Two Cultures, One Journey

by Rebecca West, Curatorial Assistant, Plains Indian Museum

From Cobblestone magazine, April 2004, Volume 25, Number 4.
This essay is appropriate for Grades 4 - 9.

What would the journey of Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery have been like had they not come into contact with Native Americans? It would still have been a journey full of challenges, sure to influence the future of the nation. But the challenges would have been much greater without guidance and assistance from the Native Americans encountered along the expedition's path. "Our information is altogether from Indians collected at different times and entitled to some credit," said William Clark in 1804.

One of the goals set by President Thomas Jefferson for the expedition was to gather information about the Native Americans, and to establish peaceful relationships in order to map trade routes to the Pacific Ocean. In addition to sharing information about their cultures, the fifty-plus tribes on the route offered much more - food, friendship, shelter, horses, directions, and safe passage - often at critical points in the journey.

The Native Americans knew the land and its resources very well. After all, this was their home long before the arrival of Lewis and Clark.

The Native American tribes in the vast regions between the Missouri River and the Pacific Ocean were unique from one another in many ways. The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara of the Missouri River tribes were farmers and hunters living in earth lodges, while the Shoshone, Sioux, Blackfeet and Nez Perce and other Plains and Plateau tribes were more nomadic, hunting on foot or on horseback and living in tipis.

Tribes on the Columbia River and along the Pacific Ocean such as the Chinook, Tillamook, the Clatsop and others built impressive canoes, hunted, and fished for salmon. Each tribe had its own traditions expressed through ceremonies, clothing, origin stories, and arts.

While gathering information Lewis and Clark were acting as explorers and ethnographers as they studied the lives of these Native groups. Most encounters were brief, and gave a mere glimpse of how the tribes lived. The expedition did have opportunities to learn more about some tribes, such as the Mandan, while wintering in their earth lodges and participating in buffalo hunts over the winter of 1804. There they forged a special relationship with their guide Sacagawea, a Shoshone woman raised by the Hidatsa.

The expedition was usually received with warmth and curiosity, sometimes with fear or hostility. Language differences created problems throughout the expedition. Interpreters knew some Sioux, but little of the many other languages of tribes living farther west.

Meetings between the two cultures were somewhat formal - Lewis and Clark often began their introductions by announcing that the land now belonged to the United States, and that the new "great father" was President Thomas Jefferson.

Many Native Americans had never seen people different from their own, and Shoshone oral tradition described them as "Men with faces as pale as ashes." These pale men offered trade goods such as knives, kettles, beads, tobacco, axes, cloth, and other items. Tribal leaders were given an official document or a peace medal to assure that they were on peaceful terms with the United States Government.

The Lewis and Clark expedition opened the way for events that would forever change the traditional cultures of tribes along the route. The 200 years that followed the expedition were extremely difficult for Native Americans.

The 19th century boasted a massive westward movement. With this movement came trade routes, railroads, the discovery of gold and the commercialization of natural resources - all of this spelled progress and opportunity to some citizens. For the Native Americans, this meant something else. Native Americans suffered through rapid change, experiencing disease, warfare, loss of homelands and resources such as the buffalo and a forced change in their traditional ways as they were moved onto reservations.

Despite hundreds of years of adversity, however, the tribes encountered by Lewis and Clark exist today with strong identities and thriving traditions. Most of the tribes are centered on reservations with their own tribal governments, schools, and cultural centers. They maintain their tribal identities by keeping ceremonies, arts, and languages alive. As Justin Gould, a Nez Perce tribal member said, "People need to realize we never left this place. We're not museum pieces." Most tribes welcome a remembrance of the expedition's bicentennial as a part of history, as long as both sides of the story are told.

Capt. Meriwether Lewis

Capt. William Clark