A Grizzly in the Mail and Other Adventures in American History

10. Water Battle on the Missouri

10 WATER BATTLE ON THE MISSOURI The charge of the expedition is honorable to myself as it is important to my country. —Meriwether Lewis Years ago a man was deciding whether or not to leave his government job in Washington DC to travel to the Western Country . . . to unknown lands. It would be a journey through Native tribes that he assured his mother would be perfectly friendly. As he told her: “The charge of the expedition is honorable to myself, as it is important to my country. For its fatigues I feel myself perfectly prepared nor do I doubt my health and strength of constitution to bear me through it.” He decided to go, with “the most perfect preconviction in my own mind of returning safe.” Those are the words of Meriwether Lewis to his mother in a letter dated July 2, 1803. In a small way they reflect my story. One day in September 2001 I woke up in St. Louis, eight hundred miles west of Washington and in some ways thousands of miles 118 Water Battle on the Missouri from all I held dear. I wasn’t in Smithsonianland anymore. What had caused me to pick up and leave a secure federal position at the pinnacle of the museum world and move to a place that barely registers in the thoughts of an Easterner? It was Lewis and Clark fever, a dangerous history bug. I had accepted a position at the Missouri Historical Society as project educator on a team charged with developing a traveling exhibition about the Lewis and Clark expedition in commemoration of its bicentennial (2004–2006). In short, the opportunity to work on a high-profile national traveling exhibition was too good to pass up. My decision took me on a fascinating journey into a Western world brimming with present-day tension, one inhabited by both Lewis and Clark fanatics, passionate about the expedition and its place in America’s history, and a variety of tribal groups determined to speak truth about the expedition’s legacy. I stepped into this world after an innocent but transformational encounter with the explorers on their trail in Montana. During my entire school career in Pennsylvania I read only a few paragraphs about Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in history classes. I knew who they were, of course, but their story had not captured my imagination, perhaps because I had never traveled west. I was not even aware that Meriwether Lewis had stopped in my hometown, Lancaster, to meet with astronomer Andrew Ellicott on his way to Philadelphia while planning the expedition in 1803. One day, while working at the American History Museum, I caught the Lewis and Clark bug. A book group I belonged to had read Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage and invited a Smithsonian scholar and his Mandan (North Dakota Native) friend to join our discussion of the book. Their tales of adventures along the Lewis and Clark trail piqued my curiosity. The Trail West Shortly after that, I happily seized an opportunity to accompany a Smithsonian study tour along the expedition’s route in western Water Battle on the Missouri 119 Montana and Idaho. The eighteen-member group from across the nation gathered at Great Falls, Montana, on a hot day in August. My job as the Smithsonian representative and host of the group was to ensure that everyone had a good time and that the trip went smoothly. This was my first time in Montana and my immediate concern was fire: it was fire season and wild fires raged in parts of the state. I feared that road closures due to fires would affect our itinerary, and I did not want anything to spoil this trip. Ranging in age from eighteen to mid-seventies, our group members came from every region of the country, but our common fascination with the Lewis and Clark expedition led to a powerful bonding experience. Since we were bravely following in Lewis and Clark’s footsteps, what better way to begin the trip than with a hot (in the hundreds) afternoon float trip down the Missouri River? We put in east of the series of dams and power plants that have totally altered the spectacle that Lewis saw. In Great Falls today, it takes a powerful imagination to envision the river as it appeared two hundred years ago. In this ten-mile stretch of river, Lewis and...