How Lewis and Clark Worked

They may be the most famous explorers in U.S. history, but there are plenty of interesting details to the Lewis and Clark expedition that history has allowed to fade. Learn about the origin and the aftermath of America's first early push Westward in this episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the All New Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Lewis Bryant. I thought you were gonna come me, touis. Yeah,

(00:22):
I thought, you know, like I thought about it. You're
like that chuckle, do that dumb joke. I wondered if
I was related to um Mr Clark. Oh yeah, yeah,
I'm just gonna say I am from now on. She's like,
if you heard of William Clark, the explorer, Lewis and Clark. Yeah,
well I'm Josh Clark because Clark's the unusual name. You
might be no, but I mean like his family, Uh

(00:47):
was from the Ohio River Valley. I grew up in Toledo. Hey,
there you go. I wonder you have an explorer spirit.
You're a laid back guy. He was laid back yep,
not like Lewis. He was semi literate. Yeah, I'm fairly literate. Yeah,

(01:08):
that's the big distinction. It is funny, like have you
read some of his verbatim journal unentry Clark's or Lewis's, well,
both of them, but Clark's way worse. Uh. Yeah, Lewis
is pretty good writer, I thought, yeah, but he had
some weird spellings. To Clark was just like frontier Kentucky
boy writing in a Yeah. They were a good pair though. Yeah.

(01:30):
And this isn't one of those podcasts where or stories
where you look back and you're like, oh, you know,
histories really pumped this up and they were really kind
of like this and like jerks and no, No, this
was really a great story and they were actually true
American heroes, you know, one semi tragic. I would say, well,

(01:51):
the ending is pretty tragic. No, but Lewis lewis manic depressive. Yeah,
by all accounts. Yeah, back then they called it prone
to you know, prone to fits, but modern people say, no,
he was probably manic depressive. Uh. And I prepped by
watching the four hour Ken Burns documentary last night. Four hours. Yeah,

(02:14):
I thought it was two hours, and I was like, oh,
I got this, And then I got to, uh, the
two hour point, and I was like, wait a minute,
they just hit the Continental divide. I don't think I'm
at the end. That's so funny because in the email
you you emailed me to suggest that I watch it.
You called it a six part not four hour. Well

(02:34):
they had it on YouTube in six parts, but in
actuality it's twelve parts. All right, So let's do this.
This is one of my favorite stories in history, is
it really? Yeah? Man? And again I've said this before.
Why isn't this a movie, like a really good movie? Not?
Have you seen almost heroes? Yeah? Right, there you go. No, alright,

(02:57):
So Chuck um Lewis and Clark Merriwether Lewis William Clark,
pair of UM army folk turned explorers thanks to a
little bit of um I guess serendipity. It would have
been somebody else had it not been these guys. Because really,
the whole idea of this expedition, which was called the

(03:19):
Core of Discovery, it sounds like a soccer team. Um
it was. It was the brainchild of Thomas Jefferson. Yeah,
in the brainchild of t J. Because he's like, hey,
I just bought I just doubled the size of our
country by buying a bunch of land from Napoleon. Do
you know the background on that, the Louisiana purchase. I know,

(03:42):
it's the greatest land deal in the history of the world. Probably,
But what what do you mean, Well, it was the
Frenches land and they were about to get it from
they were about to get it given to the Spanish. Well,
the Spanish were west of them, so probably, and the
French like had barely any presence in this area, but
it was their land. But the Spanish, had they taken over,

(04:04):
they would have been a real problem because the Americans
had access to the Port of New Orleans because the
French were basically absentee landlords there, and so the idea
that the Spaniards were about to get it, that was
a big problem. So Jefferson sent some people over to
France to try to negotiate something, and it turned out
Napoleon was having all sorts of problems and it had
been recommended to him by his people, like just sell

(04:26):
it to the Americans. They're coming over, they want to talk.
So I think James Monroe was sent by Thomas Jefferson
with the a limit of ten million dollars to do
something to buy Florida and New Orleans or New Orleans
for ut the ten million dollars, Monroe found out he
could get all of the Louisiana territory, which went up

(04:48):
to Canada. Yeah, Louisiana is really undersells it. It was.
They went from the Rockies all the way over to
the colonies and then up to Canada and down to
the Gulf of Mexico. It was a double the size
of our country. Yeah, overnight. So Monroe was like, I'll
give you fifteen million dollars for it, and the French
are like sold. So he bought eight hundred and twenty

(05:10):
seven thousand square miles of North America about three cents
an acre, and uh, that was a chunk of change, though,
I think that was double what our are gross economy
was at the time. But it's a pretty good investment.
That's a great investment. Could you imagine, though, how weird
that would be off if it had gone a different way.
The United States could have ended it about the Mississippi River,

(05:32):
which it did at the time, and just beyond that
on the other side could have been Spain or not Spain,
but you know what I mean, a Spanish colony. Well,
it could have been a lot like um Africa, you know,
like all these former colonies that are just like adjacent
to one another. But this is a French colony. This
was a Belgian colony. This was a British colony, and
I think the Brits controlled Canada and like the Oregon
territory at the time. Yes, um, yeah, we were all

(05:56):
sandwich kind of in there together. So we buy from
the French, we go fight Spanish for the rest of it.
And uh, in between all of this, we send Lewis
and Clark to go check out what had just been bought.
And this expedition was gonna happen anyway, but we thought
that we were going to have to ask for permission
to go through this area. But now all of a

(06:18):
sudden it was America. And that added a facet to
this expedition that hadn't been there before, which was basically
informing the Indians that they were now living in America
and they had um a new great father, which is
how Meriwether Lewis put it. How he described t J. Yeah,
you have a new great father who lives in a
lodge in Washington, d C. And you can come visit

(06:40):
him and see like how great it will be to
live under his patronage. But not really right sign this treaty.
Uh so uh he named he was his private secretary.
Lewis was his kind of personal aid, and he knew
what kind of dude he was. Maybe drink a little
too much, was prone to depression, but he he sort

(07:01):
of gave him this job to help him out. He
thought he'd be good for it. Don't get me wrong, right,
he groomed him for the position. But yeah, he he
thought it would be. He had he had invested interest
in the man, and he's like, this is gonna be
really good for Lewis, is what he needs. He's twenty
nine years old, which is remarkable to me. Uh good, sharpshooter.
He said, you pick your partner. He picked William Clark,

(07:23):
who was his former captain I believe in the army,
a couple of years older. And he looked up to
Clark quite a bit. It was like, I need you, brother,
because you compliment You complete me, right, which, by the way,
we should probably say there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that
Lewis and Clark were ever gay. Clark definitely wasn't. Yeah,

(07:44):
there's a lot of conjecture about Merriwether Lewis was. He
courted several women and was rejected by all of them.
He was a total eligible bachelor, never married, never was
engaged or betrothed or anything. So of course, as time
wore on, people were, well, he must have been gay. Yeah,
there's been a lot of a lot of conjecture, and

(08:04):
they come up with the idea that he probably wasn't gay,
but that he was um bye. You know that he
had um something of an aversion to women that was
not necessarily based on any kind of sexual orientation. He
just didn't know what he was doing and he didn't
feel comfortable around women. Well, like we said, he was

(08:25):
by all accounts manic depressive, So he was kind of
a messed up guy in a lot of ways, a
little bit semi tragic figure. You said, yeah, and we'll
get to that. Um, the main goal, well, there are
a couple of main goals. The main goal for Jefferson was, Hey,
I want to find this all water route to the
sea that's really important for trade. And also, hey, let's

(08:47):
check out this thing we just bought and go out
and record as much of it as you can. Animals, plants, people, Uh,
what the heck is out there? Basically come back and
tell us. Right, and Lewis wasn't exactly a slide, which
when it came to this kind of stuff. His mother
was a celebrated herb doctor um in Virginia. Yes, you
knew what she was doing. And um, she kind of

(09:09):
raised him in the woods, so he was he was
pretty good at botany. But to just kind of further
his education and not just that, but all sorts of
other things that would come in handy on the expedition,
Jefferson sent him to the American Philosophical Association, which was
the first learned society in North America, and basically he
underwent this like grueling crash course of everything from astronomy

(09:32):
to cartography to geology, medical training, everything everything you could
you would need. They basically just filled Lewis's head with
and he in turn filled Clark in on a lot
of it too. Yeah, also a lot of what they
might encounter in ways of uh, we'll call them Indians
for the purposes of the show, because that's what they
called them, right, And Jefferson was like, and don't forget

(09:54):
to call me great father. It's awesome. So, um, Lewis
is in Pittsburgh or in Philadelphia getting this training. He
writes to Clark, says, please join me on this and
you were my captain. I'm a captain. Now we're gonna
be co captains on this, just so there's not any
kind of weirdness or anything like that. Like I'm I

(10:14):
was chosen to leave the expedition, but I'm choosing you
for help. But let's do this evenly, which is unheard of,
and it actually even more unheard of. It worked out
really well. Yeah, it did. Like there wasn't any kind
of like backbiting or problems, and they actually ran it
a bit like a democracy too. Yeah. In the end

(10:34):
um the they were kind of described as a family,
like really really tighten it. I kept waiting for the
story to go off the rails, but it didn't. They
really hung together and stuck together. After some initial discipline
problems once they kind of weeded out, I think from
summer to fall they kind of weeded out some of
the bad apples. Well, what's funny. One guy got um

(10:56):
discharged for mutinous acts and another guy got discharged for desertion.
But they they this happened in the middle of the
the first leg of the trip, so they had to
stay on and so they could get them to a
place where they could go back. So they just had
them doing hard labor the whole time. Wow. Uh so, Um,

(11:17):
they brought along a couple of people of note. One,
Clark took his slave, York, that he had had since
he was a kid. He was only only black guy
and only slave on the on the party, right on
the adventure party, we'll call it. He was he was
technically a man servant I guess, like a valet or

(11:38):
something like that to Clark outside of the expedition, but
on the expedition, York was basically just a member of
the party. Yeah, he was a member of the party. Um.
He played a really great role in diplomacy because, uh,
the American Indian was had never seen black people before
and they didn't have hang ups obviously like white people did.

(12:02):
So they're like, this guy is awesome. He's huge, and
he's strong, and look at that, like amazing black skin
that's even darker than ours. Like they really thought he
was great. And I'm you know, I'm sure all the
white people and they were like, well, yeah, look at me,
Look what about me, my pale white skin. I'm friends
with the great father. But he played a great role
in diplomacy. Um, and like you said, was generally treated

(12:24):
pretty well. Um. Although he did get sort of sort
of some of the crap duties. Well, plus he also
got royally screwed over at the end of the expedition.
Oh yeah, we'll get to that though. Okay. Uh. And
so we have York with Clark, and then um Louis
purchased a dog for twenty dollars name c Man. And
they used to think it was scanning because these guys

(12:46):
um handwriting was so bad that for yeah, basically a century, like,
everybody thought it was scanning for two centuries. And then
somebody figured out, well, wait a minute, why is one
of these rivers called Siemens Creek right, And then they realized, wait,
that's the dog. That's the dog. Everybody, by the way,
had something named after them, and they had trouble coming

(13:07):
up with names for everything, like York, the York Islands
of Montana, like everybody on that tour had something named
after them, which is kind of neat. So he was
a Newfoundland dog and he made it the whole way.
We're happy to go ahead and spoil that one. Yeah,
which is great because they ate dogs, by the way.
At some point on this trip, they had a lot
of horse. Yeah, they did, so like you said they

(13:29):
started in Pittsburgh, but the officials start was really in St.
Louis in December of UM three, and they're like, all right,
let's hit the river, the Missouri River. Well, that's where
they assembled camp and wintered. They started all their people
and ran them through like army training, and took the

(13:49):
best of the best. They officially started in May, the
falling spring. Of course, you wouldn't start in the winter.
Uh So they had a big keel boat and a
couple of smaller canoes and said let's hit the river.
And they did. So they stillst to it because again,
ultimately Jefferson was looking for a northwest passage across the
continent to the Pacific, and he wanted to see if

(14:11):
you could basically ride a river all the way across
the country. Yeah, by the time, I think they're about
forty five people at first, but when they eventually whittled
it down, the official Corps discovery was thirty three people. Right. So,
they they head out and they start going upstream up
the Missouri River, and it was rough going at first,
and they literally pulling their boat out from outside the

(14:32):
water waist deep by tow rope against the current again. Yeah,
they're going upstream the whole way to the source of
the Missouri River. Yeah. So the first Indians they encountered,
well not the first, the first situation they encountered where
the Titan Sioux or the Lakota. And they're actually warned
by previous American Indians like, watch out for these guys.

(14:53):
They're basically the mafia of the Missouri River. Like they'll
demand payment, they won't. Uh, they'll take your goods, they'll
control the trade. Yeah. They wanted them to trade exclusively
with them. Yeah. And they had done this to the
French in the Spanish for years. Uh and they I
think Lewis called them the pirates of the Missouri. But um,

(15:14):
when they did reach them, it came to a standoff
over a canoe that they they gave them their gifts.
The first thing they would do whenever they encountered a
new tribe was to like give them these trinkets, tell
them about the Great Father, give them like handkerchiefs and
things like we come in peace and um with with
the Titon Sue though, there was a standoff over a
canoe that they wanted and they're like, we're not giving

(15:35):
this canoe and it literally came to a point where
guns were raised and like hundreds of Indians had their
arrows pointed at them, and it was about to go down,
and uh, chief Black Buffalo intervened. It was like, you
know what, let our women and children toward your really
cool boat that we've never seen and meet all you
guys and then y'all can have safe passage. So they

(15:58):
managed to get through their unscathed. But that was their
first like run in where they were like, man, this
could go down pretty badly. And luckily that was one
of just a few I think as far as cross
country unchartered expeditions, uncharted expeditions go, this went about as
good as you could possibly hope for. Yeah, I mean
it was super peaceful. Um, they were the well, they

(16:23):
only shot one bullet in anger the entire trip. It's
pretty remarkable. Man, that is neat. So they hit the
great planes and that might as well have been Mars
to them. Um, if you think about it, if you've
never been west of I think there's a saying that
a squirrel can jump from tree to tree until it's
the Mississippi. And so when they hit the great planes,
they had never seen anything like it like there were

(16:44):
no trees, just just planes. It's just planes, and it
was just you know, they were absolutely blown away by this.
And uh, there they encountered the Mandan and Minotauri or
Hidatsa Indians, right, and they just I did, all right,
this is pretty good place to build a camp, stay
here for a few months. And they built Fort Manden,

(17:06):
which they named after the local one of the local
tribes and Um and they were buddies. They had like
lived together in harmony, right, they got they they forged friendships,
they were visited by locals, and uh, something big happened here,
which we'll get into in a second, but first let's
do a message. Okay, Chuck. So we're at Fort Manden,

(17:30):
which is we're in South Dakota. I think they were
having a good time hanging out having Yeah, there was
a big problem with venereal disease on the expedition because
like they were having a lot of sex with Indians
and the Indians um had syphilis, which was something that
was unknown to Europeans, and Europeans contracted it very easily.

(17:54):
So that was a big thing. Well that was another
thing about Louis too. Apparently like everybody else in the
exped had sex with Indian women, and he was like
he stayed away from his journal. Entries about like Indian
sexual practices were very like and just snide. I think
is away one person put it um. Yeah, there's just

(18:14):
he's an odd duck. I get what if he tried
to put on that. He was just you know, cleaning up.
And they're like, Louis, it doesn't hurt when he peas
like something's going on, it doesn't burn. I don't think
he's having sex. He says he had sex with all
those women burns. When is a burn? When you be
doesn't burn? Win Louis Peace. Yeah. So apparently burning when

(18:36):
you pee like was a big thing on this core
of discoveries. Discovered syphilis too, all right. So the other
important thing that happened here, which is I think what
you were getting to was they hired a French Canadian
trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau. But they really what they were
doing was hiring his wife. Yeah, Soicago way or Soicago wea.

(18:59):
I didn't mispronounce that. You didn't mispronounce it. There's a
lot of pronunciations, yeah, but there's only one that's right,
and they're the right. One is based on the journal
entries of Louis Clark everybody else in the expedition. Because
this was an expedition, everyone was expected to like make
notes and and yeah, they were all ord of stuff
down right. And Sacaea is mentioned dozens of times in

(19:21):
these journals because she did do some outstanding stuff. Um,
and she's mentioned phonetically, so it's Socca Gowa. Also at
some point it's also mentioned that her name is Shoshone
for bird woman and the shy Sacaga is bird and
Weya is a woman, so it's Chicago Wea, not Sacca Joeya.

(19:47):
That's right. Well, I mean that's a big point. It's true,
although the ken Burns thing, these historians all pronounced it differently,
which is sort of frustrating. Well, yeah, there's such a
kaka and then Saca joweyah. Yeah. One of the ladies
called her straight up Sacada and I was like, straight up.
So she was very important because A she was a translator.

(20:09):
B she was essentially a white flag everywhere they went. Um.
And I don't think we said this, but by the
time they broke camp to leave, she had a baby. Yeah,
she actually gave birth to her first child. Um and
Fort Manden Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, Yeah, who was pretty cool,
grew up to be pretty cool. Yeah. Sure, But Scagia

(20:29):
if we say Soca Dwia too, I think that's fair.
Okay she Um, she was sixteen at the time, and
she was married to Charbonneaux. She's one of two of
his wives. Um, and I didn't hear anything about the
other showy woman. Did she not go along? I don't
think so? Okay, all right, so, um she John Baptiste

(20:51):
and Toussaint were a family, even though Sacagawea was Toussant's
slave wife, like he purchased her. But she was Shoshone.
And the reason why she was so valuable is because
the expedition leaders had found out that the Shoshone were
known for their horsing abilities, and the expedition had two

(21:13):
horses that they set out with, and we're like, we're
gonna need a lot more. So we need to trade
with the Shoshone when we make it to the Rockies,
and we will need this woman. And she comes in
handy to a spectacular degree in this sense. Yeah. And
not only was she a white flag She was just
great for the spirit of the camp to have a
woman there. Uh. And baby was a charmer too. Oh,

(21:35):
of course. You know, you can't pull up with a
woman and a baby and say like we're warring people exactly,
you know, apparently across all tribes along the plains, if
you have a woman and a baby in your party,
you're automatically not a war party, and therefore you come
in peace. Yeah, and she was also pretty awesome. Charbonneau
himself was described as quite average, but Chicago Way was

(21:58):
the real deal, like one of the bravest members of
the expedition. And at one point one of the boats
overturned and they lost we're losing a lot of their
important records and things. And she was the main one
that was like boom in the water retrieving the stuff
while Charbonneau was I don't know what he was doing.
Who knows what Sharbonneau was doing. But Psychic Awaya was

(22:18):
swimming retrieving the stuff. This is after she'd given birth,
This is while she's breastfeeding, walking scores of miles and
in a given week, she was pretty tough. Yeah, and
you know, we'll go ahead and spoil this that baby,
like we said lived. It made it all the way
there and back, this brand new baby, uh to the
age of about I guess two and a half, and

(22:39):
he just stole William Clark's heart. Yeah, he loved him.
He ended up adopting him, he did. Yeah, he adopted
him and educated him in St. Louis. After she died,
he adopted both her kids much later. So um, but yeah,
his name was Jean Baptiste, the the baby, and he
was nicknamed Pompey because of his pompous little dancing. Antics

(22:59):
like Clark found him to be quite a little danswer. Um.
So the The other way that Saka Gaweya was helpful
to this expedition was that she was a translator. She
could speak um Shoshone obviously um. She could also speak
Hadata and so her husband could speak Hadata. So if

(23:24):
she was speaking to a Shashoni, Let's say they encountered
a Shoshoni person, the Shoshone would speak to Sacagawea. She
would say what they said in Hadata to her husband.
Her husband would say in French what had just been
said in Hadata to another man, who would in turn

(23:46):
tell William and Merryweather what had been said in English.
That was the translation line, and Sacagaweya was the pivotal
point of this as far as speaking to um plains
abs point. Yeah, and you would think that's setting it
up to say in like big problems arose because of it.
But it really worked pretty well. No, because they were

(24:06):
also trained in plain sign language to Apparently there was
a lot of UM gesturing that was fairly universal that
a lot of the people who were recruited in St.
Louis originally were familiar with two. Yeah, they got along
pretty well, they did, all right. So after the Mandon villages,
they broke camp and went on um to the confluence
of Yellowstone with the Missouri and entered the land where

(24:29):
they started seeing, like when they hit the planes, they
started seeing these crazy animals they've never seen before. Uh.
It's important to say they didn't discover anything. Yeah, it's
very important to say that they were just the first
white guys to record it for science. Um, but prairie
dogs and elk and buffalo by the tens of thousands. Uh, antelope,
all kinds of things to them that were just these

(24:51):
weird animals. Um. They actually sent a live prairie dog
back to Jefferson, which is pretty it's hious and it
made it all the way U Grizzly Bears. They encountered
those for the first time on this expedition. Yeah, they
were warned at the grizzly by the Indians and they
were like we we've hunted brown Bear and black Bear.
And then they were kind of like holy crap. Like

(25:13):
in their journals they were like, I've never seen anything
like this. It took ten shots and we almost died,
and the Grizzly Bears to be reckoned with. Lewis said
something like, um, I'd rather fight two Indians than one
Grizzly Bear. Yeah. So here we are in early June. Uh,
they reached the point where the Missouri divided that they
didn't they weren't told about this, uh fork, So like

(25:34):
huh right, what should we do here? In equal parts
north and south? Yeah, I mean it was like a
hardcore left and right that was uh, basically everyone in
the party agreed on one direction except Lewis and Clark.
They were like, we were old school, we like in sync. Yeah.

(25:56):
So they despite the fact that everyone disagreed, they followed them,
and that just shows like how united they were They
were like, you know what, we don't think you guys
are right, but we're going to follow you because you
were our captains, right, and we want to see your
faces when you realize you're wrong, which actually would happen,
but it wouldn't lead to like eating each other like
the dinner party, no, huh um. So they keep mosying

(26:20):
along and they're doing pretty well. They apparently they got
to a point where, um Clark looked down one day,
I think it was Clark, it was possibly Lewis too.
It was Lewis and he realized that a little stream
at his feet was running west and he realized that
they just crossed the Continental Divide. Yeah, that was the
mouth of the Missouri that they were literally straddling with

(26:42):
their feet. Yeah, and they that meant that now they
had just left the Missouri, and we're going to hook up.
First they went on to the Snake River, but that
would take them to the Columbia River, which, by their reckoning,
would take them to the Pacific Ocean. So they'd made
it like a substantial amount of distance. Yeah. That was
a depressing moment though for Louis, because he he thought

(27:05):
when he reached that ridge that he would look and
see just downhill to the ocean, and what he saw
was rocky mountains Nevada. Yeah, and he was like, oh man,
this is not going to be very easy. No, we
didn't know about the rocky mountains. No. And even uh
even still, when they finally do think that they see
the ocean, they still were twenty five miles away from

(27:26):
it when they finally get to that point, yeah, which
we'll get to. Oh, that's right. Uh So, what they
ended up doing they made a mistake because there was
a shortcut they could have taken. They would have taken
four days, and instead they had to go work their
way around the Great Falls of Montana, which took uh
fifty three days of portage. Uneasy portage, yeah, because this

(27:50):
portage was like carrying these boats. But also these guys
were wearing like moccasins and stuff, and they had a
huge problem with prickly pear, yeah, which would just go
right through your bokusen. It's basically like stepping on nails
the whole time while you're carrying a very heavy boat. Yeah,
and all your supplies whiskey and you know, food, salt.

(28:10):
Uh So in July they arrived at another fork. Three forks.
They named them the Gallatin for the Secretary of Treasury,
the Madison for the Secretary of State, and the Jefferson,
and decided to follow the Jefferson because there was more
to it. I think, yeah, And I think they were like,
this is the one that is going to head west,
so they follow that. I think at this pointer, either

(28:33):
right before or right after, they they meet up with
the Shoshone. Have they met the Shoshoni yet? Uh? Well,
at this point Lewis went off by himself, um, and
a couple of more people to find the Shoshoni, including
psychic away right or No, she wasn't there yet. I
don't think she was there yet. But he did find them,
and um he basically said, hey, we come in peace.

(28:56):
We have a camp back here. We want you to
come hang out at. Well. They were in bad shape
apparently this is show anywhere. Yeah, they were pretty worse
for the wear and very docile as a result. Um.
So he met these women and children and told them
all that stuff and they came back and hung out
with them, and at Camp Soka Goea recognized one of

(29:16):
the women that Clark was a Clark or Lewis I
think at this point it was both who who they
came back with and said, hey, we found some shoon
and she said, hey, that's actually my bff from first grade.
Because remember Soa had been um kidnapped and sold, so
there were still members of her tribe living around the

(29:37):
Rockies and um, she actually met up with them and
with her brother who was now chief. Yes, she was
like your chief and you know it, little sister, and
he went, you're married to a French trapper. She's like
that guy. Not really he bought me, uh, which is
not funny at all, you know. Um. So then they

(29:57):
proceeded across the continental divide to the main village with
the Shoshonees and uh hard on a tour guide, old Toby,
which is a great name for an Indian tour guide,
and said Toby said, you know, I'll lead you through
these mountains, but we're gonna need some horses to eat
because it's gonna be rough and to travel with. Right,
But this is where they were really eating a lot

(30:19):
of horse meat. Yeah, the Bitter Root Mountains. It was
pretty rough through Montana and Idaho. Uh and that was
when you know, their spirits were never broken. But that's
when they were dampened for sure. So um, when they
make it through the bitter Roots, I don't remember why
they did or where, but there was a point where
they said, we can't use these horses anymore. I guess

(30:41):
it's when they got onto the Columbia River, right. Well,
maybe is this where they were eating salmon and the
salmon was making them sick? Yes, So they come to
a pierced village with old Toby I believe it, at
the lead and um, they're celebrated, welcome, they throw a
feast for him, and it makes every buddy violently ill
in the expedition, like the salmon is awful, yeah, or

(31:04):
these roots or whatever. I'll bet it was the roots
that got them. Yeah, I think it was. Um. So
every apparently everyone recovered. Um, but they say, okay, well
here's the Columbia River. We can't really use these horses anymore.
I think one of the things that's very much overlooked
in the history of this expedition is just how much

(31:25):
the core discovery relied on friendly tribes. So like when
they hit the Columbia River, they said, hey, Shoshone or
no Nez Pierce friends, will you watch our horses for us.
And then as Pierce said, yes, you guys go to
the Pacific Ocean. When you come back, we'll have your horses.
Go ahead and brand them so you know which ones

(31:45):
are yours, And they did. They left their horses with
the Nez Pierce. Yeah, I mean it was it was
kind of the best case scenario story for most of
the trip. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Uh. And that is
actually too where they were where they traded for dog
to eat, which was one of the only disappointing parts
of the story for me. Um, that and what happened
New York. All right, So at this point, it's uh,

(32:06):
mid October, it floated down to the Great Falls of
the Columbia, which is now Solilo Falls. I think about
how much easier it was at this point, like they're
not going upstream any longer they get with the current. True,
but it was the Oregon territory, so they were getting
rained on constantly. I mean it was pretty brutal conditions. Um,

(32:29):
but you're right. It wasn't like slugging through in the summertime,
pulling that boat up stream, stepping on prickly pear exactly. Uh.
So this is where on November seven, they thought that
they saw the ocean. It's actually a bay about inland.
And one of them said ocean in view O c
I N I love the ocean O T e A N.

(32:51):
In this the same paragraph they misspelled ocean two different ways.
Give him a break, come on. Uh. Finally, finally, finally,
by mid November, they strode upon the sands of the Pacific.
And this is the really sad part is that Merryweather
called it tempestuous and horrible. Like he wasn't like, oh,

(33:14):
we made it. He was he was depressed, and he
was like, this isn't like the Atlantic coach, and this
is rocky and beating us with waves like the Organ
coast is rough. Uh. And he didn't cotton to it.
But what he did cotton to was being an accurate dude.
By dead reckoning over the course of over he was

(33:35):
only off by forty miles in charting this, this ride
that is pretty amazing, is pretty remarkable. So sagawea Um.
One of the reasons she signed on, aside from being
a slave to her husband who signed her on um,
was that she wanted to see the Pacific. She'd heard
about the Great Waters and yeah, and so when they
were getting closer, Um, she petitioned Lewis and Clark saying like,

(34:00):
there's no way you can't let me not come with
you to see the Pacific Ocean itself. And they let
her come along. They had word from some local tribe,
I'm not sure which one it was that there was
a monstrous fish on the beach, and Lewis and clarker
like they're talking about a whale. We should go get
some blubber, and so aways like I'm there, I'm coming

(34:20):
with you. So they took her along and they all
got to go see the Pacific Ocean and it was
personal that first time. Yeah, they got a bunch of
blubber and oil and stuff from it. Um, and it
died first, So you can keep liking Lewis and Clark Um.
So uh, they camp there on the Pacific for a
full four months. Yeah. Basically they were trying to two things.

(34:42):
They were trying to decide what to do, and they
were technically they were waiting for a boat to come by, say,
a letter of credit from Jefferson that said, hey, if
you're a boat, give these people a ride back and
we'll pay you like good money, right, I read that
they never seriously thought that they were going to take
a boat back. Well, that was the deal is. Technically

(35:02):
they were supposed to be waiting for a vote. What
they were really doing was just sort of weighing their
options as to how best to go back and win.
And this is the really cool part. They put it
to a vote. They did put it to a vote, um,
and it was a vote that included an African American
and a woman and a Native American, and it was

(35:24):
a who Saya and York both both their votes were
given equal weight to everybody else's. Where to camp? Set
up camp for the winner. Yeah, so they elected to
cross the river to the south Um where they were
informed that there was elk and deer. You can hold
up here, you can hunt all winter, and they did,
and prepare yourself for the return journey home, which we'll

(35:47):
get to after this message. All right, So here we
are at Fort Clatsop o Yea named after the Clatsop tribe.
They were hunting, They were storing up, they were getting
their provisions in order, getting ready to go back, and

(36:09):
they hauled butt on the way back. They did. Yeah,
you know how it is sure it plus it doesn't
take as long because now you know how long it's
gonna take. Yeah, And they weren't stopping to record everything
they did actually been there, um, but the group wasn't
as happy. Uh. They were irritable, especially Lewis. He kind

(36:31):
of fell into a depression on the way home. He
didn't did he come out of it at all while
they were at the Pacific or did it just stick
the whole time? Well, I mean I think it was
up and down. Basically, they believe when he was not
recording in his journal he was depressed. Um, but he
is remarkable and that he soldiered on like this is
a manic depressive who was still like getting up every

(36:52):
day and doing this and like the worst thing he
did was not journal you know. Um. Actually the worst
thing he did was on the way back he stole
a canow at one point, which is really out of character.
And he was described as kind of like cracking at
the seams at this point, which is really sad. So
March six, they started back up the Columbia with these

(37:14):
new canoes, bartered for some horses and camped with the
Nez Pierce for a month, and then they got their
horses back from the Nez Pierce. Those horses that those were,
there's the ones before they got back there to the
next piers. They bartered for some horses and then eventually
hooked back with the next pierce and camp for like
a month and got their horses back and got their

(37:35):
horses back. I think that's your favorite part of this night.
They're like, hey, guys, were you hanging onto this for?
They also sunk their canoes at a certain point and
then went back and got those. He keep keep the
canoes from being sent down river. They just sunk them
and then they came back and got them. It's pretty cool.
So they basically retraced their trail through the Bitter Roots
UM only one retrograde march and the entire journey, which

(37:58):
means you have to double back Gale, which is in
itself pretty remarkable. Uh. And then on July six, they
separated UM back where they were at that original shortcut
that they should have taken, and said, hey, let's send
off some different factions here and do a little bit
more exploring and a little bit more recording of things.

(38:18):
They're like, we've slacked off. Well, yeah, because they were
kind of like I said, they were home, but on
the way home, Um, this is where Louis where they
ran into their first kind of violent episode with the
black Feet Indians, and um, a dude shot at Louis.
He shot back, hit the guy in the belly. Another
guy stabbed the Blackfeet Indian. Where is it a Blackfoot Indian?

(38:42):
And um, they rode away like the black Feet did,
but two of them died and it was you know,
it was sad they had gone all that way without
violence and they finally kind of had to their hand
was forced, essentially. Chuck. Also, Um, there was another shooting
that took place during this period, but this moment accidental.
Um Lewis was actually shot when he was mistaken for

(39:05):
an elk while he was out hunting with a member
of the expedition, Pierre Cruzette, and cruzatt Um didn't fess
up to it immediately. He was like, oh, I guess
from Indians. It must have been those black Feet and uh. Finally,
when they searched the area and found no sign of
black feet, Crusat was like, I'm sorry, I thought you're

(39:27):
an elk. I'm blind in one I don't forget, but
I'm the fiddle player and everybody loves me, and Louis
was like, we'll just let it go and apparently was
really in a lot of pain. It hit him in
the try and like he had a very long and
difficult recovery for the rest of the time. But it
was about this time when everybody came back together. Yeah,

(39:49):
and this, you know, we're sort of simplifying this part
of the story. But they eventually did all meet back
up UM pretty remarkably. Like I think the story is
one of them around it a bin and right as
they did that, the others were rounding the band and
they're like, oh hey, it's you, Like it's you out
here in the middle of nowhere. Uh. So they've eventually
went back to demand in villages. That is where the

(40:10):
Charbonneau family UM left the expedition UM, and that is
where a private John Coulter, who was one of the men, said,
you know what St. Louis like, I didn't like it there.
I really like it out here. Can I can I
go back? And they're like, sure, man, go go west,
young man exactly, and he did. So he did. He
he was going to UM work with some French trappers

(40:34):
and they had a following up pretty quickly after. And
then this guy Coulter, Yeah, he went off on his
own and they think he was the first white person
to enter what's now Yellowstone Park, and he was. He
was the first to recount the geysers, and even um
still there's part of it called Coulter's Hell. Oh cool,
the guys are area of Yellowstone very cool. Uh So

(40:55):
reportedly the only thing they did not run out of
on the way home was powder, lead, paper, an inc or.
At least that's what Kinburn says, you know how they
put a little cherry on top of everything. Uh. Finally,
in September of eighteen o six, on the twenty three,
they arrived victorious in St. Louis and the river was

(41:15):
lined with people cheering for them, shooting their guns in
the air, and like we should point out, everyone thought
they were dead. Yeah, I mean for a long time,
like they were sending messages back in Prairie Dogs. But
then at a certain point that just wasn't possible. So
even Jefferson had given up hope. They've been like they've
been gone for two and a half years, like we're
not going to hear from Lewis and Clark again. And

(41:36):
then they did, and then they did, and um covered
about eight thousand miles over two years, four months and
nine days, discovered, I'm sorry, not discovered, recorded hundred and
twenty two animals that they had never seen, hundred and
seventy eight plants that they had never seen, and did
a pretty darn good job of cartographing. Cartographing is that

(42:01):
even a word? Yeah? I think it is drawn maps.
Um describing the Rocky mountains and Jeffrey was like, rocky mountains,
but I have mountains, now, what are those? And they
were like they're snow capped even in the summer, and
they were, you know, they've never seen any of this.
They were blown away. So um. After this, uh, Clark

(42:21):
sets up shop in St. Louis. Yeah, they doubled everyone's pay,
which was nice, and gave everyone a bunch of land. Right,
you got I think three d and twenty acres and
some Clark got six hundred each, but the rest of
the guy's got like almost the rest two people did
not get any land or any money, and that was
SKAGWAYA and York, um, which sucks. Yeah, and apparently York

(42:47):
had a difficult reentry into slavery. I can imagine, So
could you think about like living like that and then
going back to being a slave. Yeah, And so he
asked um Clark for his freedom. He's like, I know,
I don't get landed all and stuff, but how about
my freedom? And Clark was like no, And not only that,
he wrote his brother a letter and said, you know,

(43:08):
York is being kind of uppity since he got back.
He's not he's not being a good slave and he's
having trouble and uh so I had to beat him. No. Yeah,
that was that was the one time I was like, oh, man, yeah,
that's pretty awful. It was like really headed in the
good direction. And all that had to happen was he
could have just said, yes, you are free, and then
it would have been the best story ever. Man. That's

(43:30):
that's really awful. I had no idea about that. Yeah.
And then there were there various accounts that he might
have been freed a few years later, or perhaps escaped.
No one is quite for sure, even though I've noticed
kin Burns does a lot of factual stating of things
that are disputed, Like he just said straight up that
he was freed five years later, and I read up

(43:51):
on it, and people like maybe not huh. Ken Burns
just does whatever his haircut tells him. I'm a sucker
for those things, though. I mean, and I know a
lot of documentary filmmakers kind of poopoo him. Yeah. Well,
I mean that takes a certain interpretation, and that's that
exactly he said. Wait, hold on, I'm really disappointed in Clarks.

(44:14):
What do you want me to do? I don't know.
I guess to talk about Lewis. Yeah, I mean, Clark
went on, we should say to have like a very
successful rest of his career. Well, hold on, you want
to bright side? Bill Clinton in two thousand one gave
a posthumous um rank a sergeant in the army to York.
Oh great, so that's kind of nice and um, way

(44:35):
to go Clinton. Today, there are some statues commemorating York.
One in Louisville, Kentucky. I think there's one at Lewis
and Clark College in Portland. In Kansas City, there's one.
So he's He's definitely been smiled upon historically as like
a great man and adventurer by everyone but William Clark. Yeah,
and his family, who was like no, So Louis had

(44:58):
some difficulties upon returning home, he's made governor appointed governor
of the Upper Louisiana Territory. I think started out well,
but then he kind of got into financial trouble. I
think his territory got into financial trouble, right and Washington
he wasn't able to complete. The big thing was that
he wasn't able to complete what he was supposed to do,

(45:20):
which has come back and write about the whole thing. Yeah,
those weren't published until eighteen fourteen, which is eight years
after they returned. And even then they were published after
his death. Yeah, so he was. He was, by all accounts,
pretty depressed. He was on his way to Washington supposedly
to plead for more money for the territory. Yeah, to
kind of he had been called out on some finances

(45:42):
and he wanted to go clear that up. And supposedly
he had some some of his journals that he wanted
to turn in. It's like here, I've got this right.
And he fell out of favor a little bit with
Jefferson because of all that, which is you know, kind
of sneaks. It is because he was groomed by Jefferson.
There was a family friend, like they were friends. So um, Lewis.

(46:02):
I guess he's on his way to Washington. He's following
the Natchez Trails trace and he stops in Tennessee at
a place called the Grinders in near Nashville, and that's
where he died. He was he was found well, apparently
crawling toward the innkeeper's wife, shot bleeding, asking for water,

(46:23):
and she just like screamed and ran away. Yeah. And
this is another disputed thing. Was he killed or did
he commit suicide? Uh? If you google death of Meriwether Lewis,
that comes up suicide. But it is definitely in dispute. Yeah.
And ken Burne straight up said he killed himself and
it was very sad. Well. The reason why it's in

(46:43):
disputes because he was shot in the abdomen and in
the head. Ye. It's also an expert marksman. Yeah. And
the suicide people I think reckon that back then with guns,
Like if you really wanted to do it, you would
point one at your chest and wan at your head
and squeeze at the same time. Yeah, Like I um,
but the people said he was murdered for money, and

(47:05):
what were you gonna say? Nothing? Okay? Uh? Sadly, even
though this story had a happy ending. It was sort
of the beginning of the end of the American Indian Um.
It's a pretty big thing to point out. Yeah, there
was a great quote from one of the people in
the documentary. It said, they left his students, came back
his teachers, and sadly America failed to learn the lessons

(47:27):
that they had brought back with them, because if everything
had gone the way of Lewis and Clark, it would
have been awesome. They were basically like, hey, got the
Great Father, Like we said, we're gonna live in harmony,
and they believed him, and they believed themselves, you know.
They weren't like pulling one over on him. Uh. And
it's just sad that it went down a different way
from that point forward. Basically, you know what I'm saying.

(47:49):
There was one brief moment when it could have gone
in a different way. Yeah, and that was it. Yeah.
But Clark and Lewis also, I guess, kind of paved
the way for the idea of manifest destiny, although that
wasn't coined until about forty years after the expedition. They
are always held up as this idea, and this is
an idea that people subscribe to for a very long

(48:11):
time that America was destined to take up the area
between the Pacific and the Atlantic. It was our destiny,
and therefore anything that stood in our way should just
fall before us as we swept outward towards the Pacific
Ocean to and justifies the means. And Lewis and Clark
was like, look, they're they're an example of that. Clark

(48:33):
eventually died of natural causes. In most of the rest
of the party sort of just faded into history. Um,
Jean Baptiste, while yeah, he didn't. He became like, okay,
the court is not a courtis on the lady a quartier? Right? Yeah,
he was prince with a German prince, with German prince

(48:53):
Prince Wilhelm. Okay, Um and uh, I think the oldest
survivor to be nine, lived all the way to the
Civil War and at the age of ninety volunteered to
fight for the Union. And I don't know if they
took him up on under They're just like, we get it,
your legend, but we got this, so who knows. So

(49:14):
that's the Lewis and Clark expedition. The core of discoveries.
The dog lived the baby lived. Yeah, the dog made
it all the way. They only lost one person on
the entire trip, Charles Floyd, and he died early on
of what they believe was probably a pendicitist first dependix.
And Uh, it's pretty amazing. They didn't have to eat
each other. They didn't even eat the guy who died

(49:35):
of the first dependix. No, just dog and horse. Uh.
If you you got anything else, No. If you want
to learn more about Chuck's favorite story from American history,
you can type in Lewis and Clark in the search bar.
How stuff works. And since I said search bar, it
means it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call
this diplomatic community. Hey guys. Last week, the Dutch police

(49:58):
arrested the Russian diplomat Dmitri borrowed then in his home.
They were called in by concerned neighbors because the diplomat
was drunk, hitting his kids, dragging them by their hair
through the house. The police arrived as and was witnessed
to the brutality against the children and also established that
Mr Borodin was extremely drunk. They had no choice but
to arrest him to protect the children from further abuse. Immediately,

(50:21):
the Russian government came into action and putin the devil incarnate.
If you ask me, this is from Jasper demanded his
release and apologies from the Netherlands. Uh. That same afternoon,
I started listening to the latest stuff you should know,
Lo and behold it was about diplomatic community as a
podcaster to a close. I received a news update on

(50:41):
my phone that the Dutch government had apologized to the
Russians for the arrest because it violated the Treaty of Vienna.
Immunity one out again. UH. Since then, UNA SEF has
issued a statement that the well being of the children
should be more important than diplomatic community. Maybe something will
finally change, probably not person and I hope we declare
a board in persona non grata, but that seems unlikely. Anyway,

(51:05):
I want to share this actuality of your podcast with you.
It's pretty weird that it happened when it did, and
luckily it wasn't about floods or earthquakes. And that is
from Jasper in Amsterdam, one of my favorite cities. Nice.
Thanks a lot, Jasper. It's pretty interesting. I love it
when things happen like sympatico like that Confluence. Yeah. Um, well,

(51:25):
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(51:45):
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