Chapter 31
After
St. Louis, Washington and beyond, 1806–1838
Lewis became governor of the Louisiana Territory and died of gunshot wounds in Tennessee in 1809, probably by his own hand. Clark became the government’s chief official for Indian affairs in the West and lived until 1838. York was refused his freedom for about ten years. Sacagawea probably died in 1812, though Shoshone tradition says she lived until 1884.
Meriwether Lewis, 1807–1809
Lewis comes home a hero. Jefferson makes him governor of the Louisiana Territory, based in St. Louis. But he is not suited to the job. He argues with the territory’s officials, falls into debt, drinks too much, and suffers from what Jefferson called his depressions of mind. And he never manages to write the book about the expedition that everyone is waiting for.
In October 1809, travelling to Washington to sort out his debts, he stops for the night at an inn called Grinder’s Stand on the Natchez Trace in Tennessee. In the early hours of 11 October he is found badly wounded by gunshots, and he dies soon after. He is 35. Most historians believe he took his own life, though some still argue that he was murdered.
Sacagawea
Sacagawea does bring Pomp to St. Louis, and later goes back up the Missouri with Charbonneau. In December 1812, at a trading post called Fort Manuel in present-day South Dakota, a clerk writes in his journal that Charbonneau’s Shoshone wife has died of a fever. He calls her “a good and the best Women in the fort.” She is about 25, and leaves a baby daughter, Lisette. In the 1820s, Clark wrote her name in a list of the expedition’s members, and beside it: dead.
The Shoshone tell a different story. According to their tradition, she left Charbonneau, lived among the Comanche and then the Shoshone, and died on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming in 1884, a very old woman. A grave there bears her name. Most historians accept the 1812 record, but the Shoshone story is still told.
William Clark, 1807–1838
Clark settles in St. Louis. He marries, has children, and becomes the United States’ chief official for Indian affairs in the West, and later governor of the Missouri Territory. For thirty years, the nations of the West deal with the government through him.
He keeps his promise to Sacagawea’s family. Pomp comes to live in St. Louis and goes to school there, and after 1813 Clark becomes the guardian of both Pomp and his baby sister, Lisette. Pomp grows up to travel in Europe with a German prince, then returns to the West as a guide and mountain man.
But Clark also signs treaty after treaty that takes land from the nations of the West, and moves many of them from their homes. He dies in 1838.
York
York asks for his freedom soon after they return. His wife is enslaved by another family in Louisville, Kentucky, and he wants to be with her. Clark refuses. His own letters to his brother show that he was angry with York, called him insolent, hired him out to other masters, and beat him.
Clark finally frees York about ten years after the expedition. What happens to him afterwards is not certain. Clark later told a writer that York had failed in business and died of cholera. Nobody knows if that is true.
What came next
The journals were published slowly. Patrick Gass’s came first, in 1807. An official account, with Clark’s great map, appeared in 1814. The captains’ own words, exactly as they wrote them, spelling and all, were not printed in full until 1904. They are the words quoted in this book.
Fur trappers followed the Corps up the Missouri almost at once. By the 1840s settlers were pouring west along the Oregon Trail. For the nations who had fed, guided and sheltered the Corps, what followed was a disaster. Smallpox swept through the Mandan villages in 1837 and killed almost everyone. The Nez Perce, who saved the starving Corps in 1805, were driven from their homeland by the army in 1877. The Shoshone, the Lakota and the Blackfeet were pushed onto reservations.
The journey of the Corps of Discovery is a great adventure. It is also the first chapter of that story.
The End