Visualizing History: “Cultural Exchange on the Lewis and Clark Trail”
Thomas Jefferson’s Peace Medal, 1801 SOURCE: Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, USA / The Bridgeman Art Library
Lewis and Clark carried many gifts for the Indians they anticipated meeting as they traveled up the Missouri River toward the Rocky Mountains. Intended to signal goodwill and respect, some of the gifts held other subtle meanings as well.
Blue Trade Beads SOURCE: Ralph Thompson Collection of the Lewis & Clark Fort Mandan Foundation, Washburn, ND
Upon encountering new tribes, the explorers presented high-ranking Indian leaders with silver medals bearing the likeness of President Jefferson, in two-, three-, or four-inch sizes. Imagine the Indian recipients’ reactions. What specific message might the image of the president convey? The explorers traveled with ornamental trinkets (“ear bobs,” silk handkerchiefs, ivory combs, ribbons) as well as practical goods (brass buttons, needles and thread, blankets, calico shirts) that demonstrated American manufacturing and handcraft. They carried a few small mirrors and magnifying glasses but on one occasion found that making fire with the latter engendered suspicion, not goodwill. Blue glass beads—portable and inexpensive—were a sought-after gift, leading Clark to observe that beads “may be justly compared to gold and Silver among civilized nations.”
Jefferson pointedly urged Lewis to take small hand-cranked corn mills, to acculturate the native women to American household technology. Indian women, with full charge of corn agriculture and its preparation as food, used mortars and pestles to pulverize dried kernels. Each time Lewis and Clark presented tribal chiefs with a corn mill and demonstrated its use, the recipients seemed to be “highly pleased.” Yet a year later, a fur trader visiting the Mandans wrote, “I saw the remains of an excellent large corn mill, which the foolish fellows had demolished to barb their arrows.”
The explorers received gifts as well. The most impressive was the necklace shown here, made of 35 four-inch grizzly bear claws. The explorers encountered a number of Indian men wearing bear claw “collars” (Lewis’s term for it). For many tribes, bears were sacred animals, and their claws embodied spiritual power. Grizzlies are large (up to nine hundred pounds) and aggressive, so acquiring so many claws from multiple bears without the use of firearms took extraordinary courage. Such an ornament clearly signaled that the wearer of it was a man of courage and power.
Corn Mill Grinder SOURCE: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Gift of Mr. Allan Jobson
Grizzly Bear Claw Necklace SOURCE: © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Harvard University, PM#41-54-10/99700 (digital file 60740049)
SOURCES: Jefferson’s medal: Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, USA / The Bridgeman Art Library; trade beads: Ralph Thompson Collection of the Lewis & Clark Fort Mandan Foundation, Washburn, ND; corn mill: The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Gift of Mr. Allan Jobson; bear claw necklace: © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Harvard University, PM#41-54-10/99700 (digital file 60740049).
- On what basis do you think the explorers chose to distribute the three sizes of the medals bearing Jefferson’s likeness?
- Did the explorers perhaps fail in their mission by giving the mill for grinding corn to male leaders instead of to women? Or could this repurposing of the food grinder be read as a rejection by the women themselves of Americans’ gendered practices?
- Why might Indians bestow the rare grizzly-claw necklace on the explorers? Did it honor their manly courage? Or promote a spiritual brotherhood? Or might it have been intended to discourage further shootings of the sacred bears?
Why was the territory of the Louisiana Purchase important to President Jefferson, and why did he send Lewis and Clark to explore it?