Speaker 1: When Thomas Jefferson acquired the eight hundred million acre Louisiana purchase,
Speaker 1: he launched a second major exploring expedition into the West,
Speaker 1: one with an entirely different outcome than Lewis and Clark's,
Speaker 1: an outcome that shines a new light on what Lewis
Speaker 1: and Clark's journey really meant for America. I'm Dan Flory's
Speaker 1: and this is the American West, brought to you by
Speaker 1: Velvet Buck. Still in barrel, Velvet Buck arrives this summer
Speaker 1: just in time for the season that calls us home.
Speaker 1: A portion of every bottle supports backcountry hunters and anglers
Speaker 1: to protect public lands, waters and wildlife enjoy responsibly. Jefferson's
Speaker 1: other Lewis and Clark. On a gray Tuesday in November
Speaker 1: of the year eighteen oh five, with a chill wind
Speaker 1: scattering autumn leaves into the puddles of Washington's muddy streets,
Speaker 1: White House staff admitted a caller for a private dinner
Speaker 1: with the President of the United States that November evening.
Speaker 1: Thomas Freeman must have felt his future was made. Thomas
Speaker 1: Jefferson was about to offer him a plum appointment. The
Speaker 1: leadership of one of his prized explorations into the Louisiana purchase,
Speaker 1: one of the most fascinating parts of the globe for
Speaker 1: scientific study. With Meriwether Lewis and his party already on
Speaker 1: the shores of the Pacific, Jefferson was turning to Freeman,
Speaker 1: a civilian astronomer who'd immigrated from Ireland, to lead an
Speaker 1: exploring party into southwestern America. Jefferson and call this new
Speaker 1: probe the Grand Expedition, and he was aiming it at
Speaker 1: the Red River of the South, which natural history titan
Speaker 1: Alexander von Humboldt had assured the President would take American
Speaker 1: explorers into vast deserts and the southerly ranges of the
Speaker 1: Shining Mountains. Along with Humboldt, Jefferson had canvass a number
Speaker 1: of scientists who'd been gathering information about the Southwest, and
Speaker 1: he was fascinated. The young United States had geopolitical reasons
Speaker 1: for exploring Louisiana, but at heart, Jefferson was a naturalist
Speaker 1: who dug fossils and written his own book about Virginia.
Speaker 1: His informants about the Southwest told him wonderful stories about
Speaker 1: volcanoes and tigers and herds, of wild horses, among innumerable
Speaker 1: buffalo and wolves. He knew that camels, what he called
Speaker 1: the yama or paca of Peru, still existed in similar
Speaker 1: country in South America, and since there was already evidence
Speaker 1: of elephants in America by then Charles Wilson Peel had laboriously,
Speaker 1: if badly, reassembled the skeleton of one for his museum
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, elephants might still be in the West. Two
Speaker 1: Meriwether Lewis had shipped enough reports and specimens back from
Speaker 1: the Missouri River that science was already buzzing about animals
Speaker 1: and birds never seen in the Eastern States, and Jefferson's
Speaker 1: hope was that America's most famous naturalist, William Bartram, would
Speaker 1: accompany Freeman into the Southwest. Bartram was in his late sixties, though,
Speaker 1: so instead promoted Alexander Wilson, soon to be America's first
Speaker 1: great bird painter, as Freeman's naturalist. Jefferson instead chose a
Speaker 1: young Virginian whose family he knew well. Thus did a
Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania medical student named Peter Custis become the
Speaker 1: first scientist trained in an American university to when a
Speaker 1: posting as a naturalist to the west. Congress had come
Speaker 1: up with twice the funding for this expedition, as it
Speaker 1: had for Lewis and Clark. So when his private dinner
Speaker 1: with the President concluded, Thomas Freeman stepped into the Washington
Speaker 1: Knight holding seven pages of exploring instructions written in Jefferson's
Speaker 1: clear handwriting. He knew, he wrote, a friend, the hazards
Speaker 1: of travel in the neighborhood of Santa Fe. A great
Speaker 1: many difficulties, in some personal danger will attend the expedition,
Speaker 1: but I will stick or go through the more danger,
Speaker 1: the more honor. Jefferson's instructions, which Freeman must have scanned repeatedly,
Speaker 1: still exists in the Library of Congress. They include intriguing
Speaker 1: directions that also appeared in the exploring instructions the President
Speaker 1: had given Meriwether Lewis. The following objects in the country
Speaker 1: adjacent to the rivers along which you will pass will
Speaker 1: be worthy of notice. The animals of the country generally,
Speaker 1: and especially those not known in the maritime states. And
Speaker 1: the remains and accounts of any which may be deemed extinct.
Speaker 1: The western half of North America then was the country,
Speaker 1: and the eighteen hundreds was the century that ultimately answered
Speaker 1: many fundamental questions about America's destiny. With the Louisiana purchase,
Speaker 1: Jefferson's administration had affected a continental future for the US,
Speaker 1: Like a stone rolling down a mountain. The US in
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds would claim and buy and seize much
Speaker 1: more of the continent. Eventually, everything from southwestern deserts to
Speaker 1: Alaska on tundra what had been and could have remained
Speaker 1: Native America or French, British or Mexican territory over the
Speaker 1: next sixty years would become part of the US. Thus
Speaker 1: did the West become ours? There was that intriguing final
Speaker 1: line in Jefferson's Natural History Instructions too, about one of
Speaker 1: the grand scientific questions of the age, was extinction real?
Speaker 1: Were camels and elephants still out there? Or had they, somehow,
Speaker 1: for some unknown reason, vanished from America? Could living creatures
Speaker 1: really entirely disappear on a planet Christianity had long believed
Speaker 1: was designed as perfection by a creator. How could species
Speaker 1: God had placed on Earth vanish, leaving us with only
Speaker 1: their enigmatic bones and skeletons. These questions, and many others,
Speaker 1: were why Jefferson aimed a second major exploring expedition at
Speaker 1: the West. It's a foregone conclusion that everyone listening to
Speaker 1: this has long known about Lewis and Clark, America's most
Speaker 1: famous explorers. I would wague that the chances are almost
Speaker 1: non existent, though, that you've ever heard of Thomas Freeman
Speaker 1: or doctor Peter Custis own about an eighteen oh six
Speaker 1: American probe into the West that was known as the
Speaker 1: Grand Expedition. Yet two centuries and two decades ago, a
Speaker 1: party of superbly equipped American explorers was working its way
Speaker 1: up the Red River of Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: painstakingly mapping the country, holding councils with all the local tribes,
Speaker 1: and making collections of plants, wildlife, and geology. Both President
Speaker 1: Jefferson and the party's leaders thought of this as the
Speaker 1: Southwestern counterpart to the Lewis and Clark Party, which in
Speaker 1: that same summer was returning from a successful exploration across
Speaker 1: darkest North America to the Pacific by intent. Freeman, an engineer, surveyor,
Speaker 1: and cartographer, and Custis, a student of Benjamin Smith Barton
Speaker 1: in America's best university at the time, should today be
Speaker 1: as famous as any historical figures who aren't President Sir
Speaker 1: Jeah Generals, Jefferson had picked them the lead a scientific
Speaker 1: reconnaissance across the Great Plains to the Rockies as far
Speaker 1: as legendary Santa Fe. We ought to have heard about
Speaker 1: them in junior high school social studies the way we
Speaker 1: hear about Neil Armstrong's one giant Leap for mankind on
Speaker 1: the Moon, but then once so wrong with Jefferson's second
Speaker 1: expedition to the West that it's now invisible in American history.
Speaker 1: In a master plan Jefferson had set down in eighteen
Speaker 1: o three, America's third president, had outlined four major expeditions
Speaker 1: he hoped to send into the New Louisiana Purchase. In
Speaker 1: a precient prediction of the future destiny of the US,
Speaker 1: Jefferson believed an expedition into the southern parts of the Purchase,
Speaker 1: aimed at what we today called the Southwest, was almost
Speaker 1: as critical as having Lewis and Clark search for the
Speaker 1: Northwest Passage. Fundamentally, American exploring parties in the West would
Speaker 1: establish a national presence on North American geography that Jefferson
Speaker 1: hoped both European powers and Native people would acknowledge, and
Speaker 1: as with his questions about extinction, Western exploration represented the
Speaker 1: Jefferson administration's official support of cutting edge science. What was
Speaker 1: out there? What new wonders existed on this last continent
Speaker 1: that humans had found on Earth? But Lewis and Clark
Speaker 1: would leave those questions unanswered for an enormous stretch of
Speaker 1: the Louisiana purchase. So, in an exchange of letters with
Speaker 1: Meriwether Lewis in eighteen oh three, Jefferson had told Lewis
Speaker 1: that the object of your mission is single, the direct
Speaker 1: water communication from sea to sea. I will also send
Speaker 1: a party up the Red River to its head, then
Speaker 1: cross over to the head of the Arkansas and come down.
Speaker 1: That this will be attempted distinctly from your mission. So
Speaker 1: what's Lewis and Clark underway? In eighteen oh four, Jefferson
Speaker 1: devoted the time he had for expiation to two years
Speaker 1: of detailed planning and a budget of five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: from Congress to send his next grand expedition into the
Speaker 1: heart of the West. The problems for this second expedition began, though,
Speaker 1: with the choice of rivers. Jefferson told a friend that
Speaker 1: he regarded the Red River of the South as next
Speaker 1: to the Missouri, the most interesting water of the Mississippi.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately he was smitten by the Red in part
Speaker 1: because he misunderstood it. Soon after his purchase of the
Speaker 1: Louisiana territory, Jefferson had made known his belief that its
Speaker 1: proper southern boundary was actually the Rio grand River. That
Speaker 1: startling claim meant that the upstart United States believed it
Speaker 1: now possessed not merely the French colonies in Louisiana and Missouri,
Speaker 1: but also Texas and New Mexico, where Spain had settlements
Speaker 1: that dated back to the early sixteen hundreds. Spain's diplomat
Speaker 1: to the US responded that this was absurd reasoning, but
Speaker 1: Jefferson had alarmed Spain, which was already struggling to hold
Speaker 1: on to its American colonies. The Spanish monarchy was highly
Speaker 1: suspicious of America's claim that, as a democratic republic, it
Speaker 1: represented the future for North America. Jefferson's claims unnecessarily rile Spain,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately, his attempts to regroup and turn the Red River,
Speaker 1: where he was able to document far more French activity
Speaker 1: than on the Rio Grande, into a compromise boundary failed
Speaker 1: to appease the Spanish government. But in the world of
Speaker 1: the Southwest and its geography, how feasible was an expiration
Speaker 1: up the Red River and then down the Arkansas. Anyway?
Speaker 1: The essential first question of this pairing was where would
Speaker 1: the Red River lead American explorers. Jefferson assumed that major
Speaker 1: rivers had in mountain ranges, and that, given its lower
Speaker 1: course and size, the Red must have its origins somewhere
Speaker 1: in the southern ranges of the Shining Mountains, near the
Speaker 1: tantalizing destination of Santa Fe. That assumption appeared to be
Speaker 1: corroborated by recent maps, particularly a brand new one drawn
Speaker 1: by the famous Prussian naturalists himself Alexander von Humboldt, and
Speaker 1: based on his map work in Mexico City's archives. Humboldt
Speaker 1: knew that Lower Louisiana was bisected north and south by
Speaker 1: a river the French called River Rouge that flowed from
Speaker 1: the west, and he knew that from the high Rockies
Speaker 1: near Santa Fe, a reddish river flowed eastward. Surely, the
Speaker 1: river the Spaniards saw, and one thousand miles later Fritchman saw,
Speaker 1: was the same one the Americans who are now calling
Speaker 1: the Red so that's how Humboldt drew it. Just as
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark were to open an economic route up
Speaker 1: the Missouri to the northwest, the Red appeared poised to
Speaker 1: do the same with a proto Santa Fe trailed trade
Speaker 1: route between Louisiana and New Mexico. If in fact, the
Speaker 1: Southern Rockies was where the Red River headed. Jefferson issued
Speaker 1: a call to the American scientific community for more information
Speaker 1: about the Southwest, and he got it. A New York
Speaker 1: nationalist named Samuel Mitchell told the President the Red was
Speaker 1: supposed to be navigable for one thousand miles above the
Speaker 1: last French town on it century old Nakanish, and that
Speaker 1: it penetrated a country of immense prairies with alligators, buffalo tigers, wolves,
Speaker 1: and innumerable herds of wild horses. The Scottish expatriate scientist
Speaker 1: Sir William Dunbar wrote of the Redd's long course and
Speaker 1: its sources in what he called salt Mountains. Dunbar dangled
Speaker 1: wonderful stories of wonderful productions, including possibly unicorns on the
Speaker 1: southern prairie, and in the wake of a recent mastodon
Speaker 1: skeleton excavation in Kentucky. Giant water serpents too, he thought
Speaker 1: might be in the Southwest. Dunbar also reported vague stories
Speaker 1: of masses of metal venerated by the Indians and assumed
Speaker 1: to be silver ore, and more of those. In the
Speaker 1: next episode from his Indian agent in Nacrish, doctor John Sibley,
Speaker 1: Jefferson learned one other critical bit of information. As the
Speaker 1: gateway to New Mexico, the Upper Red, was controlled by
Speaker 1: the horticultural Pawnees, actually the Wichitas as we know them today,
Speaker 1: under their forceful leader Awahakai, and a buffalo hunting people
Speaker 1: sibly referred to as the Aton, who we now know
Speaker 1: as the Comanches. These Indians, who had fond memories of
Speaker 1: the days when Spanish and French traders had competed for
Speaker 1: their friendship, were openly expressing interest in the Americans. That
Speaker 1: was music to Jefferson's ears. While the natural history particulars
Speaker 1: the President was hearing were vaguely real, the geography, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: was not. There were those who knew the truth about
Speaker 1: the Red even this early in the seventeen eighties and
Speaker 1: seventeen nineties. The Spanish government had dispatched French and Spanish
Speaker 1: explorers to link the towns of Saint Louis, Nacotish, and
Speaker 1: San Antonio with distant Santa Fe. Some of them traveled
Speaker 1: the Red River, and they knew it did not lead
Speaker 1: them to Santa Fe. But what had caught the attention
Speaker 1: of Spanish officials was acclaimed by one of them, Pierre Vial,
Speaker 1: in seventeen ninety three, that it was possible to journey
Speaker 1: from Saint Louis to Santa Fe in little more than
Speaker 1: three weeks. The revolutionary Americans were that close. That was
Speaker 1: far too close. Among Jefferson's informants, there was one who
Speaker 1: gave the President accurate information about his choice of a river.
Speaker 1: A scheming and controversial general named James Wilkinson presented the
Speaker 1: President with a twenty two page letter about the Southwest,
Speaker 1: designed to excite the presidential eye. As Wilkinson put it,
Speaker 1: among the various details about the natural history of this
Speaker 1: wonderful country, there was actually an accurate description of the
Speaker 1: Upper Red River, one almost certainly based on the travels
Speaker 1: of a young American horse trader named Philip Nolan, a
Speaker 1: man worthy of a fuller treatment in a later episode
Speaker 1: of this podcast above the Wichita villages. The Red River Fort.
Speaker 1: The right hand fort flowed through a mountain ridge to
Speaker 1: the west, but the left hand for which was the longer,
Speaker 1: spilled off an open plain, Wilkinson said, so extensive as
Speaker 1: to require the Indians four days in crossing it. Beyond
Speaker 1: that high plain there was a river running south, and
Speaker 1: beyond that very high mountains disappearing into northern distances. Had
Speaker 1: the Americans understood this description, which accurately portrayed the headwaters
Speaker 1: of the Red River in Great Canyons eroded into the
Speaker 1: Yano Wes Tocado or the Stake Plain, with the Pecos
Speaker 1: River flowing south beyond that, and with the Rockies in
Speaker 1: Santa Fe still many days to the northwest, they would
Speaker 1: have understood that the Arkansas River, not the Red, was
Speaker 1: the correct route to the Rockies. The Arkansas would also
Speaker 1: have had the added benefit that the Missouri did for
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark. It would have gotten American explorers farther
Speaker 1: away from Spanish forces sent out to stop the Americans
Speaker 1: from examining the West. The truth was that Jefferson's insistence
Speaker 1: on the Red for his second Big Western expedition was
Speaker 1: ill start, and the result was that Freeman's and Custos's
Speaker 1: chances at becoming American heroes like Lewis and Clark were
Speaker 1: about to evaporate. The letter of exploring instructions Jefferson had
Speaker 1: given him in November of eighteen oh four included a
Speaker 1: line also in the Lewis and Clark letter that would
Speaker 1: prove far more significant in the Southwest. If at any
Speaker 1: time a superior force, authorized or not authorized by a
Speaker 1: nation should be arrayed against your further passage and inflexibly
Speaker 1: determined to arrest it, you must decline its further pursuit
Speaker 1: and return. So Freeman, it turned out, would neither stick
Speaker 1: nor go through. In fact, he was about to bounce
Speaker 1: right out of American history, With both Spain and Native
Speaker 1: peoples like the Osages making threatening noises about Americans penetrating
Speaker 1: the Southwest. Jefferson personally selected Captain Richard Sparks, familiar to
Speaker 1: him via Lewis, as one of the best woodsman, bushfighters
Speaker 1: and hunters in the army, to head a military contingent
Speaker 1: to accompany the two scientific leaders. Now in the spring
Speaker 1: of eighteen oh six, all was haste in procuring French
Speaker 1: and Native guides and laying in supplies so that the
Speaker 1: Grand Expeditions specially designed barges could take them up river
Speaker 1: as far as the Wichitaa villages, whence they planned to
Speaker 1: explore westward by horseback. Freeman directed the purchase of a
Speaker 1: camera obscura to produce topographic images, a high quality chronometer
Speaker 1: for fixing longitudes, and a portable barometer for taking elevations,
Speaker 1: along with an acrochromatic telescope to help fix latitudes by
Speaker 1: observing the eclipses of Jupiter's moons. Custus brought a shotgun,
Speaker 1: plant presses, and various traps and preservation equipment, plus a
Speaker 1: library of natural history reference volumes. By mid April of
Speaker 1: eighteen oh six, the bulk of the exploring party had
Speaker 1: assembled in Natchez, Mississippi, where they conducted a last round
Speaker 1: of outfitting. Sparks selected two non commissioned officers and seventeen
Speaker 1: privates for their general good health and robust temperaments. As
Speaker 1: with Lewis and Clark, there was an African American member
Speaker 1: of the expedition who may have arrived with Peter Custis.
Speaker 1: Unlike York, we don't know his name. This party entered
Speaker 1: the mouth of the Red River on May the first,
Speaker 1: anticipating a year long probe taking them some thirteen hundred
Speaker 1: river miles into the western interior. But despite their high spirits,
Speaker 1: they couldn't miss the warning signs on the Spanish border.
Speaker 1: As Custius would confide in his journal, this expedition seems
Speaker 1: to have thrown their whole country in the commotion because
Speaker 1: the Red River was got nearly so distant from Spanish
Speaker 1: power as the Missouri Madrid got active in a hurry,
Speaker 1: it quickly dispatched not one but two bodies of troops
Speaker 1: to intercept Freeman and Cussis. One with two hundred cavalry,
Speaker 1: commanded by Captain Francisco Vianna, left Nacadochus in East Texas
Speaker 1: to confront the Americans on the Lower River. The other,
Speaker 1: which Zebulun Pike, who mistakenly thought he was its target,
Speaker 1: described as the most important expedition ever sent out from
Speaker 1: the province of New Mexico, was the Insurance Policy, commanded
Speaker 1: by Lieutenant Ficundo Melgari's. It left Santa Fe bound for
Speaker 1: the Red in early June of eighteen oh six, With
Speaker 1: that time and the summer of eighteen oh six merely
Speaker 1: waited out the geopolitical rendezvous. When Jefferson's explorers arrived in Nacotash,
Speaker 1: the last American outposts on the Red, and heard of
Speaker 1: the ominous Spanish troop movements, the two questions they must
Speaker 1: have been asking themselves were how far are we going
Speaker 1: to get? And will I live through this? Nonetheless, this
Speaker 1: was the President's own mission. Now brought up to fifty
Speaker 1: men with French and two Indian guides and a total
Speaker 1: of seven craft, making it the largest American exploring party
Speaker 1: of the age. Freeman's stick or go through aphorism was
Speaker 1: about to be tested. Confronting only nature, the aphorism worked.
Speaker 1: In the course of their five month exploration, the party
Speaker 1: would confront many remarkable phenomena of the Red Rivers in
Speaker 1: natural ecology. One of those was the Great Raft, a
Speaker 1: thousand year old logjam that entirely blocked the river for
Speaker 1: more than one hundred miles. To get their boats around
Speaker 1: this massive obstacle, they had to detour through a swamp
Speaker 1: land that likely rivaled today's ok Finoki Swamp. For naturalist custos,
Speaker 1: the Great Swamp was a botanical treasure. For everyone else,
Speaker 1: it was pure misery. Fourteen days of incep sent fatigue,
Speaker 1: toil and danger, doubt and uncertainty, as Freeman put it.
Speaker 1: Beyond the route, Freeman got a first opportunity to try
Speaker 1: out his diplomatic skills on the Indians, whose country they
Speaker 1: now entered, an ancient but reduced population of mound builders,
Speaker 1: the Catto Confederacy. For two weeks the Americans treated with
Speaker 1: de Heehuitt, hereditary chief of the Caddos, to whom Freeman
Speaker 1: presented US flags and solicited Catto endorsement of the exploration.
Speaker 1: Custus meanwhile observed and wrote of Catto and customs and skills.
Speaker 1: Their talents with the bow, he said, put him in
Speaker 1: mind of stories from the Iliad, and he posted a
Speaker 1: twenty six specimen botanical collection downriver for Custis. The beautiful
Speaker 1: Red River Valley seemed the paradise of America, as he
Speaker 1: called it. The naturalists Eden Jefferson and Promise the image
Speaker 1: of Freeman and Custus ill starred as they were that
Speaker 1: I savor Is, then proceeding upriver in July of eighteen
Speaker 1: oh six, busily studying the river valley, made aware by
Speaker 1: the Caddos that a Spanish force four times their number
Speaker 1: was shadowing them in the undulating hills to the west.
Speaker 1: Guided by the Caddos, cut Finger and grand Ose Ages,
Speaker 1: the party engaged in a series of minor adventures, at
Speaker 1: one point ascending a small mountain prominent in the Caddo
Speaker 1: creation myth and consuming a bottle of whiskey with their guides.
Speaker 1: By the twenty second of July, they had rounded the
Speaker 1: Great Band of the Red near present Texarkana and were
Speaker 1: heading due west. On July the twenty seventh, the Caddoes
Speaker 1: told them that they had reached the former location of
Speaker 1: Bnard de la Harp's early eighteenth century trading post that
Speaker 1: had been the most westerly French settlement on the Red River,
Speaker 1: beyond which Spain now insisted that the southwest belonged to
Speaker 1: their monarchy. There was another alarming development too. After ascending
Speaker 1: the river for two weeks without a thunderstorm, the water
Speaker 1: in the Red was dropping fast. Still two to three
Speaker 1: weeks from the Wichital villages, and whatever horses they could
Speaker 1: purchase with their flags and gifts, the explorers were having
Speaker 1: to drag their barges, their hulls grinding on channel gravel
Speaker 1: up the river. As for the movements of the Spanish
Speaker 1: troops sent to oppose them, they were direct and purposeful.
Speaker 1: After angrily cutting down the American flag he found flying
Speaker 1: into heehus Cadat village, Captain Vianna had marched his force
Speaker 1: north to the Red taking a position on a bluff
Speaker 1: that's been known ever since as Spanish Bluff, near the
Speaker 1: present boundary between Oklahoma and Arkansas, sending a post to
Speaker 1: his superior saying that he knew the irremedial damage that
Speaker 1: would result to this province if the Union is accomplished
Speaker 1: of the expedition of the United States with the faceless
Speaker 1: Wichitaal Indians and the Comanches. Vianna wrote that he would
Speaker 1: confront the Americans above the old French posts, as this
Speaker 1: territory is ours. Lacking a successful exploration, Freeman very well
Speaker 1: might have ensured his name in American history had he
Speaker 1: opted for armed conflict, but there was no violent encounter.
Speaker 1: When the Americans rounded a bend in the river and
Speaker 1: faced a Spanish force four times their size arrayed across it,
Speaker 1: Vianna politely but firmly refused to allow the Americans to pass,
Speaker 1: and Freeman, with Jefferson's instructions in hand, if at any
Speaker 1: time a superior force, authorized or not authorized by a nation,
Speaker 1: should be arrayed against your further passage and inflexibly determined
Speaker 1: to arrest it, you must decline its further pursuit. In return,
Speaker 1: he made the mature decision the confrontation called for. The
Speaker 1: date was July thirtieth, eighteen oh six. They had ascended
Speaker 1: the Red River, six hundred and fifteen miles to the
Speaker 1: edge of the black Land Prairies and the Great Plains,
Speaker 1: but still only halfway to the Great Mystery of the
Speaker 1: Red Sources. So Freeman agreed to turn back rather than
Speaker 1: proceeding on. As Lewis and Clark often began their journal entries,
Speaker 1: the Grand Expedition turned around in a young country like
Speaker 1: the US, anxious about its reputation and longing for heroes
Speaker 1: to celebrate. Thomas Freeman and Peter Custis and their mates,
Speaker 1: on a presidentially authorized attempt to explore the West, return
Speaker 1: to a country that quickly turned away and forgot them.
Speaker 1: For a total expenditure at last of eighty seven hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: Jefferson had launched an expedition that another power had forced
Speaker 1: to retreat. Peter Custis's natural history work on the red
Speaker 1: was highly intriguing. He had cataloged twenty two mammals, thirty
Speaker 1: six birds, seventeen reptiles, fishes and amphibians, fifty eight trees,
Speaker 1: and one hundred and thirty flowering plants, twenty six of
Speaker 1: which he collected for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: The meager geographic results meant that everyone involved understood, having
Speaker 1: failed to penetrate the great planes and reached the rockies
Speaker 1: in Santa Fe, the expedition was a failure. There was
Speaker 1: just no other way to spend it. The President's public
Speaker 1: reaction was clear enough. He preferred to concentrate on the
Speaker 1: triumphant return of Lewis and Clark and to say as
Speaker 1: little as possible about his second expedition. There are historians,
Speaker 1: in fact, who have called this expedition a headstrong decision
Speaker 1: that put in danger the lives of Americans pursuing an
Speaker 1: impossible goal, and it does appear that Jefferson's own stubbornness embarrassing.
Speaker 1: There was also an undercut of public suspicion. At least
Speaker 1: one prominent newspaper would editorialize that the ferment with Spain
Speaker 1: in eighteen oh six was not caused by Aaron Burr's
Speaker 1: plot to invade the Southwest, as newspapers favorable to Jefferson's
Speaker 1: administration tried to spin it, But by Jefferson's secret expeditions,
Speaker 1: secret orders, and secret plans of exploration. The fate of
Speaker 1: Freeman and Custis does beg another question, what if the
Speaker 1: Spaniards who sent out two different expeditions to find Lewis
Speaker 1: and Clark had also succeeded and blocked them. I suspect
Speaker 1: the Freeman and Custis expedition provides us with an answer.
Speaker 1: What happened to their expedition? Seems to argue that America's
Speaker 1: destiny in the West didn't truly rest on successful Jeffersonian exploration.
Speaker 1: Despite their failures, US traders carrying American goods and even
Speaker 1: US flags still traveled among the Indians of the Southwest
Speaker 1: in the years following, and more of this in the
Speaker 1: next episode. By eighteen nineteen, the Red River to the
Speaker 1: hundredth Parallel did finally become the boundary between Spain and
Speaker 1: the US, and Mexico did revolt successfully against Spain to
Speaker 1: create its own democratic republic. In eighteen twenty one. American
Speaker 1: expansionist policies in the three decades after Jefferson still brought Texas,
Speaker 1: New Mexico, and the far Southwest into the American orbit.
Speaker 1: Had Spain similarly intercepted Lewis and Clark, The analogy provided
Speaker 1: by Freeman and Custis argues that even without their expedition,
Speaker 1: the history of the Northwest likely would have turned out
Speaker 1: just about the same as it did. In the big picture,
Speaker 1: other currents of nineteenth century history were more powerful than
Speaker 1: Jeffersonian explorers. So remove Lewis and Clark from the American
Speaker 1: story just as the Spanish force removed Freeman in Custice,
Speaker 1: and probably not much would have changed geopolitically. But I
Speaker 1: should emphasize geopolitically, a successful Lewis and Clark expedition was
Speaker 1: a truly important historical event for America. What we would
Speaker 1: have lost without Lewis and Clark in our history then
Speaker 1: and now is our awestruck reaction towards New worlds. Lewis
Speaker 1: and Clark gave us a carefully recorded ultimate camping trip
Speaker 1: in a dream world that lay at the end of
Speaker 1: sixty thousand years of human trekking out of Africa and
Speaker 1: around the Earth. Behind us lay our footprints in the
Speaker 1: American West of eighteen oh four to eighteen oh six.
Speaker 1: We got one last glimpse, through Lewis and Clark of
Speaker 1: what the whole earth had been in the deep past,
Speaker 1: as our robot rovers tremble across Mars and send us
Speaker 1: photographs that are analogues of their maps of America from
Speaker 1: only two hundred years ago. We see expiration as a
Speaker 1: specific American legacy, but that legacy is common to humanity everywhere.
Speaker 1: Any human who doesn't live to see our footprints on
Speaker 1: Mars is going to experience the kind of regret I
Speaker 1: feel that Freeman and Custus didn't get to emulate Lewis
Speaker 1: and Clark and explore the West, a regret that intrigued
Speaker 1: me into once writing in a book I called Horizontal Yellow,
Speaker 1: a little novella The River that Flowed from Nowhere that
Speaker 1: imagines Freeman and Custis continuing up the Red River into
Speaker 1: a Southwest beyond all of Thomas Jefferson's fantasies.
Speaker 2: How did you How did you first become aware of
Speaker 2: the Grand Expedition until I encountered it with you?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Never heard of it?
Speaker 2: Never heard of it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and I don't think most people have ever
Speaker 1: heard of it. I encountered it for a very simple reason.
Speaker 1: I was getting a master's degree at Northwestern State in
Speaker 1: Louisiana and there was an archivist there named Catherine Bridges,
Speaker 1: and she was inquiring of me, So, what are you
Speaker 1: interested in? What do you want to, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: write a master's thesis about? And I said, well, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm interested in. I mean, I'm interested in
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark in the fur trade, and you know,
Speaker 1: all this kind of classic early Western stuff. And she
Speaker 1: looked at me for a second and she said, so,
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you something I'm pretty sure you
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 2: Stephen randaller a on it.
Speaker 1: Stephen and Randall lead this expedition.
Speaker 2: One day there will be born.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So she said, I'm going to tell you something
Speaker 1: I bet you don't know. Thomas Jefferson sent a second
Speaker 1: expedition out two years after Lewis and and he sent
Speaker 1: it right up the Red River, and Red River flows
Speaker 1: right through Nacolus, right through town.
Speaker 2: Oh really, yes, yeah. And I grew up within about
Speaker 2: where you were at that moment.
Speaker 1: Where I was that moment, that's where I was curious
Speaker 1: about eight miles from there.
Speaker 3: I was curious whether you'd gotten on this because it
Speaker 3: was a local store, local.
Speaker 2: Story, and you hadn't even heard of it.
Speaker 1: No, I hadn't heard of it, nor had anybody else.
Speaker 1: And I will say that now, back in northwestern Louisiana,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, there are all kinds of people
Speaker 1: who called me up and email me and text me
Speaker 1: with these detailed questions, sort of like people do for
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark about this expedition. Because once people learned
Speaker 1: about it back there, suddenly they were just all over it.
Speaker 3: Oh do you think they saw this rock? Do you
Speaker 3: think they camped under this big tree?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean an archaeologist found a button from one
Speaker 1: of the jackets at one of their camps about twenty
Speaker 1: five years ago, and that was national news. By publication
Speaker 1: of the book was not national news. The button from
Speaker 1: the camp was national news. But anyway, I said, so,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got to be kidding. She said, no,
Speaker 1: there's a there was an expedition. It went right through here.
Speaker 1: It didn't ultimately, I said, well, so I farted they
Speaker 1: get She said, well, they didn't get very far. They
Speaker 1: got about six hundred and fifty seven hundred miles up
Speaker 1: the Red River, and they got turned around by a
Speaker 1: Spanish army. So that's why hardly anybody knows about it.
Speaker 1: Because the United States was a young country, it was
Speaker 1: looking for heroes to celebrate, didn't want to really celebrate,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Some group that chickens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, European country had sort of whisk back home. So
Speaker 1: I said, well, is there any account of it? She said, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got a microfilm of it. And so what she
Speaker 1: showed me was a microfilm of the official government report
Speaker 1: of this expedition in eighteen oh seven, the year after
Speaker 1: the expedition took place, and that official government report was
Speaker 1: written by somebody else. I finally discovered when I was
Speaker 1: doing the book. A guy named Nicholas King was hired
Speaker 1: by the administration to redact their original journals into a
Speaker 1: single account. And this guy, Nicholas King, he not only
Speaker 1: redacted the journals into a single account, so you couldn't tell,
Speaker 1: for example, whether it was Freeman talking or it was
Speaker 1: Custos talking. He converted it into third person rather than
Speaker 1: in the first person of their journals. And the final
Speaker 1: thing he did is I started looking closely at it
Speaker 1: I was gone, I mean, there's this all this rich
Speaker 1: natural history in this expedition, and I start trying to
Speaker 1: figure out, so what was this tree? Shit? I can't
Speaker 1: find anything that looks like it's named that. And what
Speaker 1: I began to realize, and finally when I found the
Speaker 1: original in the letters of the War Department where the
Speaker 1: original accounts, journals and all were stored, and I found
Speaker 1: the originals, I realized that this guy, Nicholas King, evidently
Speaker 1: he couldn't read Peter Custis's handwriting, and so he just
Speaker 1: destroyed all the Latin binomials of all the plants and
Speaker 1: over and stuff. And so one of the things that
Speaker 1: happened is the result of that is that Custice kind
Speaker 1: of emerges from it with the American scientific community going,
Speaker 1: what in the hell this guy? He's from the University
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania. He has said under Benjamins a bit of Barton,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't know any of the scientific names of
Speaker 1: the plants and animals. And in fact it was the
Speaker 1: guy who redacted it. So what I did, ultimately when
Speaker 1: I wrote the book was I found the original accounts,
Speaker 1: and that's what I ended up, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a big thing with the Lewis and Clark journals
Speaker 1: that you published, the original journals of the account. So
Speaker 1: once I found Freeman and Custis's stuff, I was able
Speaker 1: to put together a story of it where the proper
Speaker 1: stuff was a tribute to each one of them, and
Speaker 1: all the scientific nomenclature was correct. And so it turned
Speaker 1: it suddenly into two hundred years later, two hundred frigging
Speaker 1: years later, into a really worthwhile scientific expedition that just
Speaker 1: got cut off before they really could quite get out
Speaker 1: to the great planes and start seeing all that stuff
Speaker 1: that Lewis and Clark saw, all those new animals. They
Speaker 1: stopped just short of that by about two days.
Speaker 3: One of the things you see in especially popular history
Speaker 3: is there's a tend towards these hypotheticals of like what
Speaker 3: if Patten had sent the tanks this way or that way,
Speaker 3: or what if so and so, you know never wrote
Speaker 3: this book, and then there's sort of this hypothetical.
Speaker 2: I think that's occurring in your mind.
Speaker 3: Oh no, I think this is I think there's all
Speaker 3: kinds of like TV show. I feel like this account
Speaker 3: manterfactual as calls yeah, counterfactual. Yeah, Like there are all
Speaker 3: these questions of like counterfactuals in history, and in this
Speaker 3: case you highlight that what if Lewis and Clark never
Speaker 3: made it to the Pacific, you have sort of the
Speaker 3: actual counterfactual here that suggests that probably things would have
Speaker 3: been folded very similarly to the way in which they
Speaker 3: did with the success of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Speaker 3: And so I think that's one of the really interesting
Speaker 3: aspects of this story. You often, I think when I
Speaker 3: when I read about the Lewis and Clark expedition, you
Speaker 3: read about sort of all the natural science that they
Speaker 3: brought back, and you read about sort of the Lewis
Speaker 3: and Clark as ethnographers, and Lewis and Clark in terms
Speaker 3: of adding to our knowledge of this place. But you
Speaker 3: here able to answer question of what is the actual
Speaker 3: significance in terms of territorial expansion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think know at least if the Freeman
Speaker 1: and Custis expedition is indicative if the Spaniards and they tried,
Speaker 1: by the way, they sent two expeditions up to the
Speaker 1: Missouri River to try to find Lewis and Clark, but
Speaker 1: they it's just too big a country. They couldn't find
Speaker 1: them that if they had managed to stop them and
Speaker 1: turn them around, and had Lewis and I've had, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, there are a lot of uh Marriwether Lewis's
Speaker 1: an American hero. He would have never stopped for a
Speaker 1: bunch of Spaniards. He would have just plowed right on.
Speaker 1: He would have never stopped. But had they been stopped,
Speaker 1: I think, judging by the Freeman and Custis expedition, things
Speaker 1: probably would have been folded in the Northwest pretty much
Speaker 1: as they did anyway. But you know, as I was
Speaker 1: trying to point out what we would lose though, is
Speaker 1: that incredible description of the early American West that those
Speaker 1: guys did, and that you know, nobody wants to sacrifice.
Speaker 1: To me, that's the real contribution that those guys made.
Speaker 1: I don't think they you know, they didn't find the
Speaker 1: Northwest Passage for sure. I mean, they tried to cross
Speaker 1: the bitter Root Mountains and think that was going to
Speaker 1: lead them to the Northwest Passage, you know, and it
Speaker 1: didn't didn't do it at all. I mean, there's not
Speaker 1: even a Northwest Passage kind of highway across the bitter
Speaker 1: Root Mountains these days. So they didn't find that they
Speaker 1: kind of actually failed in their ultimate goal of finding
Speaker 1: a northwest passage. But and they didn't really you know,
Speaker 1: their presence on the Pacific coast was important for that
Speaker 1: winner of eighteen oh five, but eighteen oh five, eighteen
Speaker 1: oh six, but you know, Astoria's Fort was probably more important.
Speaker 1: And even that fort got taken away by the Brits
Speaker 1: in the War of eighteen twelve. But it's it's those
Speaker 1: journals and all that description of the landscape and the animals,
Speaker 1: and the ethnographic stuff on the native people, you know,
Speaker 1: however flawed. Sometimes it might have been Jesus Man. That
Speaker 1: stuff nobody. I certainly don't want to ever lose that.
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark count count.
Speaker 2: I want to hear more about the Big Raft, the
Speaker 2: Great Raft, a thousand year old log jam.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Great Raft is really interesting.
Speaker 2: I presume it's not there anymore.
Speaker 1: It's not there anymore, but it took the invention of
Speaker 1: nitroglycerin in the eighteen seventies to remove it.
Speaker 2: How many miles long was it?
Speaker 1: Well, when it was finally removed, it was one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty miles long.
Speaker 2: I just want people to picture what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: It like if if you've seen just like picture, you're
Speaker 2: on a creek and you know, at the end of
Speaker 2: spring runoff or whatever, and there's a bunch of logs
Speaker 2: piled up like toothpicks or match sticks, all jumbled up,
Speaker 2: you know, and there's usually that a be or cooler
Speaker 2: in a bottle and someone's dog toy floating there because
Speaker 2: it can't get by. But then the next year it
Speaker 2: floods and washes it out, washes it out, and it's
Speaker 2: you know, but you see them pop up and go away.
Speaker 2: But the fact that one of those ad a thousand
Speaker 2: years and accumulated over one hundred miles of logs, and yeah,
Speaker 2: not only totally obstructed any kind of navigation.
Speaker 1: Completely obstructed navigation, and not only that it was climbing
Speaker 1: the river. It started out we think a thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: down at the mouth of the Red River, and when
Speaker 1: Freeman and Custis encountered it, they were like about two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty miles up the river. So it had
Speaker 1: receded for two hundred and fifty miles up river as
Speaker 1: the bottom end had rotted off and it had been
Speaker 1: swept away by floods. But every time there was a
Speaker 1: big freshet out on the plains, the upper end stacked
Speaker 1: up again, and so it was just climbing the Red
Speaker 1: River like a snake. And by the time of.
Speaker 2: Year, that was a frustrated many a cat fisherman.
Speaker 1: Ohnot of structure, though, it frustrated, you know, So on
Speaker 1: the Missouri once we had steamboats, I mean you could
Speaker 1: go up the Missouri and you could you know, you'd
Speaker 1: haul back bison ropes, heavy stuff from the planes. But
Speaker 1: on the Red River you could not navigate that thing
Speaker 1: until the eighteen seventies and they.
Speaker 2: Blasted it out of there.
Speaker 1: They blasted it out. Our guy named Captain Henry Shreve
Speaker 1: from the US Army Corps of Engineers used nitro glycerin.
Speaker 1: It took him about ten years to blast.
Speaker 2: Oh that's all I was gonna ask. So he didn't
Speaker 2: find like some magical pinch point. No, you just kept
Speaker 2: doing it.
Speaker 1: Just kept blowing it out, doing it. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: got photographs of it in that book. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: kind of unbelievable. And people said, you could be walking
Speaker 1: out on the ground what you thought was just the ground,
Speaker 1: and you'd cock your ear and damn, there's water running
Speaker 1: under my feet, and they would realize, shit, we're standing
Speaker 1: on the great raft and underneath us the Red River
Speaker 1: is flowing, but it's timber coming out of where ultimately
Speaker 1: it's coming from, primarily the woods upstream on the Red River.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so it's cottonwood logs. Yeah, some of my
Speaker 2: mind I was picturing. Yeah, some of them were Jennifer
Speaker 2: picturing like like a coniferous tree of some sort or
Speaker 2: I got you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were there were. There was a big expanse
Speaker 1: of junipers on the middle Red not rocky mountain junipers,
Speaker 1: but there were Virginia junipers and they were really tall,
Speaker 1: really big.
Speaker 2: People compared it was mostly cottonwoods tipping into the river.
Speaker 1: It was mostly cotton woods. And of course cottonwoods that's
Speaker 1: why it would rot away, is because you know, they're
Speaker 1: soft and kind of easily damaged by water. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: this thing was just climbing the river.
Speaker 3: Were there are there oral traditions that I mean, it
Speaker 3: seems like this sort of thing that's just so grand
Speaker 3: and strange, and I wonder like if there if we
Speaker 3: have any sort of sense of how native people in
Speaker 3: that area described.
Speaker 1: It, well, I don't have a good native account, but
Speaker 1: I can tell you this. In two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: the two hundredth anniversary of this expedition, Lsu Shreetport put
Speaker 1: on a three day symposium celebrating the Freeman and Custis expedition.
Speaker 1: And so they had me back there to do a
Speaker 1: keynote and do various other things. And while I was there,
Speaker 1: there was a group of Catto Indian guys and they
Speaker 1: came up to me and they said, so, you know
Speaker 1: where Chikhania is, don't you? And I said, yeah, I
Speaker 1: do and Chakanie and I I mentioned in the podcast
Speaker 1: that Freeman and Custis climbed this little small mountain in
Speaker 1: southwestern Arkansas with their two guides and drank a bottle
Speaker 1: of whiskey in order to converse with the Great Spirit.
Speaker 1: And these Caddos who were removed from Louisiana by treaty
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty five and they were relocated to western
Speaker 1: Oklahoma around a lot in Oklahoma, they had had kind
Speaker 1: of oral traditions of this mountain that was supposed to
Speaker 1: be part of their origin story, but they didn't know
Speaker 1: where it was. And somebody told them, I don't know
Speaker 1: if they told them at that conference or they already
Speaker 1: knew about it when they came. But they came to
Speaker 1: me and said, so, you know where Chickny and aias
Speaker 1: And I said yeah, because I had gone up and
Speaker 1: found it and climbed the mountain and you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't drink a whole bottle of whiskey, but I drank
Speaker 1: some whiskey up on top of it. And I said yeah.
Speaker 1: And they said, well, can you show us where it is?
Speaker 1: I said, well, absolutely, yeah, I can take you there.
Speaker 1: So I took these four cattle guys, one of them
Speaker 1: was really pretty old, he was in his eighties probably,
Speaker 1: and went up to this mountain that was there as
Speaker 1: part of their creation myth story. That was very cool.
Speaker 1: I don't know who owned the hill. Uh, there were
Speaker 1: there was nobody really living very close to it. And
Speaker 1: so sort of like the way you and I did,
Speaker 1: uh a blackwater draw A blackwater draw, we had a
Speaker 1: self tour and I did a self guided tour up
Speaker 1: on top of that. Now. Yeah, just climbed up there
Speaker 1: and uh yeah. So these guys, uh And since then,
Speaker 1: and this happened within the last year, I've had another
Speaker 1: guy who tells me. He's a cat Oak historian, and
Speaker 1: he's wanting me to show him where it is and
Speaker 1: take him out there. Of course I don't ever really,
Speaker 1: my parents are gone. I've got aunts and uncles and
Speaker 1: things back in Louisiana. But yeah, so yeah, I actually
Speaker 1: sent him a you know, I took a photograph of
Speaker 1: a USGS seven point five quad and sent it to
Speaker 1: him and showed him the road that went by, a
Speaker 1: little dirt road two track that went by, and circle
Speaker 1: it and said, this is where it is. That's right here.
Speaker 2: So the expedition had they not been turned around, what
Speaker 2: name brand features would they have?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: What things that people today are? Where might they have been?
Speaker 2: Like holy cologe of that? Like what would they run into?
Speaker 1: Well, they would have. They would have been out on
Speaker 1: the equivalent of the Mandan Lakota country farther south. I mean,
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark of course, get up to the Mandan
Speaker 1: villages and they've already passed some Lakota bands, and then
Speaker 1: they go from the Mandan villages to the Rockies and
Speaker 1: they don't really see anybody, but they would less Freeman
Speaker 1: Custis would have been amongst a similar group of people
Speaker 1: farther south. But in this case it was Pawnees, a
Speaker 1: group we call the Wichitas now, and they had It's
Speaker 1: the same group, by the way, that Carnado when he
Speaker 1: was going to Quavera, was trying to find. And when
Speaker 1: Carnado went to try to find them, they were living
Speaker 1: up on the Arkansas River, but they had moved down
Speaker 1: to the Red River, I don't know, fifty or sixty
Speaker 1: years before Freeman Incussus. And so that's where they were going,
Speaker 1: and they were gonna leave their craft there, those seven
Speaker 1: boats they had, and they were gonna purchase horses from
Speaker 1: the Wichitas and head up the river. And as I
Speaker 1: said when I was trying to describe how that river works,
Speaker 1: you would reach a point maybe one hundred miles beyond
Speaker 1: the Wichita villages, where it would fork, kind of like
Speaker 1: a three forks thing, except depending on which way you went.
Speaker 1: The right hand one would go through the Wichita Mountains
Speaker 1: in the Quartz Mountains of southwestern Oklahoma, and it really
Speaker 1: wouldn't go much farther than that. It wouldn't get you,
Speaker 1: for example, to the front range of the Rockies. The
Speaker 1: left fork, though, and this is the one that everybody
Speaker 1: thought that's the one that's going to go to Santa Fe.
Speaker 1: That fork would actually take you to the canyons of
Speaker 1: the eastern escarpment of the Aano Estacata. And so in
Speaker 1: the primary one is Paalo Duro.
Speaker 2: Can they would have been in a commanche country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they would have been in Commanchee country with the.
Speaker 2: Commandche have demolished them.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think so. No, I don't think so.
Speaker 2: I mean, at that time, it wouldn't have been hostile.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The next episode I'm going to do is about
Speaker 1: a guy, a trader named Anthony Glass who two years
Speaker 1: after Freeman Custis are turned around the Jefferson Administration, Indian
Speaker 1: Asia and Nacolas shown Sibley. They give this guy the
Speaker 1: responsibility of going out and make the diplomatic arrangements with
Speaker 1: the Wichitas and the command She take American flags out,
Speaker 1: give them American flags, tell them they're now, you know,
Speaker 1: part of the Great Father in Washington's tribes and we're
Speaker 1: going to start trading with him and all that. And
Speaker 1: that guy he was among the Wichitas and the Comanches
Speaker 1: for about ten months and he didn't ever really experience
Speaker 1: any kind of danger. And what it was, I think
Speaker 1: is if you were a trader, if you had trade
Speaker 1: goods and they were, they were a okay with you.
Speaker 1: And Glass of course took trade goods out with him,
Speaker 1: so I don't think the Comanches would have screwed around
Speaker 1: with him. They didn't screw around with the Long Expedition
Speaker 1: fifteen years later. They just let them go through. They
Speaker 1: didn't really have any reason yet, I think to be
Speaker 1: hostile and who they became who the Commanches became hostile
Speaker 1: towards by the eighteen forties, eighteen fifties, eighteen sixties was
Speaker 1: the Texans, and they distinguished between Texans and Americans. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I look forward to that episode coming up. Man,
Speaker 2: that's gonna be great.
Speaker 1: It'll be fun because there's a it's got a little
Speaker 1: Oh Henry twist to it. Think you
Speaker 2: To the game when Moses the vis