally correct because these were printed two weeks ago and there’s lots of changes if you want the most upto-date schedule our schedule for the T of mini voices is kept on our front desk in the next tent over so stop by there and make sure that the programs you want to see are still on the schedule and update your schedule as well so with that I’d like to thank you all for coming and I’d like to introduce our panelist the program this hour is a visit with William Clark and our speakers Cynthia Black Eagle Alan Pinkham Brian McCormick and Crystal white so let’s please make them welcome good afternoon my name is Brian McCormick uh I’m an enrolled member of the nesp tribe I’m also uh a licensed landscape architect I own my own firm here in the valley um I do a lot of work on cultural projects for Indian tribes throughout the Northwest um anyway a few years ago most Americans had never heard of Black Eagle speaking Eagle no horns on his head or rabbit skinned leggings they are the delegation of for n person men that traveled to St Louis Missouri in the fall of 1831 um today we are going to talk about this incredible journey 175 years ago this year that forever changed the course of NES Pur and American history and we’re going to start off with Alan Pinkham he’s going to give us a little uh background of of first history before 1831 all right thank you Brian uh I just want to set the stage here for some of the events that came you know after lisis and Clark and even prior you know the ners people had lived in this area for since time in Memorial you know that’s Way Beyond tribal memory and what this actually means was that we were created right here in this country our creation story is up River at camei the heart of the monster some of you may have seen it but this is the where we were created from the blood and the water and the earth and the light and then uh so this is how we came to be we there’s no oral history that says that we came from anywhere else we were always here from the beginning of time when the creation of the Earth was done by the Creator and and so we’re here at at at our country this is the country that we were given to live in to to our do our life to live our lives right here in this country along the Snake River the Salmon River the Clearwater River the imaha the Palo River all these drainages where we were and we’re still here today and so when these new kinds of people came to us you know we described it and they’re coming we this is what we called it this event this coming of the white people or the white man we Soo this is what this term means the coming of these strange people and and they came and how can we not know about how these people came to this Earth You we always knew things and the way we knew things is that we travel this continent this island you know we travel to the north to where the great lake is and where it’s cold all year long and we travel to the South where the country is hot all year long and of course we went to the Pacific Ocean a Puget Sound area and there are stories of us traveling there was a nesp man his name was tooma and when you go to puet sound the pet sound people call Mount raner Toom so this is how this Nest purse name was given to him because he was a runner that went between here and the Puget Sound and he’ go run by this mountain so he was given that name Toom and this is way before we even acquired the horse and then we’d go east to the great l where the uh red Pipe Stone was and there we would gather the uh Pipe Stone and we’d bring it back and so there was a traveling and a trade system way before 1492 and before we acquired the horse and so so we we knew the country and then one and then to put look at this in a practical sense how could we not not know of a strange kind of people that came in 1492 for 300 years prior to Lis and Clark how could we not know about that if we travel this island we would have found out about these people and there are stories of us traveling there’s a story of a man traveling for 20 years and he came back and he he gave us all kinds of stories and I’m sure he would have brought back news about what he had seen and so those are the kind of stories that exist so now we know that these kinds of people exist that in and my father used to tell me we described them before we seen them they would speak a language we never heard before their their eyes would be like fish and um some of them would have their faces on upside down and what that meant was beards and mustache and bald on top so if you fit that description you know who you are and and so these are the kinds of stories that told us that yes we we were here and a new kind of people came and even in a practical sense there were three Nest Pur at Fort Mandan in why were we there we we went there to find out what’s going on and so we knew L and Clark were coming we knew more about Lu and Clark than they knew about us and so when we travel like this we they would always bring news back you know what’s happening what’s going on all these new people they’re coming when they come Among Us they will turn our world over and what that meant was that when they come they’ll plow the ground and they’ll turn it over that’s what that means and so these are the kind of stories that would come to us and so when Louis and clar came of course it wasn’t a great event like they put on right now you know this Bicentennial you know to us Lis and Clark is a minor incident but as in this great change that was coming and when we seen Louis and Clark wri in their journals well how do they do that how can they transfer knowledge like this and so we said we need to find out how to do that so in 1822 three young Nest purse men were sent to Red River District in Canada to the missionaries up there I believe it was the Jesuits and so we sent them up there two of them died but one came back his name was Ellis and and uh so he learned how to read and write and then the U after L and Clark of course we wanted to find out more because they had the technology that we didn’t have the ability to make Glass and Metal and particularly we very interested in in how do you make powder and how do you make the lead balls that that uh shoot the game see we had six muzzle loers when Louis and Clark came to our country here we already had the muzzle Lo but we ran out of powder and ball so how do you find out how to do these things well you treat these guys pretty good so the ultimate decision was not to kill LS and Clark because they had this technical knowledge that we did not have and the ability to read and write and so as things went on after 1822 then it became you know a conflict between two cultures in 1813 the first conflict that we experienced experience with these men in our in our area was down here at the mouth of poo River and Indian was killed by uh one of the traitors so then hostilities started to occur and then they said well how can we prevent us from having all these problems with the traitor and Trappers and and these early settlers that were coming in and so we need we need to go look for the the one that would help us and his name happened to be William Clark of the Luen Clark expedition so now we were trying to solve our problem so we went to St Louis in 1831 and the names of these men are were just given to you so so this is the stage this is the beginning of this great change that’s coming to us we knew that these this was going to happen because the prophecies or the foretelling of these events were brought back I can imagine by the men and those family groups that traveled out to the Great Plains and passed to and then to the Southwest where we found another kind of human being that wore hats and they wore little blankets and they call themselves Spanish so so these things are the things that were setting up this trip of 183 1 and and that’s why this committee is here and I’d like to pass the microphone on to someone else here thank you the four Nest Pur Warriors traveled from present day Idaho to St Louis in 1831 an expedition very similar to that of marwe Lewis and William Clark 25 years earlier when the nest Pur arrived in St Louis they s out General William Clark then the superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Missouri River Country and the Pacific Northwest in mid- October 1831 the party arrived in St Louis Bishop Rosati wrote a detailed if very biased account of their stay on December 31st 1831 several other colorful accounts have been given regarding the delegation stay in St Louis however the underlying concept was that these four warriors were there to ask that the people of St Louis give them something connected with religion and more importantly education nobody in St Louis spoke the nesp language and th all communication was done via sign language therefore the people of St Louis could not completely understand the specifics of the npers request having been exposed to new ailments and lacking immunization the Elder two Warriors Black Eagle and speaking Eagle also known as man of the morning sickened died and were buried a few weeks after their arrival in St Louis prior to their deaths both were given Catholic rights and were buried in the Catholic Cemetery their remains were relocated several times and were finally laid to rest in a then unmarked Mass grave at Calvary Cemetery after the deaths of Black Eagle and speaking Eagle nor horns on his head and rabbit skin leggings dropped from sight on March 26th 1832 they left on the steamer Yellowstone an American Fur Company boat they met up with George Catlin who painted them while aboard ship according to an account by Catlin no horns on his head succumbed to disease soon following the Yellowstone’s arrival at Fort Union rabbit skin leggings was left to return home alone he crossed the Montana Plains and met up with finess purse at a camp in the Buffalo country later that fall he was killed in a fight with the black feet on the headwaters of the Salmon River while rabbit skin leggings did not return with teachers in toe this one event was a catalyst sparking the missionary movement in the west while the reason for the journey is debated even today this remarkable undertaking forever changed the face of Western history thank you Crystal what I’m going to talk about is we installed a monument in St Louis a few years ago and I’m going to talk a little bit about the history of that monument and the committee um in April 2001 Crystal here presented a proposal to an audience at the NP National Historical Park in Spalding to to create a monument in St Louis to honor the for Nets Pur men after the lecture many nesp tribal members including some of the descendants came together to form a committee too far away okay there we go um and here’s a picture of our committee members there the goal of this this new committee was to assist crystal in writing grants fundraising planning and design of prop the proposed ners Monument the actual Monument is about 8 ft tall it’s made of granite it is symbolizing two eagle feathers and it’s on a base and on that base we had uh the text written approximately 2/3 of the cost was covered by several grants it was about $42,000 to build this thing the were B third of the project the money was raised through t-shirt and program sales private and church group donations raffle proceeds and some money from the nesp tribe uh the committee spent several months writing and editing the text that would wrap around the granite base there are four distinct panels facing the cardinal directions that each deliver a different message the first one names the four Warriors including their first names the second one here is a tribute to all the unknown people that share the mass grave with the two Warriors the third panel tells the story of the four nesp Warriors including several possible explanations of why they travel to St Louis which is what you heard about earlier and then the fourth panel is a personal tribute from all the nest Pur to honor their four ancestors two of which are buried at the site in conjunction with the uh unveiling of our Monument there was a the committee held a local ceremony at Spalding after that ceremony we went over to uh St Louis Missouri in March of 2003 the Missouri Historical Society hosted a colloquium titled conversations with the NES purse several NES Pur Flathead and sailor descendant were invited to speak as well as local historians following the lectures we also served lunch in the museum and the nest purse quickly got dressed in the regalia and demonstrated some of our traditional songs and dances there was a huge crowd there including many children from the local schools throughout the month of March there was also an exhibit at the museum that featured many personal items from tribal members including some of their bead work in their Cornus bags the next day the unveiling of the granic monument took place at Calvary Cemetery which is a huge Cemetery outside of St Louis uh we open the dedication with the Lord’s Prayer which you can see here which was spoken in English and it was signed by n first descendants using Indian sign language the local newspaper in St Louis estimated there were about 75 nesters descendants that traveled to St Louis for a ceremony along with about 150 people from throughout St Louis and Beyond several dignitaries were also there to honor the foress purse currently we’re our committee is trying to build a monument here in our area so people will be able to read about the story uh we were awarded a challenge casare grant for the National Park Service and we we’re going to be doing a local Monument up at CI at the tribal W Center uh we’re probably going to start that maybe next month after we get all the paperwork signed at the park service so hopefully hopefully by the end of the year we’ll get this Monument done we’re going to do some interpretive signs and a native plant garden and what we’re hoping to do is hopefully have a series of interpretive signs on tribal lands that can tell our own history for visitors to see uh right now I’d like Cynthia to talk about some of her perspectives of the events and her family’s uh comments about this whole process good afternoon I’m Cynthia Black Eagle I have one daughter Shannon and one grandson Lorenzo I don’t want to boast but Black Eagle he’s one of my ancestors on my father’s side and on my other side is speaking Eagle but my famous warrior is no horns on his head um we have so much Rich history among the npers that it’s so wonderful to know that they were impelled to venture out to know that the world was changing before us and we needed to educate ourselves we knew that was the most important thing is to seek education in order to survive and we have a lot of uh college graduates and even doctors among our nespor people which I’m very proud of too and honored to know that They too had had dreams and visions that would uh benefit our people in our survival in the New World today we have um doctors that um physical Doctors medical doctors that uh are competing in the world and eventually wel allc come back to our people and I feel that this is one of the first steps that our people can take is to you know start take taking care of our own people and it shows how we survived along the rivers that we took care of our own people through the medicines that we that was handed down to us from our grandparents and great-grandparents we drove to um St Louis and we could not help but wonder and think you know these Warriors leaving their homes venturing out not having any idea whatsoever what is before them but that strength in their hearts was so amazing that um they wanted to make a difference for their people and to do that you would have to go out our people walked distances but that’s quite a Way St Louis is a long way about 1700 miles about 2,000 mil away from here and as we were cruising over there you couldn’t help but notice all the casinos I didn’t get very lucky but uh all the casinos that were uh that we’ve seen was probably a dream away as they were journeying over to St Louis and it was so um amazing to see the people that gathered there toh help us celebrate the Warriors did make make it but it’s on our way back that we lost lost two Black Eagle and speaking eagle and what was in their hearts at the time you know that uh whatever they were seeking and felt was that achieved before their dad or did they ever fulfill their dreams and Passions to make that Journey over it was almost like it was a spirit filled ceremony because we sang a very old song that is still that we still sing today and it’s called The Journey song If there was only two of you here I would sing it but I’m kind of I don’t like mics and have stage fright but it was a powerful song that one of our elders led us in which even you know our people were very they had spirituality and that was part of their lives and it still lives today here within our nous people the opportunity was quite an honor to know that we had Valiant Warriors that were ready for this change and wanted to make a difference for their people and if it meant traveling that far it has opened the doors for a lot of our people to go and get that education now I feel that they were victorious Warriors because we are known as the real real people the namu meaning n Pur I appreciate everyone I’m here this afternoon and if you do have any questions there’s a lot of knowledge up here that we can share about the four Warriors that um made the journey and were successful thank you wonderful we do have a question right here why don’t we start with it uh the tradition has been uh among many people that uh the Warriors went to St Louis to get the book of heaven and that’s been written for a long long time and I was wondering why the uh uh why the uh reason for going to St Louis has not been that I mean since most people have uh have known or for a long long time had the idea that they went to Lis to get the book of Heaven which was the book that the Lewis and Clark had okay all right Alan uh I I’ll answer the question you know there is there is controversy among the npers that did we go for the Bible or did we go for some other kind of book or did we go to see William Clark to complain about those things that were occurring to us you know after 1813 and uh there is a little bit of Doubt here but then from my perspective from my family particularly my father he always told me we never went to St Louis looking for the Bible it just wasn’t you know it didn’t occur that way there there’s a lot of speculation that the the uh Indian sign language for the book is like opening the page of a book you know when you lay it out you open it up this way well no understood n person St Louis you know so we would use sign language and then the book you know like you open the book well the missionaries got a hold of this and says oh these poor Savages are looking for the Bible it really wasn’t that you know according to my oral history that I received it was never looking for the Bible but but the book is the Book of Knowledge and so if the Bible is considered a book of knowledge then it becomes part of what we were seeking and from the Bible of course comes a great deal of knowledge but then the technology of the day is how do you learn how to do the things that we don’t have and possess see that’s another aspect Lo Clark said that yeah we’ll send you Traders and you’ll you’ll be able to come and get some of these Goods when we send these Traders out to you while it never occurred directly lot a lot of the Traders came down from Canada they were not United States and there were some uh coming in from United States and we called them Boston because that’s where they actually came from Boston Boston and but the ultimate decision here is uh we weren’t looking for the Bible but what came out of this misunderstanding is the missionaries because there is a letter written by Reverend spaly but I think it’s more of a fabrication than a real authentic you know translation of what we really wanted well when when the missionaries heard of they had Reverend Spalding put it down as yes we went to St Louis in 1831 looking for the Bible and and there is this controversy but according to my history we really weren’t looking for the Bible it was the technology of the day that’s what we really wanted and how do you get lead and powder you know for your uh muscle loaders so that’s what we really were looking for I have a question uh regarding um William Clark’s letter that is in the M the Missour historical society and he’s complaining about all the tribes that are coming out of the mountains um because it wasn’t just the nest Pur who sent delegates to to St Louis a number of tribes were doing this because he was the head of the Indian office and I’m I’m going to paraphrase but who’s saying something like you know uh why why are they coming to see me as if I have anything to do with their Affairs as if I can solve their problems and you know forgetting that he had promised uh peace and friendship and um I guess if you could elaborate on that and then um I know you’ve mentioned before about you know we felt um that there was other reasons that we would have it in well with the United States and yet we were having all this this murder taking place so if you could elaborate on that oh yeah it’s true there there’s some uh William Clark letters that he had sent to someone and uh he would in one of the letters that he sent to probably one of his superiors in Washington DC he says the Indians are coming to St Louis to complain of their problems to me and the nesp one all he said about nesp is the ones that we had previously met among the the Rocky Mountains so that he implied that it was us in 1831 but then the iroise and some of the Eastern tribes are also bringing back problems to him and St Louis because the Eastern tribal people are being dispossessed and relocated and pushed West because of the settlement coming Westward so he was not only getting complaints from the Midwest and Western tribes he was also getting complaints from the Eastern tribes because they were suffering just as much as we were particularly from the epidemics also uh so the epidemics at the time measles and small poox were wiping out populations of tribal people very it was a very big impact and so there was a lot of complaints and uh William Clark being the uh agent Indian agent of the time you know and from about 1820 up to about 1840 I believe uh he received all these complaints and so he was I’m sure he was probably inundated with all kinds of complaints because it just wasn’t happening to Northwest tribes it was also happening to the Eastern tribe of people as well so and and then of course the missionary is taking up the Bible and says well we need to go out and and uh give the enlightenment to these Heathen people and of course this is what Reverend Spalding you know carried that message and and of course others Jason Lee and Whitman and a lot of others did the same too but to different different tribes and so the missionary period was very also very devastating to us because they carried the Bible in one hand and then said well if you follow the book you know you’ll be okay and if you don’t follow the Bible then you’ll go to hell but we there’s no Concept in Indian religion or spirituality that there is a hell so so there was a contrast in what they were telling us and of course old Joseph then became very disappointed in what he was hearing from Whitman and spalin and they just argued about religion among themselves so old Joseph renounced Christianity you know just prior to the war of 1877 and but another interesting thing here that occurred is that losen Clark met hak elel who was um redbear and there’s a lot of descendants of redbear there’s hundreds of us not only the black Eagles and a pums and a Carter and a Corbit you know there’s hundreds of us descended from this one man called uh red grizzly bear that met L and Clark in 1806 and also there’s a lot of uh descendants from Twisted hair there’s about 5 or 600 of those so and these two men are are uh different Twisted hair took up the white man’s way and of course his sons did and then redbear played both both sides you know he went to St Louis in the name of Peace but also at some some of the redbear clan took up the Bible as well so you know in my estimation is some of our people took up the Bible to help protect themselves because of The Changing Times and the disposition and disenfranchisement that we’re undergoing one way to seek salvation is to go to the Bible and I think many of our people did that so so there’s a real contrast here of and others said well no we want to live our own way you know we we we have our own concept of who the Creator is and how we should live and so there’s a division among our tribal people in this regard and uh that that came out to be treaty non-treaty and Christian non-Christian uh npers so there was a a dichotomy here and there was a split of how our people wanted to live their lives and and that some of that is still present it’s not as bad as it used to be but it’s it’s still around and uh so so this is the great Changing Times that I was talking about the Bible played a great deal in this changing time some of it good some of it bad just like our propheties prophecies said when these people come Among Us they’ll bring bad things and good things to us so that’s what’s happening we do have time for another couple of questions if any of you have a question that you’d like to ask you do have a wealth of knowledge up here and uh pretty amazing I would like to ask about your Memorial that you’re planning and that’s going to be in CI and your funding is there do you have your plans what what’s your status of your memorial statue for CI what What stages have you gotten to with that uh what we’ve done so far is we just were notified in April from the park service about The Challenge cost share so we’re still working on the contracts for that um after we after we do that we’ll probably get started on a design phase and Crystal and I worked on several interpretive projects uh mostly in Oklahoma and Kansas but what we’ll do is we have set up an advisory committee that helps us determine what text we’re going to talk about and plus our St Louis Warriors committee that’s already in in existence will help us determine what we’re going to talk about what we’ve initially thought about is we’re going to do two panels we’re not going to actually do another Monument like we shown because that was really expensive but what we want to do is more like interpretive panels and on one one of the signs we want to talk about the history of the warrior uh the for Ness Pur Warriors that went over there and then on the other panel we want to actually talk about the monument and everything that’s happened over in St Louis since we built that thing that Monument has become very popular and Almost Famous at St Louis um that cemetery is very popular uh I guess they do tours through there and it’s become like their number one stop on their tour through the cemetery so but in in conjunction with this uh project in C we also want to do a a n nesters native plant garden just to highlight some of our traditional plants we’re not going to really talk about their uses but I think we just so we can do some uh future interpretive sites up there at CI so there’s really a lack of interpretation from a tribal perspective just throughout our reservation so we want to start with that project there awesome a couple of questions let’s take those real quickly just thought of a good idea Brian why don’t you get those tour guides in St Louis to charge an extra buck and they can U get you some money for another Nifty monument in CI to add to your interpreter signs there’s an awful lot of people over there that you know would probably donate something yeah that’s probably true I mean it’s actually even won some awards um Crystal maybe we talk about that but so it’s a cath yeah and she can talk more about that I mean um but I mean I know the the guys that actually built the monument have submitted it to like a headstone award thing and they’ve won you know like the national award and so no we didn’t actually get credit sometimes so so that’s kind of just frustrating for us living way over here so actually I have a question for Crystal uh and maybe you could elaborate on that Crystal what he said but um I’m really curious about um your research um on St Louis and how difficult it was for them to communicate I think that’s important to talk about because when you read that letter that was supposedly translated from the nesters who were there the delegates um you know it to me I don’t understand how they could have possibly have said what’s in that letter based upon what what little they could communicate on and I guess the other thing that really bothers me is that and I think what may have occurred this is just me um thinking that uh because one of them or two of them had a Catholic right when they P when they died and of course you would be thankful for someone helping you as you’re in that sacred time of leaving Earth and um you know he they may have just you know assumed you know he was he could have been saying yeah our people need help you know they’re they’re being murdered or whatever and and the the Catholic priest may have you know actually started that I don’t know I but if you could talk about those two things thank the letter are you do you mean the one that either rabbit skin leggings in her horns that is why disputed for exactly the reasons that you said nobody there spoke in his purse so if it actually occurred and actually most of them spoke French that wrote it down so for it to get to English it would have had to gone from sign to French to English whoever wrote it down however interpretation so as far as the historical field um it’s a nice Nifty little thing but it’s not really given a lot of credit as being something that can be proven to have happened a lot of people people have said they heard this happened but as far as those who actually have come forward and said yes we witnessed it there really isn’t the documentation for that um as far as the Catholic rights go the two men were actually nursed by Clark’s wife and um it was a highly Jesuit community so if they hadn’t been giving Catholic rights they would have been put in a Popper’s grave because there was no other option so for them to have been given that right it was actually a really nice and caring thing for that to have been done assumptions aside it allowed them to be buried at the cathedral which is where downtown St Louis by the arch so if they hadn’t been given the rights they would have been in a popper grave for example Chief Pontiac of the Ottawa is buried in a Popper’s grave which is now beneath a parking garage across from the old baseball stadium so that could have been the fate of these two had they not been given those rights yes sir on the question on um on religion Alan you were saying that uh two uh people went up to Canada to learn how to speak the white man’s language or sign language to be able to communicate with these people was this before the religion came into it uh yeah it and um the the thing that my father would tell me is that we wanted to learn how to read and write and at Red River in Canada was a was a mission that taught how to read and write and of course the Bible came in with that Association as well too so religion is connected in that way but uh and there were three two died at the school and then one survived and he came back and he could read and write his name is Ellis and he became important in a treaty making process in Wala Wala In 1855 because he could read and write and he was a nest purse so but his notes have never been found you know it would be very interesting if we could find his journal or the notes in this treat treaty negotiation In 1855 because none of those notes have ever there were probably three or four four nesters that could read it right at the time of 1855 all right one other question here it’s probably a silly question but I don’t know did the nesps have horses before Louis and Clark came there I I don’t know my history that good and did they those four Chiefs then travel by horse then or did they walk to uh St Louis well my understanding is that yes we had the horse at the time of Louis and Clark and in his journals of Lou and Clark he described horses among the nesp are very colored you know they have a lot of color and they’re uh like the English corser very similar very good uh breed horse that the nesp had and uh we uh practiced gelding at the time so we would eliminate of course the stallions that weren’t as good as the others so and that’s why the herds became very U welldeveloped and we probably got the horse about 1700 you know uh Francis Haynes of he’s another historian of nesper History he claims about 1730 but uh because the trade route between a tribe is so fast and and we learned about these things very quickly I on my estimation it wouldn’t take more than two decades for the uh horse to come up to the Northern Plains after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 so it would only taken a couple of decades to get up to the Northern Plains and if we and there’s um if you seen a strange animal you never seen before what what kinds of questions would you ask you know what what what good is this animal is it like the dog um can you you know can it can you pack can you ride it and it’s such a large animal and of course we would have learned these things if we were in a Spanish country in in uh probably New Mexico or Arizona in that area so we had have learned very quickly that this was a good animal that could you know travel greater distances with us and so uh and that’s why I also say U we acquired the horse much earlier than most people estimate because if we travel to to the Southwest we would have found Spanish horses and uh there is um a little story of a ners man he went so far south he seen a little animal he never seen before and he called this little animal pitsco and pitco in this verse means imitator and this animal this little an seen was a monkey so that’s how far south we went so that would have been well into Waka and maybe you know that area so we traveled great distances but then when a horse we acquired now there’s some travel people say there was even horses way before Columbus that the horse was already here well there was a prehistoric horse here that that’s been proven now whether that was a horse that we utilized I don’t know but this European horse the soyo the crossed water people brought this animal and the reason why I related to the dog is that when we call the horse we called it s and chco is the dog so he named the horse the first part of the dog’s name s too very similar in sound so we just named the horse the short version of the dog so uh uh once we acquired the horse then we traveled all over the place there’s a story of an npus man he went to a place called Cincinnati of course that place now is Cincinnati Ohio well I found out Cincinnati is established in 1890 or 1795 so did he go there when it was first for or was it after Luc and Clark I can’t prove whether he was there at the time of Louis and Clark or not but I do know that Cincinnati was established in 1795 so he probably traveled some sometime between 1795 and 18202 Cincinnati because he had the horse because the story says that he uh loaded his horses up with packs and he went East he wanted to see where the sun comes up his name is hak sin that’s the name of it man I think we’re out of time for questions uh would you all be willing to answer questions in the back after the program’s over all right and please let’s thank our panel and thank you all very much for coming I would like to draw your attention to our program schedule they’re out on the sandwich board in the back and also the summer of Peace among the Meo the program these were printed a couple of weeks ago so there are some changes in them for our most upto-date schedule stop by the front desk in the tent right over here to my right and please join us for our next program Silas Whitman is here and he’s going to be talking about reflections of the past so join us for that program as well

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Amy Mossett on Sacagawea and the Oto Nation

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

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

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