{"product_id":"lewis-and-clark-through-indian-eyes-isbn-9781400077496","title":"Lewis and Clark Through Indian Eyes","description":"\u003cp\u003eAt the heart of this landmark collection of essays rests a single question: What  impact, good or bad, immediate or long-range, did Lewis and Clark’s journey have  on the Indians whose homelands they traversed? The nine writers in this volume each  provide their own unique answers; from Pulitzer prize-winner N. Scott Momaday, who  offers a haunting essay evoking the voices of the past; to Debra Magpie Earling’s  illumination of her ancestral family, their survival, and the magic they use to this  day; to Mark N. Trahant’s attempt to trace his own blood back to Clark himself; and  Roberta Conner’s comparisons of the explorer’s journals with the accounts of the  expedition passed down to her. Incisive and compelling, these essays shed new light  on our understanding of this landmark journey into the American West.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eAuthor's Note\u003cbr\u003eMap\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003ePART ONE\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrenchmen, Bears, and Sandbars\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby Vine Deloria, Jr.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eWhat We See\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby Debra Magpie Earling\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eWho's Your Daddy?\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby Mark D. Trahant\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eMerriwether and Billy and the Indian Business\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby Bill Yellowtail\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eOur People Have Always Been Here\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby Roberta Conner\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003ePART TWO\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMandan and Hidatsa of the Upper Missouri\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby Gerard A. Baker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe Ya Oo Yet Soyapo\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby Allen V. Pinkham, Sr.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eThe Ceremony at Ne-Ah-Coxie\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby Roberta and Richard Basch\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eThe Voices of Encounter\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eby N. Scott Momaday\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“A remarkable book…gives both the event and the era a fresh perspective.” —\u003ci\u003eThe St. Louis Post-Dispatch\u003c\/i\u003e “Every story has two sides, and until now, the Indian point of view has scarcely been heard.” —\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e“[A] compulsively readable book…should be required reading for all Americans.” —\u003ci\u003eSanta Cruz Sentinel\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlvin M. Josephy, Jr., a leading historian of the American West, was the author of  many award-winning books, including \u003ci\u003eThe Patriot Chiefs\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Indian Heritage of America\u003c\/i\u003e,  \u003ci\u003eNow That the Buffalo's Gone\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Civil War in the American West\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003e500 Nations\u003c\/i\u003e, and  \u003ci\u003eA Walk Toward Oregon\u003c\/i\u003e. He was a vice president and editor of \u003ci\u003eAmerican Heritage\u003c\/i\u003e magazine,  the founding chairman of the board of trustees of the Smithsonian's National Museum  of the American Indian, and president of the Western History Association. Josephy  died in the fall of 2005, shortly after completing this book.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart One\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrenchmen, Bears, and Sandbars\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eVine Deloria, Jr.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVine Deloria, Jr., is a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Fort   Yates, North Dakota. He is perhaps the only American whose educational   history ranges as far and wide as a New England prep school (Kent), the   U.S. Marine Corps Telephone Repair School in San Diego, the Lutheran   School of Theology in Chicago, and membership in the faculty of a   prestigious state university.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDeloria is currently retired professor of history and an adjunct   professor of law, religious studies, and political science at the   University of Colorado in Boulder. Best known to the general public as   an author (his works include \u003ci\u003eCuster Died for Your Sins: An Indian   Manifesto\u003c\/i\u003e, 1969; \u003ci\u003eRed Earth, White Lies\u003c\/i\u003e, 1995; among many other books),   he has been a college professor since the early 1970s and an activist   in Indian affairs since the 1960s. From 1964 to 1967, for example, he   was executive director of the National Congress of American Indians; in   the mid-seventies he founded and chaired the Institute for the   Development of Indian Law; in the nineties, after serving as vice   chairman of the Board of the Smithsonian National Museum of the   American Indian, he became chairman of its Repatriation Committee.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVine Deloria, Jr., has received honors early and often for his work as   a writer and scholar, but unique among these was his nomination in 1974   as one of eleven \"Theological Superstars of the Future.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhile his Sioux forebears chose confrontation in their encounter with   Lewis and Clark, Deloria chooses a potent sense of historical irony.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrenchmen, Bears, and Sandbars\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eExaggeration of the importance of the expedition of Lewis and Clark is   a typical American response to mythology. We prefer our fantasies in   opposition to the facts of life. It was a routine venture now revered   because we desperately need to have a heroic past, since that pleasure   is denied to us in the present. The expedition was initiated following   Jefferson's finesse of Congress and the Constitution in the purchase of   a mere claim by France that it \"owned\" a substantial portion of the   North American West because a Frenchman had first set foot on lands   drained by the Mississippi. Not only did the expedition seek a   practical water route to the West Coast with the eventual goal of   opening the Pacific to American commerce, but Jefferson also needed to   prove that the purchase of an unknown territory was not a white   elephant. (He did, however, caution Lewis and Clark to be on the   lookout for mammoths while en route.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSince traditionally historians have understood the journey as the first   effort by civilized men to pierce the unknown West, we often tend to   clothe the accounts of Lewis and Clark in more heroic terms than they   seem to have deserved. Much good history falls by the wayside when we   stress the heroics and neglect the context of their journey in our   understanding. The expedition actually seems to have been a tedious   march from one place to another made known to them by Indians and   French traders, with an occasional incident to testify to the   strangeness of the land and the unique challenges that the West   presented.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfter reading through the journals edited by Elliott Coues, my   impression of the memorable experiences of the expedition, the things   that would have remained with its members years after their return,   revolved around three major topics, although I must admit that a strong   case might be made for several other themes. But the things that   impressed me were the fact that Frenchmen had already explored much of   this region so that it was reasonably well known to many people, that   there seemed to be an oversupply of bears on the prairies and   bottomlands, and that sandbars posed a continuing barrier to the   expedition, making the development of a heavy and easy commerce with   the Orient via an inland waterway impossible. Indeed, travel later to   the Montana area depended heavily on the spring snowmelt and required   special flat-bottom boats.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe accounts of the journey to the West Coast contain those wonderful  naïve observations that always come with first discovery. Consequently   the responses of the Corps of Discovery to these new experiences   provide us with good insight into their feelings and what they believed   they were doing, and record the occasional misfortunes of the group,   which became traumas because they were unexpected. Entries on the   return trip record fewer surprises and illustrate the confidence and   sometimes arrogance that experience often brings.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat they had the confidence that they could split the little company   and explore different river systems with the expectation that they knew   the land so well that they could meet again in more familiar territory   suggests that they felt they had conquered the West. The final report   would therefore be couched in the optimistic terms of men who had   overcome severe hardships and now stood ready for another challenge.   They had breached the unknown, albeit with considerable assistance from   the local inhabitants, and now believed in their own superiority, a   mood that would shortly energize people to emulate their feats and   bring about the ruination of the Great American West.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBefore we examine the Indian understanding of the expedition, let us   walk with the explorers on their first encounter with the land and its   peoples. We have traditionally been taught to believe that the Lewis   and Clark expedition was the first penetration of white men into the   western lands. This belief is totally unfounded. The locations of the   Mandan villages, scattered from the present North Dakota-South Dakota   line along the Missouri River to some distance above present-day   Bismarck, were already common knowledge. French and British traders had   already established a thriving commerce with these villages and the   sedentary Indians were accustomed to dealing with foreigners.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA good portion of the trip while moving through wild and unoccupied   country did not involve discovery of the West but merely followed paths   already well established. Thus when the expedition visited the Yankton   Sioux camp, the Indians were flying a Spanish flag, and it is well   known that these Sioux had attended the British conference at Albany   prior to the American Revolution. They would also send warriors to   support the British during the War of 1812. The coastal tribes in   Washington and Oregon had already been visited by the English and   Spanish and had routed the Spanish expansion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMore important, however, was the presence of French trappers in the   area. The growing population of half-breeds of French-Indian heritage,   some people representing second and perhaps even third generations of   men out on the plains, indicated that white men had lived among the   tribes for a considerable period of time. Above the great bend near   present-day Pierre, South Dakota, the expeditioners visited a   Frenchman's house that had no protective palisade, testifying to the   fact that the French had successfully melded with the Indians long ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrench colonial policy had encouraged intermarriage with the Indians   and the exchange of children to create kinship bonds with the eastern   tribes. The French sought to create a new kind of society of mixed   Euro-Indian genetic background that would and could hold the lands   claimed by the French king under the Doctrine of Discovery by appealing   to their common ancestry. This class of people was now temporarily   loyal to whoever could enhance their fortunes. Most of them had   extensive experience in wandering the western lands, and, in sharing   their knowledge about the land and its people, they enabled Lewis and   Clark to anticipate some of the problems that lay ahead. But they had   no loyalty to the Americans, nor would they have for some time to come.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Frenchmen represented a good deal more than easing the   psychological burdens of the unknown lying ahead for the expedition.   Indeed, their presence indicated the existence of a society in which   manufactured goods were becoming increasingly valuable, as steel knives   replaced flint weapons and guns were coveted for both hunting and war.   The value to be given in exchange for these industrial products would   have to be the skins and hides of animals that were temporarily   valuable when beaver hats were stylish or when there was a lack of   available leather on the European markets. The land could sustain the   wildlife it had but was not so productive that animals could replenish   their numbers in the face of extensive hunting above and beyond simple   human subsistence. The primary objects of Indian commerce were the   hides and skins of the animals that also inhabited the land, and there   were a finite number of these creatures, although at the time the herds   of grazers seemed without number.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eActually in the journals we find few references to large herds of   buffalo or even to the massive dams and villages of the beaver, whose   pelts would later be the primary items of trapping and trading. Beaver   seem to merit sparse attention when recording the fauna of the region.   There are probably more references to rattlesnakes than to beaver,   since the men seemed almost hypnotized by these serpents, hardly an   item of trade. Lewis and Clark almost certainly saw the wildlife as a   barrier to be overcome and not as commodities that would constitute the   major portion of trade for the next eight decades.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSome of the half-breeds were not descendants of the local tribes.   Pierre Dorian, for example, seems to have been part Iowa Indian, as   does his wife. Here we see the results of the displacement of tribes in   the Midwest who had been trading with the French and British for more   than two centuries. Although there had been no removal treaties   affecting the midwestern tribes at that time from which these people   might have been fleeing, the fabric of their communal life had long   since been torn apart by intermarriage and trade wars. As members of   the eastern tribes had experienced the course of empire, they joined in   and moved west to become a part of the impending invasion and serve as   bicultural brokers in the transactions that lay ahead.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis new class of people would also help open the Pacific Northwest to   commerce and exploration. As the Hudson's Bay Company extended its   trading posts and influence in the western Rockies and Columbia basin,   it employed Iroquois voyageurs who had only a smattering knowledge of   the Christian religion but loved to sing Catholic hymns, relying on   their rhythms to measure the oar strokes of the trade canoes. These   hymns would later inspire the Nez Perces and Flatheads to send a   delegation to St. Louis in search of these power songs, triggering the   missionary movement toward the Oregon country that ended in disaster   for all concerned.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCould these people be described as an indigenous population as we think   of one today? To the expedition they were indistinguishable from the   local tribes except for the obvious language differences and the   warlike proclivities of the tribes claiming and defending extensive   territories. Certainly they were seen as a different class from tribal   Indians in Canada, who eventually become known as the Metis   (mixed-blood people), the constituency of Louis Riel, who regarded   themselves as equal members of Canadian society. They appear later in   the 1870s as invaders of the northern hunting grounds, feared and   resisted fiercely by the tribes living in the United States. Annually   they brought large numbers of hunters with freight wagons and families   south across the border to hunt buffalo when their own herds had been   thinned out, thus escalating the depletion of the northern buffalo herd   more rapidly than expected.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCertainly the invasive half-breeds played a critical role in arranging   the first treaties between the United States and the northern Plains   tribes, treaties incidentally negotiated by William Clark after his   exploring days were done. As time went on American whites became the   scouts, hunters, and interpreters for subsequent expeditions mounted in   St. Louis and Leavenworth, and with some exceptions the French-Indian   half-breeds declined in importance. Their descendants today dominate   tribal politics in most of the Great Lakes and Plains tribes. Indeed,   for some tribes, having French ancestors rather than English is a sign   of distinction.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThink of what these people represented, however, and we begin to   visualize an alternative possible scenario for the settling of the   West. The French colonial policy was to encourage intermarriage with   the natives and the exchange of children who would be raised in a   different society so that over time they would help create a society   that treated lands, resources, and people in a much different manner   than the English\/Americans did. Would the interior of the United States   have been developed with a goal of maintaining a sustainable yield of   products rather than of exhausting the resources? Would treaties even   have been necessary if the various tribes had adopted enough of French   culture that they adapted their institutions to resemble those of   western Europe and guaranteed equality in both law and custom to new   settlers of the region?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCould a mixed-blood government have dealt with the United States on   better terms? We would like to think so, although the experiences of   the Five Civilized Tribes suggest otherwise. But the Five Tribes   possessed valuable farming lands in the South, whereas the northern   plains hardly offered the settlers much comfort, so the demand for land   would not have been as intense. To what degree would mixed-bloods'   willingness to accommodate themselves to technology and opportunity   have produced an ecologically sound society?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis distant prospect seems not impossible if we read the journals of   the trip. From St. Louis to the Mandan villages it appears that the   Frenchmen had a vital place in the region's social environment. Quite   casually we learn that the French were building houses and settling in   near the Big Bend without any immediate or prolonged conflict with the   tribes using the same area as hunting grounds. We can understand the   sense of relief felt by the men whenever the expedition came across   Frenchmen, as if they had brought the entirety of the European   perspective with them. That the Frenchmen felt entirely at home and   possessors of the same knowledge of the land as the Indians suggests   that in large part the Gallic colonial goal had been achieved.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe experience of the Yankton Sioux with the French and Americans is   interesting and demonstrates how deeply the French had intruded into   Indian life. As the Corps of Discovery approached the Yankton Sioux   territory they encountered Pierre Dorian, Jr., the son of their   interpreter who had ensured that they receive a warm and friendly   reception. Instead of the haughty attitude that Lewis and Clark often   showed toward Indians, negotiations with the Yanktons went smoothly.   Their generosity in giving the chiefs both medals and clothing   impressed them. A Yankton chief summarized the difference: \"I went   formerly to the English, and they gave me some clothes; when I went to   the Spanish they gave me a medal. But nothing to keep it from my skin;   but now you give me a medal and clothes.\"","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304722026725,"sku":"NP9781400077496","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400077496.jpg?v=1767731385","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/lewis-and-clark-through-indian-eyes-isbn-9781400077496","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}