Nearly 200 years after Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s legendary expedition along the Missouri River, through the Rocky Mountains and to the Pacific shore, little is known about the tribes who welcomed, and even saved the Corps of Discovery from starvation.
While the expedition crew, including Sacagewea (their most infamous Indian guide), have long since departed, generations of tribal people have remained as living links to the trail’s past. The Sioux, Omaha, Nez Perce and many other tribal nations survived the European settler influx, the land confiscation, and punishing federal policies aimed at Indian extinction.
The tribes are still here.
But their stories remain largely untold outside of their own communities.
Commemorations for the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial kicked off in January 2003 and many more events are coming. Already a Corps of Discovery II trek is under way. A mock boat and crew are moving along the Missouri River, through the Rockies, eventually to the Pacific shore. The crowning events will be found in what are billed as signature events along the trail, which continue until September 2006. The National Park Service and the National Council of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial will work with local planners to organize commemoration events from Virgina to the Oregon Coast. In a sense, they will relive the glory, the courage, and determination Lewis and Clark showed in discovering the rest of America, as they saw it then.
The tribes have been invited to take part in the events, but the question remains as to whether tribal stories will move beyond their too-frequent status as romanticized myths and historical trivia. Will the Indian side of the story finally emerge?
For two weeks in August 2003, two journalists, a writer and photographer sought some of these hidden stories. Mark Anthony Rolo and photographer Mary Annette Pember wanted to meet and hear from Native people throughout Indian Country. They journeyed on and off the beaten trail to find out what Indians had to say about those two white guys who came up the river 200 years ago. They wanted to see how tribal communities have fared in the years since the new settlement of the West. And while they did not traverse the trail all the way to the Pacific they discovered, they believe, a few of those great Indian stories untold beyond their own communities.
They met Gerard Baker a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes outside of his office, at his mother’s home on the For Berthold Reservation. Baker is the highest-ranking Native American in the National Park Service. He plays a key role in convincing tribes that it is in their best interest to take advantage of these signature commemoration events in order to tell their story, their way.
One of the most intriguing footnotes to the legendary expedition has been in wondering whatever happened to those Jefferson peace medals that the Corps of Discovery gave out to tribes along the trail. They met one Sioux elder whose family still has one of those medals.
And there were surprises, like just how different European expansion affected two different tribes - the Omaha Nation and the Iowa Tribe of Kansas.
But the most exciting stops along the trail were in meeting everyday, individual Native people. From an artist who has an affinity for the people of Tibet to a National Park Service ranger raising triplets, they found out just how diverse Indian country truly is.
The long trail is filled with more stories than one journalist alone could cover. It is the hope of this journalistic team that more journalists, especially Native American journalists, will get on the trail in the coming year and report their own discoveries in Indian country. Journalists and other storytellers alike have an opportunity to give voice, a needed Native perspective to this noted historic event.
(Writer bio) Mark Anthony Rolo is an enrolled member of the Bad
River Band of Ojibwe in northern Wisconsin. He is the
former Washington D.C. correspondent for Indian
Country Today and former Executive Director of the
Native American Journalists Association.
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