Lewis and Clark Were Idiots

 Lets examine truthfully, 2 dog eating former army buddies, with slaves and servants in tow, crossing the continent with a couple of tons of gear – little of which they actually had to haul themselves.

 Lewis, an alcoholic, manic depressive, and Clark, an unemployed introverted ex-sergeant, were quite the team I have to say.  They could shoot, they could talk and they could piss off the locals in just about any language.  Their Virginian, white bread, narrow minded backgrounds provided just the right amount of pomposity to piss off just about every tribe they encountered, provided the chiefs and their native lieutenants ever got past the disbelief.   Were all white people going to be as dumb as these guys?

 These two whackos were well provisioned by President Jefferson to boldly go where no man has ever gone before, except for the fact that, well there were plenty of men and women everywhere they went. So many so that these two guys did one thing right; they brought a woman along so they could stop and ask for directions.   I will have to give them credit for that.  Of course Sacajawea came also with her boneheaded husband who twice tipped over the canoes and lost all the gear on board.  He wasn’t much of a shot, couldn’t manage any of the boats, ride horses poorly and really didn’t speak any other language but French, but Sac more than covered for him.  Lots of places in the Northwest are named after Charbonneau, nobody knows why.

 The miracle is only one guy died out of their whole party.  I don’t credit this to Lewis or Clark.  This is a credit to the kindness and open heartedness of the true natives of this country.  When Drouillard had nothing left to shoot it was the natives who turned these guys on to Wapato.   It was the natives who traded canoes for horses (except when these doo-gooders actually stole the canoes) and the natives who gave them dried salmon in exchange for blue beads.  Blue beads oh boy!  Now there’s a bargain.  Sorry kids there’s so little to eat this winter, but look, these white guys left us some blue beads!

 Lewis brought along lots of Mercury.  It was the early 19^th century cure for the clap.  It was used so much that present day historians are finding the old Corp of Discovery campsites by detecting the Mercury deposits left behind in the latrines.  Nowhere in any of the journals did anyone mention the beauty of the native women though.  Seems our intrepid explorers were not just focused on natural resources in those days.   

 So that’s the Lewis and Clark legacy.  The history books glorified it for me in high school but I always kind of knew better.  Just stopping at a couple of the Corp of Discovery campsites I could tell these guys were none too bright.  They always camped on promontories in windy places.  They seemed to have a great love for mud flats and dingy forested areas.  They ignored what the Northwest natives wore and stuck with moldy deerskins and leathers.

 So the great Corp of Discovery Bicentennial is coming to and end.  This time 2 centuries ago these guys were crossing Montana or Wyoming, probably swatting flys and mosquitos and hoping to make St. Louis by winter.  Lewis would later kill himself and Clark would complain about having to free York* because he was becoming unbearable as a slave.  I’m kind of glad of the end of the bicentennial really.  I think these guys actually “discovered” very little.  They enabled a claim for an already occupied land to be carried forward to the world by a President of a tiny nation with lots of guns.  Ah, doesn’t history tend to repeat itself? 

 *York, who was much adored by the Northwest natives (no doubt) for his unending patience and admirable chocolate brown skin, had a taste of a real life somewhere else.  He appreciated the people and places he had visited anyway.