SYSK Selects: 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):
M Hi, s Y s K friends, It's me Josh
and for this week's s Y s K Select, I've
chosen how Lewis and Clark worked. A great episode from
two thousand thirteen. It reveals that the famed expedition could
have changed the history of relations between Native Americans and
European Americans, but sadly, the European Americans in charge ended

(00:22):
up going a different way. I hope you enjoyed this
eye opening episode about what could have been. Starting now,
welcome to Stuff you should Know from House Stuff Works
dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,

(00:43):
and there's Charles W. Lewis Bryant. Ye. I thought you
were gonna come in to this. Yeah, I thought, you know,
like I thought about it. You like not chuckle do
that dumb joke I want. I wondered if I was
related to um Mr Clark. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm just
gonna say I am from now on. She like, have
you heard of William Clark the explorer Lewis and Clark. Yeah,

(01:05):
well I'm Josh Clark because Clark's the unusual name. You
might be no, but I mean like his family, uh
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,

(01:29):
not like Lewis. He was semi literate. Yeah, I'm fairly literate. Yeah,
that's the big distinction. It is funny, like, have you
read some of his verbatim journal entries 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

(01:53):
boy writing in a Yeah. They were a good pair though. Yeah,
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,

(02:18):
well the ending is pretty tragic. No, but Louis Lewis
is manning 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

(02:39):
documentary last night. Four hours. Yeah, 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 watched it, you called it
a six part four hour Well they had it on

(03:02):
YouTube in six parts, but in actuality it's twelve partsious.
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?
Right there? You go? No? Alright, So Chuck um Lewis

(03:25):
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 Core of Discovery.

(03:48):
It sounds like a soccer team. Um it was. It
was the brainchild of Thomas Jefferson. Yeah, in the brain
child of t J. Because he's like, hey, I just
spot 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, it's

(04:09):
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,

(04:31):
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

(04:53):
it to the Americans. They're coming over, they want to talk.
So I think James Monroe was sent by Thomas J.
Everson with the a limit of ten million dollars to
do something to buy Florida and New Orleans or New Orleans.
For the ten million dollars, Monroe found out he could
get all of the Louisiana territory, which went up to Canada. Yeah,

(05:16):
Louisiana is really undersells it. It was. It went from
the Rockies all the way over to the colonies and
then up to Canada and down to the Gulf of Mexico. Yeah,
it was double the size of our country. Yeah, overnight.
So Monroe was like, I'll give you fifteen million dollars
for it. In the French are like sold. So he
bought eight hundred and twenty seven thousand square miles of

(05:40):
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 if
if it had gone a different way. The United States
could have ended it about the Mississippi River, which it
did at the time, and just beyond that on the

(06:03):
other side could have been Spain, right 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
sandwich kind of in there together. So we buy from

(06:25):
the French, we go fight the 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 going to 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 sudden, it was America. And that added

(06:48):
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 lew Us 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 him and see, like how great

(07:08):
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 of gave him this job to

(07:30):
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, who was his former captain I

(07:52):
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, there's a lot of conjecture about Meriwether

(08:14):
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 war on, people were like, well, he must
have been gay, and yeah, there's been a lot of
a lot of conjecture, and they have come up with
the idea that he probably wasn't gay, but that he

(08:37):
was um by 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. 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

(09:00):
water route to the sea that's really important for trade.
And also, hey, let's 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 slouch when it came to
this kind of stuff. His mother was a celebrated herb

(09:22):
doctor um in Virginia. Yes, she knew what she was doing,
and um, she kind of 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,

(09:44):
and basically he underwent this like grueling crash course of
everything from astronomy 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 philled Clark in
on a lot of it too. Yeah, also a lot
of what they might encounter in ways of uh, we'll

(10:06):
call them Indians for the purposes of the show, because
that's what they called them, right, And Jefferson's like, and
don't forget 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

(10:29):
any kind of weirdness or anything like that, Like, I'm
I was chosen to lead 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

(10:50):
ran it a bit like a democracy too. Yeah. In
the end 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

(11:10):
from summer to fall they kind of weeded out some
of the bad apples. Well, what's funny. One guy got
um 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

(11:30):
just had them doing hard labor the whole time. Wow.
Uh so um, 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 Um,

(11:53):
he was technically a man servant I guess, like a
valet or something like that to Clark out eye 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

(12:14):
seen black people before and they didn't have hang ups
obviously like white people did. 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 on the they were like, well, yeah,

(12:35):
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 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,

(12:57):
Louis purchased a dog for twenty dollars name saman And
they used to think it was scanning because these guys
um handwriting was so bad that for yeah, basically a century,
like everybody thought it was scanning 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,

(13:21):
that's the dog. That's the dog. Everybody, by the way,
had something named after them, and they had trouble coming
up with names for everything, like York, the York Islands
in 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.

(13:42):
At some point on this trip they had a lot
of horse. Yeah, they did. So, like you said, they
started in Pittsburgh, but the official 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 and started all their people

(14:05):
and ran them through like army training and took the
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 said let's do it because again,
ultimately Jefferson was looking for a northwest passage across the

(14:27):
continent to the Pacific, and he wanted to see if
you could basically ride a river all the way across
the country. Yeah. By the time, I think they were
about forty five people at first. But when they eventually
whittled it down. The official Corps discovery was thirty three people. Right.
So they head out and they start going upstream up
the Missouri River. And it was rough going at first

(14:48):
and literally pulling their boat out from outside the 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 Teton, Sioux or the Lakota. And they're actually warned

(15:08):
by previous American Indians, like, watch out for these guys.
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

(15:29):
think Lewis called them the pirates of the Missouri. But um,
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

(15:50):
the Teton Sioux, though, there was a standoff over a
canoe that they wanted and they're like, we're not giving
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, lead our women and children toward your really

(16:11):
cool boat that we've never seen and meet all you
guys and then y'all can have safe passage. So they
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 one about as

(16:34):
good as you could possibly hope for. Yeah, I mean
it was super peaceful. Um, they were than the Core Blood. Well,
they 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'd never been west of I think there's a saying

(16:56):
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
no trees, there's 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 Minotari or

(17:16):
Hidatsa Indians, right, and they decided, all right, this is
pretty good place to build. The camps sit here for
a few months, and they built Fort Manden, 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 in Okay, Chuck.

(18:09):
So we're at Fort Manden, which is where in South
Dakota I think Modakotas. They were having a good time
hanging out, having lots of sex with the local ladies. 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

(18:33):
very easily. So that was a big thing. Well that
was another thing about Louis too. Apparently like everybody else
in the expedition had sex with Indian women, and he
was like he stayed away from it. His journal entries
about like Indian sexual practices were very like snide. I
think is away one person put it um. Yeah, it's

(18:54):
just he's an odd duct. I get what if he
tried to put on loan 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. Yeah, burns when I burn, win
you be doesn't burn when Louis pas. Yeah. So apparently

(19:16):
burning when you pee like was a big thing unsure
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, so

(19:37):
Icago way or Icago Wea. I didn't mispronounce it. 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 on the expedition. Because this was an expedition, everyone
was expected to like make notes and and yeah, they
were all journal stuff down right. And Soccagea is mentioned

(20:01):
dozens of times in these journals because she did do
some outstanding stuff. Um, and she's mentioned phonetically, so it's
Socca go wella. Also, at some point it's also mentioned
that her name is Shoshone for bird woman, and the
Shoshone Scaga is bird and Wea is a woman, So

(20:24):
it's Chicago Wea, not Socca joeya. That's right. Well, I
mean that's a big point. It's true, although the kN
Burns thing, these historians all pronounced it differently, which was
sort of frustrating. Well, yeah, there's such a cowaka yeah,
and then sca joweyah. Yeah. One of the ladies called
her straight up Sacawa and I was like straight up,
so we right up. So she was very important because

(20:47):
A she was a translator. 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 Charboneau, yeah, who was pretty cool, grew up to
be pretty cool. Yeah. Sure, But Scagia, if we say

(21:10):
Sacajawea too, I think that's fair. Okay she Um, she
was sixteen at the time and she was married to Charbonneau.
She was one of two of his wives. Um and
I didn't hear anything about the other. Um Shoshone woman?
Did she not go along? I don't think? Okay, all right,
so um she John Baptiste and Toussaint were a family,

(21:34):
even though Sacagaia was Tusson'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 horses that they set out with,

(21:55):
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, of course. You know, you can't pull

(22:17):
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. Charboneau himself was described as quite average,
but Chicago Ay was the real deal, like one of

(22:40):
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 Charbonneau was doing.
But psyche Awa was swimming, retrieved the stuff. This is

(23:00):
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 he just stole William Clark's heart. He

(23:23):
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 baby, and he was
nicknamed Pompey because of his pompous little dancing. Antics like
Clark found him to be quite the little dancer. Um. So.

(23:45):
The other way that Sca Gawea was helpful to this
expedition was that she was a translator. She could speak
um Shoshone obviously um. She could also speak data and
so her husband could speak Hadata. So if she was
speaking to a Shoshoni, let's say they encountered a Shoshoni person,

(24:08):
the Shoshone would speak to sacagawey 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 tell William and
uh Merryweather what had been said in English. That was

(24:32):
the translation line and Sacagaweya was the pivotal point of
this as far as speaking to um plains tribes. 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're also trained in
plain sign language to Apparently there was a lot of
um gesturing that was fairly universal. That a lot of

(24:54):
the people who were recruited in St. Louis originally were
familiar with two. So they got along pre well. They
did all right. So after the Mandon villages, they broke
camp and went on um to the confluence of the
Yellowstone with the Missouri and entered the land where they
started seeing, like when they hit the planes, they started
seeing these crazy animals they've never seen before. Uh, it's

(25:16):
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
weird animals. Um. They actually sent a live prairie dog
back to Jefferson, which is pretty neat. It's hilarious and

(25:39):
it made it all the way. 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 crappy. In
their journals, they were like, I've never seen anything like this.
It took ten shots and we almost died. And the

(25:59):
grizzly bear, 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 they're like, huh right,
what should we do here? In equal parts north and south? Yeah,

(26:19):
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. So they
despite the fact that everyone disagreed, they followed them, and

(26:43):
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 are our
captains 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 along and they're doing
pretty well. They apparently they got to a point where, um,

(27:07):
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 their feet. Yeah, and they that meant
that now they had just left the Missouri and we're

(27:28):
going to hook up. First, they went onto 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 when he reached that ridge that he would
look and see just downhill to the ocean, and what

(27:51):
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 out the rocky mountains and even uh
even still, when they finally do think that they see
the ocean, they still were twenty five miles away from
it when they finally get to that point, yeah, which
we'll get to. Oh sorry, that's right. Uh. So what

(28:13):
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 portage was like carrying these boats. But also these

(28:34):
guys were wearing like moccasins and stuff, and they had
a huge problem with prickly pear, Yeah, which would just
go right through your moccasin. And 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.
Uh So on July twenty they arrived at another fork.

(28:54):
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 right before or right after they they

(29:16):
meet up with the Shoshoni. Have they met the Shoshoni yet? Uh? Well,
at this point Louis went off by himself, um, and
a couple of more people to find the Shoshoni, including
Sakaway 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.
We have a camp back here. We want you to

(29:38):
come hang out at. Well, they were in bad shape.
Apparently the Shoshoni were. Oh they were. 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
the women. Yeah, that Clark. Was that Clark or leew

(30:00):
Us I think at this point it was both who
who they came back with and said, hey, we found
some Shoshoni And she said, hey, that's actually my bff
from first grade. Yeah, because remember Psychic away I had
been um kidnapped and sold. So there were still members
of her tribe living around the rockies and um she
actually met up with them and with her brother who

(30:21):
was now chief. Yes, she was like your chief, you
know it, little sister. Anyway, 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 proceeded across the continental divide to the main
village with the Shoshonees and uh hard on a tour

(30:44):
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 of horse meat. Yeah, the Bitter Root Mountains.
It was pretty rough through Montana and Idaho. Uh and

(31:05):
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 it's when they got onto the Columbia River. Right. Well,
maybe is this where they were eating salmon and the

(31:27):
salmon was making them sick? Yea. 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 everybody violently ill in
the expedition, like this salmon is awful, yeah, or these
roots or whatever. I'll bet it was the roots that

(31:47):
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
the core discovery relied on friendly tribes. So like when

(32:10):
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, yeah, 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 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

(32:33):
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, mid October, and it floated down to the
Great Falls of the Columbia which is now Solilo Falls.

(32:54):
And 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, but you're right. It wasn't like
slugging through in the summertime, pulling that boat up stream,

(33:15):
stepping on prickly pear exactly. Uh. So this is where
on November seven, they thought that they saw the ocean. Uh,
it's actually a bay about twenty five miles inland, and
said ocean in view O c I N I love
the ocean O T E A N. In this the
same paragraph they misspelled ocean two different ways. Give him

(33:37):
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 we made it.
He was he was depressed, and he was like, this
isn't like the Atlantic Ocean. This is rocky and beating

(34:01):
us with waves, like the Oregon coast is rough. Uh.
And he didn't cotton to it, um. But what he
did cotton to was being an accurate dude by dead
reckoning over the course of over. He was only off
by forty miles in charting this this ride. That is
pretty amazing. He's pretty remarkable, so U Sokawa Um. One

(34:24):
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,
there's no way you can't let me not come with
you to see the Pacific Ocean itself. And they let

(34:47):
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 Clark like,
but they're talking about a whale. We should go get
some blubber and sea ways like, I'm there, I'm coming
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

(35:08):
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.
They were trying to decide what to do, and they
were technically they were waiting for a boat to come by,

(35:28):
to 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 they were supposed to be waiting for a boat.
What they were really doing was just sort of weighing
their options as to how best to go back and win.

(35:52):
And this is the really cool part. They put it
to a vote. They did put it to a vote. Um,
and then it was a vote that included an African
American and a woman and a Native American. Yeah, and
it was a whoaa and york both both their votes
were given equal weight to everybody else's. It was very cool.
Where to camp set up camp for the winter. Yeah,

(36:14):
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 with the return journey home.

(36:40):
All right, So here we are at Fort Clatsop, Oregon. Yeah,
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 they hauled butt on the
way back they did. Yeah, you know how it is

(37:01):
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 we've already
seen it. Yea been there. Um. But the group wasn't
as happy. Uh, they were irritable, especially Lewis. He kind
of fell into a depression on the way home. He
didn't Did he come out of it at all while

(37:23):
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
day and doing this and like the worst thing he
did was not journal you know. Um. Actually the worst

(37:44):
thing he did was on the way back. He stole
a canoe 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
in March six, they started back up the Colombia with
these new canoes, bartered for some horses, and camped with

(38:06):
the Nez Pierce for a month, and then they got
their horses back from the Nez Pierce, those horses that
those were there before they got back there to the
next piers. They bartered for some horses and then eventually
hooked back with the next Pierson camp for like a
month and got their horses back and got their horses back.
I think that's your favorite part of this, Mordin's. They're like, hey, guys,
were you hanging onto this for They also sunk their

(38:27):
canoes at a certain point and then went back and
got those to 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 on the entire journey, which means you have
to double back basically, which is in itself pretty remarkable. Uh.

(38:50):
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. They're like, we we've slacked off. Well, yeah,
because they were kind of, like I said, they were
holl and butt on the way home. Um, this is

(39:12):
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 black Feet Indian
or is it a Blackfoot Indian? I think? Okay? And
Um they rode away like the black Feet did, but

(39:33):
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 one was accidental. Um. Louis was actually shot
when he was mistaken for an elk while he was
out hunting with a member of the expedition Pierre Cruzette

(39:56):
and uh cruzat 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,
cruise I was like, I'm sorry, I thought you're an elk.
I'm blind in one eye, don't forget. Yeah, but I'm
the fiddle player and everybody loves me. And Louis was like,

(40:20):
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, 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.

(40:42):
Like I think the story is one of them around
it a band, 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 eventually went back to the
Mandan villages that is where the Charbonneau family, UM left
the expedition um and that is where a private John Coulter,

(41:04):
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 and they had
a following out pretty quickly after. And then this guy Coulter, Yeah,

(41:25):
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 reportedly, the only thing they did
not run out of on the way home was powder, lead, paper,

(41:46):
and ink, or at least that's what Kiinnburn says. You
know how they put a little cherry on top of everything, right. Uh. Finally,
in September of eighteen o six, on the twenty three,
they arrived victorious in St. Louis and the river was
lined with people cheering for them shooting their guns in
the air, and like we should point out everyone thought

(42:07):
they were dead. Oh yeah, 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 then they did, and then they did. And UM
covered about eight thousand miles over two years, four months

(42:28):
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 even a word? Ye drawn maps? UM describing the

(42:54):
Rocky mountains and Jeffery was like, rocky mountains, 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
had never seen any of this. They were blown away.
So um after this, uh, Clark 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

(43:15):
d and twenty acres and some Clark got six d 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. Yeah, um, which sucks.
He had. Apparently York had a difficult reentry into slavery,

(43:37):
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
was like, I know I don't get land all the 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, York is being kind of uppity
since he got back. He's not he's not being a

(43:59):
good slave of 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
that's really awful. I had no idea about that. Yeah,

(44:19):
and then there were there are 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
on it, and people like maybe not. Ken Burns just

(44:40):
does whatever his haircut tells him. I'm a sucker for
those things, though. I mean, I know a lot of
documentary filmmakers kind of poopoo him. Yeah. Well, I mean
it takes a certain interpretation, and that's that exactly Like
you said, Wait, hold on, I'm really disappointed in Clark.
I know that stinks. What do you want me to do?

(45:02):
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 go 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 to go. Clinton. Today, there are

(45:24):
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 some difficulties upon returning home.

(45:48):
He's made governor appointed governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory
and thinks started out well, but then he kind of
got into financial trouble. I think his territory got into
financial trouble, right, and he wasn't going to Washington. He
wasn't able to complete. The big thing was that he
wasn't able to complete what he was supposed to do,
which has come back and write about the whole thing. Yeah.

(46:08):
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 to plead for more money. For the territory. Yeah,
to kind of he had been called out on some
finances and he wanted to go clear that up. And

(46:30):
supposedly he had some some of his journals that he
wanted to turn in. Gotcha, 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 stinks. It is because he was groomed by Jefferson.
There was a family friend, like they were friends. So, um, Lewis,
I guess he's on his way to Washington. He's following

(46:51):
the Natchez Trail, Natchez trace, and he stops in Tennessee
at a place called the Grinders in Yeah, 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, and she just like screamed and ran away. Yeah,

(47:13):
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 Burns straight up said he
killed himself, and it was very sad Well, the reason
why it's in dispute because he was shot in the
abdomen and in the head. It's also an expert marksman. Yeah,

(47:36):
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 one at
your head and squeeze at the same time. Yeah, Like
I hadn't ye, um, but I mean I said he
was murdered for money, and what were you gonna say? Nothing? Okay? Uh. Sadly,

(47:56):
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 as teachers, and sadly America failed to learn the
lessons that they had brought back with them, because if

(48:16):
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.
There was one brief moment when it could have gone

(48:38):
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 time,

(48:58):
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.
That in justifies the means, and Lewis and Clark was like, look,
they're they're an example of that. Yeah. Clark eventually died

(49:20):
of natural causes in eight 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 courtisan that'd be a lady a quartier, right, Yeah,
he was princes and German Prince with German Prince Prince Wilhelm.

(49:41):
Okay um and uh, I think the oldest survivor lived
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 it or they're just like, we get it,
your legend, but we got this. Who knows. So that's
the Lewis and Clark expedition, the core of discoveries. The

(50:04):
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 appendicitist first Appendix. And uh,
it's pretty amazing. Yeah, they didn't have to eat each other. No,
they didn't even eat the guy who died of the
first appendix. No, just dog and horse. Uh. If you

(50:27):
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 they said search bar, it means
it's time for a listener mail, I'm going to call
this diplomatic community. Hey, guys. Last week, the Dutch police
arrested the Russian diplomat Dmitri Borrowdn in his home. They

(50:50):
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 Borden was
extremely drunk. They had no choice but to arrest him
to protect the children from further abuse. Immediately, the Russian
government came into action and putin the devil incarnate. If

(51:13):
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 podcast
drouwe to a close. I received a news update on
my phone that the Dutch government had apologized to the
Russians for the arrest because it violated the Treaty of Vienna.

(51:33):
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 personally. I hope we declare Borden
persona non grata, but that seems unlikely anyway. Wanted to
share this actuality of your podcast with you. It's pretty

(51:55):
weird that it happened when it did, and luckily it
wasn't about floods or earthquakes. 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, if you have a
confluence email you want to send us, you can send

(52:16):
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