The Beginning and the End: Lewis and Clark among the Upper Missouri River People

They were not the first white men native people had seen, and they would not be the last. However, to some extent the contact established by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark was both the beginning and the end of the world of upper Missouri River peoples. The white explorers represented the ties of trade and commerce that would enmesh native groups in an ongoing relationship with the United States and the use of force and exposure to disease that would eventually irreversibly weaken the tribes.¹ After the 1804 expedition, the upper Missouri River region would never be free of the influence of Americans. From this point on, citizens of the United States would conceive of the area as within their sphere of influence, a place to be improved, refined, incorporated. It would be a mistake to assume this was a natural occurrence or an inevitable event. Rather, examination shows a conscious, intentional attempt by Lewis and Clark to change and reshape the region to conform to their own concepts of nationality and power.

We might justifiably question why this small group of men, known to history as the Lewis and Clark expedition, but properly named the Corps of Discovery, believed that they could and should alter the world that they found west of the Mississippi River. The Corps of Discovery cannot be viewed as issuing from a major political power. It came from a small but expanding republic that venerated agriculture, Christianity, and private property rights. Still governed by an elite group of wealthy idealists, the United States had only fifteen years of experience under its new form of government and was testing its limits. One of those tests centered on the purchase of a huge amount of territory from imperial France in 1803. Usually a strict constructionist and proponent of small government, Thomas Jefferson expanded his outlook when presented with the opportunity to double the size of his nation.² The Louisiana Purchase represented a major undertaking for the young republic and brought it into a new role as an imperial power. To stake a claim to that new empire, President Jefferson proposed an extremely ambitious plan to traverse the territory. Thus was born the Lewis and Clark expedition.

The Corps of Discovery's impact on native peoples generally has been viewed as benign, if not positive. One noted historian of the Lewis and Clark expedition wrote that the captains' management of the Indians is "beyond praise," that "no more successful outcome is imaginable," and he goes on to characterize Lewis and Clark as both understanding and liking Indians.³ Today's historians should be more critical in bestowing praise for Lewis and Clark's relations with native peoples by considering the impacts on the tribes and peoples from their point of view.

Lewis and Clark were the first representatives of the United States to enter the area. These explorers in many ways reflected both the position and the expectations of their young country. Meriwether Lewis represented a generation of men raised with economic and social advantages and indeed was remarkable only for his close ties to the third President of the United States. Thomas Jefferson took a particular interest in this young man who would not stand out in a crowd for scholarly, educational, economic, or military achievements.⁴ Indeed, he seemed to offer little in the way of preparation for an important diplomatic mission to the western tribes. His brief military career began during the Whiskey Rebellion and included attendance at the signing of the Treaty of Greenville, which stripped Ohio lands from the Miami and Shawnee nations. In fact, Lewis represented the American group that ultimately posed the greatest threat to native peoples—the land speculators. Like many Virginians, Lewis looked to the opening of lands in Kentucky for future profit. After his stint in the army, he meant to go to Kentucky...