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Published: September 2nd 2023
(Disclaimer: My narrative includes certainly elements best categorized as historical fiction. They may use terms that are not necessarily politically correct. Please accept them as necessary verisimilitude.)
Our day started with a tour of the Ft. Leavenworth Frontier Army Museum.The collection consists mostly of various preserved frontier Army transportation vehicles, although it also includes uniforms and other Army paraphernalia. There are several larger weapons, such as gatling guns and howitzers. The fort here was established as a cantonment for troops under Col. Henry Leavenworth. Located on the (Kansas) side of the Missouri, the landing where a ferry was established became the unofficial jumping off point for the California Trail, the Santa Fe Trail, and the Oregon Trail. The fort was instrumental in securing the West for the westward expansion of the young United States. Later, it became the central point for the Army during the Mexican War. Now, the fort is home of the Command and General Staff College and other training commands.The CGSC is a normal part of the upward career path for career Army officers, followed by the War College (reminiscent of the cursus honorum of Roman times). Participants can gain a Master's in Military Arts and Science
if they choose to enter that path and do the required thesis. The fort seems peaceful enough, but we had been rather sternly warned to confine our routes on the fort to only those required to get to and return from the Museum, and so we did not seek out the views of the river and the marked landing point that was the start of the trails. We knew that our next stop, Weston Bend State Park, across the river in Missouri, should give us views of the same stretch of the Missouri as might be had from Ft. Leavenworth.
One might reasonably ask just why we were concerned with catching glimpses of the river in certain places. Any journey that attempts to give the traveler any sense of the original Journey of Discovery must necessarily concern itself primarily with four things: Native American tribes, wildlife, geography/geology, and the Missouri River. It is impossible to understand the enormous difficulties the Corps encountered without knowing something of the river along which they traveled. The Missouri is the longest river in the United States, and carries a volume of water about equal to that of the Mississippi. When you add the
Mississippi from below the confluence with the Missouri, the result is the fourth longest river in the world. At the time of the Journey of Discovery (henceforth in my narrative to be simply the JOD), it was considered one of the most unruly of rivers. As westward migration began about 1830, it became a principal means of commercial transport, just as it had been for native tribes for millennia. But as the population grew, particularly in at the lower reaches of the river, it began to be tamed. Fifteen dams now provide irrigation water, flood control, and hydroelectric power to the region. The river has been channelized to make navigation easier. It ahs been straightened and meanders cut off, again to improve navigability, thus making it some 200 miles shorter than it was in the time of the JOD. Thus to appreciate the river as it was in the time of Lewis and Clark, you need to find stretches where it still looks very much as it did in 1804. These are few and far between, hence our repeated attempts to see such areas.
Upon arriving at Weston Bend, another place where you were supposed to be able to
see the wild river about as it was in 1804, we located the trailhead and started out. It was labeled as an easy walk, but actually for us oldsters it involved significant climbing. We finally came to what appeared to be the edge of the bluff above the river, but tall vegetation kept us from seeing anything but the smallest patch of blue for beyond. Without knowing the river was in that direction it would have been easy to miss even that glimpse. Thinking that there must be a better spot, we ascended further along the bluff, finally reaching another top, again with no view. In the long run we never saw the river, but did get a nice hike out of the attempt. We knew that the exercise, particularly in climbing hills, would stand us in good stead later in our trip.
Our next stop was at the Loess Hills National Wildlife Refuge. It was quite a run up there, and I noticed that Meriwether had been very quiet ever since we left Ft. Leavenworth, so I asked him what he was thinking about.
"I was just thinking about that fort. The whole time we were exploring
the territory, we had good relations with the Indians except the two we were forced to kill when they tried to steal our rifles and horses. That was some adventure. We were afraid their friends would come back, so we left as rapidly as we could and did not stop for about 63 miles. A brief rest and we rode out again, stopping only for one night and finally meeting Sgt. Ordway on the river the next day. We had hoped to find him to warn him about the Indians, but we just released the horses, hopped in the boats, and got back into the river going downstream. Other than that one skirmish, the Indians were happy to establish trade and seemed to have little interest in violence toward us, saving it for other tribes. I wish I knew why they changed so much that we ended up at war with them."
I explained about the push of settlers into Native American lands, followed by the inevitable pushback.
"So there don't appear to be many Indians around now. What happened to them?"
I explained the fights with white settlers, the deliberate gift of blankets known to be
contaminated, the deliberate slaughter of all the buffalo herd to deprive them of food, clothing, shelter, and so many other things. He was stunned.
"I guess I can see those other things. The Mandans had been greatly reduced by smallpox when we stayed with them, and they were always suspicious that it was given to them deliberately. What I cannot see is how they got rid of that many buffalo. There were millions of them. A herd would take more than a day to pass you by."
I said, "Estimates are that there were 50-60 million at the time of your journey. By the time the killing had stopped and people started trying to save the species, there were only 1200-2000 left."
He was still musing when we arrived at Loess Hills. The Loess Hills are large hills of windblown silt. After the last Ice Age, the glaciers retreated, and as they melted they left large plains of glacial silt, ground by the ice into a very fine powder often called "glacial flour". This was picked up by the wind and deposited into hills like windrows. Such deposits are found around the world, but the ones her
are the thickest except for one site in China, measuring 60-90 feet high in general, but as much as 350 feet in some areas of Iowa. In the area of the wildlife refuge a huge wetland developed. It was drained in a massive earth-moving project in 1906, but continued to flood. In 1935 FDR ordered that the land be returned to a wetland status, and it was made into a wildlife refuge. Interesting historical note: the area was originally known as Squaw Creek. The Obama administration changed it to Loess Hills due to the pejorative nature of the term "squaw". Recently the Iowa Tribe reopened an historic travel stop, still calling it Squaw Creek Truck Plaza. GO figure.
Today the refuge is mostly empty except during the fall and spring migrations. Over a million snow geese travel through here, and in the winter it is the home of over 400 bald eagles. Our untimely arrival meant we saw nothing of interest, except for one lone turtle trying to cross the road. We gave him an assist.
Our next two stops gave us much more of a feel for the JOD. Crossing back over the Missouri to the Nebraska,
we next stopped at Indian Cave State Park. There we got right down to the river, although it was apparent that it is not completely free-flowing at this point. The eponymous cave was said to contain petroglyphs, but we could not find any from our distant vantage point. You are not allowed to closely approach the cave. More instructive was the Missouri River Basin Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center near Nebraska City. There we found a full-scale outdoor replica of the keelboat that the expedition took with them as far as the Mandan villages where they wintered over. The exhibit allowed us to see how they stored goods on the keelboat. Inside the visitors' center, there were several displays, including the only scale models of the much smaller pirogues that were another essential part of their journey. These would continue with them past the Mandan villages for some distance.
This center also gave us our first look at earth hut lodges. These semi-permanent structures were used by the Plains Indians, who usually only stayed in tipis when traveling, such as on seasonal bison hunts. Round in shape, they were built with a wattle and daub technique but with much
thicker earth layers. Frequently they were built using abundant cottonwood. This wood was soft but strong, allowing it to be worked easily, but it usually lasted only 6-8 years, necessitating rebuilding at that time. With a central fire-it and an exit hold for smoke, they could be kept warm in winter. They were large enough (about 40 ft in diameter) that sections could be set aside for weapons storage and pits for storage of vegetables. They were used by extended family groups, and could sleep as many as 30-40 people. It is thought that they were originated by the sedentary Mandan tribe, but later adopted by many others.
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2023 Lewis and Clark trip 120 Chuck Weston Bend State Park 071323
