L and C and me--a Missouri River trip - i

 

at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas Rivers

Of course, back then, there was no KC out there on the misty horizon.

In case you're wondering, that's Lewis and Clark there at the end of the sidewalk. Not them, of course--photography was hardly that developed in 1804; but it's some kind of sculpted representation standing at a place where the two of them and their corps stayed for four days and nights at the advent of their trip up the Missouri.

That's old Muddy to their left, and the Kansas River to their right. They'd been on the Missouri (its waters are heavier than the Kansas, they reported) since leaving the fur traders in a little French village named St. Louis. But now, in a few days, they'd be turning pretty much straight north, heading up into what they knew--and feared, in a way--was Indian country. They'd follow the Missouri, the longest river on the continent--and no, they didn't know that. 

Their number one objective was to find a waterway that would get them all the way to the other side of the continent, a voyage very few American settlers had ever done and most hadn't even tried to imagine. President Jefferson wanted to know what was all out there in the vast territory he'd just picked up  from the French at a bargain basement price (15 million).

The whole bunch was called the Corps of Discovery for good reason because discovery was their directive: cover a goodly chunk of the 824 thousand square miles of that real estate purchase, bring back as comprehensive a report as you can of the flora and fauna, and while you're out there, introduce yourselves and the US to the savages (they weren't particularly pc), tell them to stop fighting with each other and work for their Great Father in Washington. That's about it--well, and stay alive to bring it all back.

To accomplish that, L and C recruited 45 crew, all of them lean and young and sparking for real adventure. Two of them, right here, got loaded on one of those four nights at the confluence of the two great rivers. A chap named John Collins, assigned to guard duty, tapped into the Corp's reserves (you couldn't run an army without fuel--without grog) when he knew darn well he wan't supposed to. He did anyway, got himself all loopy and convinced another corpsman, Hugh Hall, to join in the reverie, which young Hugh did. 

The next day already, right here, there followed a court-martial (the Corp was a military unit). Collins, who'd started the mess, got himself 100 lashes with a cat'o'nine tails, while drinking-buddy Hall got half that, given that Hall got himself drawn in and didn't himself tap the keg. 

For the record, a cat 'o nine tails looked something like this (and yes, that is a mousepad, not mine, but then there's no accounting to taste). Couldn't have been a pleasurable experience. Might well have made the next day's rowing more than a little difficult.

A big public flogging might seem a little heavy for tipping the keg for a little extra, but most historians would say that the punishment was pretty much standard fare. It fit the crime and was by no means out of the ordinary. The punishment was brazenly public too, to up the ante a bit on the original directive: Don't touch the booze for anything more than your daily "grog," (about four ounces) of whiskey.

Lesson learned, I guess, because such tomfoolery didn't happen again--or, if it did, L an C simply didn't record it for posterity. All of that happened here, while the Corps was camped at the mouth of the Kansas River.  

It's hard not to notice KC if, today, you stand right there where they must have 219 years ago, but it's still somehow thrilling to stop by where the Kansas meets the Missouri, right at the spot where they must have and imagine what it might have been like to stand there wondering what (literally) "on earth" they were going to discover once they started up river. None of them had any idea and they knew it. 

Honestly, it must have been daunting, even humbling, which is to say thrilling, I suppose, just to stand there. For some of us, still is.