I have a deep interest in the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The 1804-06 journey, which laid the bedrock for the western expansion of the United States, has tight ties to Kentucky.
Corps of Discovery co-commander William Clark spent his formative years in Jefferson County. The Clark family arrived in Kentucky from Virginia in 1785, when William was 14. Accompanying the family was York, a Clark family slave who later traveled with Clark and the Corps of Discovery to the Pacific Ocean and back. York’s role in the historic journey was not insignificant, and he is memorialized in a sculpture by Ed Hamilton on Louisville’s waterfront.
Near the Falls of the Ohio in the summer and fall of 1803 Clark selected the nucleus of the expedition, a group he referred to as the “nine young men from Kentucky.” They included William Bratton, John Colter, brothers Joseph and Reubin Field, Charles Floyd, George Gibson, Nathaniel Pryor, George Shannon and John Shields. Colter and Shannon may have joined Meriwether Lewis prior to his reaching Louisville. They apparently were with Lewis when he arrived at the Falls of the Ohio on Oct. 14, 1803.
The men departed 12 days later, after the commanders had spent time at the home of William Clark’s older brother and Revolutionary War hero Gen. George Rogers Clark, who was residing on the north side of the Ohio, in Indiana Territory.
My Corps of Discovery quest recently led me to the Missouri History Museum’s Library and Research Center in St. Louis, the city where Clark spent the last 30 years of his life. There, I met Molly Kodner, the library archivist and the keeper of treasures, a few of which she shared.
The library, Kodner explained, is home to the Julia Clark Voorhis collection. Voorhis was William Clark’s eldest granddaughter and inherited many family papers from her father, George Rogers Hancock Clark. The collection was bequeathed to the Missouri Historical Society upon Julia’s death in December 1922.
“The Voorhis collection actually includes 14 boxes of materials,” Kodner said. “Most people are mainly interested in the journals.”
“The journals” are the notes, writings, sketches and maps kept by Lewis and Clark during their journey. These are some of the original, hand-written journals. Eighteen of the journals are known to exist. These are generally known as the “red” journals, as the handwritten notes are bound in red Moroccan leather. The men likely copied these from their rough field notes. There is some debate if they were written during the journey or copied following the Corps’ return to St. Louis in September 1806. The general agreement among scholars and researchers is that most or all of the red journals were penned in the field.
The Missouri History Museum has four of the red journals. Kodner placed one on display, along with the letter of credit issued by President Thomas Jefferson to Lewis, a draft copy of Clark’s letter to Lewis accepting his invitation to join the Corps of Discovery, a letter penned by Lewis to his mother from Ft. Mandan in March 1805, a letter from Clark to one of his sons after Clark had settled in St. Louis, and other relics.
The most affecting for me, however, was Clark’s Elk-Skin Journal. It is one of the museum’s prized pieces and generally not on public display. And it’s one of a kind.
“This is the only field journal we know of that has survived,” Kodner said.
The Elk-Skin Journal, which is how Clark referred to it, contains his field notes from Sept. 11, 1805, to Dec. 31, 1805—when the Corps traveled across the Bitterroot Mountains and down to the Pacific Ocean, meeting the Flathead and Nez Perce Indians. The journal is hand stitched, contains about 220 pages, and is penned in iron gall and oak gall ink. The paper is cotton rag. The journal, which has the appearance of having been carried in a pocket, bag or pouch over rough terrain in harsh weather, is about the size of a paperback novel. The handwriting is a small cursive script, neat and still legible, although littered with Clark’s creative spellings. The soft elk-skin cover has a button-and-tie closure, and on the inside of the cover is a faintly visible sketch of Ft. Clatsop, the Corps’ winter quarters of 1805-06. Whether Clark or another member of the Corps drew the outline of the fort is unknown.
When deciding where to build their winter quarters, Lewis and Clark settled on two possible locations. They put the final decision to a vote. In his entry for Nov. 23, 1805, Clark recorded the results, including the votes of the Indian woman Sacagawea, whom Clark recorded by the nickname Janey, and York, his slave. It is simply extraordinary.
The Elk-Skin Journal can be viewed online at mohistory.org/collections/item/resource:214653.