Winter at Wood River

The Osage were experienced traders, exchanging horses and Indian slaves for French guns, knives, axes, kettles, and other metal objects. After the 1760s, the Osage adopted a new economic system of planting gardens in permanent villages, summer hunts in the plains, and fur-trapping in the winter.

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.

The expedition set up camp near a town named after the Cahokia, one the Illinois tribes. The captains reported that Missourias, the Illinois, Cahokias, Kaskaskias, and Piorias were nearly destroyed by the Sauks and Foxes.

At the time of the expedition, the nation from which the Missouri River derived its name were so reduced by smallpox and attacks that they had abandoned their villages and merged with other tribes—Kansas, Osages, but primarily, the Otoes.

To outsiders in 1803, the Sauk and Fox people living on the Mississippi River in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin were seen as one people. Both peoples spoke the Sauk-Fox-Kickapoo dialect of Algonquian and had similar cultures and economies.

About 1784, a small group of Shawnee and Delaware migrated from Illinois to southeastern Missouri. Ten years later, the Spanish encouraged members in Illinois to migrate the Cape Girardeau area as a way to protect their own settlements from the Osage.

By 1800, the Potawatomi had successful traded with the French to the north and the Spanish in St. Louis. They resided in a large region surrounding the southern half of Lake Michigan between the Mississippi River and Lake Erie and extending south to the mouth of the Illinois River.

The Corps of Discovery, as it would be called, or the “corps of volunteers for North Western Discovery,” as Lewis put it, epitomized the rising glory of the United States—its sense of limitless possibilities and unparalleled opportunities.

The original shopping list contained more than 180 items, including various “Mathematical Instruments”, arms and accouterments, ammunition, clothing, camp equipage, provisions, Indian presents, medicine, and packing materials.

In 1804 and in the presence of the Lewis and Clark expedition the little village, built and designed to be an outpost of the fur trade, shed its ambiguous Spanish-French parentage and took on full American citizenship.

The Missouri River still contributes its tint a few miles north of St. Louis. It is difficult to determine exactly how much, and how often, the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers changed during the nine decades after the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Clark recorded: “Capts. Lewis & Clark wintered at the enterance of a Small river opposite the Mouth of Missouri Called wood River, where they formed their party, Composed of robust Young Backwoodsmen of Character.”

Surrounded by maple trees at Camp Dubois, tapping and boiling the sweet, watery sap until it crystallized into sugar could begin as soon as the days warmed enough to get the sap rising in the trees.

Lewis had assured Clark that their situations would be identical in every respect, beginning with rank. The fact that Clark was actually a lieutenant was a secret kept throughout the expedition.