In Search of York: The Slave Who Went to the Pacific with Lewis and Clark by Robert B. Betts (review)

72 Western American Literature In Search of York: The Slave Who Went to the Pacific with Lewis and Clark. By Robert B. Betts. (Boulder: Colorado Associated University Press, 1985. 182 pages, $25.00.) Although the writer of this speculative biography specifically disclaims having presented a “definitive portrait of York,” terming that impossible, Robert B. Betts’work persuades the reader that the biographer’s “search” has been substantially successful. Where specific materials are lacking, he turns to what historians say of the conditions and activities of blacks, slaves and freed, in the early nineteenth century. York was probably born in the mid-1770s, grew up a companion to William Clark, later a co-captain of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and became Clark’sbody servant in about 1784, assuming the highest status a slave could attain. He accompanied his master on the historic exploration, and the journals of the explorers attest to his numerous contributions to their success. Only after the successful return of the expedition to St. Louis in Septem­ ber, 1806, does the real “search” begin. Not freed at once by Clark, as many believe, York continued as his servant, traveling extensively with him and probably present at his 1808 wedding. But Clark noted in 1809 that a different servant traveled with him; and a previously unpublished letter to Clark from a nephew, John O’Fallon, written in May of 1811, revealed that York had been, for almost certainly a year, a hired-out slave in Louisville, Kentucky, with a master who mistreated him. The nephew adds that “he appears wretched under the fear he has incurred your displeasure ... he sorely repents of whatever misconduct of his that might have led to such a breach.” Shortly thereafter, Betts believes, and not later than 1815, Clark freed York. One of two versions of the rest of York’s life, and perhaps the more credible, is found in notes made by Washington Irving after Clark told him in 1832 that he had freed his slaves, giving one a wagon and six horses to haul freight between Nashville and Richmond. Irving wrote: “The waggoner was York. . . . He could not get up early enough in the morning—his horses were ill-kept—two died—the others grew poor. He sold them, was cheated—entered into service—fared ill. . . . He determined to go back to his old master . . . but was taken with the cholera and died in Ten­ nessee.” Interestingly, Betts does not find entirely incredible another version of York’s later years, as he reports a story by fur trapper Zenas Leonard, of hav­ ing encountered in a Crow village in 1832 and again in 1834, an elderly Negro man who said he had been with Lewis and Clark, returned to the mountains, and lived with “perfect peace and satisfaction.” Betts has paid “a debt long overdue” in this book both interesting and scholarly about the life of the one member of the historic expedition who was not free. REX ROBINSON Logan, Utah ...