Great Warriors II

William Clark wore many hats on the frontier, explorer, military officer, trader, Indian agent, planter and businessman.  Like many people who lived in close proximity with Native Americans, his attitude toward them and dealings with them were conflicted many times over.  Clark, 1770-1838, is best known as one of the co-leaders of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-1806.  That expedition and all that it accomplished are out of the scope of this blog and beyond encapsulating in a single post.  The point here is to look at Clark's dealings with Native peoples post-expedition, when his position as Indian Agent ad Missouri governor made him responsible for implementing United States policy toward them. Clark was born in Ladysmith, Virginia to a large plantation family on the edge of the Virginia frontier.  Though he was too young to fight in the American Revolution, he was a remote witness to it.  His older half-brother was George Rogers Clark, renowned i...

Not all interaction between Natives and Whites was antagonistic.  Interracial relationships, usually between male Settlers and Native women, were common.  The children of those couples could function in their father's world, but they more often preferred that of their mother.  They could serve as bridges between the two worlds by being interpreters, scouts and guides.  Without such men, early exploration of North America and trade between Natives and Whites would have been more difficult than it was.  Yet, the contributions of these mixed-race individuals are often little known and overlooked.  While Sacagawea has taken her rightful place in the history of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-1806, few people outside of frontier buffs or local historians have heard of George Drouillard and Pierre Cruzatte. George Drouillard (1773-1810) was born of a Shawnee mother and a French-Canadian father.  He learned how to read and write, was p...

The story of Sacajawea's reunion with her family and tribe during the Lewis and Clark Expedition is a familiar one, told from her vantage point.  However, her brother, Cameahwait, by this time chief of the Salmon Eater band of the Lemhi Shoshone would have also had feelings in the matter. Little is known of Cameahwait's life or how he rose to a position of authority among his people.  Apparently, he was several years older than Sacajawea.  In their society, siblings and cousins are often considered the same relationship and spoken of in the same words.  Some sources suggest that they may have been cousins, or even half-siblings.  No matter what the exact familial rank, their actions when they met up again suggested a close family bond.  When Sacajawea was 12 and her brother much older and already an established warrior, the Hidatsa raided their hunting camp.  Four men, four boys and some elderly and children were killed.  Sacajawea and some othe...

When early explorers encountered Native people and wanted to designate them in a written record, they often went with what the surrounding tribes called them, rather than the tribe's own name for themselves.  The Mandan are a Siouan-speaking people living in North Dakota with two closely allied tribes, the Hidatsa and Arikara.  Historically, their range was the Missouri River, in what is now North and South Dakota.  They were living there when French explorers encountered them in 1738.  The French adopted the name Mandan as a corruption of various Siouan words for people who dwelt in earth lodges or people who lived under ground.  Later Anglo explorers stated that the Mandans referred to themselves as People of the Pheasants.  Most likely, like many Native tribes, they had a variety of names that referred to themselves as people. Mandan oral history reveals that their original home was near a large lake.  Like other Siouan peoples, pre-Contact Mandan...