Spirit Mound

In 1804, the hallmark of every successful explorer was to expect the unexpected, and tell about it when it occurred. President Jefferson gave Meriwether Lewis some clues as to what to watch for: wooly mammoths, a mountain of salt, a volcano, and evidence of the Lost Tribe of Welshmen.^[2]In turn, the eminent Scottish mathematician and astronomer William Dunbar assured Jefferson that “the Red River Country was not only a haven for unicorns and sea serpents, but that ingots of … Continue reading Lewis and Clark were led by well-traveled St. Louisans to watch for “ancient fortifications” as evidence of pre-historic peoples. On 9 January 1804, Clark, out with Pvt. Collins on a duck hunt, stumbled upon “9 mouns forming a circle” that he figured were part of “an Indian Fortification.” Actually they were thousand-year-old foundations for a key part of the Cahokia Mounds culture.^[3]See Moulton, ed., Journals, 2:154. Biloine Whiting Young and Melvin L. Fowler, Cahokia: The Great Native American Metropolis (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 3.

After the expedition got under way, they found—and often measured and described in appropriate battlement terminology—more than a dozen “antient fortifications,” including one opposite the mouth of the Riv. Jacques, which later were proven to be merely overgrown sand bars on the flood plain of the Missouri River. Their proclivities accounted for their initial tentative judgment about Spirit Mound: “The reagular form of this hill would in Some measure justify a belief that it owed its Orrigin to the hand of man,” an idea which they promptly dismissed on the basis of convincing evidence that it was “most probably the production of nature.”

In terms of natural history, they were more methodical and successful, collecting specimens—and annotating or describing them—of 178 plants plus a total of 122 species and subspecies of fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals.^[4]Paul Russell Cutright, Lewis & Clark: Pioneering Naturalists, 2nd ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 399-447.

The visit to Spirit Mound was among the more bizarre sidelights of the whole expedition, but evidently it was not entirely unexpected. Seventy-six years earlier, explorer Pierre La Véndrye called the place the “Dwelling of the Spirits” and reported sparkling stones and gold-colored sand. To pass the mouth of the White Stone [Vermillion] River on the 24th, then go back several miles the next day with a specially selected detachment to trace the route to the mound, may not have amounted to much delay. Yes, it may simply be that the captains decided they needed to hang back a bit in order to give the Omahas (Mahars) time to catch up and council with them.

Biddle’s Paraphrase

By order of their commander-in-chief, Thomas Jefferson, the two captains conscientiously saw to it that duplicates of their journals were kept as insurance against loss. To our great benefit, the redundancies in their records often contain a few enlightening variants omitted in the earlier drafts. One of the most diverting instances of duplication is present in Clark’s own five different descriptions of his and Lewis’s side trip on the morning of August 25, 1804, in searing heat, to that small mound with the conical summit, almost 10 miles north of the mouth of a certain tributary. For reasons that are discussed by Gary Moulton in his bicentennial edition of all the journals, the first draft appears under the date of August 24th.^[5]Moulton, Journals, 2:50 6n.

Nicholas Biddle (1786-1844), the brilliant young Philadelphian, assembled from the two captains’ journals a paraphrase that was published in 1814 which remained the sole official account of their journey until 1904. In his 695-word selective recombination of the captains’ five drafts (collectively 1,903 words), he calls the mound the “Mountain of Little People, or “Little Spirits:”^[6]History of the Expedition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clark, to the Sources of the Missouri, thence across the Rocky Mountains and down the River Columbia to the Pacific Ocean. Performed … Continue reading

Captains Lewis and Clarke [sic], with ten men, went to see an object deemed very extraordinary among all the neighboring Indians. They dropped down to the mouth of Whitestone river, about 30 yards wide, where they left the boat, and at the distance of 200 yards ascended a rising ground, from which a plain extended as far as the eye could discern. After walking four miles, they crossed the creek where it is 23 yards wide and waters an extensive valley.

The heat was so oppressive that we were obliged to send back our dog to the creek, as he was unable to bear the fatigue; and it was not till after four hours’ march that we reached the object of our visit. This was a large mound in the midst of the plain, about N. 20° W. from the mouth of Whitestone river, from which it is three miles distant.

The base of the mound is a regular parallelogram, the longest side being about 300 yards, the shorter 60 or 70; from the longest side it rises with a steep ascent from the north and south to the height of 65 or 70 feet, leaving on the top a level plain of 23 feet in breadth and 90 in length. The north and south extremities are connected to two oval borders which serve as new bases, and divide the whole side into three steep but regular gradations from the plain. The only thing characteristic in this hill is its extreme symmetry, and this, together with its being totally detached from the other hills which are at the distance of eight or nine miles, would induce a belief that it was artificial; but as the earth and the loose pebbles which compose it are arranged exactly like the steep grounds on the borders of the creek, we concluded from this similarity of texture that it might be natural.

The Indians have made it a great article of their superstition; it is called the mountain of Little People, or Little Spirits, and they believe that it is the abode of little devils in the human form, about 18 inches high and with remarkably large heads, armed with sharp arrows, with which they are very skillful, and always on the watch to kill those who should have the hardihood to approach their residence. The tradition is that many have suffered from these little evil spirits; among others, three Maha Indians fell a sacrifice to them a few years since. This has inspired all the neighboring nations, Sioux, Mahas, and Ottoes, with such terror that no consideration could tempt them to bvisit the hill. We saw none of these wicked little spirits; nor any place for them, except some small holes scattered over the top; we were happy enough to escape their vengeance, though we remained some time on the mound to enjoy the delightful prospect of the plain, which spreads itself out till the eye rests upon the N.W. hills at a great distance, and those of the N.E. still farther off, enlivened by large herds of buffalo feeding at a distance.

The soil of these plains is exceedingly fine; there is, however, no timber except on the Missouri, all the wood of the Whitestone river not being sufficient to cover thickly 100 acres. The plain country which surrounds this mound has contributed not a little to its bad reputation; the wind driving from every direction over the level ground obliges the insects to seek shelter on its leeward side, or to be driven against us by the wind. The small birds, whose food they are, resort in great numbers in quest of subsistence; and the Indians always seem to discover an unusual assemblage of birds as produced by some supernatural cause. Among them we observed the brown martin employed in looking for insects, and so gentle that they did not fly until we got within a few feet of them. We have also distinguished, among the numerous birds of the plain, the blackbird, the wren or prairie-bird, and a species of lark about the size of a partridge, with a short tail.

The Ten Visitors

1. Sergeant John Ordway
2. Corporal Richard Warfington
3. Private John Shields
4. Private Joseph Field
5. Private John Colter
6. Private William Bratton
7. Private Robert Frazer
8. Private François Labiche
9. Clark’s slave York
10. Possibly engagé Cann

And where were the rest of the company? At their previous night’s camp a few miles farther up the Missouri, occupied with “fleecing” and “jerking” some of the meat of the bison that J. Field had brought down on the 23rd—the first one to be shot by the Corps.

Oppressive Heat

It was a hot and humid day. Seaman had to be returned to the boat at the mouth of the Vermillion River, likely the white pirogue. His breed originated in Newfoundland, so he was genetically conditioned to a colder climate than summer on the Missouri River. But even Lewis, born and bred a hardy Virginian, was stricken by symptoms that indicate he was building up to an attack of heat exhaustion from the glare of the midday sun combined with the humidity of the midwest’s prairie. Clark declared on the 25th that his partner:

being much fatigued and verry thursty obliged us to go to the neares water which we Could See, which was the W. Stone Creek at right angles from the Course we came out, and we got water in three miles in the Creek.”

Legends of Little People

Many sources have stated that Indian peoples—Otoe and Missouria, Omaha, Lakota Sioux, and others—”revered this location.”^[7]Spirit Mound, www.nps.gov/mnrr/learn/historyculture/spiritmound.htm accessed on Oct 18, 2017; Patricia Ann Lynch and Jeremy Roberts, Native American Mythology A to Z, 2nd ed. (New York: Chelsea … Continue reading But it must be noted that nothing in the stories that those people tell, including Pierre Dorion, Jr., who would naturally be loyal to his wife Rainbow”s Yankton and Lakota peoples, give any hint that they held it in reverence as a domain of Wakan Tanka [Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka], the Great Mystery, also known as the Great Spirit, the creator of the Yankton Sioux. On the contrary, their stories universally emphasized that the elusive humanoid guardians would kill anyone who trod on its premises for any reason.

The Yanktons maintain that the Little People were the victors in an aboriginal war between two tribes competing for the favors of the spirits. The outcome was the emergence of two families of spirits. The losers were the big Sasquatch, who moved on westward; the victorious Can O’ti na stayed put.

No one told Lewis and Clark that they were not to go there because it was hallowed ground. They were warned away because those Can O’ti na, those “Little People,” or “Little Tree Dwellers,” would kill trespassers and had done so recently. But where did that name “Little Tree Dwellers” come from? There are not, and have never been, so far as anyone knows, any trees on or near the mound, except for the shelterbelts planted by ranchers and farmers.