Exploring Lewis and Clark: Reflections on Men and Wilderness - Hardcover

Slaughter, Thomas P.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375400788 ISBN 13: 9780375400780

Verlag: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

A fascinating account of the famed expedition draws on the personal journals of the explorers themselves to re-examine their odyssey in light of the cultural prejudices and goals of Lewis and Clark, offers profiles of Sacajawea and York, Clark's slave, and discusses the meaning and impact of the journey. 17,500 first printing.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Thomas P. Slaughter is the Andrew V. Tackes Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame.
He is the award-winning author of three previous books—most recently, The Natures of John and William Bartram—and is the editor of three others, including the Library of America edition of William Bartram: Travels and Other Writings. He lives in South Bend, Indiana, with his wife and two children.

Thomas P. Slaughter is the Andrew V. Tackes Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame.

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Chapter 1
Dreams

In the beginning the surface of the earth was all water and there was darkness." In this darkness and on these waters First Creator and Lone Man walked. They came across a duck-a mud hen in some versions-diving under the water and were curious. They asked the duck what she ate and she returned from a dive with sand in her beak, which they used to create the earth.

The First Creator made broad valleys, hills, coulees with timber, mountain streams, springs, and, as creatures, the buffalo elk, black-tailed and white-tailed antelope, mountain sheep and all other creatures useful to mankind for food and clothing. He made the valleys and coulees as shelter for the animals as well as for mankind. He set lakes far apart. Lone Man created for the most part level country with lakes and small streams and rivers far apart. The animals he made lived some of them in the water, like beaver, otter, and muskrat. Others were the cattle of many colors with long horns and long tails, moose, and other animals.

First Creator and Lone Man compared their creations and found fault with each other's. "First Creator said of the land north of the Missouri River, 'The things you have created do not meet with my approval. The land is too level and affords no protection to man.' " Lone Man thought that First Creator had made the land south of the Missouri too rough. They agreed, though, to leave all as it was and to allow humans to use the south side until its resources were exhausted and then move across the river to the north. "So it was agreed between them and both blessed their creation and the two parted."

Lone Man watched humans multiply and was pleased. He worried, though, about evil spirits among them and decided to be born as a man. He chose a Mandan virgin for his mother, turned himself into a kernel of corn, and entered her when she ate him. "In the course of time the child was born and he grew up like other children, but he showed unusual traits of purity and as he grew to manhood he despised all evil and never even married. Everything he did was to promote goodness."

There are other stories about the creations, about the origins of Lone Man and his good deeds on behalf of humans. Mandans said they had come from a cavern on the north bank of a river at the ocean's shore. They told Lewis and Clark that they came from a village under the earth, from which they climbed on a grapevine. They knew that Lone Man never married or engaged in a sexual act. They believed that light-complexioned people would come from the east, because that was prophesized from the time of creation. And they anticipated trouble from the white men when fur traders and explorers arrived. When First Creator saw the whites that Lone Man created, he disapproved. "You have made a queer kind of men-they will always be greedy!"

"In the beginning God created the Heaven, and the Earth." Important stories repeat. The earth is created three times in Genesis, and the Mandan told their creation story in multiple versions too. "So God created man in his own Image, in the Image of God created he him; male and female created he them." Again: "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, & breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Lone Man breathed life into his creations too, and not always in the same way.

Myths vary in the repetition. Both the variation and the repetition are essential. "And God spoke to Noah, saying, Go forth from the Ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee: Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl and cattle, and of every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth, that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth." Myths, by their very essence, can be and must be replicated. We repeat them-both the telling and the acts-over and over again.

Myths create binaries-heaven and earth, man and woman, good and evil, beginning and end, first and last, God and man. The middle ground between these binaries is scary, violent, evil or holy, and unnatural-a place to avoid (taboo) or approach through ritual in an attempt to resolve the danger of the binary or opposite. These are places for shamans. Even Jesus and Lone Man faced great danger in these liminal (in-between) spots when they became humans. "Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field, which the LORD God had made." That, it seems, was its undoing. "And the LORD God said to the Serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon your belly shall you go, and dust shall you eat, all the days of thy life." Cursed, again, the serpent remains between God and humans, man and woman, nature and the unnatural, although always identified more closely with the second in each of these binaries-humans, woman, and the unnatural-thereby branding each by association. We are, in the Genesis myth, forever snake and not snake over and over again.

Where, Lewis and Clark asked the Mandan, did your people come from? We live under the water, where we have a village and gardens. Then, before we remember, we come out through a hole and settle on the Missouri River. Lone Man is born to a Mandan virgin, who conceives him by ingesting a kernel of corn. . . . "Several little anecdotes told me today," Clark wrote, not even bothering to enter the (to him) silly stories that he dismissed charmingly. Ignoring the belief of some Mandans that they came from the south-First Creator's land-and the west-a cavern on the banks of a river at the ocean's edge-Clark postulated that they were descended from "a more civilized state" to the east.

The explorers believed that the Mandans were too "white" to be full-blooded Indians. The tribe's comparatively fair complexion was a sign of racial connections to Europe, Lewis and Clark reasoned. The Indians spoke of a garden and a great flood, demonstrating shared mythical origins. The explorers sought other evidence of the Mandans' biblical knowledge, since an American "lost tribe" remained a distinct possibility, as did a Welsh genealogy. There were stories about Prince Madoc's discovery of North America and possibly some Mandans had heard about fair-complexioned ancestors who came from the east with stories about a garden, a snake, and a flood.

Such apparently simple issues as directionality were devilishly difficult to establish with the Mandan, though. Some came from below; some came from over there; some responded positively to Clark's suggestion that they came from the east. More than one traveler remarked that Indian responses to such questions were useless. According to the fur trader David Thompson, "persons who pass through the country often think the answers the Indians give are their real sentiments. The answers are given to please the querist." Hospitality dictated that answers please the guest, so the Mandan told Clark what they thought he wanted to hear. He did not appreciate their stories set westward, to the south, or underground. If he wanted them to say that they came from the east, they would provide that response, too. The eastern origin and the descent from civilization were Clark's theories. The directions were part of his mythical baggage. The desire for racial linkages between Indians and Europeans was his culture's, too. The Mandans knew better and did not share the dream that their peoples were one. Their "charming anecdotes" were true. They knew who the white men were and where they had come from.

Mandans saw their myths unfolding in the present, as did Hidatsa, Nez Perce, Shoshone, and Sahaptan-speaking...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2003
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0375400788
• ISBN 13: 9780375400780
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 231
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar