Tent of Many Voices: 08110402T

ladies and Gentlemen please come join us uh our 11:00 program is about to begin and I'd like to thank you all for coming out this morning we've got a beautiful day nice little breeze blowing and uh we're very happy with the temperatures we are part of the National Park traveling exhibit the leison Park traveling exhibit and we are following along in the footsteps of louisy Clark and stopping in towns and cities and reservations along the way to talk about the Lewis and Clark Story and when we talk about the Lewis and Clark Story it's not just their story it's a story of Ls and Clark the men that went with them the woman that accompanied them on this journey and of all of the peoples they met along the way so hopefully our tent of many voices is a place where all of these voices can be heard and shared to tell the entire LS and Clark Story and the stories of those people who have followed them and crossed this land as well so welcome to our traveling Exhibit while you're here take time to go over and visit our exhibit tent there's a 35 minute audio tour you can do of the exhibit we have our scale model peel booat and our pl's Indian TP out in the front so you can see some of the artifacts that and Clark would have seen on their Journey that were used by the Plains Indians of that time so today let's go ahead and get started with our program and we'd like to thank you for joining us and we'll have Scott Mandell and pton Bud Clark here to talk about the Journey of the second core of Discovery so I'll turn it over to you all February we don't have to whole great well thank you all I I there's probably most of the people sitting here number of already know about who we are there's lot a small crowd but we we want to let you hear the story of our organization um the planning for the vice Centennial has been going on for a long time I guess by a lot of different people people who uh all across the country who had some different connection to the story or whatever some places uh in excess of 30 years people have been anticipating this byen which is really the bicentennial of the West as many people have referred to it it's the bicentennial of everything west of the Mississippi River with regard to the United States of America as a nation and uh one of the individuals who was keenly interested in taking steps to prepare for the vice Centennial was a man by the name of Glenn bishop and Glenn and Bishop was from St Charles Missouri and he was a contractor and businessman and among other things he was an antique boat hobbyist and he had built wooden boats in the past and that sort of thing and had a real love for boats and particularly old boats Wooden Boats and had built a couple and uh living in St Charles Missouri in 1979 I actually had the privilege in 1979 when I was a little kid of uh of attending the very first Lewis and Clark uh Heritage Days event that took place there 25 years ago in that town and from that time on roughly uh there was a deep commitment in the community of St Charles to tell their story as it related to the overall expedition in in this chapter in American history and one of the things that frustrated Glenn very much was the fact that despite the fact that in Clark's field notes from wood rer there had always been available to anyone who wanted to go and look and see but there was a an image of the kilbo the Clark had drawn in his field notes and yet everywhere you went across the country every for Lewis and Clark had two guys in skin caps in a Birch Park canoe paddling up the Missouri River and this really irritated Glen he was a kind of he was a mild mannered guy but there was one thing that was a bur under a saddle blanket it was it was this image of two guys in skin caps and a birch bar canoe so he decided that in an attempt to set the record straight that he would build a model of the original kill booat so people would have an understanding of what this vessel was like and you have to remember that 200 years ago the largest vessel that had ever plied the Missouri River was the kill boat that L and Clark had taken with it this was this was a massive boat by comparison to anything else that been up there there were 50ft canoes but there were dogouts and things like that and there were there were large boats but nothing like this on this order so he built the model of it and in 1982 kind of showed it to the world as it were and and people were very excited they thought it was neat and that model still exists and it's really quite beautiful and all but it was a 1 in to 1T scale so even though it was 55 in Long which is pretty pretty big model it did not heat felt communicate in full the scope of what this vessel was like and particularly it did not communicate what this boat looked like moving on the water and if you haven't seen our boats you should they really are quite spectacular when they move on the water and so he decided to actually start constructing a replica of the first boat based upon field notes from Clark and Wood River based upon good information from the uh Maritime Museum missan Institute and he studied a great deal about boats that were common and typical of that time the man who built the original boat for Lewis we believe is a man by the name of John Walker and there was a great deal of information about John Walker who was a boat right on the non River and using this very good research and having been both a carpenter in his own right as well as a boat right he was able to bring a lot of common practical understanding of what was needed to make this boat operational and that sort of thing so he started working in 1983 on building this boat in his backyard if you're not aware a boat has to be boats like this are built upside down well it's a 55 ft long structure that's bowed and and when he was making the frame of it for the longest time people thought that he was building this wooden Greenhouse in his back Y and he was kind of the object of ridicule in his neighborhood people would kind of laugh at him and thought he was kind of this Ecentric kind of crazy old guy and then one day as the planks went on and it started to look like a boat and he flipped it over then people really started kind of giving him a hard time and kind of poking fun at him because Glenn had a big white beard and they used to sort of make Noah jokes you know and laugh at him you know his old guy thought he was Noah building his ark that was in the mid 80s late early 90s then in 1993 we got the great flood and everybody stopped laughing and uh at any rate in '96 the boat was finally finished and we took a 1,000m trip from Wood River Illinois to St Joe Missouri and back to St Charles it took us s weeks and if it started out it was only going to be a trip from Wood River up to St Charles for the vice lieuten or for the for the Heritage Days event and it kind of grew and grew and grew before you know it was 7 weeks and 1,000 miles and it changed many of our Lives fundamentally those of us who were involved with the project because we started to see not only the possibilities with regard to the bicentennial but we started to have a much deeper understanding of the Missouri River Corridor and what it represented to us as a nation environmentally historically spiritually and as this this Great River coursed through the interior of our nation and all the all the things that that that connotated to us as a society the Missouri River is more than simply a river it is a it is an idea in many ways and it became a passion for many of us and we had started to plan on what we would do the next year and indeed we started working over the winter on the white perog the first of the two smaller boats and we had that boat all framed out and the last day I worked on that boat was the 30th of January of 1997 on the 31st of January of 1997 Glenn and another fell CJ lahan who's been instrumental in our group over the years they did some finishing touches some touchup work on the kbo because that next week we were going to move the kill booat down to the transor D down where the Rams played football for a big boat show it was going to be a display item there of all the boats around it and they were doing a little touchup on it on the 31st of January and they left the warehouse that night about 5:00 Glenn got home at about 5:20 the phone rang and it was the fire department the warehouse had caught on fire and the boat that had taken him 13 years to build with his own hands by himself in about 40 minutes was reduced ashes it was a terrible terrible thing it was a devastating experience for all of us and I remember the next morning standing in the still smoldering Embers of that boat completely for more was a tremendous sense of loss because this vote had come to sort of represent what might be and when I asked Glen what are we going to do his response was I was never completely happy with that vote anyway and that was the day and I've said this many times before but that was the day that I truly understood the meaning of undotted Courage if a man could spend 13 years of his life by himself his own money building this thing that he only wanted to give as a gift to the American people by building it if he could experience this tremendous loss and go forward without any without any hesitation that was the kind of character and a man that I had tremendous respect for and I swore my allegiance to him that day quite literally and from that day on our organization actually grew it's sort of like sometimes when you cut a tree back or PR a tree back it it grows more hearty and healthy and that's what happen happened with our organization in 1997 countless members of our greater St Louis St Charles Community came forward retired individuals men who had carpentry skills or some other skill and we immediately started working on the fleet of boats because our Dream had grown by that time to build the whole Fleet of boats and we knew that we couldn't get the kbat done in one year so we started working on the white perog because we knew that as important as the boats were just like the original Expedition the most important thing on the trip was the men and it was important to train a crew and if we had to wait until the kill booat was done we would lose valuable and precious time training Crews so in 1997 we completed in 6 months the white perau and that year we took that boat from down to Mississippi from St Louis down and up the Ohio to Fort Massac on the Ohio and then in 1998 we built the red boat in about 8 months and we that year we took the white and red thr together from yank and South Dakota back down to St Charles passed by here that first time in 1998 in 1999 we began work on the kilb the second kilb and now there were many hands to make the labor White and the work went much faster and in addition to working on the kilbo we took the two perugu in 1999 from Louisville Kentucky down to Fort Massac on the Ohio River and then in 2000 we took the two perog continued work on the kilbo and took the two Peres to Elizabeth Pennsylvania we brought them down to manangi hila to the Ohio down the Ohio to Louisville and then in 2001 the kilbo was finished and we took it up to Pier South Dakota and brought it back to yanes so by 2001 we had trained on the entire water route from Elizabeth Pennsylvania where it began all the way to Pier South Dakota below D and that was a tremendous amount of training we had a very qualified crew by that time in 2002 we were very worried it was only a year away from the bicentennial and we were very concerned about putting our boats in the water and having an accident and then not having time to have them rebuilt for the bicentennial but we wanted to continue to train Crews so we took 30 men and five dugouts five dugouts not Dugout canoes no such thing a Dugout is a Dugout is a Dugout it's a log and we took five big log LS and 30 men from Deacon Rock to the ocean to the mouth of the Columbia River 140 Mi to continue to train those Crews and so we were ready the bicentennial was about to begin and then it kind of dawned on me that Lewis hadn't rid a car from CDs and ran out to Pittsburgh to get the boat and he had to get there some other way and part of the story is about understanding how vast the nation we are how big a nation we are and how difficult things were for all of our forefathers as they moved across this great continent and I realized that in order for the story to be complete Lewis had to get to Pittsburg and so last year on the 5th of July I mounted a horse at Washington DC and rode to Pittsburgh Pennsylvania the core gathered in Elizabeth Pennsylvania in August and in August we departed Elizabeth Pennsylvania we came down the mangila river to the Ohio down the Ohio River to Caro Illinois up in Mississippi to our winter camp at Wood River arriving there on December 12th just as the original core had done day for day mile for mile and then we spent the winter at Camp de and that fellow who had been helping Glenn years before CJ Lanahan he had dedicated the last three years of his life to building a replica of camp deis in Wood River Illinois a working functioning Camp de that would allow us to train there over the winter and learn the skills necessary for what we were embarking on and over the winter we brought men from our organization now up to 250 members strong from 36 different states and we brought them there over the winter and we trained there and we learned infantry skills from the time and that sort of thing we participated in the three flags ceremony which changed the The Sovereign flags that flew over St Louis 300 200 years ago on in March when when Spain and France relinquished their claims to Louis Iana and then in may we put the boats in the water on the 7th of May and on the 14th of May the same dat in the same hour of the original Expedition once again we were underway and we entered the mouth of the Missouri River and we've ascended the Missouri River now 691 miles on a journey that this year will take us 1350 Mi to waser North Dakota and Fort Mandan and we will complete those miles in the same time frame with the original Expedition it is a tremendous honor for us to share this story with America but as we talked about today this story is about much more than simply two individuals Lewis and Clark and for a long time that's been the way we referred to this story as Louis and park Louis and park is like an icon on the desktop of your computer that you never clicked on you know it came with all that preloaded software that you never use and one day you clicked on that icon and all those great applic were in there and you thought wow if I'd known this was here earlier I would have used it that's what Lewis and Clark is like and while it's important to tell the story of the many tribes along the way before we even get to the tribes last year one of the big things we had to talk about was the many tribes that comprised the core itself in 1803 this nation was not a homogeneous Nation there wasn't a bunch of people who got up in the morning and thought of themselves as Americans there was people themselves as Virginians and pennsylvanians and new englanders and Kian and tennesseans and they thought about themselves in a very colloquial way yeah they had joined together to fight the British and gain independence and autonomy from the British crown but a Virginia was a Virginia a Pennsylvanian was a Pennsylvanian and there the two would meet unless maybe in the case of the Whiskey Rebellion and when they met there they were on opposite sides this story is about the moment when those eastern states started to understand that they were part of something bigger and the men who comprised the core of Discovery were not one group of people they were Scots and Irish and Germans and wel and French and it was an Eclectic group of individuals to begin with some like Lewis and clar from the upper class Gentry aristocracy as it were some from the very lowest levels of society poor dirt farmers from Appalachia people who knew that this Expedition and being on it would change their lives fundamentally if they could go on this trip and come back that they would reap rewards that would change their lives and the family's lives it would give them a chance to have a fresh start in the world a chance to have a leg up upward mobility and it was very important for that group of individuals but they were not a common group of individuals and there was a tremendous amount of angst between them which at Wood River we see played out it was very difficult for the captains to bring discipline and order to this group of unruly individuals but they finally did but then Lewis and Clark even complicated matters further because they went to St Charles and they recruited all of these French boatmen to help make the trip possible another chapter in the story of America a melting pot that strength is in its diversity leis in Clark bring into the story Frenchmen who are not only French and speak a different language but are Catholic which is a very complex issue in the late 18th and early 19th century and we see the eclecticism and the diversity of this group of people growing day by day as these people join the crew and then ultimately as they make their way across the nation so many times over and over and over again the turning point in success or failure pivots on the assistance that they are given freely and hospitable by the native nations that they encounter along the way and that is the message and the model that this Bicentennial continues to offer us and that we must Embrace and share Across the Nation is that the story of this core of Discovery 200 years ago is a story that reflects the character of America today it is eclectic Multicultural and diverse and that was it's strength then and it is the strength of our nation today it is a great honor for us to be able to bring this story to life it's a great honor to be here with you today I'm going to stop talking and let Bud say a few words Bud as you know is the great great great grandson of William Clark we have several descendants with us today and it's tremendously it's a special honor for us to get to serve with them as we move across the country in this exercise but it's also magical to be at places where we get to stand next to descendants of the original Expedition once again grasping hands with descendants of those native people who met them for the first time 200 years ago and see evidence that once again there is an opportunity for the promise of Thomas Jefferson to come true that one day we can live in peace and friendship together and this hopefully is the beginning of that age oh thank you thank you Scott as Scott mentioned we do have some uh other descendants here today the uh um Bob if you would stand please Bob Anderson who is a collateral descendant of George Shannon and his grandson Josh Josh lus um Josh is the youngest member of our organization making the entire trip as George Shannon was the youngest member of the original Expedition also Church my cousin Churchill is here the back Churchill is part of our organization planning to make the entire trip um you know I think that very early on as students of Lewis and Clark one of the first things we recognize is that uh perhaps the the title Lewis and Clark expedition is is sort of a Mis I think if I could change any of the written words that uh my ancestor wrote I I would change that title and give it some a name something like uh the core of Discovery Journey Through the lands of the Native Americans because in fact that is exactly what it was and one of the things that that makes this event today so significant and and so important and why we feel so honored to be here is that quite frankly without the the help without the hospitality and the assistance of the Native Americans there there's a very good chance that I wouldn't be standing here we can say with absolute certainty that the Lewis and Clark expedition would not have succeeded how dismal that failure might have been well we'll never know because they had the assistance of the Native Americans and it did succeed and as we proceed across the country and travel through the homelands of the Native Americans we hope that there'll be many more like days like this one where we can really enjoy coming together as a nation and as we mentioned earlier this morning that's that is what we want our Legacy to be it's quite straightforward it's really quite simple when this is all over we want to stand tall and say we were a part of bringing this nation closer together as a family and we can see that happening on days like today and it's magic it's really magic I think Scott did you want to yeah like entertain questions now I think that's probably best you just yeah why don't we do that we'd like to answer questions either about the original Expedition if we can if you have interest in something that happened on the original Expedition something about our Expedition something about the votes um just raise your hand we'll bring the microphone if you have questions uh wave to us Angela's on that side I'm on this side and we'll be glad to entertain this questions for you question um maybe I shouldn't say do you plan to do this but will you do this will you write a book are you keeping journals as the original leis and Clark did and write a book to compare what they went through as compared to what you are going through I my journals are online at Lewis and clark.nj you con I've been writing journals for this organization for many many years our our previous training exercises were brief so those journals were shorter but I have journaled since last year since I left Washington DC last year that's a journal that probably might be a good historical document to compare what happened on a daily basis as far as books go I don't know on the 23rd of September 2006 I'm probably going to put on in a sweatshirt and you know try to think about something else at least for a little while um I know some of the guys were planning on writing book one of the guys actually last night told me that he's got a title for his book they're all writing books they're all talking to agents and Publishers all the time but the uh one of the guys last night told me and sge PRI will appreciate this one one of the titles that I heard last night that one of the guys is working on is sweet corn and Anarchy on the Missouri River yes I'm sure there'll be a book out of it I don't know whether the market can bear too many more though can't throw a stick without hitting a new book on leou and Clark you know uh I'm trying to keep the journal I I have to tell you I I have a new found admiration for the members of the core of Discovery and their diligence in terms of keeping journals men like orway and white house and my ancestor um I don't know how after those long tiring days those physically taxing days that are that were were so much much more strenuous and taxing than anything that we experience you know I get falling down tired doing what we do and it's nothing in comparison and I find myself thinking that I should be catching up on my journals and it doesn't always happen um in terms of publishing something later I can tell you this I I did inherit one uh trait from my ancestor and that is the ability to spell extremely creatively in fact uh I have the talent and the ability to even stump spell check and get that sort of sinking sensation when I see that message no suggestion so I'm probably more of a nuts and bolts guy than than an off but I am trying to keep uh keep a journal my kids bug me about it you got to do it do it for your grandkid and then they lay the guilt trip on me then I can't sleep at night cuz I know I should be up working on my journals by candle light but anyway um leis are you the lady to the actual Le that went on Expedition no Mary Mother Lewis did not have any uh legitimate erors now he did have collateral descendants but he did not have a direct descendant however uh we do believe that he may have uh a direct descendant although not recognized not recognized through a formal marriage or anything that he may have had a child with the lower bruy woman when they passed through the bru Su uh in in the late September of 1804 that he may have had a child in the spring of 05 uh with with her and uh there's some speculation about that I am not a descendant of mar mother Le however I curiously enough when I was in active duty in the Army I am an Army soldier and uh when I was on active duty service I'm in the guard now and the unit that I served on served with when I was active duty was the unit that evolved out of the very same unit that Mary Mother lewi served with some other questions all right let's give them all a big hand thank you very much it's my pleasure to have the discuss we than girls with us and to have Scott and Bud with us to talk about the discovery Expedition thank you both so much and thank you all for coming as well we have another program scheduled at 12:00 so join us then