The Final Leg

Perhaps more than any North American people, the Kickapoo exemplify the transitory nature of the native nations encountered during the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In 1803, there was at least one village near Ste. Genevieve on the Mississippi River.

Many, including the expedition members, misheard the people’s name as ‘chien’—French for ‘dog’. Their name actually comes from the Sioux exonym shahíyena, perhaps meaning ‘people of alien speech’. The captains thought that they might make good trading partners.

Spelled variously in the expedition journals, Clark sometimes called the Arikara people Pawnee due to their similar linguistic origins—both were Caddoan-speaking people. Weakened by smallpox and Sioux attacks, they would have significant impact on American fur trade interests on the Upper Missouri and affect the lives of several expedition members.

The captains appeared eager to meet with the Omaha. They tried to find them at their two biggest villages and planted a flag at the gravesite of the chief who for many years had controlled trade in the region, the infamous Blackbird.

After the 1781 smallpox epidemic, the Mandan had moved into to a more defensible position in two villages immediately south of the Hidatsa at the Knife River. The Mandan-Hidatsa alliance had developed many years prior, and the two tribes previously shared their large hunting territory to the west.

Prior to the expedition, the Hidatsa had settled in three villages just north of two Mandan villages in a complex now called the Knife River Villages. There, they practiced horticulture and hunting in the manner of the Plains Village tradition.

Presently known as the Lakota people, Lewis and Clark most often called them the Tetons. There were three main groups: Oglala, Brule, and Saone. The bands typically lived separately, hunted freely within each other’s territory, and came together for community events.

The Yankton along with the Yanktonai make up the Western Dakota division of the Dakota People. Although the Yankton and Yanktonai sometimes considered themselves to be one people, their separate locations resulted in a unique history for each.

On 23 March 1806, once again battling the rising spring runoff, as it had each of the two previous years on the Missouri, the Corps of Discovery started up the Columbia River towards home.

The most serious hunting mishap, and surely the most memorable episode in Lewis’s frequently referenced “chapter of accedents,” was the moment on 11 August 1806 when Pierre Cruzatte shot him in the buttocks.

After splitting up into five separate details over five weeks earlier, all the members of the Corps of Discovery were finally reunited 142 miles downriver from the mouth of the Yellowstone.

On 8 June 1806, Meriwether Lewis wrote of that evening, “we had the violin played, and [we] danced for the amusement of ourselves and the Indians.” Presumably, Pierre Cruzatte was the fiddler. It was the last mention Cruzatte’s playing the violin. Why?

The expedition arrived on 7 December 1803, witnessed the transfer of Louisiana from Spain to the United States, and metaphorically passed through its western gate on 14 May 1804. They would not return until 23 September 1806.

Two days after returning to St. Louis, its citizens celebrated the expedition’s return with a grand dinner and ball. Here are the eighteen toasts as reported in the Kentucky Western World.