WEBVTT - Ep. 07: Jefferson’s "Other" Lewis & Clark 0:00:01.360 --> 0:00:05.880 When Thomas Jefferson acquired the eight hundred million acre Louisiana purchase, 0:00:06.320 --> 0:00:10.039 he launched a second major exploring expedition into the West, 0:00:10.480 --> 0:00:14.280 one with an entirely different outcome than Lewis and Clark's, 0:00:14.800 --> 0:00:18.040 an outcome that shines a new light on what Lewis 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:22.400 and Clark's journey really meant for America. I'm Dan Flory's 0:00:22.720 --> 0:00:26.480 and this is the American West, brought to you by 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:30.600 Velvet Buck. Still in barrel, Velvet Buck arrives this summer 0:00:31.000 --> 0:00:33.520 just in time for the season that calls us home. 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:38.000 A portion of every bottle supports backcountry hunters and anglers 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:56.720 to protect public lands, waters and wildlife enjoy responsibly. Jefferson's 0:00:56.800 --> 0:01:07.319 other Lewis and Clark. On a gray Tuesday in November 0:01:07.440 --> 0:01:10.760 of the year eighteen oh five, with a chill wind 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:14.640 scattering autumn leaves into the puddles of Washington's muddy streets, 0:01:15.280 --> 0:01:18.559 White House staff admitted a caller for a private dinner 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:24.559 with the President of the United States that November evening. 0:01:24.840 --> 0:01:31.800 Thomas Freeman must have felt his future was made. Thomas 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:35.560 Jefferson was about to offer him a plum appointment. The 0:01:35.680 --> 0:01:40.120 leadership of one of his prized explorations into the Louisiana purchase, 0:01:40.640 --> 0:01:42.840 one of the most fascinating parts of the globe for 0:01:42.959 --> 0:01:47.520 scientific study. With Meriwether Lewis and his party already on 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:50.880 the shores of the Pacific, Jefferson was turning to Freeman, 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:55.400 a civilian astronomer who'd immigrated from Ireland, to lead an 0:01:55.400 --> 0:02:00.920 exploring party into southwestern America. Jefferson and call this new 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:04.880 probe the Grand Expedition, and he was aiming it at 0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:08.720 the Red River of the South, which natural history titan 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:12.320 Alexander von Humboldt had assured the President would take American 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:16.160 explorers into vast deserts and the southerly ranges of the 0:02:16.200 --> 0:02:21.320 Shining Mountains. Along with Humboldt, Jefferson had canvass a number 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:25.720 of scientists who'd been gathering information about the Southwest, and 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:30.840 he was fascinated. The young United States had geopolitical reasons 0:02:30.919 --> 0:02:35.120 for exploring Louisiana, but at heart, Jefferson was a naturalist 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:39.440 who dug fossils and written his own book about Virginia. 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:44.760 His informants about the Southwest told him wonderful stories about 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:49.960 volcanoes and tigers and herds, of wild horses, among innumerable 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:53.880 buffalo and wolves. He knew that camels, what he called 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:58.200 the yama or paca of Peru, still existed in similar 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:02.440 country in South America, and since there was already evidence 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:07.640 of elephants in America by then Charles Wilson Peel had laboriously, 0:03:08.040 --> 0:03:11.960 if badly, reassembled the skeleton of one for his museum 0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:15.359 in Philadelphia, elephants might still be in the West. Two 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:20.520 Meriwether Lewis had shipped enough reports and specimens back from 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:24.399 the Missouri River that science was already buzzing about animals 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:28.320 and birds never seen in the Eastern States, and Jefferson's 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:32.639 hope was that America's most famous naturalist, William Bartram, would 0:03:32.680 --> 0:03:37.720 accompany Freeman into the Southwest. Bartram was in his late sixties, though, 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:42.000 so instead promoted Alexander Wilson, soon to be America's first 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:47.480 great bird painter, as Freeman's naturalist. Jefferson instead chose a 0:03:47.560 --> 0:03:51.320 young Virginian whose family he knew well. Thus did a 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:56.520 University of Pennsylvania medical student named Peter Custis become the 0:03:56.560 --> 0:04:00.520 first scientist trained in an American university to when a 0:04:00.640 --> 0:04:05.240 posting as a naturalist to the west. Congress had come 0:04:05.320 --> 0:04:08.960 up with twice the funding for this expedition, as it 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:12.360 had for Lewis and Clark. So when his private dinner 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:16.080 with the President concluded, Thomas Freeman stepped into the Washington 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:20.960 Knight holding seven pages of exploring instructions written in Jefferson's 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:25.240 clear handwriting. He knew, he wrote, a friend, the hazards 0:04:25.279 --> 0:04:28.640 of travel in the neighborhood of Santa Fe. A great 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:32.640 many difficulties, in some personal danger will attend the expedition, 0:04:33.000 --> 0:04:36.480 but I will stick or go through the more danger, 0:04:36.760 --> 0:04:42.680 the more honor. Jefferson's instructions, which Freeman must have scanned repeatedly, 0:04:43.120 --> 0:04:48.039 still exists in the Library of Congress. They include intriguing 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:51.840 directions that also appeared in the exploring instructions the President 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:55.919 had given Meriwether Lewis. The following objects in the country 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:59.080 adjacent to the rivers along which you will pass will 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:02.400 be worthy of notice. The animals of the country generally, 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:06.599 and especially those not known in the maritime states. And 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:11.040 the remains and accounts of any which may be deemed extinct. 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:15.479 The western half of North America then was the country, 0:05:15.880 --> 0:05:19.960 and the eighteen hundreds was the century that ultimately answered 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:25.160 many fundamental questions about America's destiny. With the Louisiana purchase, 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:30.279 Jefferson's administration had affected a continental future for the US, 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:33.039 Like a stone rolling down a mountain. The US in 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:37.000 the eighteen hundreds would claim and buy and seize much 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:41.440 more of the continent. Eventually, everything from southwestern deserts to 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:45.159 Alaska on tundra what had been and could have remained 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:49.760 Native America or French, British or Mexican territory over the 0:05:49.800 --> 0:05:53.200 next sixty years would become part of the US. Thus 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:59.600 did the West become ours? There was that intriguing final 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:04.200 line in Jefferson's Natural History Instructions too, about one of 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:09.119 the grand scientific questions of the age, was extinction real? 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:14.000 Were camels and elephants still out there? Or had they, somehow, 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:18.960 for some unknown reason, vanished from America? Could living creatures 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:23.760 really entirely disappear on a planet Christianity had long believed 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:28.080 was designed as perfection by a creator. How could species 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:32.239 God had placed on Earth vanish, leaving us with only 0:06:32.400 --> 0:06:37.360 their enigmatic bones and skeletons. These questions, and many others, 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:41.160 were why Jefferson aimed a second major exploring expedition at 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:47.520 the West. It's a foregone conclusion that everyone listening to 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:51.040 this has long known about Lewis and Clark, America's most 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:54.279 famous explorers. I would wague that the chances are almost 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:57.840 non existent, though, that you've ever heard of Thomas Freeman 0:06:58.080 --> 0:07:01.800 or doctor Peter Custis own about an eighteen oh six 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:05.240 American probe into the West that was known as the 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:09.840 Grand Expedition. Yet two centuries and two decades ago, a 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:14.040 party of superbly equipped American explorers was working its way 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:18.480 up the Red River of Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma, 0:07:18.800 --> 0:07:23.200 painstakingly mapping the country, holding councils with all the local tribes, 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:28.440 and making collections of plants, wildlife, and geology. Both President 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:31.720 Jefferson and the party's leaders thought of this as the 0:07:31.800 --> 0:07:35.440 Southwestern counterpart to the Lewis and Clark Party, which in 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:40.440 that same summer was returning from a successful exploration across 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:48.000 darkest North America to the Pacific by intent. Freeman, an engineer, surveyor, 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:52.640 and cartographer, and Custis, a student of Benjamin Smith Barton 0:07:52.880 --> 0:07:56.520 in America's best university at the time, should today be 0:07:56.600 --> 0:07:59.760 as famous as any historical figures who aren't President Sir 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:03.160 Jeah Generals, Jefferson had picked them the lead a scientific 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:06.560 reconnaissance across the Great Plains to the Rockies as far 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:09.800 as legendary Santa Fe. We ought to have heard about 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:12.440 them in junior high school social studies the way we 0:08:12.520 --> 0:08:15.920 hear about Neil Armstrong's one giant Leap for mankind on 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:20.239 the Moon, but then once so wrong with Jefferson's second 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:24.720 expedition to the West that it's now invisible in American history. 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:30.440 In a master plan Jefferson had set down in eighteen 0:08:30.480 --> 0:08:35.040 o three, America's third president, had outlined four major expeditions 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:39.240 he hoped to send into the New Louisiana Purchase. In 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:42.560 a precient prediction of the future destiny of the US, 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:46.920 Jefferson believed an expedition into the southern parts of the Purchase, 0:08:47.360 --> 0:08:50.520 aimed at what we today called the Southwest, was almost 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:53.720 as critical as having Lewis and Clark search for the 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:58.800 Northwest Passage. Fundamentally, American exploring parties in the West would 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:03.600 establish a national presence on North American geography that Jefferson 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:08.200 hoped both European powers and Native people would acknowledge, and 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:12.280 as with his questions about extinction, Western exploration represented the 0:09:12.320 --> 0:09:17.640 Jefferson administration's official support of cutting edge science. What was 0:09:17.679 --> 0:09:22.160 out there? What new wonders existed on this last continent 0:09:22.400 --> 0:09:26.640 that humans had found on Earth? But Lewis and Clark 0:09:26.720 --> 0:09:31.120 would leave those questions unanswered for an enormous stretch of 0:09:31.160 --> 0:09:35.000 the Louisiana purchase. So, in an exchange of letters with 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:38.720 Meriwether Lewis in eighteen oh three, Jefferson had told Lewis 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:42.880 that the object of your mission is single, the direct 0:09:42.960 --> 0:09:46.720 water communication from sea to sea. I will also send 0:09:46.760 --> 0:09:49.840 a party up the Red River to its head, then 0:09:49.920 --> 0:09:53.080 cross over to the head of the Arkansas and come down. 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:58.920 That this will be attempted distinctly from your mission. So 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:02.640 what's Lewis and Clark underway? In eighteen oh four, Jefferson 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:05.920 devoted the time he had for expiation to two years 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:09.720 of detailed planning and a budget of five thousand dollars 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:13.839 from Congress to send his next grand expedition into the 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:23.040 heart of the West. The problems for this second expedition began, though, 0:10:23.360 --> 0:10:28.320 with the choice of rivers. Jefferson told a friend that 0:10:28.400 --> 0:10:31.520 he regarded the Red River of the South as next 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:35.080 to the Missouri, the most interesting water of the Mississippi. 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:38.800 But unfortunately he was smitten by the Red in part 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:43.400 because he misunderstood it. Soon after his purchase of the 0:10:43.400 --> 0:10:47.680 Louisiana territory, Jefferson had made known his belief that its 0:10:47.840 --> 0:10:52.679 proper southern boundary was actually the Rio grand River. That 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:57.040 startling claim meant that the upstart United States believed it 0:10:57.120 --> 0:11:01.679 now possessed not merely the French colonies in Louisiana and Missouri, 0:11:02.160 --> 0:11:06.560 but also Texas and New Mexico, where Spain had settlements 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:11.240 that dated back to the early sixteen hundreds. Spain's diplomat 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:14.920 to the US responded that this was absurd reasoning, but 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:18.959 Jefferson had alarmed Spain, which was already struggling to hold 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:23.440 on to its American colonies. The Spanish monarchy was highly 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:27.920 suspicious of America's claim that, as a democratic republic, it 0:11:28.200 --> 0:11:35.200 represented the future for North America. Jefferson's claims unnecessarily rile Spain, 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:39.400 and unfortunately, his attempts to regroup and turn the Red River, 0:11:39.720 --> 0:11:42.959 where he was able to document far more French activity 0:11:43.120 --> 0:11:46.920 than on the Rio Grande, into a compromise boundary failed 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:50.080 to appease the Spanish government. But in the world of 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:54.280 the Southwest and its geography, how feasible was an expiration 0:11:54.520 --> 0:11:57.840 up the Red River and then down the Arkansas. Anyway? 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:02.439 The essential first question of this pairing was where would 0:12:02.440 --> 0:12:08.559 the Red River lead American explorers. Jefferson assumed that major 0:12:08.679 --> 0:12:11.680 rivers had in mountain ranges, and that, given its lower 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:15.480 course and size, the Red must have its origins somewhere 0:12:15.520 --> 0:12:18.720 in the southern ranges of the Shining Mountains, near the 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:23.160 tantalizing destination of Santa Fe. That assumption appeared to be 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:27.600 corroborated by recent maps, particularly a brand new one drawn 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:32.440 by the famous Prussian naturalists himself Alexander von Humboldt, and 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:37.320 based on his map work in Mexico City's archives. Humboldt 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:41.840 knew that Lower Louisiana was bisected north and south by 0:12:41.880 --> 0:12:45.880 a river the French called River Rouge that flowed from 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:48.800 the west, and he knew that from the high Rockies 0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:53.599 near Santa Fe, a reddish river flowed eastward. Surely, the 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:58.080 river the Spaniards saw, and one thousand miles later Fritchman saw, 0:12:58.400 --> 0:13:01.320 was the same one the Americans who are now calling 0:13:01.360 --> 0:13:05.800 the Red so that's how Humboldt drew it. Just as 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:08.440 Lewis and Clark were to open an economic route up 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:11.880 the Missouri to the northwest, the Red appeared poised to 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:15.280 do the same with a proto Santa Fe trailed trade 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:19.880 route between Louisiana and New Mexico. If in fact, the 0:13:20.000 --> 0:13:26.640 Southern Rockies was where the Red River headed. Jefferson issued 0:13:26.640 --> 0:13:29.920 a call to the American scientific community for more information 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:33.679 about the Southwest, and he got it. A New York 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:37.000 nationalist named Samuel Mitchell told the President the Red was 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:40.440 supposed to be navigable for one thousand miles above the 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:45.040 last French town on it century old Nakanish, and that 0:13:45.120 --> 0:13:51.760 it penetrated a country of immense prairies with alligators, buffalo tigers, wolves, 0:13:51.800 --> 0:13:57.480 and innumerable herds of wild horses. The Scottish expatriate scientist 0:13:57.840 --> 0:14:01.600 Sir William Dunbar wrote of the Redd's long course and 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:07.199 its sources in what he called salt Mountains. Dunbar dangled 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:12.840 wonderful stories of wonderful productions, including possibly unicorns on the 0:14:12.840 --> 0:14:16.119 southern prairie, and in the wake of a recent mastodon 0:14:16.240 --> 0:14:21.280 skeleton excavation in Kentucky. Giant water serpents too, he thought 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:26.080 might be in the Southwest. Dunbar also reported vague stories 0:14:26.280 --> 0:14:30.480 of masses of metal venerated by the Indians and assumed 0:14:30.520 --> 0:14:33.760 to be silver ore, and more of those. In the 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:39.240 next episode from his Indian agent in Nacrish, doctor John Sibley, 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:43.800 Jefferson learned one other critical bit of information. As the 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:47.440 gateway to New Mexico, the Upper Red, was controlled by 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:52.200 the horticultural Pawnees, actually the Wichitas as we know them today, 0:14:52.760 --> 0:14:57.440 under their forceful leader Awahakai, and a buffalo hunting people 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:01.200 sibly referred to as the Aton, who we now know 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:05.360 as the Comanches. These Indians, who had fond memories of 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:08.720 the days when Spanish and French traders had competed for 0:15:08.800 --> 0:15:12.960 their friendship, were openly expressing interest in the Americans. That 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:17.920 was music to Jefferson's ears. While the natural history particulars 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:22.640 the President was hearing were vaguely real, the geography, unfortunately, 0:15:22.800 --> 0:15:26.360 was not. There were those who knew the truth about 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:30.240 the Red even this early in the seventeen eighties and 0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:35.000 seventeen nineties. The Spanish government had dispatched French and Spanish 0:15:35.040 --> 0:15:39.200 explorers to link the towns of Saint Louis, Nacotish, and 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:43.480 San Antonio with distant Santa Fe. Some of them traveled 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:46.440 the Red River, and they knew it did not lead 0:15:46.480 --> 0:15:49.360 them to Santa Fe. But what had caught the attention 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:53.240 of Spanish officials was acclaimed by one of them, Pierre Vial, 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:56.800 in seventeen ninety three, that it was possible to journey 0:15:56.800 --> 0:15:59.840 from Saint Louis to Santa Fe in little more than 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:04.560 three weeks. The revolutionary Americans were that close. That was 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:11.160 far too close. Among Jefferson's informants, there was one who 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:14.840 gave the President accurate information about his choice of a river. 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:19.840 A scheming and controversial general named James Wilkinson presented the 0:16:19.840 --> 0:16:23.120 President with a twenty two page letter about the Southwest, 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:27.320 designed to excite the presidential eye. As Wilkinson put it, 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:32.840 among the various details about the natural history of this 0:16:32.960 --> 0:16:36.960 wonderful country, there was actually an accurate description of the 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:41.200 Upper Red River, one almost certainly based on the travels 0:16:41.200 --> 0:16:45.560 of a young American horse trader named Philip Nolan, a 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:48.560 man worthy of a fuller treatment in a later episode 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:53.880 of this podcast above the Wichita villages. The Red River Fort. 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:57.680 The right hand fort flowed through a mountain ridge to 0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:01.400 the west, but the left hand for which was the longer, 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:07.520 spilled off an open plain, Wilkinson said, so extensive as 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:11.920 to require the Indians four days in crossing it. Beyond 0:17:11.960 --> 0:17:15.160 that high plain there was a river running south, and 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:21.600 beyond that very high mountains disappearing into northern distances. Had 0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:26.280 the Americans understood this description, which accurately portrayed the headwaters 0:17:26.280 --> 0:17:29.879 of the Red River in Great Canyons eroded into the 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:33.960 Yano Wes Tocado or the Stake Plain, with the Pecos 0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:37.480 River flowing south beyond that, and with the Rockies in 0:17:37.560 --> 0:17:41.000 Santa Fe still many days to the northwest, they would 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:44.320 have understood that the Arkansas River, not the Red, was 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:47.920 the correct route to the Rockies. The Arkansas would also 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:50.639 have had the added benefit that the Missouri did for 0:17:50.720 --> 0:17:54.119 Lewis and Clark. It would have gotten American explorers farther 0:17:54.160 --> 0:17:57.760 away from Spanish forces sent out to stop the Americans 0:17:57.880 --> 0:18:02.840 from examining the West. The truth was that Jefferson's insistence 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:05.800 on the Red for his second Big Western expedition was 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:09.480 ill start, and the result was that Freeman's and Custos's 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:13.200 chances at becoming American heroes like Lewis and Clark were 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:18.000 about to evaporate. The letter of exploring instructions Jefferson had 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:20.800 given him in November of eighteen oh four included a 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:23.800 line also in the Lewis and Clark letter that would 0:18:23.800 --> 0:18:28.240 prove far more significant in the Southwest. If at any 0:18:28.320 --> 0:18:32.560 time a superior force, authorized or not authorized by a 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:36.560 nation should be arrayed against your further passage and inflexibly 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:40.400 determined to arrest it, you must decline its further pursuit 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:44.919 and return. So Freeman, it turned out, would neither stick 0:18:45.080 --> 0:18:48.840 nor go through. In fact, he was about to bounce 0:18:49.200 --> 0:19:01.000 right out of American history, With both Spain and Native 0:19:01.040 --> 0:19:05.600 peoples like the Osages making threatening noises about Americans penetrating 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:10.440 the Southwest. Jefferson personally selected Captain Richard Sparks, familiar to 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:13.879 him via Lewis, as one of the best woodsman, bushfighters 0:19:13.920 --> 0:19:17.359 and hunters in the army, to head a military contingent 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:21.520 to accompany the two scientific leaders. Now in the spring 0:19:21.560 --> 0:19:24.879 of eighteen oh six, all was haste in procuring French 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:28.159 and Native guides and laying in supplies so that the 0:19:28.200 --> 0:19:32.000 Grand Expeditions specially designed barges could take them up river 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:35.359 as far as the Wichitaa villages, whence they planned to 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:39.399 explore westward by horseback. Freeman directed the purchase of a 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:44.879 camera obscura to produce topographic images, a high quality chronometer 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:49.440 for fixing longitudes, and a portable barometer for taking elevations, 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:54.000 along with an acrochromatic telescope to help fix latitudes by 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:58.760 observing the eclipses of Jupiter's moons. Custus brought a shotgun, 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:03.040 plant presses, and various traps and preservation equipment, plus a 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:08.600 library of natural history reference volumes. By mid April of 0:20:08.640 --> 0:20:11.360 eighteen oh six, the bulk of the exploring party had 0:20:11.400 --> 0:20:15.359 assembled in Natchez, Mississippi, where they conducted a last round 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:20.000 of outfitting. Sparks selected two non commissioned officers and seventeen 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:24.200 privates for their general good health and robust temperaments. As 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:26.760 with Lewis and Clark, there was an African American member 0:20:26.840 --> 0:20:29.880 of the expedition who may have arrived with Peter Custis. 0:20:30.760 --> 0:20:34.840 Unlike York, we don't know his name. This party entered 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:36.840 the mouth of the Red River on May the first, 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:41.600 anticipating a year long probe taking them some thirteen hundred 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:46.240 river miles into the western interior. But despite their high spirits, 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:49.119 they couldn't miss the warning signs on the Spanish border. 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:54.439 As Custius would confide in his journal, this expedition seems 0:20:54.480 --> 0:20:58.960 to have thrown their whole country in the commotion because 0:20:59.000 --> 0:21:01.840 the Red River was got nearly so distant from Spanish 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:05.359 power as the Missouri Madrid got active in a hurry, 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:09.280 it quickly dispatched not one but two bodies of troops 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:13.119 to intercept Freeman and Cussis. One with two hundred cavalry, 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:17.640 commanded by Captain Francisco Vianna, left Nacadochus in East Texas 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:20.840 to confront the Americans on the Lower River. The other, 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:24.720 which Zebulun Pike, who mistakenly thought he was its target, 0:21:25.080 --> 0:21:28.880 described as the most important expedition ever sent out from 0:21:28.880 --> 0:21:33.520 the province of New Mexico, was the Insurance Policy, commanded 0:21:33.560 --> 0:21:36.960 by Lieutenant Ficundo Melgari's. It left Santa Fe bound for 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:41.560 the Red in early June of eighteen oh six, With 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:44.720 that time and the summer of eighteen oh six merely 0:21:44.800 --> 0:21:50.920 waited out the geopolitical rendezvous. When Jefferson's explorers arrived in Nacotash, 0:21:51.000 --> 0:21:54.080 the last American outposts on the Red, and heard of 0:21:54.119 --> 0:21:57.480 the ominous Spanish troop movements, the two questions they must 0:21:57.480 --> 0:21:59.800 have been asking themselves were how far are we going 0:21:59.840 --> 0:22:03.760 to get? And will I live through this? Nonetheless, this 0:22:04.000 --> 0:22:07.160 was the President's own mission. Now brought up to fifty 0:22:07.240 --> 0:22:10.679 men with French and two Indian guides and a total 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:15.119 of seven craft, making it the largest American exploring party 0:22:15.160 --> 0:22:19.480 of the age. Freeman's stick or go through aphorism was 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:26.000 about to be tested. Confronting only nature, the aphorism worked. 0:22:26.520 --> 0:22:28.920 In the course of their five month exploration, the party 0:22:28.960 --> 0:22:32.240 would confront many remarkable phenomena of the Red Rivers in 0:22:32.359 --> 0:22:36.159 natural ecology. One of those was the Great Raft, a 0:22:36.320 --> 0:22:40.000 thousand year old logjam that entirely blocked the river for 0:22:40.080 --> 0:22:43.600 more than one hundred miles. To get their boats around 0:22:43.680 --> 0:22:46.719 this massive obstacle, they had to detour through a swamp 0:22:46.800 --> 0:22:52.640 land that likely rivaled today's ok Finoki Swamp. For naturalist custos, 0:22:52.760 --> 0:22:56.320 the Great Swamp was a botanical treasure. For everyone else, 0:22:56.400 --> 0:23:00.919 it was pure misery. Fourteen days of incep sent fatigue, 0:23:01.080 --> 0:23:04.320 toil and danger, doubt and uncertainty, as Freeman put it. 0:23:05.600 --> 0:23:08.400 Beyond the route, Freeman got a first opportunity to try 0:23:08.440 --> 0:23:11.600 out his diplomatic skills on the Indians, whose country they 0:23:11.680 --> 0:23:16.000 now entered, an ancient but reduced population of mound builders, 0:23:16.040 --> 0:23:20.399 the Catto Confederacy. For two weeks the Americans treated with 0:23:20.520 --> 0:23:24.159 de Heehuitt, hereditary chief of the Caddos, to whom Freeman 0:23:24.240 --> 0:23:28.320 presented US flags and solicited Catto endorsement of the exploration. 0:23:29.080 --> 0:23:32.680 Custus meanwhile observed and wrote of Catto and customs and skills. 0:23:33.119 --> 0:23:36.080 Their talents with the bow, he said, put him in 0:23:36.160 --> 0:23:39.000 mind of stories from the Iliad, and he posted a 0:23:39.080 --> 0:23:44.320 twenty six specimen botanical collection downriver for Custis. The beautiful 0:23:44.320 --> 0:23:47.639 Red River Valley seemed the paradise of America, as he 0:23:47.720 --> 0:23:52.119 called it. The naturalists Eden Jefferson and Promise the image 0:23:52.119 --> 0:23:54.359 of Freeman and Custus ill starred as they were that 0:23:54.440 --> 0:23:58.600 I savor Is, then proceeding upriver in July of eighteen 0:23:58.640 --> 0:24:02.240 oh six, busily studying the river valley, made aware by 0:24:02.280 --> 0:24:05.680 the Caddos that a Spanish force four times their number 0:24:06.080 --> 0:24:08.960 was shadowing them in the undulating hills to the west. 0:24:10.000 --> 0:24:13.240 Guided by the Caddos, cut Finger and grand Ose Ages, 0:24:13.480 --> 0:24:16.680 the party engaged in a series of minor adventures, at 0:24:16.680 --> 0:24:20.200 one point ascending a small mountain prominent in the Caddo 0:24:20.359 --> 0:24:24.159 creation myth and consuming a bottle of whiskey with their guides. 0:24:25.280 --> 0:24:27.399 By the twenty second of July, they had rounded the 0:24:27.440 --> 0:24:30.800 Great Band of the Red near present Texarkana and were 0:24:30.840 --> 0:24:34.320 heading due west. On July the twenty seventh, the Caddoes 0:24:34.359 --> 0:24:37.439 told them that they had reached the former location of 0:24:37.560 --> 0:24:41.439 Bnard de la Harp's early eighteenth century trading post that 0:24:41.560 --> 0:24:44.760 had been the most westerly French settlement on the Red River, 0:24:45.119 --> 0:24:49.000 beyond which Spain now insisted that the southwest belonged to 0:24:49.080 --> 0:24:55.040 their monarchy. There was another alarming development too. After ascending 0:24:55.040 --> 0:24:57.760 the river for two weeks without a thunderstorm, the water 0:24:57.840 --> 0:25:01.280 in the Red was dropping fast. Still two to three 0:25:01.320 --> 0:25:04.320 weeks from the Wichital villages, and whatever horses they could 0:25:04.359 --> 0:25:07.520 purchase with their flags and gifts, the explorers were having 0:25:07.560 --> 0:25:11.240 to drag their barges, their hulls grinding on channel gravel 0:25:11.480 --> 0:25:15.320 up the river. As for the movements of the Spanish 0:25:15.320 --> 0:25:18.439 troops sent to oppose them, they were direct and purposeful. 0:25:19.600 --> 0:25:23.040 After angrily cutting down the American flag he found flying 0:25:23.200 --> 0:25:27.000 into heehus Cadat village, Captain Vianna had marched his force 0:25:27.119 --> 0:25:30.040 north to the Red taking a position on a bluff 0:25:30.280 --> 0:25:33.840 that's been known ever since as Spanish Bluff, near the 0:25:33.920 --> 0:25:39.119 present boundary between Oklahoma and Arkansas, sending a post to 0:25:39.200 --> 0:25:42.800 his superior saying that he knew the irremedial damage that 0:25:42.840 --> 0:25:45.800 would result to this province if the Union is accomplished 0:25:45.880 --> 0:25:49.040 of the expedition of the United States with the faceless 0:25:49.160 --> 0:25:52.680 Wichitaal Indians and the Comanches. Vianna wrote that he would 0:25:52.720 --> 0:25:56.159 confront the Americans above the old French posts, as this 0:25:56.400 --> 0:26:03.760 territory is ours. Lacking a successful exploration, Freeman very well 0:26:03.920 --> 0:26:07.240 might have ensured his name in American history had he 0:26:07.440 --> 0:26:11.679 opted for armed conflict, but there was no violent encounter. 0:26:11.880 --> 0:26:14.359 When the Americans rounded a bend in the river and 0:26:14.520 --> 0:26:18.639 faced a Spanish force four times their size arrayed across it, 0:26:19.960 --> 0:26:24.359 Vianna politely but firmly refused to allow the Americans to pass, 0:26:25.080 --> 0:26:29.000 and Freeman, with Jefferson's instructions in hand, if at any 0:26:29.080 --> 0:26:32.920 time a superior force, authorized or not authorized by a nation, 0:26:33.080 --> 0:26:36.720 should be arrayed against your further passage and inflexibly determined 0:26:36.760 --> 0:26:39.920 to arrest it, you must decline its further pursuit. In return, 0:26:40.760 --> 0:26:45.200 he made the mature decision the confrontation called for. The 0:26:45.359 --> 0:26:50.360 date was July thirtieth, eighteen oh six. They had ascended 0:26:50.359 --> 0:26:53.200 the Red River, six hundred and fifteen miles to the 0:26:53.320 --> 0:26:55.600 edge of the black Land Prairies and the Great Plains, 0:26:55.680 --> 0:26:59.000 but still only halfway to the Great Mystery of the 0:26:59.119 --> 0:27:04.199 Red Sources. So Freeman agreed to turn back rather than 0:27:04.280 --> 0:27:07.600 proceeding on. As Lewis and Clark often began their journal entries, 0:27:07.960 --> 0:27:13.440 the Grand Expedition turned around in a young country like 0:27:13.520 --> 0:27:17.480 the US, anxious about its reputation and longing for heroes 0:27:17.560 --> 0:27:21.119 to celebrate. Thomas Freeman and Peter Custis and their mates, 0:27:21.359 --> 0:27:25.000 on a presidentially authorized attempt to explore the West, return 0:27:25.160 --> 0:27:28.640 to a country that quickly turned away and forgot them. 0:27:30.560 --> 0:27:35.080 For a total expenditure at last of eighty seven hundred dollars, 0:27:35.640 --> 0:27:39.440 Jefferson had launched an expedition that another power had forced 0:27:39.480 --> 0:27:43.080 to retreat. Peter Custis's natural history work on the red 0:27:43.240 --> 0:27:47.040 was highly intriguing. He had cataloged twenty two mammals, thirty 0:27:47.080 --> 0:27:51.800 six birds, seventeen reptiles, fishes and amphibians, fifty eight trees, 0:27:52.080 --> 0:27:54.879 and one hundred and thirty flowering plants, twenty six of 0:27:54.960 --> 0:27:58.720 which he collected for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 0:27:59.800 --> 0:28:04.760 The meager geographic results meant that everyone involved understood, having 0:28:04.840 --> 0:28:07.520 failed to penetrate the great planes and reached the rockies 0:28:07.560 --> 0:28:11.040 in Santa Fe, the expedition was a failure. There was 0:28:11.240 --> 0:28:26.200 just no other way to spend it. The President's public 0:28:26.280 --> 0:28:29.480