Speaker 1: Brought to you by the All New Toyota Corolla. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Speaker 1: Charles W. Lewis Bryant. I thought you were gonna come me, touis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, like I thought about it. You're
Speaker 1: like that chuckle, do that dumb joke. I wondered if
Speaker 1: I was related to um Mr Clark. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say I am from now on. She's like,
Speaker 1: if you heard of William Clark, the explorer, Lewis and Clark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I'm Josh Clark because Clark's the unusual name. You
Speaker 1: might be no, but I mean like his family, Uh
Speaker 1: was from the Ohio River Valley. I grew up in Toledo. Hey,
Speaker 1: there you go. I wonder you have an explorer spirit.
Speaker 1: You're a laid back guy. He was laid back yep,
Speaker 1: not like Lewis. He was semi literate. Yeah, I'm fairly literate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the big distinction. It is funny, like have you
Speaker 1: read some of his verbatim journal unentry Clark's or Lewis's, well,
Speaker 1: both of them, but Clark's way worse. Uh. Yeah, Lewis
Speaker 1: is pretty good writer, I thought, yeah, but he had
Speaker 1: some weird spellings. To Clark was just like frontier Kentucky
Speaker 1: boy writing in a Yeah. They were a good pair though. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this isn't one of those podcasts where or stories
Speaker 1: where you look back and you're like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: histories really pumped this up and they were really kind
Speaker 1: of like this and like jerks and no, No, this
Speaker 1: was really a great story and they were actually true
Speaker 1: American heroes, you know, one semi tragic. I would say, well,
Speaker 1: the ending is pretty tragic. No, but Lewis lewis manic depressive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: by all accounts. Yeah, back then they called it prone
Speaker 1: to you know, prone to fits, but modern people say, no,
Speaker 1: he was probably manic depressive. Uh. And I prepped by
Speaker 1: watching the four hour Ken Burns documentary last night. Four hours. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought it was two hours, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I got this, And then I got to, uh, the
Speaker 1: two hour point, and I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: they just hit the Continental divide. I don't think I'm
Speaker 1: at the end. That's so funny because in the email
Speaker 1: you you emailed me to suggest that I watch it.
Speaker 1: You called it a six part not four hour. Well
Speaker 1: they had it on YouTube in six parts, but in
Speaker 1: actuality it's twelve parts. All right, So let's do this.
Speaker 1: This is one of my favorite stories in history, is
Speaker 1: it really? Yeah? Man? And again I've said this before.
Speaker 1: Why isn't this a movie, like a really good movie? Not?
Speaker 1: Have you seen almost heroes? Yeah? Right, there you go. No, alright,
Speaker 1: So Chuck um Lewis and Clark Merriwether Lewis William Clark,
Speaker 1: pair of UM army folk turned explorers thanks to a
Speaker 1: little bit of um I guess serendipity. It would have
Speaker 1: been somebody else had it not been these guys. Because really,
Speaker 1: the whole idea of this expedition, which was called the
Speaker 1: Core of Discovery, it sounds like a soccer team. Um
Speaker 1: it was. It was the brainchild of Thomas Jefferson. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the brainchild of t J. Because he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: I just bought I just doubled the size of our
Speaker 1: country by buying a bunch of land from Napoleon. Do
Speaker 1: you know the background on that, the Louisiana purchase. I know,
Speaker 1: it's the greatest land deal in the history of the world. Probably,
Speaker 1: But what what do you mean, Well, it was the
Speaker 1: Frenches land and they were about to get it from
Speaker 1: they were about to get it given to the Spanish. Well,
Speaker 1: the Spanish were west of them, so probably, and the
Speaker 1: French like had barely any presence in this area, but
Speaker 1: it was their land. But the Spanish, had they taken over,
Speaker 1: they would have been a real problem because the Americans
Speaker 1: had access to the Port of New Orleans because the
Speaker 1: French were basically absentee landlords there, and so the idea
Speaker 1: that the Spaniards were about to get it, that was
Speaker 1: a big problem. So Jefferson sent some people over to
Speaker 1: France to try to negotiate something, and it turned out
Speaker 1: Napoleon was having all sorts of problems and it had
Speaker 1: been recommended to him by his people, like just sell
Speaker 1: it to the Americans. They're coming over, they want to talk.
Speaker 1: So I think James Monroe was sent by Thomas Jefferson
Speaker 1: with the a limit of ten million dollars to do
Speaker 1: something to buy Florida and New Orleans or New Orleans
Speaker 1: for ut the ten million dollars, Monroe found out he
Speaker 1: could get all of the Louisiana territory, which went up
Speaker 1: to Canada. Yeah, Louisiana is really undersells it. It was.
Speaker 1: They went from the Rockies all the way over to
Speaker 1: the colonies and then up to Canada and down to
Speaker 1: the Gulf of Mexico. It was a double the size
Speaker 1: of our country. Yeah, overnight. So Monroe was like, I'll
Speaker 1: give you fifteen million dollars for it, and the French
Speaker 1: are like sold. So he bought eight hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: seven thousand square miles of North America about three cents
Speaker 1: an acre, and uh, that was a chunk of change, though,
Speaker 1: I think that was double what our are gross economy
Speaker 1: was at the time. But it's a pretty good investment.
Speaker 1: That's a great investment. Could you imagine, though, how weird
Speaker 1: that would be off if it had gone a different way.
Speaker 1: The United States could have ended it about the Mississippi River,
Speaker 1: which it did at the time, and just beyond that
Speaker 1: on the other side could have been Spain or not Spain,
Speaker 1: but you know what I mean, a Spanish colony. Well,
Speaker 1: it could have been a lot like um Africa, you know,
Speaker 1: like all these former colonies that are just like adjacent
Speaker 1: to one another. But this is a French colony. This
Speaker 1: was a Belgian colony. This was a British colony, and
Speaker 1: I think the Brits controlled Canada and like the Oregon
Speaker 1: territory at the time. Yes, um, yeah, we were all
Speaker 1: sandwich kind of in there together. So we buy from
Speaker 1: the French, we go fight Spanish for the rest of it.
Speaker 1: And uh, in between all of this, we send Lewis
Speaker 1: and Clark to go check out what had just been bought.
Speaker 1: And this expedition was gonna happen anyway, but we thought
Speaker 1: that we were going to have to ask for permission
Speaker 1: to go through this area. But now all of a
Speaker 1: sudden it was America. And that added a facet to
Speaker 1: this expedition that hadn't been there before, which was basically
Speaker 1: informing the Indians that they were now living in America
Speaker 1: and they had um a new great father, which is
Speaker 1: how Meriwether Lewis put it. How he described t J. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have a new great father who lives in a
Speaker 1: lodge in Washington, d C. And you can come visit
Speaker 1: him and see like how great it will be to
Speaker 1: live under his patronage. But not really right sign this treaty.
Speaker 1: Uh so uh he named he was his private secretary.
Speaker 1: Lewis was his kind of personal aid, and he knew
Speaker 1: what kind of dude he was. Maybe drink a little
Speaker 1: too much, was prone to depression, but he he sort
Speaker 1: of gave him this job to help him out. He
Speaker 1: thought he'd be good for it. Don't get me wrong, right,
Speaker 1: he groomed him for the position. But yeah, he he
Speaker 1: thought it would be. He had he had invested interest
Speaker 1: in the man, and he's like, this is gonna be
Speaker 1: really good for Lewis, is what he needs. He's twenty
Speaker 1: nine years old, which is remarkable to me. Uh good, sharpshooter.
Speaker 1: He said, you pick your partner. He picked William Clark,
Speaker 1: who was his former captain I believe in the army,
Speaker 1: a couple of years older. And he looked up to
Speaker 1: Clark quite a bit. It was like, I need you, brother,
Speaker 1: because you compliment You complete me, right, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: we should probably say there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark were ever gay. Clark definitely wasn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of conjecture about Merriwether Lewis was. He
Speaker 1: courted several women and was rejected by all of them.
Speaker 1: He was a total eligible bachelor, never married, never was
Speaker 1: engaged or betrothed or anything. So of course, as time
Speaker 1: wore on, people were, well, he must have been gay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of a lot of conjecture, and
Speaker 1: they come up with the idea that he probably wasn't gay,
Speaker 1: but that he was um bye. You know that he
Speaker 1: had um something of an aversion to women that was
Speaker 1: not necessarily based on any kind of sexual orientation. He
Speaker 1: just didn't know what he was doing and he didn't
Speaker 1: feel comfortable around women. Well, like we said, he was
Speaker 1: by all accounts manic depressive, So he was kind of
Speaker 1: a messed up guy in a lot of ways, a
Speaker 1: little bit semi tragic figure. You said, yeah, and we'll
Speaker 1: get to that. Um, the main goal, well, there are
Speaker 1: a couple of main goals. The main goal for Jefferson was, Hey,
Speaker 1: I want to find this all water route to the
Speaker 1: sea that's really important for trade. And also, hey, let's
Speaker 1: check out this thing we just bought and go out
Speaker 1: and record as much of it as you can. Animals, plants, people, Uh,
Speaker 1: what the heck is out there? Basically come back and
Speaker 1: tell us. Right, and Lewis wasn't exactly a slide, which
Speaker 1: when it came to this kind of stuff. His mother
Speaker 1: was a celebrated herb doctor um in Virginia. Yes, you
Speaker 1: knew what she was doing. And um, she kind of
Speaker 1: raised him in the woods, so he was he was
Speaker 1: pretty good at botany. But to just kind of further
Speaker 1: his education and not just that, but all sorts of
Speaker 1: other things that would come in handy on the expedition,
Speaker 1: Jefferson sent him to the American Philosophical Association, which was
Speaker 1: the first learned society in North America, and basically he
Speaker 1: underwent this like grueling crash course of everything from astronomy
Speaker 1: to cartography to geology, medical training, everything everything you could
Speaker 1: you would need. They basically just filled Lewis's head with
Speaker 1: and he in turn filled Clark in on a lot
Speaker 1: of it too. Yeah, also a lot of what they
Speaker 1: might encounter in ways of uh, we'll call them Indians
Speaker 1: for the purposes of the show, because that's what they
Speaker 1: called them, right, And Jefferson was like, and don't forget
Speaker 1: to call me great father. It's awesome. So, um, Lewis
Speaker 1: is in Pittsburgh or in Philadelphia getting this training. He
Speaker 1: writes to Clark, says, please join me on this and
Speaker 1: you were my captain. I'm a captain. Now we're gonna
Speaker 1: be co captains on this, just so there's not any
Speaker 1: kind of weirdness or anything like that. Like I'm I
Speaker 1: was chosen to leave the expedition, but I'm choosing you
Speaker 1: for help. But let's do this evenly, which is unheard of,
Speaker 1: and it actually even more unheard of. It worked out
Speaker 1: really well. Yeah, it did. Like there wasn't any kind
Speaker 1: of like backbiting or problems, and they actually ran it
Speaker 1: a bit like a democracy too. Yeah. In the end
Speaker 1: um the they were kind of described as a family,
Speaker 1: like really really tighten it. I kept waiting for the
Speaker 1: story to go off the rails, but it didn't. They
Speaker 1: really hung together and stuck together. After some initial discipline
Speaker 1: problems once they kind of weeded out, I think from
Speaker 1: summer to fall they kind of weeded out some of
Speaker 1: the bad apples. Well, what's funny. One guy got um
Speaker 1: discharged for mutinous acts and another guy got discharged for desertion.
Speaker 1: But they they this happened in the middle of the
Speaker 1: the first leg of the trip, so they had to
Speaker 1: stay on and so they could get them to a
Speaker 1: place where they could go back. So they just had
Speaker 1: them doing hard labor the whole time. Wow. Uh so, Um,
Speaker 1: they brought along a couple of people of note. One,
Speaker 1: Clark took his slave, York, that he had had since
Speaker 1: he was a kid. He was only only black guy
Speaker 1: and only slave on the on the party, right on
Speaker 1: the adventure party, we'll call it. He was he was
Speaker 1: technically a man servant I guess, like a valet or
Speaker 1: something like that to Clark outside of the expedition, but
Speaker 1: on the expedition, York was basically just a member of
Speaker 1: the party. Yeah, he was a member of the party. Um.
Speaker 1: He played a really great role in diplomacy because, uh,
Speaker 1: the American Indian was had never seen black people before
Speaker 1: and they didn't have hang ups obviously like white people did.
Speaker 1: So they're like, this guy is awesome. He's huge, and
Speaker 1: he's strong, and look at that, like amazing black skin
Speaker 1: that's even darker than ours. Like they really thought he
Speaker 1: was great. And I'm you know, I'm sure all the
Speaker 1: white people and they were like, well, yeah, look at me,
Speaker 1: Look what about me, my pale white skin. I'm friends
Speaker 1: with the great father. But he played a great role
Speaker 1: in diplomacy. Um, and like you said, was generally treated
Speaker 1: pretty well. Um. Although he did get sort of sort
Speaker 1: of some of the crap duties. Well, plus he also
Speaker 1: got royally screwed over at the end of the expedition.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we'll get to that though. Okay. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so we have York with Clark, and then um Louis
Speaker 1: purchased a dog for twenty dollars name c Man. And
Speaker 1: they used to think it was scanning because these guys
Speaker 1: um handwriting was so bad that for yeah, basically a century, like,
Speaker 1: everybody thought it was scanning for two centuries. And then
Speaker 1: somebody figured out, well, wait a minute, why is one
Speaker 1: of these rivers called Siemens Creek right, And then they realized, wait,
Speaker 1: that's the dog. That's the dog. Everybody, by the way,
Speaker 1: had something named after them, and they had trouble coming
Speaker 1: up with names for everything, like York, the York Islands
Speaker 1: of Montana, like everybody on that tour had something named
Speaker 1: after them, which is kind of neat. So he was
Speaker 1: a Newfoundland dog and he made it the whole way.
Speaker 1: We're happy to go ahead and spoil that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is great because they ate dogs, by the way.
Speaker 1: At some point on this trip, they had a lot
Speaker 1: of horse. Yeah, they did, so like you said they
Speaker 1: started in Pittsburgh, but the officials start was really in St.
Speaker 1: Louis in December of UM three, and they're like, all right,
Speaker 1: let's hit the river, the Missouri River. Well, that's where
Speaker 1: they assembled camp and wintered. They started all their people
Speaker 1: and ran them through like army training, and took the
Speaker 1: best of the best. They officially started in May, the
Speaker 1: falling spring. Of course, you wouldn't start in the winter.
Speaker 1: Uh So they had a big keel boat and a
Speaker 1: couple of smaller canoes and said let's hit the river.
Speaker 1: And they did. So they stillst to it because again,
Speaker 1: ultimately Jefferson was looking for a northwest passage across the
Speaker 1: continent to the Pacific, and he wanted to see if
Speaker 1: you could basically ride a river all the way across
Speaker 1: the country. Yeah, by the time, I think they're about
Speaker 1: forty five people at first, but when they eventually whittled
Speaker 1: it down, the official Corps discovery was thirty three people. Right. So,
Speaker 1: they they head out and they start going upstream up
Speaker 1: the Missouri River, and it was rough going at first,
Speaker 1: and they literally pulling their boat out from outside the
Speaker 1: water waist deep by tow rope against the current again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're going upstream the whole way to the source of
Speaker 1: the Missouri River. Yeah. So the first Indians they encountered,
Speaker 1: well not the first, the first situation they encountered where
Speaker 1: the Titan Sioux or the Lakota. And they're actually warned
Speaker 1: by previous American Indians like, watch out for these guys.
Speaker 1: They're basically the mafia of the Missouri River. Like they'll
Speaker 1: demand payment, they won't. Uh, they'll take your goods, they'll
Speaker 1: control the trade. Yeah. They wanted them to trade exclusively
Speaker 1: with them. Yeah. And they had done this to the
Speaker 1: French in the Spanish for years. Uh and they I
Speaker 1: think Lewis called them the pirates of the Missouri. But um,
Speaker 1: when they did reach them, it came to a standoff
Speaker 1: over a canoe that they they gave them their gifts.
Speaker 1: The first thing they would do whenever they encountered a
Speaker 1: new tribe was to like give them these trinkets, tell
Speaker 1: them about the Great Father, give them like handkerchiefs and
Speaker 1: things like we come in peace and um with with
Speaker 1: the Titon Sue though, there was a standoff over a
Speaker 1: canoe that they wanted and they're like, we're not giving
Speaker 1: this canoe and it literally came to a point where
Speaker 1: guns were raised and like hundreds of Indians had their
Speaker 1: arrows pointed at them, and it was about to go down,
Speaker 1: and uh, chief Black Buffalo intervened. It was like, you
Speaker 1: know what, let our women and children toward your really
Speaker 1: cool boat that we've never seen and meet all you
Speaker 1: guys and then y'all can have safe passage. So they
Speaker 1: managed to get through their unscathed. But that was their
Speaker 1: first like run in where they were like, man, this
Speaker 1: could go down pretty badly. And luckily that was one
Speaker 1: of just a few I think as far as cross
Speaker 1: country unchartered expeditions, uncharted expeditions go, this went about as
Speaker 1: good as you could possibly hope for. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it was super peaceful. Um, they were the well, they
Speaker 1: only shot one bullet in anger the entire trip. It's
Speaker 1: pretty remarkable. Man, that is neat. So they hit the
Speaker 1: great planes and that might as well have been Mars
Speaker 1: to them. Um, if you think about it, if you've
Speaker 1: never been west of I think there's a saying that
Speaker 1: a squirrel can jump from tree to tree until it's
Speaker 1: the Mississippi. And so when they hit the great planes,
Speaker 1: they had never seen anything like it like there were
Speaker 1: no trees, just just planes. It's just planes, and it
Speaker 1: was just you know, they were absolutely blown away by this.
Speaker 1: And uh, there they encountered the Mandan and Minotauri or
Speaker 1: Hidatsa Indians, right, and they just I did, all right,
Speaker 1: this is pretty good place to build a camp, stay
Speaker 1: here for a few months. And they built Fort Manden,
Speaker 1: which they named after the local one of the local
Speaker 1: tribes and Um and they were buddies. They had like
Speaker 1: lived together in harmony, right, they got they they forged friendships,
Speaker 1: they were visited by locals, and uh, something big happened here,
Speaker 1: which we'll get into in a second, but first let's
Speaker 1: do a message. Okay, Chuck. So we're at Fort Manden,
Speaker 1: which is we're in South Dakota. I think they were
Speaker 1: having a good time hanging out having Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: a big problem with venereal disease on the expedition because
Speaker 1: like they were having a lot of sex with Indians
Speaker 1: and the Indians um had syphilis, which was something that
Speaker 1: was unknown to Europeans, and Europeans contracted it very easily.
Speaker 1: So that was a big thing. Well that was another
Speaker 1: thing about Louis too. Apparently like everybody else in the
Speaker 1: exped had sex with Indian women, and he was like
Speaker 1: he stayed away from his journal. Entries about like Indian
Speaker 1: sexual practices were very like and just snide. I think
Speaker 1: is away one person put it um. Yeah, there's just
Speaker 1: he's an odd duck. I get what if he tried
Speaker 1: to put on that. He was just you know, cleaning up.
Speaker 1: And they're like, Louis, it doesn't hurt when he peas
Speaker 1: like something's going on, it doesn't burn. I don't think
Speaker 1: he's having sex. He says he had sex with all
Speaker 1: those women burns. When is a burn? When you be
Speaker 1: doesn't burn? Win Louis Peace. Yeah. So apparently burning when
Speaker 1: you pee like was a big thing on this core
Speaker 1: of discoveries. Discovered syphilis too, all right. So the other
Speaker 1: important thing that happened here, which is I think what
Speaker 1: you were getting to was they hired a French Canadian
Speaker 1: trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau. But they really what they were
Speaker 1: doing was hiring his wife. Yeah, Soicago way or Soicago wea.
Speaker 1: I didn't mispronounce that. You didn't mispronounce it. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of pronunciations, yeah, but there's only one that's right,
Speaker 1: and they're the right. One is based on the journal
Speaker 1: entries of Louis Clark everybody else in the expedition. Because
Speaker 1: this was an expedition, everyone was expected to like make
Speaker 1: notes and and yeah, they were all ord of stuff
Speaker 1: down right. And Sacaea is mentioned dozens of times in
Speaker 1: these journals because she did do some outstanding stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: and she's mentioned phonetically, so it's Socca Gowa. Also at
Speaker 1: some point it's also mentioned that her name is Shoshone
Speaker 1: for bird woman and the shy Sacaga is bird and
Speaker 1: Weya is a woman, so it's Chicago Wea, not Sacca Joeya.
Speaker 1: That's right. Well, I mean that's a big point. It's true,
Speaker 1: although the ken Burns thing, these historians all pronounced it differently,
Speaker 1: which is sort of frustrating. Well, yeah, there's such a
Speaker 1: kaka and then Saca joweyah. Yeah. One of the ladies
Speaker 1: called her straight up Sacada and I was like, straight up.
Speaker 1: So she was very important because A she was a translator.
Speaker 1: B she was essentially a white flag everywhere they went. Um.
Speaker 1: And I don't think we said this, but by the
Speaker 1: time they broke camp to leave, she had a baby. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she actually gave birth to her first child. Um and
Speaker 1: Fort Manden Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, Yeah, who was pretty cool,
Speaker 1: grew up to be pretty cool. Yeah. Sure, But Scagia
Speaker 1: if we say Soca Dwia too, I think that's fair.
Speaker 1: Okay she Um, she was sixteen at the time, and
Speaker 1: she was married to Charbonneaux. She's one of two of
Speaker 1: his wives. Um, and I didn't hear anything about the
Speaker 1: other showy woman. Did she not go along? I don't
Speaker 1: think so? Okay, all right, so, um she John Baptiste
Speaker 1: and Toussaint were a family, even though Sacagawea was Toussant's
Speaker 1: slave wife, like he purchased her. But she was Shoshone.
Speaker 1: And the reason why she was so valuable is because
Speaker 1: the expedition leaders had found out that the Shoshone were
Speaker 1: known for their horsing abilities, and the expedition had two
Speaker 1: horses that they set out with, and we're like, we're
Speaker 1: gonna need a lot more. So we need to trade
Speaker 1: with the Shoshone when we make it to the Rockies,
Speaker 1: and we will need this woman. And she comes in
Speaker 1: handy to a spectacular degree in this sense. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: not only was she a white flag She was just
Speaker 1: great for the spirit of the camp to have a
Speaker 1: woman there. Uh. And baby was a charmer too. Oh,
Speaker 1: of course. You know, you can't pull up with a
Speaker 1: woman and a baby and say like we're warring people exactly,
Speaker 1: you know, apparently across all tribes along the plains, if
Speaker 1: you have a woman and a baby in your party,
Speaker 1: you're automatically not a war party, and therefore you come
Speaker 1: in peace. Yeah, and she was also pretty awesome. Charbonneau
Speaker 1: himself was described as quite average, but Chicago Way was
Speaker 1: the real deal, like one of the bravest members of
Speaker 1: the expedition. And at one point one of the boats
Speaker 1: overturned and they lost we're losing a lot of their
Speaker 1: important records and things. And she was the main one
Speaker 1: that was like boom in the water retrieving the stuff
Speaker 1: while Charbonneau was I don't know what he was doing.
Speaker 1: Who knows what Sharbonneau was doing. But Psychic Awaya was
Speaker 1: swimming retrieving the stuff. This is after she'd given birth,
Speaker 1: This is while she's breastfeeding, walking scores of miles and
Speaker 1: in a given week, she was pretty tough. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, we'll go ahead and spoil this that baby,
Speaker 1: like we said lived. It made it all the way
Speaker 1: there and back, this brand new baby, uh to the
Speaker 1: age of about I guess two and a half, and
Speaker 1: he just stole William Clark's heart. Yeah, he loved him.
Speaker 1: He ended up adopting him, he did. Yeah, he adopted
Speaker 1: him and educated him in St. Louis. After she died,
Speaker 1: he adopted both her kids much later. So um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: his name was Jean Baptiste, the the baby, and he
Speaker 1: was nicknamed Pompey because of his pompous little dancing. Antics
Speaker 1: like Clark found him to be quite a little danswer. Um.
Speaker 1: So the The other way that Saka Gaweya was helpful
Speaker 1: to this expedition was that she was a translator. She
Speaker 1: could speak um Shoshone obviously um. She could also speak
Speaker 1: Hadata and so her husband could speak Hadata. So if
Speaker 1: she was speaking to a Shashoni, Let's say they encountered
Speaker 1: a Shoshoni person, the Shoshone would speak to Sacagawea. She
Speaker 1: would say what they said in Hadata to her husband.
Speaker 1: Her husband would say in French what had just been
Speaker 1: said in Hadata to another man, who would in turn
Speaker 1: tell William and Merryweather what had been said in English.
Speaker 1: That was the translation line, and Sacagaweya was the pivotal
Speaker 1: point of this as far as speaking to um plains
Speaker 1: abs point. Yeah, and you would think that's setting it
Speaker 1: up to say in like big problems arose because of it.
Speaker 1: But it really worked pretty well. No, because they were
Speaker 1: also trained in plain sign language to Apparently there was
Speaker 1: a lot of UM gesturing that was fairly universal that
Speaker 1: a lot of the people who were recruited in St.
Speaker 1: Louis originally were familiar with two. Yeah, they got along
Speaker 1: pretty well, they did, all right. So after the Mandon villages,
Speaker 1: they broke camp and went on um to the confluence
Speaker 1: of Yellowstone with the Missouri and entered the land where
Speaker 1: they started seeing, like when they hit the planes, they
Speaker 1: started seeing these crazy animals they've never seen before. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's important to say they didn't discover anything. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very important to say that they were just the first
Speaker 1: white guys to record it for science. Um, but prairie
Speaker 1: dogs and elk and buffalo by the tens of thousands. Uh, antelope,
Speaker 1: all kinds of things to them that were just these
Speaker 1: weird animals. Um. They actually sent a live prairie dog
Speaker 1: back to Jefferson, which is pretty it's hious and it
Speaker 1: made it all the way U Grizzly Bears. They encountered
Speaker 1: those for the first time on this expedition. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: were warned at the grizzly by the Indians and they
Speaker 1: were like we we've hunted brown Bear and black Bear.
Speaker 1: And then they were kind of like holy crap. Like
Speaker 1: in their journals they were like, I've never seen anything
Speaker 1: like this. It took ten shots and we almost died,
Speaker 1: and the Grizzly Bears to be reckoned with. Lewis said
Speaker 1: something like, um, I'd rather fight two Indians than one
Speaker 1: Grizzly Bear. Yeah. So here we are in early June. Uh,
Speaker 1: they reached the point where the Missouri divided that they
Speaker 1: didn't they weren't told about this, uh fork, So like
Speaker 1: huh right, what should we do here? In equal parts
Speaker 1: north and south? Yeah, I mean it was like a
Speaker 1: hardcore left and right that was uh, basically everyone in
Speaker 1: the party agreed on one direction except Lewis and Clark.
Speaker 1: They were like, we were old school, we like in sync. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they despite the fact that everyone disagreed, they followed them,
Speaker 1: and that just shows like how united they were They
Speaker 1: were like, you know what, we don't think you guys
Speaker 1: are right, but we're going to follow you because you
Speaker 1: were our captains, right, and we want to see your
Speaker 1: faces when you realize you're wrong, which actually would happen,
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't lead to like eating each other like
Speaker 1: the dinner party, no, huh um. So they keep mosying
Speaker 1: along and they're doing pretty well. They apparently they got
Speaker 1: to a point where, um Clark looked down one day,
Speaker 1: I think it was Clark, it was possibly Lewis too.
Speaker 1: It was Lewis and he realized that a little stream
Speaker 1: at his feet was running west and he realized that
Speaker 1: they just crossed the Continental Divide. Yeah, that was the
Speaker 1: mouth of the Missouri that they were literally straddling with
Speaker 1: their feet. Yeah, and they that meant that now they
Speaker 1: had just left the Missouri, and we're going to hook up.
Speaker 1: First they went on to the Snake River, but that
Speaker 1: would take them to the Columbia River, which, by their reckoning,
Speaker 1: would take them to the Pacific Ocean. So they'd made
Speaker 1: it like a substantial amount of distance. Yeah. That was
Speaker 1: a depressing moment though for Louis, because he he thought
Speaker 1: when he reached that ridge that he would look and
Speaker 1: see just downhill to the ocean, and what he saw
Speaker 1: was rocky mountains Nevada. Yeah, and he was like, oh man,
Speaker 1: this is not going to be very easy. No, we
Speaker 1: didn't know about the rocky mountains. No. And even uh
Speaker 1: even still, when they finally do think that they see
Speaker 1: the ocean, they still were twenty five miles away from
Speaker 1: it when they finally get to that point, yeah, which
Speaker 1: we'll get to. Oh, that's right. Uh So, what they
Speaker 1: ended up doing they made a mistake because there was
Speaker 1: a shortcut they could have taken. They would have taken
Speaker 1: four days, and instead they had to go work their
Speaker 1: way around the Great Falls of Montana, which took uh
Speaker 1: fifty three days of portage. Uneasy portage, yeah, because this
Speaker 1: portage was like carrying these boats. But also these guys
Speaker 1: were wearing like moccasins and stuff, and they had a
Speaker 1: huge problem with prickly pear, yeah, which would just go
Speaker 1: right through your bokusen. It's basically like stepping on nails
Speaker 1: the whole time while you're carrying a very heavy boat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and all your supplies whiskey and you know, food, salt.
Speaker 1: Uh So in July they arrived at another fork. Three forks.
Speaker 1: They named them the Gallatin for the Secretary of Treasury,
Speaker 1: the Madison for the Secretary of State, and the Jefferson,
Speaker 1: and decided to follow the Jefferson because there was more
Speaker 1: to it. I think, yeah, And I think they were like,
Speaker 1: this is the one that is going to head west,
Speaker 1: so they follow that. I think at this pointer, either
Speaker 1: right before or right after, they they meet up with
Speaker 1: the Shoshone. Have they met the Shoshoni yet? Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: at this point Lewis went off by himself, um, and
Speaker 1: a couple of more people to find the Shoshoni, including
Speaker 1: psychic away right or No, she wasn't there yet. I
Speaker 1: don't think she was there yet. But he did find them,
Speaker 1: and um he basically said, hey, we come in peace.
Speaker 1: We have a camp back here. We want you to
Speaker 1: come hang out at. Well. They were in bad shape
Speaker 1: apparently this is show anywhere. Yeah, they were pretty worse
Speaker 1: for the wear and very docile as a result. Um.
Speaker 1: So he met these women and children and told them
Speaker 1: all that stuff and they came back and hung out
Speaker 1: with them, and at Camp Soka Goea recognized one of
Speaker 1: the women that Clark was a Clark or Lewis I
Speaker 1: think at this point it was both who who they
Speaker 1: came back with and said, hey, we found some shoon
Speaker 1: and she said, hey, that's actually my bff from first grade.
Speaker 1: Because remember Soa had been um kidnapped and sold, so
Speaker 1: there were still members of her tribe living around the
Speaker 1: Rockies and um, she actually met up with them and
Speaker 1: with her brother who was now chief. Yes, she was
Speaker 1: like your chief and you know it, little sister, and
Speaker 1: he went, you're married to a French trapper. She's like
Speaker 1: that guy. Not really he bought me, uh, which is
Speaker 1: not funny at all, you know. Um. So then they
Speaker 1: proceeded across the continental divide to the main village with
Speaker 1: the Shoshonees and uh hard on a tour guide, old Toby,
Speaker 1: which is a great name for an Indian tour guide,
Speaker 1: and said Toby said, you know, I'll lead you through
Speaker 1: these mountains, but we're gonna need some horses to eat
Speaker 1: because it's gonna be rough and to travel with. Right,
Speaker 1: But this is where they were really eating a lot
Speaker 1: of horse meat. Yeah, the Bitter Root Mountains. It was
Speaker 1: pretty rough through Montana and Idaho. Uh and that was
Speaker 1: when you know, their spirits were never broken. But that's
Speaker 1: when they were dampened for sure. So um, when they
Speaker 1: make it through the bitter Roots, I don't remember why
Speaker 1: they did or where, but there was a point where
Speaker 1: they said, we can't use these horses anymore. I guess
Speaker 1: it's when they got onto the Columbia River, right. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe is this where they were eating salmon and the
Speaker 1: salmon was making them sick? Yes, So they come to
Speaker 1: a pierced village with old Toby I believe it, at
Speaker 1: the lead and um, they're celebrated, welcome, they throw a
Speaker 1: feast for him, and it makes every buddy violently ill
Speaker 1: in the expedition, like the salmon is awful, yeah, or
Speaker 1: these roots or whatever. I'll bet it was the roots
Speaker 1: that got them. Yeah, I think it was. Um. So
Speaker 1: every apparently everyone recovered. Um, but they say, okay, well
Speaker 1: here's the Columbia River. We can't really use these horses anymore.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that's very much overlooked
Speaker 1: in the history of this expedition is just how much
Speaker 1: the core discovery relied on friendly tribes. So like when
Speaker 1: they hit the Columbia River, they said, hey, Shoshone or
Speaker 1: no Nez Pierce friends, will you watch our horses for us.
Speaker 1: And then as Pierce said, yes, you guys go to
Speaker 1: the Pacific Ocean. When you come back, we'll have your horses.
Speaker 1: Go ahead and brand them so you know which ones
Speaker 1: are yours, And they did. They left their horses with
Speaker 1: the Nez Pierce. Yeah, I mean it was it was
Speaker 1: kind of the best case scenario story for most of
Speaker 1: the trip. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Uh. And that is
Speaker 1: actually too where they were where they traded for dog
Speaker 1: to eat, which was one of the only disappointing parts
Speaker 1: of the story for me. Um, that and what happened
Speaker 1: New York. All right, So at this point, it's uh,
Speaker 1: mid October, it floated down to the Great Falls of
Speaker 1: the Columbia, which is now Solilo Falls. I think about
Speaker 1: how much easier it was at this point, like they're
Speaker 1: not going upstream any longer they get with the current. True,
Speaker 1: but it was the Oregon territory, so they were getting
Speaker 1: rained on constantly. I mean it was pretty brutal conditions. Um,
Speaker 1: but you're right. It wasn't like slugging through in the summertime,
Speaker 1: pulling that boat up stream, stepping on prickly pear exactly. Uh.
Speaker 1: So this is where on November seven, they thought that
Speaker 1: they saw the ocean. It's actually a bay about inland.
Speaker 1: And one of them said ocean in view O c
Speaker 1: I N I love the ocean O T e A N.
Speaker 1: In this the same paragraph they misspelled ocean two different ways.
Speaker 1: Give him a break, come on. Uh. Finally, finally, finally,
Speaker 1: by mid November, they strode upon the sands of the Pacific.
Speaker 1: And this is the really sad part is that Merryweather
Speaker 1: called it tempestuous and horrible. Like he wasn't like, oh,
Speaker 1: we made it. He was he was depressed, and he
Speaker 1: was like, this isn't like the Atlantic coach, and this
Speaker 1: is rocky and beating us with waves like the Organ
Speaker 1: coast is rough. Uh. And he didn't cotton to it.
Speaker 1: But what he did cotton to was being an accurate dude.
Speaker 1: By dead reckoning over the course of over he was
Speaker 1: only off by forty miles in charting this, this ride
Speaker 1: that is pretty amazing, is pretty remarkable. So sagawea Um.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons she signed on, aside from being
Speaker 1: a slave to her husband who signed her on um,
Speaker 1: was that she wanted to see the Pacific. She'd heard
Speaker 1: about the Great Waters and yeah, and so when they
Speaker 1: were getting closer, Um, she petitioned Lewis and Clark saying like,
Speaker 1: there's no way you can't let me not come with
Speaker 1: you to see the Pacific Ocean itself. And they let
Speaker 1: her come along. They had word from some local tribe,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure which one it was that there was
Speaker 1: a monstrous fish on the beach, and Lewis and clarker
Speaker 1: like they're talking about a whale. We should go get
Speaker 1: some blubber, and so aways like I'm there, I'm coming
Speaker 1: with you. So they took her along and they all
Speaker 1: got to go see the Pacific Ocean and it was
Speaker 1: personal that first time. Yeah, they got a bunch of
Speaker 1: blubber and oil and stuff from it. Um, and it
Speaker 1: died first, So you can keep liking Lewis and Clark Um.
Speaker 1: So uh, they camp there on the Pacific for a
Speaker 1: full four months. Yeah. Basically they were trying to two things.
Speaker 1: They were trying to decide what to do, and they
Speaker 1: were technically they were waiting for a boat to come by, say,
Speaker 1: a letter of credit from Jefferson that said, hey, if
Speaker 1: you're a boat, give these people a ride back and
Speaker 1: we'll pay you like good money, right, I read that
Speaker 1: they never seriously thought that they were going to take
Speaker 1: a boat back. Well, that was the deal is. Technically
Speaker 1: they were supposed to be waiting for a vote. What
Speaker 1: they were really doing was just sort of weighing their
Speaker 1: options as to how best to go back and win.
Speaker 1: And this is the really cool part. They put it
Speaker 1: to a vote. They did put it to a vote, um,
Speaker 1: and it was a vote that included an African American
Speaker 1: and a woman and a Native American, and it was
Speaker 1: a who Saya and York both both their votes were
Speaker 1: given equal weight to everybody else's. Where to camp? Set
Speaker 1: up camp for the winner. Yeah, so they elected to
Speaker 1: cross the river to the south Um where they were
Speaker 1: informed that there was elk and deer. You can hold
Speaker 1: up here, you can hunt all winter, and they did,
Speaker 1: and prepare yourself for the return journey home, which we'll
Speaker 1: get to after this message. All right, So here we
Speaker 1: are at Fort Clatsop o Yea named after the Clatsop tribe.
Speaker 1: They were hunting, They were storing up, they were getting
Speaker 1: their provisions in order, getting ready to go back, and
Speaker 1: they hauled butt on the way back. They did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know how it is sure it plus it doesn't
Speaker 1: take as long because now you know how long it's
Speaker 1: gonna take. Yeah, And they weren't stopping to record everything
Speaker 1: they did actually been there, um, but the group wasn't
Speaker 1: as happy. Uh. They were irritable, especially Lewis. He kind
Speaker 1: of fell into a depression on the way home. He
Speaker 1: didn't did he come out of it at all while
Speaker 1: they were at the Pacific or did it just stick
Speaker 1: the whole time? Well, I mean I think it was
Speaker 1: up and down. Basically, they believe when he was not
Speaker 1: recording in his journal he was depressed. Um, but he
Speaker 1: is remarkable and that he soldiered on like this is
Speaker 1: a manic depressive who was still like getting up every
Speaker 1: day and doing this and like the worst thing he
Speaker 1: did was not journal you know. Um. Actually the worst
Speaker 1: thing he did was on the way back he stole
Speaker 1: a canow at one point, which is really out of character.
Speaker 1: And he was described as kind of like cracking at
Speaker 1: the seams at this point, which is really sad. So
Speaker 1: March six, they started back up the Columbia with these
Speaker 1: new canoes, bartered for some horses and camped with the
Speaker 1: Nez Pierce for a month, and then they got their
Speaker 1: horses back from the Nez Pierce. Those horses that those were,
Speaker 1: there's the ones before they got back there to the
Speaker 1: next piers. They bartered for some horses and then eventually
Speaker 1: hooked back with the next pierce and camp for like
Speaker 1: a month and got their horses back and got their
Speaker 1: horses back. I think that's your favorite part of this night.
Speaker 1: They're like, hey, guys, were you hanging onto this for?
Speaker 1: They also sunk their canoes at a certain point and
Speaker 1: then went back and got those. He keep keep the
Speaker 1: canoes from being sent down river. They just sunk them
Speaker 1: and then they came back and got them. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So they basically retraced their trail through the Bitter Roots
Speaker 1: UM only one retrograde march and the entire journey, which
Speaker 1: means you have to double back Gale, which is in
Speaker 1: itself pretty remarkable. Uh. And then on July six, they
Speaker 1: separated UM back where they were at that original shortcut
Speaker 1: that they should have taken, and said, hey, let's send
Speaker 1: off some different factions here and do a little bit
Speaker 1: more exploring and a little bit more recording of things.
Speaker 1: They're like, we've slacked off. Well, yeah, because they were
Speaker 1: kind of like I said, they were home, but on
Speaker 1: the way home, Um, this is where Louis where they
Speaker 1: ran into their first kind of violent episode with the
Speaker 1: black Feet Indians, and um, a dude shot at Louis.
Speaker 1: He shot back, hit the guy in the belly. Another
Speaker 1: guy stabbed the Blackfeet Indian. Where is it a Blackfoot Indian?
Speaker 1: And um, they rode away like the black Feet did,
Speaker 1: but two of them died and it was you know,
Speaker 1: it was sad they had gone all that way without
Speaker 1: violence and they finally kind of had to their hand
Speaker 1: was forced, essentially. Chuck. Also, Um, there was another shooting
Speaker 1: that took place during this period, but this moment accidental.
Speaker 1: Um Lewis was actually shot when he was mistaken for
Speaker 1: an elk while he was out hunting with a member
Speaker 1: of the expedition, Pierre Cruzette, and cruzatt Um didn't fess
Speaker 1: up to it immediately. He was like, oh, I guess
Speaker 1: from Indians. It must have been those black Feet and uh. Finally,
Speaker 1: when they searched the area and found no sign of
Speaker 1: black feet, Crusat was like, I'm sorry, I thought you're
Speaker 1: an elk. I'm blind in one I don't forget, but
Speaker 1: I'm the fiddle player and everybody loves me, and Louis
Speaker 1: was like, we'll just let it go and apparently was
Speaker 1: really in a lot of pain. It hit him in
Speaker 1: the try and like he had a very long and
Speaker 1: difficult recovery for the rest of the time. But it
Speaker 1: was about this time when everybody came back together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this, you know, we're sort of simplifying this part
Speaker 1: of the story. But they eventually did all meet back
Speaker 1: up UM pretty remarkably. Like I think the story is
Speaker 1: one of them around it a bin and right as
Speaker 1: they did that, the others were rounding the band and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh hey, it's you, Like it's you out
Speaker 1: here in the middle of nowhere. Uh. So they've eventually
Speaker 1: went back to demand in villages. That is where the
Speaker 1: Charbonneau family UM left the expedition UM, and that is
Speaker 1: where a private John Coulter, who was one of the men, said,
Speaker 1: you know what St. Louis like, I didn't like it there.
Speaker 1: I really like it out here. Can I can I
Speaker 1: go back? And they're like, sure, man, go go west,
Speaker 1: young man exactly, and he did. So he did. He
Speaker 1: he was going to UM work with some French trappers
Speaker 1: and they had a following up pretty quickly after. And
Speaker 1: then this guy Coulter, Yeah, he went off on his
Speaker 1: own and they think he was the first white person
Speaker 1: to enter what's now Yellowstone Park, and he was. He
Speaker 1: was the first to recount the geysers, and even um
Speaker 1: still there's part of it called Coulter's Hell. Oh cool,
Speaker 1: the guys are area of Yellowstone very cool. Uh So
Speaker 1: reportedly the only thing they did not run out of
Speaker 1: on the way home was powder, lead, paper, an inc or.
Speaker 1: At least that's what Kinburn says, you know how they
Speaker 1: put a little cherry on top of everything. Uh. Finally,
Speaker 1: in September of eighteen o six, on the twenty three,
Speaker 1: they arrived victorious in St. Louis and the river was
Speaker 1: lined with people cheering for them, shooting their guns in
Speaker 1: the air, and like we should point out, everyone thought
Speaker 1: they were dead. Yeah, I mean for a long time,
Speaker 1: like they were sending messages back in Prairie Dogs. But
Speaker 1: then at a certain point that just wasn't possible. So
Speaker 1: even Jefferson had given up hope. They've been like they've
Speaker 1: been gone for two and a half years, like we're
Speaker 1: not going to hear from Lewis and Clark again. And
Speaker 1: then they did, and then they did, and um covered
Speaker 1: about eight thousand miles over two years, four months and
Speaker 1: nine days, discovered, I'm sorry, not discovered, recorded hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty two animals that they had never seen, hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy eight plants that they had never seen, and did
Speaker 1: a pretty darn good job of cartographing. Cartographing is that
Speaker 1: even a word? Yeah? I think it is drawn maps.
Speaker 1: Um describing the Rocky mountains and Jeffrey was like, rocky mountains,
Speaker 1: but I have mountains, now, what are those? And they
Speaker 1: were like they're snow capped even in the summer, and
Speaker 1: they were, you know, they've never seen any of this.
Speaker 1: They were blown away. So um. After this, uh, Clark
Speaker 1: sets up shop in St. Louis. Yeah, they doubled everyone's pay,
Speaker 1: which was nice, and gave everyone a bunch of land. Right,
Speaker 1: you got I think three d and twenty acres and
Speaker 1: some Clark got six hundred each, but the rest of
Speaker 1: the guy's got like almost the rest two people did
Speaker 1: not get any land or any money, and that was
Speaker 1: SKAGWAYA and York, um, which sucks. Yeah, and apparently York
Speaker 1: had a difficult reentry into slavery. I can imagine, So
Speaker 1: could you think about like living like that and then
Speaker 1: going back to being a slave. Yeah, And so he
Speaker 1: asked um Clark for his freedom. He's like, I know,
Speaker 1: I don't get landed all and stuff, but how about
Speaker 1: my freedom? And Clark was like no, And not only that,
Speaker 1: he wrote his brother a letter and said, you know,
Speaker 1: York is being kind of uppity since he got back.
Speaker 1: He's not he's not being a good slave and he's
Speaker 1: having trouble and uh so I had to beat him. No. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that was the one time I was like, oh, man, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty awful. It was like really headed in the
Speaker 1: good direction. And all that had to happen was he
Speaker 1: could have just said, yes, you are free, and then
Speaker 1: it would have been the best story ever. Man. That's
Speaker 1: that's really awful. I had no idea about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then there were there various accounts that he might
Speaker 1: have been freed a few years later, or perhaps escaped.
Speaker 1: No one is quite for sure, even though I've noticed
Speaker 1: kin Burns does a lot of factual stating of things
Speaker 1: that are disputed, Like he just said straight up that
Speaker 1: he was freed five years later, and I read up
Speaker 1: on it, and people like maybe not huh. Ken Burns
Speaker 1: just does whatever his haircut tells him. I'm a sucker
Speaker 1: for those things, though. I mean, and I know a
Speaker 1: lot of documentary filmmakers kind of poopoo him. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that takes a certain interpretation, and that's that
Speaker 1: exactly he said. Wait, hold on, I'm really disappointed in Clarks.
Speaker 1: What do you want me to do? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess to talk about Lewis. Yeah, I mean, Clark
Speaker 1: went on, we should say to have like a very
Speaker 1: successful rest of his career. Well, hold on, you want
Speaker 1: to bright side? Bill Clinton in two thousand one gave
Speaker 1: a posthumous um rank a sergeant in the army to York.
Speaker 1: Oh great, so that's kind of nice and um, way
Speaker 1: to go Clinton. Today, there are some statues commemorating York.
Speaker 1: One in Louisville, Kentucky. I think there's one at Lewis
Speaker 1: and Clark College in Portland. In Kansas City, there's one.
Speaker 1: So he's He's definitely been smiled upon historically as like
Speaker 1: a great man and adventurer by everyone but William Clark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and his family, who was like no, So Louis had
Speaker 1: some difficulties upon returning home, he's made governor appointed governor
Speaker 1: of the Upper Louisiana Territory. I think started out well,
Speaker 1: but then he kind of got into financial trouble. I
Speaker 1: think his territory got into financial trouble, right and Washington
Speaker 1: he wasn't able to complete. The big thing was that
Speaker 1: he wasn't able to complete what he was supposed to do,
Speaker 1: which has come back and write about the whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those weren't published until eighteen fourteen, which is eight years
Speaker 1: after they returned. And even then they were published after
Speaker 1: his death. Yeah, so he was. He was, by all accounts,
Speaker 1: pretty depressed. He was on his way to Washington supposedly
Speaker 1: to plead for more money for the territory. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: kind of he had been called out on some finances
Speaker 1: and he wanted to go clear that up. And supposedly
Speaker 1: he had some some of his journals that he wanted
Speaker 1: to turn in. It's like here, I've got this right.
Speaker 1: And he fell out of favor a little bit with
Speaker 1: Jefferson because of all that, which is you know, kind
Speaker 1: of sneaks. It is because he was groomed by Jefferson.
Speaker 1: There was a family friend, like they were friends. So um, Lewis.
Speaker 1: I guess he's on his way to Washington. He's following
Speaker 1: the Natchez Trails trace and he stops in Tennessee at
Speaker 1: a place called the Grinders in near Nashville, and that's
Speaker 1: where he died. He was he was found well, apparently
Speaker 1: crawling toward the innkeeper's wife, shot bleeding, asking for water,
Speaker 1: and she just like screamed and ran away. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: this is another disputed thing. Was he killed or did
Speaker 1: he commit suicide? Uh? If you google death of Meriwether Lewis,
Speaker 1: that comes up suicide. But it is definitely in dispute. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And ken Burne straight up said he killed himself and
Speaker 1: it was very sad. Well. The reason why it's in
Speaker 1: disputes because he was shot in the abdomen and in
Speaker 1: the head. Ye. It's also an expert marksman. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the suicide people I think reckon that back then with guns,
Speaker 1: Like if you really wanted to do it, you would
Speaker 1: point one at your chest and wan at your head
Speaker 1: and squeeze at the same time. Yeah, Like I um,
Speaker 1: but the people said he was murdered for money, and
Speaker 1: what were you gonna say? Nothing? Okay? Uh? Sadly, even
Speaker 1: though this story had a happy ending. It was sort
Speaker 1: of the beginning of the end of the American Indian Um.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty big thing to point out. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was a great quote from one of the people in
Speaker 1: the documentary. It said, they left his students, came back
Speaker 1: his teachers, and sadly America failed to learn the lessons
Speaker 1: that they had brought back with them, because if everything
Speaker 1: had gone the way of Lewis and Clark, it would
Speaker 1: have been awesome. They were basically like, hey, got the
Speaker 1: Great Father, Like we said, we're gonna live in harmony,
Speaker 1: and they believed him, and they believed themselves, you know.
Speaker 1: They weren't like pulling one over on him. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it's just sad that it went down a different way
Speaker 1: from that point forward. Basically, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: There was one brief moment when it could have gone
Speaker 1: in a different way. Yeah, and that was it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But Clark and Lewis also, I guess, kind of paved
Speaker 1: the way for the idea of manifest destiny, although that
Speaker 1: wasn't coined until about forty years after the expedition. They
Speaker 1: are always held up as this idea, and this is
Speaker 1: an idea that people subscribe to for a very long
Speaker 1: time that America was destined to take up the area
Speaker 1: between the Pacific and the Atlantic. It was our destiny,
Speaker 1: and therefore anything that stood in our way should just
Speaker 1: fall before us as we swept outward towards the Pacific
Speaker 1: Ocean to and justifies the means. And Lewis and Clark
Speaker 1: was like, look, they're they're an example of that. Clark
Speaker 1: eventually died of natural causes. In most of the rest
Speaker 1: of the party sort of just faded into history. Um,
Speaker 1: Jean Baptiste, while yeah, he didn't. He became like, okay,
Speaker 1: the court is not a courtis on the lady a quartier? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was prince with a German prince, with German prince
Speaker 1: Prince Wilhelm. Okay, Um and uh, I think the oldest
Speaker 1: survivor to be nine, lived all the way to the
Speaker 1: Civil War and at the age of ninety volunteered to
Speaker 1: fight for the Union. And I don't know if they
Speaker 1: took him up on under They're just like, we get it,
Speaker 1: your legend, but we got this, so who knows. So
Speaker 1: that's the Lewis and Clark expedition. The core of discoveries.
Speaker 1: The dog lived the baby lived. Yeah, the dog made
Speaker 1: it all the way. They only lost one person on
Speaker 1: the entire trip, Charles Floyd, and he died early on
Speaker 1: of what they believe was probably a pendicitist first dependix.
Speaker 1: And Uh, it's pretty amazing. They didn't have to eat
Speaker 1: each other. They didn't even eat the guy who died
Speaker 1: of the first dependix. No, just dog and horse. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you you got anything else, No. If you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about Chuck's favorite story from American history,
Speaker 1: you can type in Lewis and Clark in the search bar.
Speaker 1: How stuff works. And since I said search bar, it
Speaker 1: means it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: this diplomatic community. Hey guys. Last week, the Dutch police
Speaker 1: arrested the Russian diplomat Dmitri borrowed then in his home.
Speaker 1: They were called in by concerned neighbors because the diplomat
Speaker 1: was drunk, hitting his kids, dragging them by their hair
Speaker 1: through the house. The police arrived as and was witnessed
Speaker 1: to the brutality against the children and also established that
Speaker 1: Mr Borodin was extremely drunk. They had no choice but
Speaker 1: to arrest him to protect the children from further abuse. Immediately,
Speaker 1: the Russian government came into action and putin the devil incarnate.
Speaker 1: If you ask me, this is from Jasper demanded his
Speaker 1: release and apologies from the Netherlands. Uh. That same afternoon,
Speaker 1: I started listening to the latest stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: Lo and behold it was about diplomatic community as a
Speaker 1: podcaster to a close. I received a news update on
Speaker 1: my phone that the Dutch government had apologized to the
Speaker 1: Russians for the arrest because it violated the Treaty of Vienna.
Speaker 1: Immunity one out again. UH. Since then, UNA SEF has
Speaker 1: issued a statement that the well being of the children
Speaker 1: should be more important than diplomatic community. Maybe something will
Speaker 1: finally change, probably not person and I hope we declare
Speaker 1: a board in persona non grata, but that seems unlikely. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I want to share this actuality of your podcast with you.
Speaker 1: It's pretty weird that it happened when it did, and
Speaker 1: luckily it wasn't about floods or earthquakes. And that is
Speaker 1: from Jasper in Amsterdam, one of my favorite cities. Nice.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Jasper. It's pretty interesting. I love it
Speaker 1: when things happen like sympatico like that Confluence. Yeah. Um, well,
Speaker 1: if you have a Confluence email you want to send us,
Speaker 1: you can send us an email The Stuff Podcast at
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