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Monday, April 28, 2008The New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-12
The Mississippi ran backwards After the February 7th earthquake, boatmen reported that the Mississippi actually ran backwards for several hours. The force of the land upheaval 15 miles south of New Madrid created Reelfoot lake, drowned the inhabitants of an Indian village; turned the river against itself to flow backwards; devastated thousands of acres of virgin forest; and created two temporary waterfalls in the Mississippi. Boatmen on flatboats actually survived this experience and lived to tell the tale. Getting over cracks As the general area experienced more than 2,000 earthquakes in five months, people discovered that most of crevices opening up during an earthquake ran from north to south, and when the earth began moving, they would chop down trees in an east- west direction and hold on using the tree as a bridge. There were “missing people” who were most likely swallowed up by the earth. Some earthquake fissures were as long as five miles. Strange Earthquake Phenonema Sand boils: The world’s largest sand boil was created by the New Madrid earthquake. It is 1.4 miles long and 136 acres in extent, located in the Bootheel of Missouri, about 8 miles west of Hayti, Missouri. Locals call it “The Beach.” Other, much smaller, sand boils are found throughout the area. Seismic tar balls: Small pellets up to golf ball sized tar balls are found in sand boils and fissures. They are petroleum that has been solidified, or “petroliferous nodules.” Earthquake lights: Lights flashed from the ground, caused by quartz crystals being squeezed. The phenomena is called “seismoluminescence.” Warm water: Water thrown up by an earthquake was lukewarm. The authors speculate that shaking caused the water to heat up and/or quartz light heated the water. Earthquake smog: The skies turned dark during an earthquake, so dark that lighted lamps didn’t help. The air smelled bad, and it was hard to breathe. The authors speculate it was a smog containing dust particles caused by the eruption of warm water into cold air. Loud thunder: Sounds of distant thunder and loud explosions accompanied earthquakes. Animal warnings: People reported strange behavior by animals before the earthquakes. They were nervous and excited. Domestic animals became wild, and wild animals became tame. Snakes came out of the ground from hibernation. Flocks of ducks and geese landed near people.
The earthquakes were preceded by the appearance of a great comet, which was visible around the globe for seventeen months, and was at its brightest during the earthquakes. The comet, with an orbit of 3,065 years, was last seen during the time of Ramses II in Egypt. In 1811-1812, it was called “Tecumseh’s Comet” (or “Napoleon’s Comet” in Europe). Tecumseh was a Shawnee Indian leader whose name meant “Shooting Star” or “He who walks across the sky.” He was given this name at birth. A great orator and military leader, Tecumseh organized a confederation of Indian tribes to oppose the takeover of 3 million acres of Indian lands, which were obtained by the Treaty of Fort Wayne in 1809. His brother, a religious leader called “The Prophet,” had gained fame when he foretold the total eclipse of the sun on June 16, 1806. (They had learned about it in advance from a team of visiting astronomers.) During this time, the Governor of Indiana Territory William Henry Harrison--worried about The Prophet’s popularity--had challenged him to produce a miracle. After the day of the “Black Sun” the brothers had no trouble attracting followers. A Black Sun was said to predict a future war. On September 17, 1811 there was another solar eclipse—which, again, was predicted by The Prophet. The brothers’ center of operations was at Prophet’s Town, located near the junction of the Wabash and Tippecanoe Rivers in northern Indiana. Tecumseh was traveling and recruiting warriors among the southeastern tribes, when Governor Harrison attacked Prophet’s Town with over a 1,000 men on November 6, 1811, a pre-emptive strike by the U. S., which marked the beginning of “Tecumseh’s War.” On December 16th, when the earthquakes began, Tecumseh was at the Shawnee and Delaware Indian villages near Cape Girardeau, 50 miles north of the epicenter at New Madrid. The earthquakes continued as he traveled back to Prophet’s Town, arriving there in February, 1812. Tecumseh’s followers lost the Battle of Tippecanoe, but they continued to fight as allies of the British during the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain. Tecumseh was killed in battle in Canada in 1813. He is honored as one of the greatest of Indian leaders, both in the United States, and in Canada, where he is considered a national hero.
The first steamboat travel on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers took place during the New Madrid earthquakes. The New Orleans set out from Pittsburgh on October 20, 1811 bound for New Orleans. Captain Nicholas Roosevelt had brought along his young wife, their 2 year old daughter, and a Labrador dog. Ten days after leaving Pittsburgh, his wife Lydia gave birth to a son in Louisville, Kentucky. They waited a while for her to recover, and for the water to rise prior to crossing the dangerous waters and coral reef at the Falls of the Ohio. On the night before the day of the earthquake, December 16th, the steamboat was anchored near Owensboro, Kentucky, about 200 miles east of New Madrid, Missouri. Their dog, Tiger, insisted on staying in the cabin with them instead of sleeping on the deck. Without realizing it, they were heading straight towards the epicenter of the greatest earthquake in American history. Their steamboat, intended to be an advertisement for steam travel, was thought instead to be the cause of the earthquake by many who saw it. At Henderson, Kentucky, where no chimneys were left standing, they stopped to visit their friends, the painter John James Audubon and his wife Lucy. Floating in the middle of the Ohio River they were protected from the earthquake tremors shaking the land, but not from the hazards of falling trees, disappearing islands, and collapsing river banks. After entering Indian Territory on December 18th, they were chased by Indians who figured the “fire canoe” had caused the earthquake, but they managed to escape capture by outrunning them. They even had a small cabin fire that night which they managed to put out. Thousands of trees were floating on the waters of the Mississippi as they approached New Madrid on December 19th, three days after the earthquake. They found that the town of New Madrid had been destroyed. They didn’t dare to stop and pick up a few survivors, for fear of being overrun, and they were without supplies. Most alarming was the fact that they had not seen a boat ascending the river in three days. They saw wrecked and abandoned boats. It was undoubtedly a miracle that they survived and kept on going. They tied up at one island, and the island sank during the night. Their dog, Tiger, alerted them to oncoming tremors. On December 22nd, they encountered the British naturalist John Bradbury on a boat at the mouth of the St. Francis River, who told them the town of Big Prairie was gone. They arrived at Natchez, Mississippi on December 30th and celebrated the first marriage aboard a steamboat on December 31st, when the steamboat engineer married Lydia’s maid! They arrived at New Orleans on January 10th, 1812, safe and sound, after traveling 1,900 miles from Pittsburgh on the first steamboat to travel the western waters.
Highly Recommended Reading
Posted by Kira Gale on 04/28/2008 at 09:01 PM (0) Comments • Permalink • Digg It • Add to del.icio.us |
Wednesday, March 05, 2008Sacagawea’s Children in St LouisIn my previous blog, “What happened to Sacagawea’s children?” I said I would tell more of the story concerning the lives of Pompey and Lisette after they were adopted by William Clark in 1813. In this blog I will tell about their lives in St. Louis. Little Pompey (born February 11, 1805 at Fort Mandan) had been living in St Louis since 1809, staying with his parents on a farm in Florissant, Missouri (today a suburb of St. Louis). He was baptized at the St Louis Cathedral on December 28, 1809; with Auguste Chouteau, the most prominent citizen of St. Louis, serving as his godfather. Sacagawea and Toussaint Charbonneau returned to the Dakotas in 1811, traveling with Manuel Lisa’s expedition to Fort Manuel, located near the South Dakota-North border in today’s Kenel, SD. They left 6 year old Pompey (Jean-Baptiste) in the custody of William Clark who had promised to raise and educate him when he was old enough to leave his mother’s care. In 1812, after the second war against Great Britain and its Indian allies began, Sacagawea gave birth to a baby girl, Lisette, at Fort Manuel. Tragically, the young mother died there, on December 20, 1812 of “putrid fever.” She was about 25 years old. A few weeks after her death, the fort was attacked by Indian allies of the British, and fifteen of the Missouri Fur Company men were killed. The remaining men retreated down river to St. Louis, stopping long enough to build Fort Lisa, north of today’s Omaha, Nebraska. On August 11, 1813 the Orphan Court records of St. Louis show that John Luttig was appointed the guardian of Jean Baptiste and Lisette Charbonneau. Luttig, the company clerk of the Missouri Fur Company, was substituting for an absent William Clark, whose name later replaced Luttig’s on the document. At the time it was thought that their father, Toussaint Charbonneau, was also deceased, but this proved not to be true.
Bob Moore, the historian of the Jefferson National Memorial Expansion Arch at St. Louis, has discovered two more important records at the St. Louis Old Cathedral. He reported the discovery in a letter to We Proceeded On, the magazine of the Trail Heritage Foundation, in the issue published in February, 2005, on the 200th anniversary of Jean-Baptiste’s birth. The first is a burial record from 1813: “The 30th of August 1813 by us assigned to hold burial in the cemetery of the parish of St Louis the body of a young female savage of the nation of serpents [Snakes/Shoshone] belonging to Mr. Charbonneau aged one year.” The second is a burial record from 1832 for “Lisette, Sauvagess.” It reads “The year of J. C. [Jesus Christ] 1832 and the 16th of June I gave ecclesiastic burial to Lisette, female savage of the nation of snakes, aged twenty one years, administered the sacraments decided yesterday.” The two records, taken together, make it seem very likely that the “other” Shoshone wife of Toussaint Charbonneau, Otter Woman, accompanied Sacagawea’s little baby, Lisette, down river to St Louis, and that she was also nursing a baby girl of her own. Otter Woman was a friend of Sacagawea’s. It was Otter Woman’s daughter, aged one year, who must have died in August, 1813. The early death of Lisette at age 21 explains why we know so little about her. I like to think that Otter Woman remained in St Louis and took care of Lisette and was a second mother to Jean-Baptiste. Again, it seems very likely. Jean-Baptiste grew up to be a very distinguished and unique individual who retained his Indian heritage despite his education and his years of living among the European aristocracy. If he had been raised almost solely by whites, it is doubtful, he would have had such a secure Indian identity. There was a third child from the Lewis and Clark Expedition who was living in St. Louis, Toussaint Jessaume. The Jessaume family was living in St. Louis with the Mandan Chief Sheheke and his family in 1807-09. They had all traveled together to the east coast and met President Jefferson in January, 1807 and were waiting for a safe passage back home. When the Jessaumes, Charbonneaus, and Sheheke and his family returned to the Mandan-Hidatsa villages in 1809, the 13 year old Toussaint chose to stay behind in St. Louis. On May 10, 1809 Meriwether Lewis signed apprentice papers for him, and took him into his own home, promising to raise and educate him at his own expense. It is not known what happened to Toussaint Jessaume after Lewis’s death on October 11, 1809. Perhaps his brother Reuben took him into his home. In 1818, Bishop DuBourg opened the St. Louis Academy, and Jean-Baptiste and the Clark boys attended school there. The academy evolved into St. Louis University, which is proud to claim Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau as an alumni. Mother Phillippine Duchesne established a school at St Charles for girls and boys, the first free school west of the Mississippi River. Did Lisette attend this school, or the one in Florissant, where Mother Duchesne opened another school for Indian children? A search is being made of the records, and I will let you know the outcome in my next blog. The Clarks had five young children, and Julia Clark who had been ill for some time with breast cancer, died on June 20, 1820. She and their children had often traveled to stay with Clark’s family in Louisville, Kentucky and her family in Fincastle, Virginia during her illness. It seems likely that Pompey and Lisette were living with Otter Woman. Pompey must have attended one of the small schools in the area, or been privately tutored when he was young. Pompey entered the fur trade, working for the Chouteaus, sometime between 1821-23. I will blog about that next, as his life was extremely interesting. The best book about Sacagawea and Pomp is by Susan M. Colby, a Charbonneau descendant and anthropologist. It is called Sacagawea’s Child: The Life and Times of Jean-Baptiste (Pomp) Chabonneau (Arthur H. Clark Co., 2005). It is a featured book on my bookstore website, and costs $28.50. Here is a link to Amazon. Posted by Kira Gale on 03/05/2008 at 02:42 PM (0) Comments • Permalink • Digg It • Add to del.icio.us |
Monday, January 28, 2008What happened to Sacagawea’s children?
The earliest probate court records of St. Louis were discovered in an old safe at the courthouse last fall, containing guardianship proceedings regarding Sacagawea’s children.The story made the Fox News broadcast in St Louis on January 21, 2008. The record, shown here, is of an Orphans Court hearing held on August 11, 1813. William Clark’s name is added to the document, substituted for the name of the original guardian, John Luttig, who was the company clerk of the Missouri Fur Company. What’s the story behind this? Lewis and Clark fans know that Toussaint, also known by his nickname “Pompey,” or as Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, was born on February 11, 1805 at Fort Mandan near Bismarck, North Dakota. This would make him 8 ½ years old. However, William Clark was not in St Louis at the time the hearing was held. He would have known the precise age of his adopted son, who was already living in St Louis and attending a boarding school.The father, Toussaint Charbonneau, Sr. was also not “deceased” though he was believed to be so at the time. He lived until about 1840. Toussaint and Sacagawea and their son Pompey came to St. Louis in 1809 with Manuel Lisa and Pierre Chouteau, who had successfully delivered the Mandan Chief, Sheheke, or Big White, back to his village in North Dakota where the Charbonneau family was living. William Clark had requested they bring Pompey to St Louis where he would provide for his education when he was old enough to go to school. The Charbonneau family lived in Florissant, the town next to St Charles, for a year or more before returning home. They went back up river with Manuel Lisa in 1811, leaving their six year old son in William’s Clark’s care. Sacagawea’s Death at Fort Manuel in 1812 Sacagawea died on Fort Manuel in Kenel, South Dakota on December 20, 1812. The Orphan Court record confirms that it was Sacagawea, rather than Charbonneau’s other Shoshone wife, who died at Fort Manuel. John Luttig wrote in his journal on Sunday, December 20, 1812: "this evening the wife of Charbonneau a Snake Squar, died of a putrid fever, she was a good and the best Women in the fort, aged abt 25 years she left a fine infant girl." The little baby girl, Lisette, and an Indian woman to care for her, must have been brought down to St Louis by Lisa’s men as they retreated back to St Louis after Fort Manuel was attacked by Indians allies of the British during the War of 1812.The attack occurred sometime after March 5, 1813, the last date of entry in Luttig’s Journal. According to Richard Oglesby’s biography of Manuel Lisa, fifteen men of the Missouri Fur Company died in the attack. Was Lisette named for Manuel Lisa? It’s a possibility. Luttig’s Journal of a Fur Trading Expedition 1812-13 is very interesting to read. The 1920 version is available on the internet. Here’s the link: http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/mtman/html/Luttig/ The Missouri Fur Company expedition retreated down river to St Louis, stopping to build Fort Lisa near the site of Council Bluffs, where Fort Atkinson was later built, north of Omaha, Nebraska. Fort Lisa became the westernmost fort defending the American frontier during the War of 1812. Lisa returned and made his headquarters there in 1814, appointed as a special Indian Agent by William Clark. I published a booklet, Defending the Western Frontier: Manuel Lisa and the War of 1812 in the Omaha-Council Bluffs Area, based on a paper I gave at the Missouri Valley History Conference in 1999. I will blog at other times about the children, and also about the War of 1812 out west. Posted by Kira Gale on 01/28/2008 at 04:51 PM (2) Comments • Permalink • Digg It • Add to del.icio.us |
Friday, January 25, 2008Aaron Burr, Meriwether Lewis and the Burr-Wilkinson Conspiracy, Part 1
Burr and Lewis had worked together during the first administration of President Thomas Jefferson (1801-1804), when Burr was Vice President of the United States and Lewis was serving as Jefferson’s private secretary. Lewis lived at the White House almost from Jefferson’s first month in office until he left on July 5, 1803 to lead the elite special army unit known as the “Corps of Volunteers for Northwestern Discovery” whose mission was to explore the new Louisiana Purchase and to seek an all water route to the Pacific Ocean. On July 11, 1804, the young army captain was traveling up the Missouri River near today’s Kansas-Nebraska border when Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in the famous duel. It was over two years before Lewis and the other expedition members heard about it. They got their first news on September 3, 1806 when they were returning home and met trader James Aird near today’s Sioux City, Iowa. William Clark wrote they learned “that Mr. Burr and Genl. Hambleton fought a Duel, the latter was killed &c &c.” Alexander Hamilton had been the first Treasurer of the United States (1789-1795) under President George Washington. Other news was that Aird “informed us that Genl. Wilkinson was the governor of the Louisiana at St Louis 300 of the American Troops had been Contuned on the Missouri a fiew miles above it’s mouth. Some disturbance with the Spaniards in the Nackatosh Country is the Cause of their being Called down to that Country…” (pages 346-347, The Definitive Journals of Lewis and Clark: Over the Rockies to St Louis ) The Burr-Wilkinson Conspiracy
General James Wilkinson was a slick operator—widely accused at the time of being in the pay of Spain. (This was later proven when files from the Spanish archives were opened. He was on the payroll of Spain from 1787 onward.) He was also the Commanding General of the United States Army and the first Governor of Upper Louisiana Territory. He was a useful double agent for President Jefferson, who was rightfully concerned with control of New Orleans and the Mississippi River. But absolutely nobody trusted him, except—perhaps—Aaron Burr. After the duel with Hamilton, Burr’s political career was effectively ended. The Burr-Wilkinson Conspiracy was a plot hatched by the two men to invade Spanish territory with a “filibustering” expedition. They planned to lead a private, armed expedition of 1,000-1,500 men into Mexico and establish a new government there, with themselves at the head of it. The invasion would launch from New Orleans, and it would take place whenever the United States went to war with Spain. They plotted together in 1804-05, and received widespread support from Americans eager to end Spanish rule. It was the talk of the country and rumors were widely reported in the newspapers. Other versions of the story are that Burr planned to establish a colony of young men on land along the Washita River called the Bastrop Lands, near today’s Austin,Texas. In addition, a separation of the western states from the American Union, the conquest of New Orleans, and support from the British Navy were all part of the rumored plans. On September 23, 1806, when the Lewis and Clark Expedition returned to St Louis they received a heroes’ welcome. But over the next few months, the big national news story was the filibustering expedition led by Aaron Burr. Blennerhassett Island
Neutral Ground on the Sabine River
During October and November, 1806, General Wilkinson managed a peaceful stand off with Mexican troops who had crossed the Sabine River invading U.S. territory. On his own authority, he signed an agreement on November 5, 1806 with the Mexican army commander which secured a 120 mile wide “neutral zone” between Nacogdoches and Natchitoches that extended all the way down to the Gulf waters. This area remained a lawless Neutral Ground from 1806 until 1821, and a border war with Spain was averted. Burr Arrested Where did this leave Aaron Burr? Wilkinson had already betrayed him on October 9th, writing a hysterical letter to President Jefferson revealing the conspiracy, and enclosed a letter in cipher code from Burr as evidence.When Burr and his followers arrived at Bayou Pierre, 30 miles north of New Orleans, they learned of Jefferson’s order for their arrest, and they turned themselves in on January 10, 1810. To be continued… Posted by Kira Gale on 01/25/2008 at 06:53 PM (0) Comments • Permalink • Digg It • Add to del.icio.us |
Thursday, January 17, 2008Book TV provides insight into Aaron Burr’s character
The New York Historical Society hosted the original one hour program, which can be heard over the internet. Here is a direct link to the page with the video broadcast on booktv.org. I enjoyed hearing it for a second time. It was insightful and fun and gave me many things to think about. My favorite insight came from Richard Brookhiser; it was regarding the "charm" of Aaron Burr. Like all students of this time period, I am puzzled as to what to make of Aaron Burr--"What was he up to?" is the perpetual question, then and now, regarding his filibustering expedition to the southwest in 1806 (which is known as the "Burr-Wilkinson Conspiracy.") Brookhiser said that an old book on Aaron Burr written around 1910 contained information from people who actually had known Burr, and revealed why he was such an enigmatic charmer. They reported that Aaron Burr was a "great listener." He listened with full attention to people. That’s why people didn’t know what he was "up to"--they were too busy talking about their own ideas to care! So what was he up to? Most of the 60-100 members of the filibustering expedition thought they were going to invade Spanish territory in the winter months of 1806-07. The question remains, did Burr intend to create a new country, with himself as the head of a new empire? I think so. I will write more about Burr and Meriwether Lewis in my next blog. Posted by Kira Gale on 01/17/2008 at 02:59 PM (1) Comments • Permalink • Digg It • Add to del.icio.us |
Sunday, January 06, 2008Lewis and Clark for libraries; Boy Scout, Girl Scout and 4-H leaders
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Saturday, January 05, 2008Lewis and Clark Mystery Map at NAVTEQ MAPS Exhibit
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Saturday, August 25, 2007Jefferson at Home: Personal Reminiscences
Jefferson wrote about slavery, “but as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we neither hold him, nor safely let him go, justice is in one scale, and self preservation in the other.” There is a new “Wiki” site for Jefferson scholarship on the main Memoirs of a Monticello Slave, as dictated to Charles Campbell by Isaac was recorded in 1847 in Posted by Kira Gale on 08/25/2007 at 05:26 PM (0) Comments • Permalink • Digg It • Add to del.icio.us |
Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello: the Ultimate House and Garden Experience
Jefferson spent 40 years working on improvements at Monticello. It deserves its status as the only American house on the World Heritage List. Jefferson’s other architectural and conceptual masterpiece, the University of Virginia, is also on the list. Both places are located in Charlottesville, Virginia on the eastern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Tour group viewing Monticello from the top of Montalto Mountain. The Foundation recently bought Montalto to save it from real estate development. A lovely old stone house on the property will become an educational center.
My friend Liz Tidwell, a Monticello tour guide, and a member of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation.
Jefferson’s porch, right outside of his study. His famous desk, with the revolving book holder, and the copying machine for copying his letters, and his telescope may be seen through the windows. The guided tour of the house takes you through this room and others on the ground floor.
The garden stretches for the length of 3 football fields, an 80 by 1,000 foot terrace, on the side of the mountain. Orchards and vineyards were placed below and to the west end of the terrace. The entire garden area was enclosed by a ten foot high fence.The gardens were to needed to feed both Jefferson’s family and his numerous visitors and guests.
The observatory was a favorite place for Jefferson to sit and read.
The outer buildings under the walkways extending from the house were work rooms, including the kitchen, smokehouse, stables, dairy, storage cellars, ice house and some slave quarters. The two walkways flanking the house enclose the flower gardens and lawn and lead to pavilion buildings at each end. Jefferson and his bride, Martha lived for the first years of their marriage in the South Pavilion, a 20 foot square building while Monticello was under construction. They lived in one room on the terrace level with a kitchen located on the ground level. Monticello was under construction in some form or another for almost forty years, from 1770 until Jefferson retired from the presidency of the United States in 1809. Posted by Kira Gale on 08/25/2007 at 11:45 AM (0) Comments • Permalink • Digg It • Add to del.icio.us |
Sunday, July 22, 2007Meriwether Lewis’s Fateful Encounter with the Blackfeet: Was It a Set-Up?
I am extremely skeptical of the idea that four experienced Indian fighters could not have prevented this from happening, if they had wished to avoid trouble. This was geo-politics. The Blackfeet controlled the area with the help of British supplied arms and ammunition. The Lewis and Clark Expedition represented the first American presence in the area, and they had promised to supply arms and ammunition to the Blackfeet’s traditional enemies, the Shoshone, Flatheads and Kutenai, and to establish a trading post in Blackfeet territory east of the Rocky Mountains. I think it is plausible that Meriwether Lewis allowed an incident to happen, as the start of the armed struggle for control of the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain area between the United States and Britain. Posted by Kira Gale on 07/22/2007 at 03:42 PM (2) Comments • Permalink • Digg It • Add to del.icio.us |
Tuesday, July 10, 2007Meriwether Lewis Events on the Divide and at Harper’s Ferry, July 7, 2007
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Friday, June 15, 2007Poking Around the Mississippi: Buffalo Bill, Nathaniel Pryor and Ulysess S Grant
Buffalo Bill in Le Claire, Iowa We wanted to do something other than Lewis and Clark, after seven years. We didn’t want a working vacation. But, guess what, I found buffalo and an almost 200 year old tavern/restaurant without any planning at all! The buffalo were at the Buffalo Bill Cody Homestead, 12 miles northwest of the Buffalo Bill Museum in Le Claire, Iowa. Le Claire is a tiny town on the Great River Road directly above the Quad Cities and just off I-80. The Buffalo Bill Museum doesn’t have many original Buffalo Bill items, but Le Claire is where he spent several years of his youth. He was born in 1846 on a homestead 12 miles northwest of Le Claire, and then they moved to town. The Cody homestead actually has a small herd of buffalo, including one baby and another on the way. The Cody house is a nice size stone house. Bill’s father Issac Cody was an abolitionist who moved to Leavenworth, Kansas in 1854 to be part of the fight against slavery. After being assaulted while giving a speech against slavery, he suffered from injuries that resulted in his death in 1857 and Bill began earning a living at age 11 to support his mother and sisters. The old restaurant and tavern dates back to the 1830’s and is called "Sneaky Pete’s." It has a great view of the Mississippi River and is located next to the Buffalo Bill Museum on the riverfront. There are also nearby boat tours. Nathaniel Pryor and Ulysses S. Grant in Galena, Illinois Sergeant Nathaniel Pryor of the Corps of Discovery settled in Galena in 1811; where he opened a trading post for the Winnebago Indians and operated a lead smelting furnace. "Galena" is the scientific name for lead ore, and it was the center of the "Lead Mining District of Illinois Country." (The photo above shows a large chunk of lead ore, on exhibit at the U. S. Grant home.) William Clark, the Indian Agent for the Territory, asked him to supply information about Indian activities. The Winnebago attacked Pryor’s trading post on January 1st, 1812, intending to kill him and his business partner, but they escaped during the burning down of the post. Pryor reenlisted in the army in 1813 and served under Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. Galena is a famous tourist town on the Mississippi, and the area is very beautiful, with great valleys and rolling hills. The Ulysses S. Grant home sits on top of the highest hill. A statue of his wife, Julia, overlooks the view of the town below nestled in the hills. The town people gave the house to the Grants in 1865, at the end of the Civil War. Grant had been a clerk in his brother’s leather goods store in Galena at the beginning of the war in 1861. In less than three years, Abraham Lincoln appointed him Commanding General of the Union Armies. In 1868 he became President of the United States, and served two terms. I doubt there is any more amazing rise to fame in American history than his life story. For the armchair traveler I am including a photo of Grant’s favorite arm chair in his library study. All the furnishings in the house are original. He took the armchair to the White House. Posted by Kira Gale on 06/15/2007 at 01:57 PM (0) Comments • Permalink • Digg It • Add to del.icio.us |
Monday, June 04, 2007Lewis and Clark Road Trips at Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue, Nebraska
Catfish Lake Restaurant is located just south of the base, near the July 21, 1804 Papillion Creek campsite of Lewis and Clark. The restaurant has several holding ponds of farm raised catfish for both its place and the Joe Tess Place restaurant in south Omaha. To reach it you go through the little tiny community of La Platte, Nebraska, which was originally called Larimer City. The two story Larimer hotel still stands here. Guess what William Larimer, Jr. did next? He founded Denver, Colorado. When I was president of the Mouth of the Platte chapter of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation we were in charge of a major grant from the National Park Service to erect signage along the Missouri River. I lobbied hard to put a sign at the restaurant and lounge, and I am pleased to say that they made a nice little area for it, with benches and a sidewalk leading to the sign. The restaurant is also a destination in my book and on the website Trip Planner. Bellevue, Nebraska is really the foundation of my history knowledge. It is the second oldest American town in the West, established in 1822. Only Pierre, South Dakota is older, established in 1818. I blogged about Omaha Chief Big Elk and the Fontenelle family recently. Several members of the family have been put in touch with each other after reading my blog Escape from Death and A Sister’s Revenge: the Daughters of Omaha Chief Big Elk. Posted by Kira Gale on 06/04/2007 at 12:05 PM (0) Comments • Permalink • Digg It • Add to del.icio.us |
Monday, May 14, 2007Pipestone National Monument, a Peaceful Place in Southwestern Minnesota
The artist George Catlin, who visited this site in 1836 was the first Euro-American to visit Pipestone. He sent a sample of the stone to a geologist for analysis, who named the stone "Catlinite" in his honor. Catlin was a friend of William Clark, who as Superintendent of Indian Affairs, issued him a pass to visit Indian Country. Many of Catlin’s paintings are on display at the Renwick Gallery, a Smithsonian Institution art museum located near the White House in Washington D. C. The Smithsonian has an excellent website for the paintings of George Catlin, including a gallery of his paintings and classroom instruction. This link will allow you to view 34 Catlin images, including his portrait of William Clark, and a view of Sergeant Charles Floyd’s grave site near Sioux City, Iowa. Long before it became America’s first national monument, Sgt. Floyd’s grave site was a "must see" destination. To learn more about the nearby area, visit Region Five (Nebraska/Iowa) and Region Six (South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota) of the Lewis and Clark Road Trips website Trip Planner. The area surrounding Pipestone National Monument is well worth a visit of several days. Each year, Pipestone stages an annual outdoor pageant, The Song of Hiawatha, on the last two weekends of July and the first weekend of August. The pageant has been staged annually since 1949. I hope to be able to attend it this year. Posted by Kira Gale on 05/14/2007 at 09:02 AM (1) Comments • Permalink • Digg It • Add to del.icio.us |
Sunday, May 13, 2007Lewis & Clark Statue Serves as Missouri River Flood Marker in St Louis
Posted by Kira Gale on 05/13/2007 at 12:04 PM (4) Comments • Permalink • Digg It • Add to del.icio.us |
The New Madrid earthquakes were the biggest earthquakes in American history. They occurred in the central Mississippi Valley, but were felt as far away as New York City, Boston, Montreal, and Washington D. C. President James Madison and his wife Dolly felt them in the White House. Church bells rang in Boston. From December 16, 1811 through March of 1812 there were over 2,000 earthquakes in the central Midwest, and between 6,000-10,000 earthquakes in the Bootheel of Missouri where New Madrid is located near the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. 
Tecumseh’s Comet and the Battle of Tippecanoe 
The first steamboat on the western waters survived the earthquakes 
Two more records found 
“The court appoints William Clark Guardian to the infant children of Toussaint Charbonneau deceased, to wit, Toussaint Charbonneau a boy about the age of ten years old and Lisette Charbonneau a girl about one year old.” --Orphans Court record, St Louis, August 11, 1813
Aaron Burr and Meriwether Lewis crossed paths several times during Lewis’s all too short life. One of Lewis’s last assignments from Jefferson was to root out suspected “Burrites” from political office in St Louis, while Lewis was serving as Governor of Upper Louisiana Territory in 1807-09. Lewis died in 1809 on the Natchez Trace, traveling to Washington, D. C. to protest some bills that weren’t being paid by government bureaucrats, and perhaps bringing some incriminating evidence regarding the Burr-Wilkinson Conspiracy to Washington. Some believe he was murdered.
Well, what was Burr “up to” while our guys were returning home? And what was the Burr-Wilkinson Conspiracy that was going to consume so much of Lewis’s time and attention in the years ahead? Who was Wilkinson?
The expedition was to start from Blennerhassett Island on the Ohio River near Parkersburg, West Virginia,where boats, supplies and men were being assembled. The island was the private estate of a wealthy and eccentric Irish aristocrat, Harman Blennerhassett, who was bankrolling the adventure. On November 27, 1806 President Jefferson ordered the arrest of Burr and his followers on the charge of illegally planning an armed attack on Spanish territory. Two weeks later, on December 11th, Blennerhassett and about 30 members of the filibuster fled from local militia, who burned Blennerhassett’s mansion on the island to the ground. The group traveled down the Ohio, where, on December 27th, they met up with Aaron Burr at the mouth of the Cumberland River in Kentucky. Altogether, the expedition now numbered around 60-100 men. The original plan was that the group would be gradually be joined by more and more men as it proceeded down river, but this didn’t happen.
What about the war with Spain that was supposed to launch the filibuster? General Wilkinson had been removed from political office as the Governor of Upper Louisiana at St Louis in June of 1806 by Jefferson, and sent down with troops to the Sabine River area between Nacogdoches Texas and Natchitoches, Louisiana. (Look at a modern day map: the Sabine River forms the wavy line boundary directly below the straight line boundary of Texas and Louisiana.)
Last weekend I heard a conversation on Book TV between two of my favorite historians, Joseph Ellis and Richard Brookhiser, who were talking about Ellis’s latest book, American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic. This is the first time I can ever remember hearing a conversation on C-SPAN, and I hope we have more opportunities like this one. I like all the formats on Book TV: the author talks followed by questions from the audience; the in-depth interviews; and the panel discussions, but I have always wanted to hear experts talk directly with one another, like the sports guys do on the sports channel that my husband listens to.
"Reference books just do not get any better than this one. It should be on every library shelf in every nook and cranny of America, but especially in Nebraska. It should be in the personal library of every Boy Scout, Girl Scout, and 4-H leader. It should interest the many thousands of Lewis and Clark afficionados. The only lament is that this excellent guide was not published until 2006--we could have used it five years earlier. Still, do not miss it."---John R. Wunder, professor of history at University of Nebraska. Dr. Wunder gave a rave review to Lewis and Clark Road Trips: Exploring the Trail Across America by author Kira Gale in the fall 2007 issue of Nebraska History. 
NAVTEQ, the giant mapping company which was just acquired by NOKIA, is sponsoring a phenomenal exhibit of maps, called "Finding Our Place in the World." The exhibit of over 130 maps from all over the world, and from all time periods, was organized by The Field Museum and The Newberry Library in Chicago. It will leave The Field Museum on January 27 to travel to only one other place, The Walters Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland where it will be on exhibit from March 16 - June 8, 2008. The maps are so rare, and so spectacular, that the wonder is that they were ever loaned out from their host institutions. This is one of the great exhibits, and is worth a trip from anywhere in the world if you love maps. The Field Museum has an 
I got two books at the Monticello gift shop while I was there: Jefferson at Monticello: Recollections of a Monticello Slave and of a Monticello Overseer, edited by James A. Bear, Jr. and 
“Mr. Jefferson was always an early riser—arose at daybreak or before.” He rode his horse daily unless the weather was very bad. “He was an uncommonly fine rider—sat easily upon his horse and always had him in the most perfect control.”
When I am relaxing at the end of a day of working on Lewis and Clark matters, I often watch House and Garden TV, so you can imagine how thrilled I was to visit Monticello! There is an undeniable “rightness” to the place, if you accept the fact that slave labor was integral to its creation and maintenance. It is a fascinating place to visit. I will write more about the daily life of Monticello in my next blog.
Meriwether Lewis’s encounter with the Blackfeet at Two Medicine River on today’s Blackfeet Reservation near Browning, Montana was the start of the war between the Blackfeet and Americans which lasted for more than two decades. Why do I think that Lewis "set up," or provoked, a fight with the Blackfeet in 1806? Well, simply put, it’s because he fell into a "profound sleep" while he and his three companions spent the night with eight young Piegan horse thieves whom they encountered at the Two-Medicine River area near today’s Glacier National Park. The teenagers were just returning from a successful raid on Crow Indian horses with 30 horses. The next morning (July 27, 1806) the boys stole the guns of all four men while Reuben Field was on guard duty and the other three were sleeping. During the ensuing uproar, the guns were recovered, and Reuben killed one of the robbers. Then the boys attempted to make off with the men’s horses, and Meriwether Lewis killed another young thief.
We had a splendid three day vacation "poking around" the Mississippi River valley after completing that big Lewis and Clark Road Trips mailing to over 700 destinations. I have always wanted to visit the Buffalo Bill Cody attractions near the Iowa Quad Cities area (Davenport, Rock Island, Bettendorf and Moline) and Interstate 80, and to see the Ulysses S. Grant home in Galena, Illinois about 75 miles north on the other side of the river. For the first time we did a leisurely touring trip, averaging 300 miles a day. That’s a great way to travel, and my book is really set up along that principle. The book has 79 "travel hubs" or facing pages of information about attractions with maps and driving directions. The fun of "poking around" is that you don’t have to get any place in particular. That’s a real vacation! On the other hand, if you like history and heritage tourism and the great outdoors, you can plan what you want to do. But having it all there in a compact form, gives you "options." And we do supply phone numbers. And now that I have heard back from so many people, the second edition of the book will be up to date with all the latest hours and prices and typos corrected. However, first we need to sell out the first edition. And you can always consult our website trip planner and see if the destinations websites are up to date with the latest information. On the road, or while planning the trip, you can just call ahead and ask because their phones are in my book.
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