Lewis & Clark - The revealing of America On April 7, 1805, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark left Fort Mandan for points west, beginning the process of "filling in the canvas" of America. This exhibition features the Library's rich collections of exploration material documenting the quest to connect the East and the West by means of a waterway passage. When Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark into the West, he patterned their mission on the methods of Enlightenment science: to observe, collect, document, and classify. Such strategies were already in place for the epic voyages made by explorers like Cook and Vancouver. Like their contemporaries, Lewis and Clark were more than representatives of European rationalism. They also represented a rising American empire, one built on aggressive territorial expansion and commercial gain. But there was another view of the West: that of the native inhabitants of the land. Their understandings of landscapes, peoples, and resources formed both a contrast and counterpoint to those of Jefferson's travelers. This part of the exhibition presents five areas where Lewis and Clark's ideas and values are compared with those of native people. Sometimes the similarities are striking; other times the differences stand as a reminder of future conflicts and misunderstandings. Discovering Diplomacy One of Lewis and Clark's missions was to open diplomatic relations between the United States and the Indian nations of the West. As Jefferson told Lewis, "it will now be proper you should inform those through whose country you will pass . . . that henceforth we become their fathers and friends." When Euro-Americans and Indians met, they used ancient diplomatic protocols that included formal language, ceremonial gifts, and displays of military power. But behind these symbols and rituals there were often very different ways of understanding power and authority. Such differences sometimes made communication across the cultural divide difficult, open to confusion and misunderstanding. An important organizing principle in Euro-American society was hierarchy. Both soldiers and civilians had complex gradations of rank to define who gave orders and who obeyed. While kinship was important in the Euro-American world, it was even more fundamental in tribal societies. Everyone's power and place depended on a complex network of real and symbolic relationships. When the two groups met--whether for trade or diplomacy--each tried to reshape the other in their own image. Lewis and Clark sought to impose their own notions of hierarchy on Indians by "making chiefs" with medals, printed certificates, and gifts. Native people tried to impose the obligations of kinship on the visitors by means of adoption ceremonies, shared names, and ritual gifts. Pipe tomahawk Pipe tomahawks are artifacts unique to North America--created by Europeans as trade objects but often exchanged as diplomatic gifts. They are powerful symbols of the choice Europeans and Indians faced whenever they met: one end was the pipe of peace, the other an axe of war. Lewis's expedition packing list notes that fifty pipe tomahawks were to be taken on the expedition. Jefferson's Secret Message to Congress While Jefferson made no effort to hide the Lewis and Clark expedition from Spanish, French, and British officials, he did try to shield it from his political enemies. By the time he was ready to request funds for the enterprise, Jefferson's relationship with the opposition in Congress was anything but friendly. When the president suggested including expedition funding in his regular address to Congress, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1761-1849) urged that the request be made in secret. The message purported to focus on the state of Indian trade and mentioned the proposed western expedition near the end of the document. Jefferson's Instructions for Meriwether Lewis No document proved more important for the exploration of the American West than the letter of instructions Jefferson prepared for Lewis. Jefferson's letter became the charter for federal exploration for the remainder of the nineteenth century. The letter combined national aspirations for territorial expansion with scientific discovery. Here Jefferson sketched out a comprehensive and flexible plan for western exploration. That plan created a military exploring party with one key mission--finding the water passage across the continent "for the purposes of commerce"--and many additional objectives, ranging from botany to ethnography. Each section of the document was really a question in search of a western answer. Two generations of American explorers marched the West in search of those answers. Jefferson Peace Medal The American republic began to issue peace medals during the first Washington administration, continuing a tradition established by the European nations. Lewis and Clark brought at least eighty-nine medals in five sizes in order to designate five "ranks" of chief. In the eyes of Americans, Indians who accepted such medals were also acknowledging American sovereignty as "children" of a new "great father." And in a moment of imperial bravado, Lewis hung a peace medal around the neck of a Piegan Blackfeet warrior killed by the expedition in late July 1806. As Lewis later explained, he used a peace medal as a way to let the Blackfeet know "who we were." Making Chiefs Lewis was frustrated by the egalitarian nature of Indian society: "the authority of the Chief being nothing more than mere admonition . . . in fact every man is a chief." He set out to change that by "making chiefs." He passed out medals, certificates, and uniforms to give power to chosen men. By weakening traditional authority, he sought to make it easier for the United States to negotiate with the tribes. Lewis told the Otos that they needed these certificates "In order that the commandant at St. Louis . . . may know . . . that you have opened your ears to your great father's voice." The certificate on display was left over from the expedition. Making Kinship In tribal society, kinship was like a legal system--people depended on relatives to protect them from crime, war, and misfortune. People with no kin were outside of society and its rules. To adopt Lewis and Clark into tribal society, the Plains Indians used a pipe ceremony. The ritual of smoking and sharing the pipe was at the heart of much Native American diplomacy. With the pipe the captains accepted sacred obligations to share wealth, aid in war, and revenge injustice. At the end of the ceremony, the pipe was presented to them so they would never forget their obligations. This pipe may have been given to Lewis and Clark. It would take another fifty years after Lewis and Clark to complete the cartographic image of the West we know today. Other explorers and map makers followed, each revealing new geographic and scientific details about specific parts of the western landscape. But this revealing process was not a simple one. New knowledge did not automatically replace old ideas; some old notions--especially about river passages across the West--persisted well into the century. In the decades after Lewis and Clark the company of western explorers expanded to include fur traders, missionaries, and government topographers, culminating in the 1850s with the Army's Corps of Topographical Engineers surveying the southwestern and northwestern boundaries of the United States as well the potential routes for a transcontinental railroad. By the time of the Civil War, an ocean-to-ocean American empire with borders clearly defined was a fact of continental life.

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