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Fort Kaskaskia

admin — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:47:30 +0000

Lewis and Clark recruited 11 men from the garrison at Ft. Kaskaskia, which resides in Randolph County, Illinois. According to the Illinois State Museum, archeologists at the Southern Illinois University recently uncovered previously unknown remains of the American Fort Kaskaskia, which is approximately 100 yards north of the French Ft. Kaskaskia (“‘Bound to the Western Waters’: The Discovery of Lewis and Clark’s Long-Lost Outpost of Ft. Kaskaskia Illinois State Museum”). After the revolution, many Americans settled in and around Kaskaskia, joining the original settlers. By the time of the expedition, many farmhouses inhabited by American settlers populated the region around the Wood River (Lankiewicz, 118).

Up until 1754, Francois Vallé and his family resided in Kaskaskia. Francois was a wealthy landowner, miner, trader, and businessman. He was considered the wealthiest man in Upper Louisiana (Ekberg). His son, Jean Baptiste Vallé would appear in Lewis and Clark’s journal entries. Francois would return to Kaskaskia from his new residence in Ste. Genevieve in 1755 to witness the marriage of two people he enslaved (Ekberg, 36). After moving to St. Genevieve, Francois bought a house in Kaskaskia at auction of the deceased Louis Turpin (Ekberg, 41). While it is unknown exactly why Francois bought the house, it was likely that the changing political landscape influenced his decision. Francois may have been hedging his bets if war had broken out west of the Mississippi, and bought the house to move his family in case of hostilities (Ekberg, 41). As of 1780 there were intense anti-American sentiments in the region, mostly in Cahokia, but also in Kaskaskia.

Located west of the Mississippi River, researchers noted that due to the flood of 1881 and shifting latitudes, after camping at the lower point of Horse Island, the expedition headed west around Kaskaskia Island. Latitudes shift because of the movement of the north and south magnetic poles. One survey in 2007 found that the North Magnetic Pole was moving north-northwest at about 34 miles per year. The Mississippi River now flows east of Kaskaskia, and Kaskaskia is no longer an island (Criss, 6). Despite several court challenges, Kaskaskia belongs to Illinois.

On November 28, 1803, the expedition arrived at Kaskaskia, and separated. While Clark and the rest of the party remained with the boat, Lewis entered Kaskaskia and met with Captains Russell Bissell, an infantry company commander, and Amos Stoddard, an artillery company commander, and informed them that he would be selecting candidates for the expedition from among their men (Salmon, 25). According to the journals, Lewis remained in Kaskaskia until December 5, 1803 and left on horseback to eventually meet the expedition in Cahokia on December 9. The ability to select volunteers for the expedition was found in a letter from the Secretary of War, Henry Dearborn. Dearborn wrote: “If any man in your Company should be disposed to join Capt. Lewis…you will detach them accordingly” (Woodger & Toropov, 194). Among the 12 men selected from Kaskaskia were Jean-Baptiste Deschamps, Francois Labiche, and Pierre Cruzatte (Royot, 167). Another man, Patrick Gass, was also selected. However, his recruitment posed some difficulty, as Captain Bissell hesitated to let him go since he was the only skilled carpenter assigned to Bissell’s unit. After Gass’s persistence and Lewis’s intervention, Bissell was forced to let Gass go (Woodger & Toropov, 194). Deschamps accompanied the expedition from Camp Dubois to Ft. Mandan (Royot, 167).

One of the most prominent members of the French trading colony was Pierre Ménard, in Cahokia, some 50 miles north along the Mississippi from Kaskaskia. Menard opened a store in Kaskaskia in 1789 and entered into a partnership with Francois Vallée (Royot, 97, 98). Vallée was a success in his own right, and the members of the expedition in 1804 should have known the family with their holdings. Vallée died in 1783, but he had become the richest man in a 500-mile radius (Ekberg, 17).

Kaskaskia continued to have relevance for at least one member of the expedition. Sergeant Patrick Gass, after his discharge from the expedition returned to Fort Kaskaskia. Gass was working there as the commissary assistant when the War of 1812 broke out. In 1813, Gass was stationed near St. Louis with a detachment assigned to monitor Indian activity.(Bridgman; Jacob).

References

“‘Bound to the Western Waters’: The Discovery of Lewis and Clark’s Long-Lost Outpost of Ft. Kaskaskia | Illinois State Museum.” Illinoisstatemuseum.org, 2021, www.illinoisstatemuseum.org/content/%E2% 80%9Cbound-western-waters%E2%80%9D-discovery-lewis-and-clark%E2%80%99s-long-lost-outpost-ft-kaskaskia. Accessed 5 Oct. 2021.
Bridgman, T. L. (2005). Sergeant Patrick Gass. Army Sergeants Major Academy Fort Bliss, TX, United States, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1111537.pdf. Accessed 5 Nov. 2021.
Criss, Robert E. "Mid-continental magnetic declination: A 200-year record starting with Lewis and Clark." GSA Today 13.10 (2003): 4-12.
Ekberg, Carl J. François Vallé and His World: Upper Louisiana Before Lewis and Clark. United States, University of Missouri Press, 2002.
Jacob, John G. The Life and Times of Patrick Gass, 1859.
Lankiewicz, Donald P. "The Camp on Wood River: A Winter of Preparation for the Lewis and Clark Expedition." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1908-1984) 75.2 (1982): 115-120.
National Centers for Environmental Information, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (2022). Tracking changes in Earth’s magnetic poles. Retrieved from https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/tracking-changes-earth-magnetic-poles.
Royot, Daniel. Divided Loyalties in a Doomed Empire: The French in the West: from New France to the Lewis and Clark Expedition. University of Delaware Press, 2007.
Salmon, John S. "Lewis and Clark Eastern Legacy Study." (2007).
Woodger, Elin, and Toropov, Brandon. Encyclopedia of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. United States, Facts on File, Incorporated, 2014.
Picture found at https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g35950-d4437447-Reviews-Fort_Kaskaskia_State_Historic_Site-Ellis_Grove_Illinois.html#/media-atf/4437447/477974777:p/?albumid=-160&type=0&category=-160

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Chain of Communication

admin — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:47:16 +0000

Communication on the Lewis and Clark Expedition required a complex chain of translation that at times consisted of five or more people. Each person involved in these translations was vital, especially as there were times when the expedition relied on the aid or goodwill of the Native Americans with whom they were speaking in order to continue with their journey. The large number of languages and people involved in this process meant that simple introductions and an explanation of the expedition’s purpose could take hours, much less any trade of goods or information (Vinikas).

Neither Lewis nor Clark spoke languages other than English, and so they were reliant on the members of their expedition who did in order to communicate with the Native peoples. It is possible that, as a result, some of the intentions and nuances that accompanied their phrasing was not translated along with the words. For example, both men addressed the Native Americans that they spoke with as “Children”, though those Native Americans were adults and often leaders in their own right. This way of referring to the people they encountered has a patronizing tone that may not have been conveyed through the multiple languages necessary for conversation (Vinikas).

Following English, the next language in the chain of translation was usually French. Though some members of the expedition, such as French Shawnee tracker George Drouillard, also spoke some Native American languages or sign language. This sign language was a common language that allowed communication between differing peoples and communities. There are some regional variations of this sign language, but ultimately it facilitated interactions between peoples with separate spoken languages (Davis). At times, using this sign language, members of the expedition were able to communicate directly to the people, however, that was not usually the case (Skarsten). So, the captains would speak English to one of the French-speaking members of the expedition, often Drouillard or Francois Labiche, a French Omaha trader from Fort Kaskaskia among a few others (Francois). Depending on the Tribe they were engaging these men would then relay the message in French to Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian fur trader who was brought along on the expedition primarily for his valuable place in this chain of communication (Toussaint).

After being told Lewis or Clark’s words in French from one of the other men, Charbonneau would translate them into Hidatsa for his wife, Sacagawea. She was Lemhi Shoshone, and the expedition’s trade with her people during the journey proved to be invaluable. This was especially true when the expedition bargained with the Shoshones for horses (Francois). After listening to her husband’s Hidatsa, she would speak to the Shoshones in her native Shoshone. Once they had replied to her, she would relay that message back to Charbonneau and the words would travel back down the chain of translation in the other direction. This tedious process would continue until an agreement had been reached.

At one point in the expedition, the chain of communication stretched even farther, adding yet one more person, and the language needed to speak to them. While traveling with their Shoshone guide over the mountains in late 1805, the party met the Salish, or Flatheads, people with whom their guide was able to communicate. These people were called Flatheads despite the fact that they did not practice the flattening of children’s skulls as was common to other Columbia River tribes. So, after Sacagawea spoke to their guide in Shoshone, he would speak to the Salish and receive a reply to pass back (Francois).

Despite the complicated nature of this chain of translation, and the number of hours required for the most basic of conversations, it was clearly successful. In their journals both Lewis and Clark praised the valuable skills of their translators and referred to the vital goods and information obtained from their interactions with various Tribal Nations. The fact that these translators were able to successfully make their intentions known, ask questions, and even conduct trade across not only the many languages needed to speak between themselves, but the numerous dialects of the peoples they encountered was truly impressive (Vinikas). Without the knowledge and input of each person involved in this lengthy chain of translation, it is possible that the expedition would have failed to reach its goal.

Sources

Vinikas, Vincent. The Historian, vol. 67, no. 1, Wiley, 2005, pp. 127–28, .

Davis, J. (2017). Native American signed languages. Oxford Handbooks Online.

Skarsten, M. O. George Drouillard: Hunter and Interpreter for Lewis and Clark and Fur Trader, 1807-1810. University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 

“Francois Labiche.” Discovering Lewis and Clark, Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, .

“Toussaint Charbonneau.” Discovering Lewis and Clark, Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, .

U.S. Department of the Interior. (n.d.). Salish. National Parks Service. Retrieved January 31, 2022, from

Tags: French Language and the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Lewis and Clark, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, Lewis and Clark Trail, Charbonneau, Sacagawea, Sacajawea, Drouillard, Labiche, language,

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Lewis and Clark: Linguistic Pioneers

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 01:27:43 +0000

Criswell conducts a systematic linguistic analysis of the Lewis and Clark journals, examining the vocabulary, spelling, grammar, and word usage that illuminate early 19th-century American English and frontier speech patterns. The article catalogs hundreds of words and phrases that first appear in written English in the expedition journals, including terms borrowed from Native American languages, French-Canadian fur trade vocabulary, and the captains’ own coinages for newly encountered plants, animals, and landscapes. Criswell examines the distinctive spelling conventions of Clark (notorious for creative orthography, once spelling “Sioux” at least 27 different ways) and Lewis (generally more consistent but still reflecting pre-standardized American spelling). The article evaluates the journals as a document of American English in a period of rapid evolution, when the language was absorbing influences from multiple sources and adapting to describe a landscape and its inhabitants for which existing vocabulary was inadequate.

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Thomas Jefferson and the Changing West

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 01:27:42 +0000

Ronda examines Thomas Jefferson’s complex and evolving vision for the trans-Mississippi West, tracing how the Lewis and Clark Expedition both realized and undermined the president’s expectations. The article explores Jefferson’s pre-expedition assumptions — the passage through the continent by water, the orderly integration of Native peoples into American agriculture, and the potential for a continental commercial empire — and how the expedition’s findings challenged each of these ideas. Ronda demonstrates that the West Lewis and Clark actually encountered — vast, arid, mountainous, and populated by powerful and autonomous Native nations — bore little resemblance to Jefferson’s imagined landscape of navigable rivers and cooperative indigenous populations. The article argues that Jefferson’s response to the expedition’s reports was selective, embracing information that supported his vision while downplaying evidence that contradicted it, a pattern that would shape American western policy for decades.

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The Expedition’s Firearms: Weapons of the Corps of Discovery

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 01:27:42 +0000

Supica provides a comprehensive analysis of the firearms that equipped the Lewis and Clark Expedition, examining how the selection, maintenance, and use of weapons shaped the expedition’s capabilities and interactions with Native nations. The article identifies the specific arms carried: the U.S. Model 1803 flintlock rifles (the first rifles specifically manufactured for the U.S. military), various trade muskets, flintlock pistols, a swivel-mounted blunderbuss on the keelboat, and the Girandoni air rifle. Supica discusses how Lewis procured these weapons at the Harpers Ferry Arsenal and elsewhere, the expedition’s ammunition supplies and powder preservation methods, and the critical importance of John Shields’s gunsmithing skills in keeping the weapons functional. The article also examines how firearms figured in diplomatic exchanges with Native peoples, serving both as gifts and as demonstrations of American military capability.

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The Bitterroot Crossing: The Most Perilous Passage

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 01:27:42 +0000

Ambrose reconstructs the expedition’s eleven-day crossing of the Bitterroot Mountains via the Lolo Trail in September 1805, widely regarded as the most physically demanding and dangerous segment of the entire Lewis and Clark journey. The article draws on journal entries from multiple expedition members to document the extreme conditions: deep snow, fallen timber, steep terrain, near-starvation (the party was reduced to eating candle tallow and horse meat), and the physical collapse of several members. Ambrose analyzes the critical role of Old Toby, the Shoshone guide who led the party over the mountains but occasionally lost the trail, and the expedition’s near-miraculous arrival in the Weippe Prairie, where the Nez Perce provided life-saving food. The article places the Bitterroot crossing in the context of the expedition’s overarching challenge: the utter failure of the imagined easy portage across the Continental Divide, which Jefferson and Lewis had anticipated based on incomplete geographic knowledge.

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Lewis and Clark and the Route to the Pacific

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 01:27:42 +0000

Allen provides a seminal analysis of the geographic knowledge and misconceptions that shaped the Lewis and Clark Expedition from conception through execution. The article traces the evolution of European and American understanding of trans-Mississippi geography, focusing on the persistent myth of a short, easy portage between navigable tributaries of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers. Allen demonstrates how this “passage through the garden” concept, rooted in Renaissance-era geographic theory and reinforced by speculative 18th-century cartography, fundamentally shaped Jefferson’s instructions and Lewis’s expectations. The article examines how the expedition’s actual discoveries — the vast, mountainous barrier of the Rockies, the absence of an easy water route, the complexity of the Columbia River system — systematically dismantled these optimistic assumptions. Allen argues that understanding this “geography of the imagination” is essential for interpreting the expedition’s decisions, frustrations, and ultimate achievement in crossing a continent far more formidable than anyone had anticipated.

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The Botany of the Lewis and Clark Expedition

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 01:27:41 +0000

Spamer provides a systematic catalog of the botanical specimens collected by Meriwether Lewis during the expedition, focusing on the surviving herbarium sheets held at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. The article traces the collection history from Lewis’s field gathering through the specimens’ journey to Philadelphia, where they were studied by botanist Frederick Pursh and others. Spamer documents the approximately 226 plant specimens that survive, many still pressed on their original sheets with Lewis’s handwritten labels, and discusses the dozens of species that were first described from these collections. The article addresses the complex history of the herbarium, including Pursh’s controversial removal of some specimens to London and the eventual recovery of others. Spamer also evaluates the expedition’s botanical contributions in the context of early American natural history and the scientific networks connecting Philadelphia, London, and the American frontier.

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The Death of Meriwether Lewis: A Historic Crime Scene Investigation

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 01:27:41 +0000

Starrs, a professor of forensic science at George Washington University, applies modern forensic methodology to the circumstances of Meriwether Lewis’s death on October 11, 1809, at Grinder’s Stand on the Natchez Trace in Tennessee. The article systematically evaluates the physical evidence, eyewitness accounts, and circumstantial factors that have fueled the longstanding debate over whether Lewis’s death was suicide or murder. Starrs examines the inconsistencies in Mrs. Grinder’s various accounts of that night, the absence of an autopsy, the presence of Lewis’s valuables after his death (which would be unusual in a robbery-murder), and the testimony of Lewis’s servant Pernier. The article also considers Lewis’s documented history of depression, his financial difficulties, and the statements of Jefferson and Clark, both of whom accepted the suicide verdict. Starrs concludes that while the evidence is insufficient for a definitive determination, the preponderance suggests suicide, though he advocates for an exhumation to resolve the question.

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Lewis and Clark on the Great Plains: A Natural History

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 01:27:41 +0000

Johnsgard, a distinguished ornithologist and naturalist at the University of Nebraska, provides a detailed ecological analysis of the Great Plains landscapes and wildlife observed by Lewis and Clark during their 1804-1806 journey. The article correlates specific journal entries describing encounters with bison herds, grizzly bears, prairie dogs, pronghorn, and hundreds of bird species with modern biological understanding of these organisms and their ecosystems. Johnsgard documents how the captains’ observations provide invaluable baseline data about Great Plains ecology before large-scale Euro-American settlement transformed the landscape. The article discusses the expedition’s encounters with species new to science, including detailed descriptions of the prairie rattlesnake, black-tailed prairie dog, and numerous bird species, and evaluates the accuracy of the captains’ natural history observations against current scientific knowledge.

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