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Wicazo Sa Review 19.1 (2004) 47-72



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Lewis and Clark among the Tetons

Smoking Out What Really Happened


Looking back at the telltale plume of smoke drifting toward the northwest on the early morning breeze of September 23, 1804, William Clark understood its meaning: the Tetons had discovered the expedition. He and Meriwether Lewis had hoped that their expedition could pass undetected through Teton territory. But it didn't. And for the following seven days and nights the expedition and the Tetons haltingly carried on a running negotiation as the three expedition boats navigated a complex course through Teton territory. Clark, the expedition's chief journalist, subsequently described the Tetons as a terrifying and treacherous people. His words shaped a negative image of the Tetons that has persisted for two centuries.

Perhaps it is not possible to ascertain what actually happened between September 23 and 30, 1804, as Lewis and Clark negotiated passage of their expedition through Teton territory. But that week's events have been presented by historians as pivotal in both the expedition's journey and in the history of the United States. Moreover, nearly all postexpedition chroniclers have uncritically used Clark's accounts to create a heroic image of Lewis and Clark and of their expedition and a malicious image of the Teton people. A close reading of Clark's writings and of other expedition texts, however, reveal factual and logical inconsistencies that suggest alternative explanations of that week's interactions between the expedition and the Tetons. The Tetons, it turns out, employed an array of strategies in attempting to get trade goods [End Page 47] from the heavily laden boats. Some of their strategies were indeed confrontational, but the texts do not support characterizing them as malicious. The actions of Lewis and Clark, on the other hand, may have been far less heroic than historians have heretofore allowed, and the captains themselves may have used the expedition texts to cover up their devious deeds.

Background

President Jefferson wrote out specific instructions to Lewis regarding the expedition. They covered a wide range of tasks of scientific and economic interest. Writing to Lewis on June 20, 1803, Jefferson's instructions with regard to interactions with Indians were quite explicit:

In all your intercourse with the natives treat them in the most friendly & conciliatory manner which their own conduct will admit; allay all jealousies as to the object of your journey, satisfy them of its innocence, make them acquainted with the position, extent, character, peaceable & commercial dispositions of the U.S., of our wish to be neighborly, friendly & useful to them, & of our dispositions to a commercial intercourse with them.
(Thwaites 1969, 7: 250)

Seven months later, in the wake of the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson amended his instructions by elaborating on the latter point of that letter: "we are now authorized to propose to them in direct terms the institution of commerce with them." Lewis was also instructed to tell the Indians that "their late fathers, the Spaniards have agreed to withdraw all their troops [and] have surrendered to us all their subjects Spanish and French [and] that henceforward we [the United States] become their fathers and friends" (Thwaites 1969, 7: 292). In short, the expedition was to be friendly to all Indian nations it encountered, inform them that the United States had acquired sovereignty over their lands from Spain, pursue commercial relationships with them, and receive permission from them to proceed on and to fulfill its other objectives.

Of all the Indian nations that Jefferson could imagine Lewis and Clark encountering, he mentioned only one, the Sioux, by name. In his January 22, 1804, letter of instructions to Lewis, he wrote:

although you will pass through no settlement of the Sioux (except seceders) yet you will probably meet with parties of them. [O]n that nation we wish most particularly to make a friendly impression, because of their immense power, and because we learn they are very desirous of being on the most friendly terms with us.
(Thwaites 1969, 7: 293) [End Page...

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