Venereal Disease and the Lewis and Clark Expedition

Foreword

Foreword A mid-October 2002 telephone call from longtime friend, historian, and author Thomas P. Lowry was exciting and intriguing. He informed me that he and his wife, Beverly – his equal as a researcher – had finished a manuscript highlighting an often-ignored but lasting medical problem that haunted members of Lewis and Clark’s Corpsof Discovery,andtheNativepeoplestheyencountered,nearly two centuries ago. Tom inquired, ‘‘Would you be interested in reading the manuscript and, if warranted, writing the foreword?’’ After voicing concerns about time constraints and weighing them against a busy schedule, I answered, ‘‘Yes.’’ My decision to do so was reinforced by my interest in Lewis and Clark,which predated my infatuation with the Civil War.This later romance began in the winter of 1936–37, when my father, a Marine Corps veteran of the Great War and a Montana rancher, read to me JohnThomason’s Jeb Stuart. Some six years before, Sarah Evans Morse, my maternal grandmother – a women’s rights crusader, educator, and social worker – introduced me to the Corps of Discovery and to Lewis and Clark. This was only natural, because Sarah Evans had come to Montana in the mid-1890s, fresh out of college, to teach in the Indian School at Crow Agency. By 1908 she held elective office as superintendent of schools inYellowstone County, and for many years before herdeath on January 10, 1933, she served as executive secretary of the Monix x Foreword tana Tuberculosis Association, a position she had held since 1916. Herofficewas in the state capitol in Helena, and on my first visit to the building, as a first-grader, as well as on subsequent visits – the most recent in 1999 – I have always been impressed with the gigantic Charles M. Russell painting of the Corps of Discovery’s meeting with the Flathead Indians in Ross’s Hole. As a divorcée with only one child, Sarah Morse always spent Christmasvacationsatmyparents’Sarpy,Montana,ranch,bounded on two of the four fence lines by the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservations. On these visits she fired a youthful fantasy with Montana history, particularly the trials and tribulations of the Corps of Discovery. A born teacher, she took my brother and me on winter walks through the snow while sharing with us passages from the expedition’s journals. To make the walks more relevant, she assigned each of us a role: Sarah was Sacagawea; my brother was Meriwether Lewis; and I was William Clark, as I felt better able to relate him, both then as well as today. Following my introduction to the Civil War, and after a required course in Montana history in eighth grade, my interest in the Corps of Discovery ebbed for more than three decades. It did not return until the late 1960s, some twelve years after I joined the National Park Service as a historian. At that time, the service was preparing for publication, in 1975, of Lewis and Clark – Historic Places Associated withTheirTranscontinental Exploration (1804–1806). BecauseofmybackgroundandfamiliaritywithmostoftheMontanasites ,Iwaselatedtoworkcloselywiththeauthorandeditorsof thisproject.LikeallvolumesintheNationalSurveyof HistoricSites and Buildings series, the Lewis and Clark volumewas site-oriented. Having returned to my Montana roots, I read with keen interest the critically acclaimed and masterful Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis,Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of theWest by my friend xi Foreword Stephen Ambrose.The enthusiasm engendered by Ambrose’s blockbuster , which spent more than ten weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, and the approach of the Bicentennial of the Lewis andClarkExpeditionaffordedachallengingopportunity.InAugust 1999,Iledaneight-day,seven-nightvantourforHistoryAmericaof the route followed by the Corps of Discovery from the Great Falls of the Missouri to the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake Rivers at Lewiston, Idaho. This honed my knowledge of and appreciation for what they accomplished. Earlier,myyearsatmilitaryschoolandfouryearsspentintheU.S. Marine Corps during World War II introduced an unsophisticated youth to a major problem that has plagued the military since 1498 – venereal disease. Back at St. John’s Military Academy, I remember our rotc lectures on the subjects of health and sanitation, which included information about venereal disease, then a no-no in public high schools. It covered transmission of venereal disease, Capt. Allen E. Smith’s cautionary warning that you don’t get gonorrhea from toilet seats, and his stern words that the only sure prophylaxis is ‘‘to keepyour pecker in your pants.’’ In the Marine Corps, the bootcamplecturesweremorespecificandweresupplementedwith gruesomephotographsoftheravagescausedtothebodybysyphilis. There was the monthly ‘‘short arm’’ inspection...