What If The Lakota Had Wiped Lewis And Clark Off The Map?
It could have happened. A descendent in the same blood line as Crazy Horse reflects on the Corps of Discovery staying alive and William Clark's racist attitudes
"Indians Discovering Lewis and Clark," a painting by Charles M. Russell created in 1896. Lewis, Clark and their Corps of Discovery encountered many different indigenous tribes during their navigations up and down the Missouri River and to the Pacific Coast and back. Several tribes, if they had wanted, could have lethally halted the expedition but didn't.
by Ben Sherman
When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark made their journey from St. Louis to the Pacific Coast and back, they observed a remarkable wealth of land, animals, plants and native cultures along the Missouri River and beyond to the Pacific. It was essential to the success of the expedition that they find ways to get along well with the Indian tribes along the journey. They nearly succeeded.
Two of the most powerful tribal nations along their route, the Blackfeet and Sioux, were almost their undoing. In September 1804, in what is now South Dakota, William Clark would have his first "bad" Indian experience. Clark’s near-violent argument with the western bands of the Sioux Nation would cause Lewis and Clark to describe them as the “vilest miscreants of the savage race.”
Clark was never known to modify the sentiment. The expedition was passing through the heart of Sioux country. They had been sufficiently forewarned of the potential hazards of traveling through the territory of the powerful Lakota. This encounter with the Lakota was the expedition’s narrowest escape with disaster.
When William Clark unsheathed his sword in a flush of anger against the Teton Sioux, he was prepared to do battle with a force that could easily have wiped out the small group of Americans. It so happens that the Sioux did not want to fight then. There was no good reason for risking Sioux lives to put these few invaders in their place. At that time, the Sioux did not hate or fear the white man.
When William Clark unsheathed his sword in a flush of anger against the Teton Sioux, he was prepared to do battle with a force that could easily have wiped out the small group of Americans. It so happens that the Sioux did not want to fight then. There was no good reason for risking Sioux lives to put these few invaders in their place. At that time, the Sioux did not hate or fear the white man.
But what they did fear was the white man’s strange and deadly disease. When William shouted to the Lakota that he had “…medicine on board that would kill twenty such nations in one day,” the wise Lakota leader recalled the reports from distant tribes that had been decimated by disease, and he decided not to take a risk with any “bad medicine” the interlopers might possess.
The encounter with the Lakota would be particularly unpleasant for William Clark. His journal descriptions were harsh, portraying the Lakota as “thin, small and generally ill-looking.” Two years later while drifting on the river through Lakota territory on the return trip, William Clark would make shouted threats to the Lakota again.
A Lakota warrior by the name of Makes the Song would have been about 18 years old at the time of the first encounter. It is remotely possible that Makes The Song was involved in the encounter with Lewis and Clark. But the likelihood is that he was further west where many of his people were. Makes the Song and the Lakota nation knew about the ‘wasichu’ and most chose to stay away from these unpleasant people.
Seventy-three years later the famous grandson of Makes the Song would lead the last defiant band of Lakota into Fort Robinson, surrendering their guns and horses. The buffalo and other sources of food were almost wiped out in the Missouri region, and his people could not face another winter in a running fight with the U.S. Army. Sitting Bull had fled to Canada. The rest of the Sioux people were confined to remnant reservations.
This grandson of Makes The Song was named Crazy Horse. The year was 1877.
Crazy Horse would die that year from a soldier’s bayonet blade in his back. The sacred Black Hills would be stolen from the Sioux in 1877. A Supreme Court justice saw fit to comment on the government’s conduct, “A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history."
Crazy Horse would die that year from a soldier’s bayonet blade in his back. The sacred Black Hills would be stolen from the Sioux in 1877. A Supreme Court justice saw fit to comment on the government’s conduct, “A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history."
Just seventy-three years after Lewis and Clark passed through the lands of the Sioux nation, the U.S. Government would take most of the lands of the Louisiana Purchase from the Indians through a combination of deception, force, murder and starvation. Alcohol and disease would contribute. There were many “rank cases of dishonorable dealings” in the extremely rapid expansion of the United States into the new territory.
William Clark played a singular key role for the first thirty of those seventy-three years in launching the American takeover of lands, subjugation of Indians and expansion of America into the Missouri region.
Clark would pull this off as a powerful and influential political appointee under six different presidents, beginning with President Thomas Jefferson and continuing through the presidencies of James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren.
Clark’s extensive accomplishments can be viewed today as total and complete execution of Jefferson’s Indian policy. Jefferson had started his presidency with great optimism about civilizing and assimilating Indians into American society as yeoman farmers.
However, with each passing year his optimism waned. By the end of his second term, as he appointed William Clark to the position of Indian superintendent for the new Missouri territory, President Jefferson was devising a new policy for dealing with Indians.
William Clark played a singular key role for the first thirty of those seventy-three years in launching the American takeover of lands, subjugation of Indians and expansion of America into the Missouri region. Clark would pull this off as a powerful and influential political appointee under six different presidents..."
Jefferson’s new plan for the fate of Indians would be harsh and unremitting. Civilization and assimilation were replaced with removal or extermination. Either way, Indian lands would be obtained for the growing American population. William Clark was being prepared to make that a reality. Clark spent several weeks in Washington DC before his appointment. He most likely had opportunities to learn firsthand of Jefferson’s policy for expanding America at the expense of the Indigenous people.
Jefferson’s Indian policy, according to Anthony F.C. Wallace’s Jefferson and the Indians, the Tragic Fate of the First Americans, would include predatory credit practices where the Indians would be allowed to accumulate higher and higher debts with traders and the U.S. Government.
The Government would then pressure the Indians to eliminate the debts through land cessions. The Government would also stand by as white encroachment of Indian lands took place. Acts of atrocity on defending Indians would follow, leading to Indian retaliation. Then the U.S. military would invade Indian lands to protect whites and punish Indians. Threats of trade embargo or war would pressure the Indians into treaties and land cessions.
William Clark: Impressions of the man depend upon the eyes of the beholders. This painting of Clark was made by Charles Wilson Peale in 1810.
The process was to be repeated over and over on the grandest scale that only a man of Jefferson’s capacity could imagine. Indeed, the seeds of ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide were planted by Thomas Jefferson. All that was needed was the persistence of resolute men to carry out his Indian policy, and he found one such man in William Clark.
The wonder is that Clark did it while posing as a friend and defender of Indian rights.
As William Clark spent his many years as Governor and Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Missouri region, he cultivated a reputation as a benevolent protector of the Indians, a defender of Indian right. Some called Clark the redheaded Chief. He was even accepted by many Indian leaders as their friend, a man of power and reputation who demonstrated his friendship by taking millions of acres of Indian lands into the new American empire.
William Clark, his nephew Benjamin O’Fallon and his friend Auguste Chouteau executed a combined total of 47 treaties with Indian tribes during the period 1815-1830. Clark ultimately had 65 Indian treaties executed under his watch. William Clark personally participated in ten treaties that involved major land cessions from a number of tribes. The U.S would eventually violate every single Indian treaty.
William Clark, his nephew Benjamin O’Fallon and his friend Auguste Chouteau executed a combined total of 47 treaties with Indian tribes during the period 1815-1830. Clark ultimately had 65 Indian treaties executed under his watch. William Clark personally participated in ten treaties that involved major land cessions from a number of tribes. The U.S would eventually violate every single Indian treaty.
William Clark would succeed in clearing all Indians out of his home state of Missouri before he was done. Clark, his city of St. Louis and his state of Missouri would reward those same Indian tribes that contributed to their wealth with a quick boot to their collective backsides.
William Clark was also an astute businessman from the very beginning of his long political career. He helped form the Missouri Fur Company along with members of the Chouteau family and Manuel Lisa. The Chouteaus were among the wealthiest families in St. Louis, as well as being William Clark’s business partners in Indian trade.
Clark and his nephews and in-laws, along with the Chouteaus, gained wealth from the fur trade and the general Indian trade. Government treaty money authorized by Governor-Commissioner-Superintendent Clark and paid to Indians found its way into company cash boxes in St. Louis. Government treaty goods provided to Indians were purchased from Company stores in St. Louis. Government posts established for Indian trade were stocked with goods purchased from company stores from St. Louis.
Alcohol was an important and permanent part of Indian trade, creating immense profits for the white traders. William Clark had complete power over all aspects of the Indian trade, including the evil liquor that ruined many Indians and destroyed entire tribal communities.
Indeed, William Clark’s long reign as Governor of the Missouri Territory, Treaty Commissioner and Superintendent of Indian Affairs led to the eventual devastation of all free and independent tribal nations of the great Missouri region that he explored. Not a single tribal nation, friendly or hostile, large or small, escaped the ravage.
Clark’s actions against Indians were deliberate, well planned and sustained.
The direct link between the Indian removal policies of Thomas Jefferson and the Indian removal actions of William Clark is all too clear. Indeed, who can say that William Clark did not communicate with President Jefferson and plan the grand scale of scheming deceptions that eventually cost the Indians their lives, their independence and their lands?
William Clark devoted a long career to the intense manipulation of the numerous Indian tribes that came under his direct control. His career was truly remarkable because of the extremely rapid spread of the new nation in the wake of his manipulations.
If one suspends any moral judgement on his actions, Clark’s accomplishments reach heroic proportions. But I, a direct descendent of Makes The Song, can no more suspend judgement on Clark’s incredibly cynical and immoral career than I can deny my ancestry and heritage.
About Ben Sherman
Ben Sherman is an Indigenous member of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) Nation, born and raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He is a founding board member and Chairman of the World Indigenous Tourism Alliance. A national leader in the development of indigenous tourism efforts in the US with a master's degree in business management, he also is co-founder of the American Indian/Alaska Native Tourism Association. Sherman has spoken at numerous international venues on the subject of Indigenous tourism and native arts, and has worked to create and promote a set of values for Indigenous tourism that includes cultural preservation, environmental stewardship and community development. He embraces beliefs in the kinship among all life forms, reciprocal relationships with the natural world and reverence for the earth as a living being.
