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When Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark into the West, he patterned their mission on the methods of Enlightenment science: to observe, collect, document, and classify. Such strategies were already in place for the epic voyages made by explorers like Cook and Vancouver. Like their contemporaries, Lewis and Clark were more than representatives of European rationalism. They also represented a rising American empire, one built on aggressive territorial expansion and commercial gain.

But there was another view of the West: that of the native inhabitants of the land. Their understandings of landscapes, peoples, and resources formed both a contrast and counterpoint to those of Jefferson's travelers. This part of the exhibition presents five areas where Lewis and Clark's ideas and values are compared with those of native people. Sometimes the similarities are striking; other times the differences stand as a reminder of future conflicts and misunderstandings.

Discovering Diplomacy

One of Lewis and Clark's missions was to open diplomatic relations between the United States and the Indian nations of the West. As Jefferson told Lewis, "it will now be proper you should inform those through whose country you will pass . . . that henceforth we become their fathers and friends." When Euro-Americans and Indians met, they used ancient diplomatic protocols that included formal language, ceremonial gifts, and displays of military power. But behind these symbols and rituals there were often very different ways of understanding power and authority. Such differences sometimes made communication across the cultural divide difficult and open to confusion and misunderstanding.

An important organizing principle in Euro-American society was hierarchy. Both soldiers and civilians had complex gradations of rank to define who gave orders and who obeyed. While kinship was important in the Euro-American world, it was even more fundamental in tribal societies. Everyone's power and place depended on a complex network of real and symbolic relationships. When the two groups met-whether for trade or diplomacy-each tried to reshape the other in their own image. Lewis and Clark sought to impose their own notions of hierarchy on Indians by "making chiefs" with medals, printed certificates, and gifts. Native people tried to impose the obligations of kinship on the visitors by means of adoption ceremonies, shared names, and ritual gifts.

Pipe tomahawk

Pipe tomahawks are artifacts unique to North America-created by Europeans as trade objects but often exchanged as diplomatic gifts. They are powerful symbols of the choice Europeans and Indians faced whenever they met: one end was the pipe of peace, the other an axe of war. Lewis's expedition packing list notes that fifty pipe tomahawks were to be taken on the expedition.

Geography

In the exploration instructions prepared for Lewis, Jefferson directed that his explorers record "the face of the country." Geography, especially as recorded on maps, was an important part of the information collected by the Corps of Discovery. In planning the expedition, Lewis and Gallatin collected the latest maps and printed accounts portraying and describing the western country. This visual and printed data was incorporated into a composite document-the Nicholas King 1803 map-which the expedition carried with them at least as far as the Mandan villages. As Lewis and Clark traversed the country, they drew sketch maps and carefully recorded their astronomical and geographic observations. Equally important, they gathered vital knowledge about "the face of the country" from native people. During winters at Fort Mandan on the Missouri in 1804-1805 and at Fort Clatsop on the Pacific Coast in 1805-1806 the explorers added new details from their sketch maps and journals to base maps depicting the course of the expedition. The first printed map of the journey did not appear until 1814 when Nicholas Biddle's official account of the expedition was published in Philadelphia and London.

Euro-American explorers were not the only ones to draw maps of the western country. As every visitor to Indian country soon learned, native people also made sophisticated and complex maps. Such maps often covered thousands of miles of terrain. At first glance Indian maps often appear quite different from those made by Euro-Americans. And there were important differences that reflected distinctive notions about time, space, and relationships between the natural and the supernatural worlds. William Clark was not the only expedition cartographer to struggle with those differences. But the similarities between Indian maps and Euro-American ones are also worth noting. Both kinds of maps told stories about important past events, current situations, and future ambitions. Both sorts of maps used symbols to represent key terrain features, major settlements, and sacred sites. Perhaps most important, Euro-Americans and Native Americans understood that mapping is a human activity shared by virtually every culture.

Nicholas King's 1803 Pre-Expedition Map

In March 1803, War Department cartographer Nicholas King compiled a map of North America west of the Mississippi in order to summarize all available topographic information about the region. Representing the federal government's first attempt to define the vast empire later purchased from Napoleon, King consulted numerous published and manuscript maps. The composite map reflects Jefferson and Gallatin's geographical concepts on the eve of the expedition. It is believed that Lewis and Clark carried this map on their journey at least as far as the Mandan-Hidatsa villages on the Missouri River, where Lewis annotated in brown ink additional information obtained from fur traders.

Indian Map of Columbia and Snake Rivers

Although there are journal notes stating that Indians provided geographical information for Lewis and Clark and drew maps on animal skins or made rough sketches in the soil, no original examples survive. However, there are several collaborative efforts in which members of the Corps redrew Indian sketches often combining their own observations with Indian information. This sketch map found in one of William Clark's field notebooks is a good example of a map derived from Indian information. It is a diagram of the relative location of tributaries of the Columbia and Snake (Lewis) rivers in present-day eastern Washington and Oregon.

Missouri Route Map near Fort Mandan

Throughout the expedition, William Clark prepared a series of large-scale route maps, with each sheet documenting several days' travel. On these sheets he recorded the course of rivers navigated, mouths of tributary streams, encampments, celestial observations, and other notable features. Big River on Sitting Rabbit's map ( above) is identified as Cannon Ball River on Clark's map and Beaver Creek is recorded as Warraconne River or "Plain where Elk shed their horns," by Clark.

Clark's Map of Midwestern Indian Settlements

Following his appointment as governor of the Missouri Territory in 1813, William Clark sketched this map of various Indian tribes and villages throughout the Missouri and Illinois territories, showing the locations of numerous forts and settlements. He prepared it in response to British incursions on the frontier during the War of 1812, when it was feared that the Indians, many of them allied with the British, would attack white settlements. The map also reflects Clark's continuing post-expedition interest in Indian activities having been appointed superintendent of Indian affairs at St. Louis in 1807.

First Published Map of Expedition's Track

This was the first published map to display reasonably accurate geographic information of the trans-Mississippi West. Based on a large map kept by William Clark, the engraved copy accompanied Nicholas Biddle's History of the Expedition (1814). As the landmark cartographic contribution of the expedition, this "track map" held on to old illusions while proclaiming new geographic discoveries. Clark presented a West far more topographically diverse and complex than Jefferson ever imagined. From experience, Clark had learned that the Rockies were a tangle of mountain ranges and that western rivers were not the navigable highways so central to Jefferson's geography of hope.

Calculating Distance

In order to make astronomical observations that would aid in calculating distances, the Corps took a sextant on their journey. On July 22, 1804, while the expedition was above the mouth of the Platte River in eastern Nebraska, Lewis gave a detailed description of the operation of the sextant and other tools that reveals his struggle to use the complicated instruments. A select number of books were taken on the expedition including British astronomer Nevil Maskelyne's Tables Requisite to be Used with the Nautical Ephemeris for Finding the Latitude and Longitude at Sea.

Animals

Jefferson subscribed to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment notion that assembling a complete catalog of the Earth's flora and fauna was possible. In his instructions, he told Lewis to observe "the animals of the country generally, & especially those not known in the U.S." The Corps of Discovery was the first expedition to scientifically describe a long list of species. Their journals, especially those kept by Lewis, are filled with direct observations of the specimens they encountered on the journey. Through objective measurements and anatomical descriptions, they defined various species previously unknown to Euro-Americans.

Indians studied animal behaviors to understand moral lessons. Animals were beings addressed respectfully as "grandfather" or "brother." Because animals intersected the worlds of the sacred and the profane, Indians regarded them as intermediaries between the human and spiritual realms.

Representing Beings

The Indian sense of "personhood" extends far beyond the western conception of human beings. In Indian culture animal people, plant people, sky peopleCall are beings in their own right. Indian art portrays a being's inner essence, not its physical form. The Columbia River artist who created this twined circular basket decorated it with images of condors, sturgeons, people, and deer-abstractions that are given equal importance in the woven pattern. This nineteenth-century Sioux clay and wood pipe portrays a buffalo, whose spirit, or Tananka, cares for children, hunters, and growing things. It may have be created as a presentation pipe.

The Power of the Bear

Artist George Catlin painted the scene of a dance held in preparation for a traditional Sioux bear hunt in 1832. These dances were performed in order to communicate with "the Bear Spirit." According to Catlin, the Sioux believe this spirit "holds somewhere an invisible existence that must be consulted and conciliated." This clay Sioux pipe bowl probably depicts the bear's role as teacher and transmitter of power.

Dressed in Courage

In both Euro-American and native cultures, clothing communicated messages about the wearer's biography, rank, and role in society. In both cultures, a warrior's clothing was his identity and men entered battle dressed in regalia that displayed their deeds and status. Symbolic insignia revealed a complex code about who a man was and what he had accomplished. But differences did exist. For instance, Plains Indian men wore clothing that incorporated symbols of their spirit visions, tribal identity, and past deeds as manifestations of the spiritual powers that helped them in battle. European soldiers wore similar symbols but as a way to display and inspire uniform loyalty to their nation.

Plants

In his instructions to Lewis, Jefferson directed the party to observe and record "the soil & face of the country, it's growth & vegetable productions, especially those not of the U.S. . . . the dates at which particular plants put forth or lose their flower, or leaf . . . ." The study and collection of plants was one of Jefferson's life-long pursuits. When he instructed the Corps in their approach to cataloging the country's flora, Jefferson again set the pattern for subsequent explorations. Jefferson, however, was not purely motivated by science; plants thought to have medicinal properties, like tobacco and sassafras, were important to the U.S. economy. As the Napoleonic Wars swept Europe and affected exports to the United States, there was a call to reduce America's dependence on foreign medicine and find substitutes on native soil.

Indians and Europeans had been exchanging knowledge about curing and health for three centuries, yet they still held very different beliefs. Indian doctors focused on the patient's relationship to the animate world around him. Euro-American doctors saw the body as a mechanical system needing regulation. Meriwether Lewis, instructed by America's foremost physician Dr. Benjamin Rush, University of Pennsylvania botanist Benjamin Barton, and his own mother, a skilled herbalist, was to serve as the Corps doctor, but William Clark also became adept in treating various illnesses. Though Clark rejected Indian explanations, he often turned to Indian techniques when members of his own party became ill.

Flora Americae Septentrionalis

Frederick Pursh, an emigrant from Saxony who worked with botanist Benjamin Smith Barton in Philadelphia, published the first botanical record of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Pursh received a collection of dried plants from Lewis, which he classified and incorporated into his Flora Americae Septentrionalis. The volume is open to Clarkia pulchella, a member of the evening primrose family, which Pursh named in honor of William Clark. Pursh took some of the Lewis and Clark specimens to London to finish the book, including the silky lupine specimen to the far left.

Sources for the Lewis & Clark Expedition Maps of 1803 and 1814

The two key maps that bracket the Lewis and Clark expedition are the Nicholas King map of 1803 and the Track Map of 1814.

Nicholas King drew upon the most current information in creating his map. This presentation shows how existing maps were used to form King's map, which it is believed, Lewis and Clark took on their journey.

The 1814 Track Map was the landmark product of the expedition. Based on a large map kept by William Clark in his St. Louis office, this map shows the geographic exploration made by Lewis and Clark. It was part of the expedition's official publication.

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Lewis & Clark - Lewis & Clark and the Revealing of America | Exhibitions (Library of Congress)

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When Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark into the West, he patterned their mission on the methods of Enlightenment science: to observe, collect, document, and classify. Such strategies were already in place for the epic voyages made by explorers like Cook and Vancouver. Like their contemporaries, Lewis and Clark were more than representatives of European rationalism.

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Expedition boats

Deep in the murky currents of nautical history lay the dim outlines of the many different types of watercraft that were afloat on North American waterways in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. For the most part, their identifiable shapes, dimensions, and uses have long since fallen away from the wood, canvas, rope, and metal fittings that once differentiated them-the flat boat, broadhorn, bateau, galley, keelboat, gundalow, canoe, barge, pettyauger, Schenectady boat, and many more. 1 Aside from the very detailed drawings of the barge or "keeled boat" that Clark left us, we remain in the dark as to the structural details of the other watercrafts the Corps of Discovery used-two large rowboats with sails, which they usually called pirogues; 2 a total of thirteen dugout canoes that they carved themselves, plus two Indian-made canoes they acquired (one they "took," the other they bought) on the lower Columbia. The Corps also used at least three bull boats and a raft.

In addition, they carried the hardware to be assembled into Lewis's hide-covered " iron-framed boat." Lewis had designed it for use as the expedition's main cargo conveyance on the upper reaches of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers; the frame would be dismantled for the expected portage between the headwaters of the two rivers, and covered again with hides on the other side. When the Great Falls of the Missouri proved to be as far as they could go with the larger of their two pirogues, the only option was to switch to Lewis's "favorite boat." But owing to several misjudgments on Lewis's part, his "experiment" failed, and to take it's place the men had to carve two more dugout canoes.

This article deals with the two pirogues that served as supplementary cargo carriers accompanying the barge from the mouth of the Missouri to the Mandan villages, one of which became the command boat on the return trip from the Marias River to St. Louis. Clark left us only a rough sketch of one of them (Figure 3), evidently drawn in haste, possibly to illustrate some point he was trying to make with the men in command of the two pirogues about how, and how much, they were to be loaded. With this sketch, plus the crew assignments for each of the three outbound boats, some passing remarks in the journals, and consideration of what is known about the history of small crafts in America, it has been possible for nautical historians such as Richard Boss to create reasonable replicas. 3

Red pirogue

Lewis left Pittsburgh on August 31, 1803, with a crew of eleven hands, seven of whom were soldiers, plus "three young men on trial they having proposed to go with me throughout the voyage." (Among the fourteen may have been George Shannon and John Colter.) He had hired a pilot named T. Moore, who was paid $70 to go as far as the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville. 4 Four days out of Pittsburgh, on September 4, Lewis wrote that "the Perogue was loaded as his been my practice since I left Pittsburgh, in order as much as posseble to lighten the boat [barge]." The description of the use of his "Perogue" suggests that it was a large open boat with a capacity in excess of what might be carried in a dugout canoe. His next words confirm that assertion:

The man who conducted her called as in distress about an hour after we had got under way, we came too and waited her coming up found she had sprung a leek and had nearly filled; this accedent was truly distressing, as her load consisting of articles of hard-ware, intended as presents to the Indians got wet and I fear are much damaged.

He put up with it for another few days, and when he arrived in Wheeling, (West) Virginia on the eighth, he "purchased a perogue and hired a man to work her." The next day he reported that the previous night he had "had my perogues covered with oil-cloth, but the rain came down in such torrents that I found it necessary to have them bailed out freequently in the course of the night." It is clear that he now had two auxiliary boats, but whether they were long narrow dugouts or larger built-up boats is not clear. By "work her," in the first instance, did he mean "paddled," or "piloted"? 5 Was this one a canoe or a boat made of planks? He hardly had enough men to crew the barge and two pirogues. Did he abandon the pirogue he left Pittsburgh with? Since the purpose of the extra watercraft was to lighten the barge and thereby facilitate its progress down the shallow late-summer Ohio, logic suggests that they were larger than dugout canoes, and would have required more than a one-man crew. It is possible that this is the boat which became known, after receiving a fresh coat of paint, as the red pirogue or, alternatively, the "French pirogue," because it was manned by nine of the French Canadian who were hired at St. Charles to assist the Corps as far as the Mandan villages.

When the expedition reached the mouth of the Marias River on June 10, 1805, the captains chose to leave the red pirogue there and proceed with the smaller white one. While seven of the men dug a cache, and a few others set up a rope walk to make a new tow-rope for the white pirogue, the rest of the party was busy beaching and hiding the other boat. As Lewis explained it, "we drew up the red perogue into the middle of a small Island at the entrance of Maria's river, and . . . made her fast to the trees to prevent the high floods from carrying her off put my brand on several trees standing near her"-to keep Indians from disturbing her, according to Sergeant Ordway-"and covered her with brush to shelter her from the effects of the sun." However, en route home on July 28, 1806, Lewis and his detachment, paddling the canoes and rowing the white pirogue down the Missouri from the Falls, stopped at the mouth of the Marias to retrieve the property they had cached there, and re-launch the red pirogue. Unfortunately, they found the boat "so much decayed that it was impossible with the means we had to repare her," so they hastily salvaged all the nails "and other ironwork's" they could, and headed downriver. Was she really suffering from rot? Or had the spring flood, and the debris it carried, stove in her hull?

On the basis of selected 18th-century documentation, Richard Boss concluded that the red pirogue may have had a length of 41 feet 7 inches, a beam of 9 feet 4 inches, and a capacity of 9 tons. Boss speculated that both pirogues were flat-bottomed, with sharp-angled chines. 6 That would made them akin to the common bateau, or the famed Schenectady boat that was frequently used for freighting on New England rivers between 1790 and 1825-although neither captain used that name in reference to their own pirogues. Clark, in his journal entry for September 20, 1806, related that at least two of five traders' boats they saw that day were from Canada. He noted that they were "in the batteaux form, . . .

their length about 30 feet and the width 8 feet & pointed bow & Stern, flat bottom and rowing Six ores only the Skeneckeity form. those Bottoms are prepared for the navigation of this river, I beleive them to be the best Calculated for the navigation of this river of any which I have Seen. . . . they are wide and flat not Subject to the dangers of the roleing Sands, which larger boats are on this river.

None of the journalists mentioned any specific differences between the Canadian traders' boats and the expedition's pirogues. 7

White pirogue

This drawing 8 provides the only visual clue left us as to any aspect of either one of the pirogues. The arrangement of six rowlocks tells us that it depicts the white, or "Soldiers" pirogue as Clark described it on May 13, 1804. The figures 4 and 6 presumably indicate the number of "tuns" of cargo that could be carried in each compartment; the other two symbols are of uncertain meaning. If "tuns" is a Clark-ism for tons, then eight tons, or 16,000 pounds, would be its carrying capacity-the burden, or burthen as it was commonly spelled-with a potential maximum load of 14 tons, or 28,000 pounds. Coincidentally, Clark's "misspelling" was also a valid seaman's term denoting a flexible unit of volume equal either to the space occupied by a cask or barrel with a capacity of about 250 gallons-perhaps 40 cubic feet-or else the volume of 2000 lbs. of water-about 32 cubic feet. 9 On one occasion Lewis implied the solution to this little conundrum when he estimated that the upper Osage River would be navigable by "perogues of eight or ten tons burthen," implying that that was the standard size. From that we can infer that Clark had in mind tons rather than tuns. 10

The end at right is the stern, with the rudder outside of it and the tiller inside. The line looping upward from it might represent a rope that would have been used when cordelling (towing) to control the distance of the stern from the riverbank. Another rope, not shown, would have been attached on the bow (left) at or below the waterline, to cordell the pirogue upstream and around snags or other obstacles in the shallows.

Early in July of 1803, a scant month before Lewis would finally leave Pittsburgh and head down the Ohio on his new barge, secretary of War Henry Dearborn issued an order to Captains Russell Bissell and Amos Stoddard at Fort Kaskaskia in the Illinois Country, southeast of St. Louis:

You will be pleased to furnish one Sergeant & Eight good Men who understanding rowing a boat to go with Capt. Lewis as far up the River as they can go & return with certainty before the Ice will obstruct the passage of the river. They should be furnished with the best boat at the Post & take in provisions for Capt. Lewis's party & themselves. If an officer should be inclined to go with the boat, he should be prefered. It would be desirable that the party should go voluntarily, if a sufficient number of suitable men should offer. 11

This was undoubtedly the boat the captains painted white so that it could easily be distinguished at a distance from the other one, which they painted red. It may have been built-up of tulip poplar planks, which was the preferred material for boat-building in the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys. 12 Clark wrote in his "Remarks" for February 23, 1805 at Fort Mandan, that the men "got the poplar perogue out of the ice," which may be interpreted as confirmation that the white pirogue was the one acquired at Fort Kaskaskia.

Nautical historian Richard Boss, who built the scale models of the two pirogues pictured here (Figures 2 and 3) concluded that all available evidence suggests that the expedition's white pirogue may have been 39 feet long, with a beam of 8 feet 8 inches. 13 That would mean that its optimum capacity would have been 8 tons of cargo, plus six oarsmen, a helmsman, and a bowman (the first syllable rhymes with now).

Fully loaded, the white pirogue would have drawn about 20 inches of water, leaving 19 inches of freeboard-the distance between the water and the lowest point on the gunwales (pronounced gunnels). Each of the five-foot cargo compartments could have been loaded one foot higher than the gunwales (Figure 4). On May 6, 1804, Lewis, who was still in St. Louis, wrote to Clark requesting that he send the "small perogue" down to St. Louis to have "way-strips" added atop her gunwales. Way-strips, better known as wash-strakes, helped to prevent spray from splashing into the boat. Clark received the letter on the seventh via John Colter, and immediately dispatched Sgt. Ordway to St. Louis with "a perogue," presumably the white one. Richard Boss included wash-strakes on his model of the white pirogue, reinforced by wooden brackets (not visible) called poppets, which would support the rowlocks-the notches serving as thole-pins. Each oar is secured to the thole-pin by means of a grommet, which is a triple ring made of a single strand of rope wrapped around the loom where it rests in the oar-lock, looped with a twist over the thole-pin, then back around the loom and tied off. (See the illustration and descriptionin the article, "Keelboat: Barge or Boat?".)

The white perogue served as the expedition's flagship from Fort Mandan to the Falls of the Missouri. The naval pennant signifying the captains' presence on board flew from a pole attached to the tip of the sprit, the single spar that gave the spritsail its name. Both the spritsail and the square mainsail were "loose-footed," that is, without booms or spars at their bottoms. They were controlled by ropes either tied to cleats, or hand-held by a crewman who could simply let go of them if a strong wind pressed the boat too much.

The awning at the stern sheltered one or both of the captains from sun and rain and, on the day in early June of 1805 when Clark recorded that Sacagawea had fallen ill, they made room for her in its shade. "I move her to the back part of our Covered part of the Perogue which is Cool," he wrote, "her own situation being a verry hot one in the bottom of the Perogue exposed to the Sun." On the return journey down the Missouri in 1806, Lewis replaced the torn and useless canvas awning with stitched-together elk skins.

Crews

Four of the white pirogue's six oars rest in their rowlocks in the cramped bow. They are single-banked, which means that one oarsman would have been seated on each thwart (bench) facing astern (with his back to the camera). The thwarts are close together, and the handles of the oars overlap one another, so the oarsmen would have to carefully coordinate their strokes. They could take simultaneous strokes, but they would have to alternate their pulling and returning motions. That is, when the blade is deep in the water, the oarsman's hands are high in the air, and on the return stroke, when the blade is out of the water, his hands are low. So, as long as their strokes were timed so that hands were high on one side, while low on the other, the oar handles, or looms, would oppose each other in continuous circles.

In a letter to Lewis (who was in St. Louis) on May 13, 1804, Clark had written from Camp Dubois that their flotilla would depart the next day in the "Boat of 22 oars, a large Perogue of 7 oares" manned by 8 Frenchmen, and "a Second Perogue of 6 oars Complete with Sails 14 &c. &c." (the so-called white pirogue) manned by soldiers. The captains revealed more details in their Detachment Orders of May 26, 1804, which suggest that one of the qualifications of the sergeants was competency in all aspects of handling boats under oar and sail. In professional terms, within the limits of river navigation, they were "able seaman," although they were never called that. Aside from the captains, the only other men with like qualifications were Pierre Cruzatte, François Labiche, and perhaps George Drouillard.

From Camp Dubois to Fort Mandan the white pirogue was known as the "Soldiers" boat because it was under the command of Corporal Richard Warfington, and crewed by his five soldiers, Privates John Boley, John Dame, Robert Frazer, Ebenezer Tuttle, and Isaac White-plus John Robinson, perhaps-all of whom would help man the barge on its return trip to St. Louis from Fort Mandan in the spring of 1805. Boley, Dame, Tuttle and White were from Fort Kaskaskia

The captains' original plan, first mentioned in Clark's Field Notes on July 4, 1804, was to send the white pirogue back to St. Louis from the mouth of the Platte River with reports to be forwarded to President Jefferson. For the next few weeks they kept that in mind, and continued to prepare for it by drawing maps and writing dispatches (see journal entries for July 24 and August 12, 1804). Evidently they had postponed that plan by the time they arrived at the Platte on July 21, for they proceeded on from there without mentioning it. On September 16, however, because increasing numbers of sandbars were impeding the progress of the barge, and they were losing time. For that reason, wrote Clark, they decided to move some of the barge's cargo to the white pirogue "& detain the Soldiers untill Spring & Send them from our winter quarters." That was a practical expedient, for the barge could easily return to St. Louis on the spring freshet with the large quantity of mineralogical, botanical and other specimens, and "Donations" of gifts from Indians, to President Jefferson and Benjamin Smith Barton, which might not have fit into the white pirogue.

Poling

Setting poles are slung from the gunwales. Lewis reported that the stem of the "narrow leaf willow" ( Salix longifolia) was ideally suited for this purpose. "It is seldom seen larger than a mans arm," he wrote, "and scarcely [ever] rises higher than 25 feet. the wood is white light and tough, and is generally used by the watermen for setting poles in preference to anything else." On one occasion, according to Sergeant Gass, they came upon "an old Indian camp, where we found some of their dog-poles, which answer for setting poles." 15

By the summer of 1805, most of the iron tips of their original poles had been lost, and Lewis noticed, on July 23, that the riverbed stones were so smooth that "the points of their poles sliped in such manner that it increased the labour of navigating the canoes very considerably." Fortunately, he had brought along a "parsel of giggs" for spearing fish or frogs, and "made the men each atatch one of these to the lower ends of their poles with strong wire, which answered the desired purpose."

Sailing

During the nearly 600 days when the Corps of Discovery was on one river or another, they were under sail a little more than one-tenth of the time. The job of rowing, poling, cordelling, or warping a boat up a river, day after day, required some training and experience. Landlubbers had to be "quick studies." No matter how small the crew, each member had to learn to be part of a team that was different from a squad of army riflemen. They might casually admire the scenery or the wildlife, or shake off mosquitoes and gnats, but their minds had to be focused primarily on the job. Their days would have been measured by a more or less continuous flow of commands from the bowman, who barked orders to the stroke-oar-the aftermost oarsman in the boat, from whom the others took their visual cues for pace, length and depth of stroke. The stroke-oar would have been the seventh in the red pirogue, and the aftermost starboard oar in the white pirogue.

Ascending a river, the crew's reactions had to be swift and sure; lapses could cost precious headway in the blink of an eye. Descending a river was no less demanding. The bowman had keep his boat at least slightly ahead of the current in order to maintain control of it if a hazard is encountered. A boat drifting freely on the water is at the current's mercy, and since flowing water is essentially chaotic, with many forces producing random flows near the surface, a boat in the river's grasp will be forced to travel wherever the water takes it. Failure to avoid a collision with a raft of logs could result in capsizing the boat and sweeping the crew beneath the logs. Every pilot and helmsman, and every man who handled one or both of the "braces" (ropes attached to each corner of the square sail), had to pay close attention to the alignment of his boat relative to the direction and force of the wind, a responsibility that was complicated by tortuous riverine courses and sometimes "flawy" (gusty) prairie winds-not to mention the hazards of rocks, sandbars, sawyers, snags, and falling banks.

The Corps of Discovery was not unique in confronting these challenges. The Missouri and the Columbia, like the Ohio and the Mississippi, were big rivers, and every party that used those highways had to learn the same skills, or else face certain disaster.

Armaments

The posts in the bows of both pirogues would each have supported a blunderbuss, a short-range defensive weapon with a large bore and a wide mouth. Those firelocks were often used at sea for repelling boarders, and the captains were prepared to use them that way if necessary. When the Teton Sioux abruptly turned belligerent on September 24, 1804, Lewis ordered all his men to arms and, according to Sergeant Ordway, commanded that the large swivel cannon on the barge be loaded with sixteen musket balls, and "the 2 other Swivels loaded well with Buck Shot, Each of them manned." Fortunately, open conflict was averted, and no similar situations arose thereafter. The blunderbusses, with their characteristic smoke and noise, served well for signaling, and for celebrations such as their return to St. Charles on September 23, 1806, when they saluted the villagers at St. Charles with three rounds from the "blunderbuts."

Accidents

The design or performance characteristics that made the white pirogue more "steady and safe" than the red one, according to the captains, are not known to us. But accidents could happen even to the best of boats. In his journal entry for April 13, 1805, one week after departing from Fort Mandan, Lewis described the rigging of the white pirogue (which Richard Boss re-created on his model, above), and explained what happened when the wind suddenly took control.

the wind was in our favour after 9 A. M. and continued favourable untill . . . 3 P. M. we therefore hoisted both the sails in the White Perogue, consisting of a small squar sail, and spritsail 16, which carried her at a pretty good gate [gait, or rate], untill about 2 in the afternoon when a suddon squall of wind struck us and turned the perogue so much on the side as to allarm Sharbono who was steering at the time, in this state of alarm he threw the perogue with her side to the wind, when the spritsail gibing 17 was as near overseting the perogue as it was possible . . . . the wind however abating for an instant I ordered Drewyer to the helm and the sails to be taken in, which was instant executed.

On August 21, 1804, a little more than three months after the expedition began, Clark recorded that the company "Set out verry early . . . under a Gentle Breeze from the S. E," but within an hour, while still passing a sandy island on their second course of the day, conditions suddenly worsened: " Wind blow's hard." Ordway termed it "a hard Breeze," adding that for some distance "the wind blew so hard that we were oblidged to take a reefe 18 in our Sail." Meanwhile, "the white pearogue could hardly Sail for want of Ballass," so they moved several kegs of pork, "&.C" from the barge to the smaller vessel. Each keg could have weighed as much as ninety pounds. 19

The rudder irons, or pivots on which the rudder was hung, were firmly attached to the stern-post. They broke when the pirogue hit a snag on May 5, 1805, but were promptly repaired by the expedition's blacksmith, John Shields. A naval pennant bearing the colors of the United States flew from the highest point on the boat-on the tip of the yard of the lateen sail on the white pirogue, and atop the mainmast of the red pirogue (see below).

The white pirogue's precious cargo included instruments, papers, medicine, and Indian presents, plus three non-swimmers-including Charbonneau-and Sacagawea with her three-month old baby boy. Altogether, the threat that all might be lost filled Lewis with dread. However, he wrote, "we fortunately escaped and pursued [proceeded] under the square sail, which shortly after the accident I directed to be again hoisted."

Poor Charbonneau was a slow learner. A month later, on May 14, he was again at the tiller of the same craft, temporarily in place of George Drouillard, and he made the same mistake again when "a sudon squawl of wind struck her obliquely, and turned [heeled] her considerably." The consequences of that event are detailed in "Charbonneau's Prayer: The Case of the Timid Waterman."

It all turned out alright, but Fate seemed to have the white pirogue in her sights. Fifteen days later, on the night of the 28th, a large bull bison crossing the river in the middle of the night climbed over the white pirogue that was beached near camp, severely damaging York's rifle and one of the blunderbusses aboard. Lewis felt "well content, happey indeed," that they had suffered no greater injury, considering that the animal had narrowly missed treading on the heads of some of the soldiers sleeping on the ground nearby. Nevertheless, he concluded, "it appears that the white perogue, which contains our most valuable stores, is attended by some evil gennii." 20

Evidence of that mounted steadily. Only two days later, when the white perogue's crew was cordelling her with the last remaining hemp tow-rope-"the safest and most expeditious mode of traveling," Lewis had declared-it broke. The boat swung in the current "and but slightly touched a rock, yet was very near overseting." This time Charbonneau was not at fault, but Lewis was nonetheless perturbed over the incident: "I fear her evil gennii will play so many pranks with her," he sighed, "that she will go to the bottomm some of those days."

History proved his fears were unwarranted. The white pirogue survived the winter of 1805-06 hidden on shore opposite the portage camp below the Falls of the Missouri, and led the Corps' flotilla of dugouts triumphantly back to St. Louis.

Pirogue or canoe?

In the days of Lewis and Clark the noun pirogue, clad in many different spellings and shades of meaning, was aimlessly adrift in the sea of names. It was absent from Noah Webster's Compendious Dictionary (published in 1806 while the expedition was still under way), being omitted, one supposes, because Webster didn't feel it had yet earned a legitimate place in American colloquial speech. Only twenty-two years later, however, he listed it in his American Dictionary of the English Language, since by then it was, he flatly asserted, "in modern usage in America," and could be defined simply as "a narrow ferry-boat carrying two masts and a lee board." 21 Another generation later the original meaning of pirogue was reasserted: "A canoe formed from the trunk of a large tree, generally cedar or balsa wood. It was the native vessel that the Spaniards found along the rivers of Central America, and on the west coasts of South America," and in North America was sometimes called a dug-boat or dugout canoe. 22

Meriwether Lewis used perogue in both senses-to denote either a large, open, built-up boat made from planks and frames, which was powered by oars; or a long, narrow canoe that was "dug out," or carved, from a tree trunk, and was propelled with paddles. 23 Given the happy coincidence of wind direction and river azimuth, both types were sometimes powered by sails. Apparently, his choice of terms was capricious, and it began with his departure from Pittsburgh on August 31, 1803, with one "perogue" in addition to the barge. Five days later he explained the purpose of the extra boat, in the context of a misfortune:

the Perogue was loaded as his been my practice since I left Pittsburgh, in order as much as posseble to lighten the boat, the [man] who conducted her called as in distress about an hour after we had got underway, we came too and waited her coming up found she had sprung a leek and had nearly filled; this accedent was truly distressing, as her load consisting of articles of hard-ware, 24 intended as presents to the Indians got wet and I fear are much damaged.

His description clearly suggests that the "perogue" was a rather large open boat with a considerable capacity. Then at Georgetown, Pennsylvania, on the same day, he

purchased a canoe compleat with two paddles and two poles for which I gave 11$, found that my new purchase leaked so much that she was unsafe without some repairs.

It may have been a dugout canoe carved from a cottonwood or tulip poplar ( Liriodendron tulipifera) bole of unknown length, or perhaps the trunk of a chestnut or white pine tree, perhaps 15 or 20 feet long and three or four feet in diameter. 25 Early that evening he set some of his hands to repairing "the canoes"-evidently referring to both the "pirogue" and the "canoe." At Wheeling on the 8th of September he wrote to President Jefferson: "I have been compelled to purchase a perogue at this place in order to transport the baggage which was sent by land from Pittsburgh, and also to lighten the boat [i.e., the barge] as much as possible." 26 He also hired a man to "work" her. Again it seems he is referring to a large open boat; he may have abandoned the first pirogue at Wheeling in favor of a new one. The confusion was compounded on November 18 when, while the rest of the crew laid by at the mouth of the Ohio River Lewis "set out . . . with a canoe and eight men in company with Captain Clark" to take a short trip down the Mississippi to visit the site of "Oald Fort Jefferson." It seems likely they really were in a pirogue, with six or seven of the eight men at the oars; that would have been the most efficient conveyance for stemming the Mississippi's brisk current on the return trip, and nine men in a dugout canoe would have been uncomfortable to say the least.

When Lewis wasn't keeping his journal, Clark's use of "perogue" and occasional orthographic variations was consistent. However, at Fort Mandan in the spring of 1805, Lewis consistently referred to the boats the men were carving from cottonwood logs as "perogues"-until April 7, that is, when the Corps left the fort on the next leg of their journey, and he recorded that their vessels consisted of "six small canoes, and two large perogues," the latter term meaning the two built-up rowboats. But after reaching the headwaters of the Missouri and making the laborious crossing of the Bitterroot Range in September of 1805, they paused among the friendly Nez Perce and began carving six dugouts to convey them and their baggage down to the sea. In a famous letter to an unknown correspondent, Lewis reverted to the old meaning of perogue, writing in his journal that the men soon got to work and carved "four large Pirogues & a small Canoe." 27

The following spring, however, as they made their way back up the Columbia from Fort Clatsop, Lewis returned to his old habit, referring to the Indians' boats as canoes, and to their own battered ponderosa pine dugouts as pirogues. (They had recently "taken" one small canoe from the Clatsops, and soon purchased another.) On April 2, 1806, he said that he intended to trade their old dugouts for some of the natives' light, sleek canoes, or else purchase them outright with elk skins. On the twelfth, the Columbia's raging Cascades snatched one of their own dugouts out of their hands and carried it swiftly downriver. The mishap worried Lewis greatly. They were desperately short of trade goods, and, he worried, "the loss of this perogue [i.e., dugout canoe] will I fear compell us to purchase one or more canoes of the indians at an extravegant price." Another six days later the high, rough and rapid water compelled the men to unload the "perogues and canoes" and manhandle their baggage over a short portage of seventy paces, then wrestle their "five small canoes" up the rapids using cords and setting poles. The two "perogues"-the ponderosa pine dugouts they had hurriedly made the previous fall on the Clearwater River-they "could take no further and therefore cut them up for fuel."

Sergeant Ordway used pirogue in a similarly ambiguous way. In early November of 1804, he stated: "Several more of our french hands is discharged and one makeing a pearogue in order to descend the Missourie." Undoubtedly he meant a cottonwood dugout canoe. One day in February, 1805, at Fort Mandan Ordway used "perogue" both ways in the same journal entry: They moved "the 2 perogues along the N. Side of the line of huts"-where they would be sheltered from direct sunlight-so as to keep the sun from drying them too quickly and thereby cracking them. Those would have been the boats they referred to otherwise as the red and white pirogues. The next sentence, however, clearly refers to dugout canoes: "16 men Got their tools in order to make 4 perogues 4 men destined [assigned] to make each perogue."

Complicating the confusion, the anonymous scribe who later paraphrased Private Whitehouse's journal changed his author's preferred "canoe" to pettyauger, one of numerous variants of the Spanish piragua through perriago and perryauger, all denoting either a single canoe hollowed from a tree trunk, or two such canoes fastened together side-by-side. 28 In the eighteenth century, the name "periagua" was often applied to a large dugout canoe fitted with a sail. 29 At his Yellowstone River canoe camp on July 20-24, 1806, Clark devised something close to one of the latter by tying his two new, narrow 28-foot dugouts together for stability. 30 After they shipped water while passing through a riffle, he had buffalo skin tacked over the adjacent gunwales to keep water from "flacking in."

Naming people, places and things is a human impulse. The Enlightenment institutionalized that impulse, and made it the ultimate purpose of an explorer's job-to observe ("discover"), describe, and name. That's basically what the expedition's journals contain-observations, descriptions, and names. But some names refuse to stand still for the lexicographer. Take pirogue, for instance. The Fourth Edition (2000) of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language omits it, but lists its Spanish-Caribbean antecedent, piragua, with two definitions: First, "A canoe made by hollowing out a tree trunk; a dugout." and second, "A flat bottom sailing boat with two masts." By the spring of 2009, however, the most recent descendant of Webster's 1806 Compendious Dictionary had reverted to the definition of pirogue that coincided with Lewis's: "a boat made by hollowing out a large log." 31

Funded in part by a grant from the National Park Service's Challenge Cost Share Program

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Deep in the murky currents of nautical history lay the dim outlines of the many different types of watercraft that were afloat on North American waterways in the first two decades of the nineteenth century.

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Outfitting the Corps | Discovering Lewis & Clark ®

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Lewis obviously thought of it as a victual of last resort. He issued it to the men for the first time on September 14 at Killed Colt Camp, and for the last time at "Portable Soup Camp" on the nineteenth. By the twentieth they had, according to Whitehouse, only "a little" of it left.

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Sent by President Thomas Jefferson to find the Northwest Passage, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the most important expedition in American history. This extraordinary film tells the remarkable story of the entire Corps of Discovery - not just of the two Captains, but the young army men, French-Canadian boatmen, Clark's African-American slave, and the Shoshone woman named Sacagawea, who brought along her infant son. As important to the story as these many characters, however, was the land itself, and the promises it held.

The mission of the Corps of Discovery was to explore the uncharted West. Beginning February 28, 1803 It would be led by Meriwether Lewis, and Lewis' friend, William Clark. Over the next four years, the Corps of Discovery would travel thousands of miles, experiencing lands, rivers and peoples that no Americans ever had before. Ken Burns' LEWIS & CLARK re-creates the 1803 journey to locate the Northwest Passage. The explorers found a varied landscape and a dizzying diversity of Indian peoples.

Premiered: November 4, 1997

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Lewis and Clark | Ken Burns | PBS | Watch Lewis and Clark Documentary | Ken Burns | PBS

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Sent by President Thomas Jefferson to find the Northwest Passage, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the most important expedition in American history. This extraordinary film tells the remarkable story of the entire Corps of Discovery - not just of the two Captains, but the young army men, French-Canadian boatmen, Clark's African-American slave, and the Shoshone woman named Sacagawea, who brought along her infant son.

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Lewis's Packing List | Thomas Jefferson's Monticello

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In preparation for the journey, Meriwether Lewis wrote a list of necessary items to be taken. Due to Lewis's spelling, some of the words may not look familiar to you; please sound them out phonetically to understand them. See http://media.nara.gov/media/images/19/29/19-2831a.gif for a look at the manuscript version of the Indian gifts.

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Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-highsm-39291 (original digital file)

Call Number: LC-DIG-highsm- 39291 (ONLINE) [P&P]

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Full-size replica of a keelboat at the Lewis & Clark State Park, on an inlet of the Missouri River in Onawa, Iowa

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Rights assessment is your responsibility. The Library of Congress does not own rights to material in its collections. Therefore, it does not license or charge permission fees for use of such material and cannot grant or deny permission to publish or otherwise distribute the material.

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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A Photographic Essay on Lewis and Clark's Keelboat - Lewis and Clark - Corps of Discovery - U.S. Army Center of Military History

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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A keelboat is a riverine cargo-capable working boat, or a small- to mid-sized recreational sailing yacht. The boats in the first category have shallow structural keels, and are nearly flat-bottomed and often used leeboards if forced in open water, while modern recreational keelboats have prominent fixed fin keels, and considerable draft.

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Flagship: Keelboat, Barge or Boat? | Discovering Lewis & Clark ®

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The Sergt at the center will command the guard, manage the sails, see that the men at the oars do their duty; that they come on board at a proper season in the morning, and that the boat gets under way in due time; he will keep a good lookout

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The Animal Diversity Web is an online database and encyclopedia of animal natural history, built through contributions from students, photographers, and many others.

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Please respond here

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Flagship: Keelboat, Barge or Boat? | Discovering Lewis & Clark ®

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The Sergt at the center will command the guard, manage the sails, see that the men at the oars do their duty; that they come on board at a proper season in the morning, and that the boat gets under way in due time; he will keep a good lookout

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Sacagawea Webpage

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Sacagawea was a Indian girl who accompanied the Corps of Discovery expedition led by Captains William Clark and Merriwether Lewis to explore the America...

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Sacagawea was a Indian girl who accompanied the Corps of Discovery expedition led by Captains William Clark and Merriwether Lewis to explore the America...