Me and L and C -- vi

Watermelon.

You'll think I'm making this up. 

Way back in the days when Meriweather Lewis was living with Thomas Jefferson, long before the journey was underway, when the two of them, talking in front of a roaring fire about what this Louisiana purchase might look like, exchanging what they knew about Native people of the Plains, it was a case of the blind leading the blind. Neither had a clue what they were talking about, nor did William Clark really.

So one can imagine what kind of feverish anxiety they must have suffered when, on their way up from what is today KC, they were sure--every day!!-- they were about to meet their first, authentic Native Americans--the "Indians" they would have said.

It had to be somewhat anti-climatic when the first one to sally up was just an Oto kid, a boy just barely a man, who was out by himself. He promised he'd bring back the leaders, but then, once again, the whole Corps waited impatiently, I'm sure, as they paddled and poled and marched up river, entirely vigilant.

They knew their objective. They had strict instructions to avoid confrontation at all costs because the mission was intended to stir interest in the Indigenous in a new enterprise: the Great Father in Washington wanted them--all of them, every tribe and band--to work together, to gather furs and buffalo hides for the Great Father. Jefferson told them to tell the Indians to make peace with each other and to maintain that peace because everyone would profit from peaceful hunting and trapping. 

And there were gifts, a never-ending stream of gifts, some of them useful, somoe a little schmaltzy-- four dozen butcher knives, twelve dozen pocket looking-glasses, seventy-two pairs of striped ribbons, and eight brass kettles. Those pirogues and the big boat must have been loaded down because, they had to pack enough swag give away each time they met some band up and down the rivers. 

The Oto kid out hunting, the young man who had promised to bring some of the headmen came through at sunset on August 2nd, when a dozen or so Otos and Missourias suddenly appeared. Shocking. Slack jaws all around, I bet. Out came real gifts--a carrot of twisted tobacco, flour, meal, pork. 

Must have been a fine first course because they no more than presented all those goodies when the band offered their own gift to the men with white skin. What?--watermelon. I'm serious--watermelon. 

Egyptians cultivated watermelon 2000 years before Christ. Sweetened watermelon didn't really appear in the history of civilization until the time of the Romans. So how on earth could a band of Native folks, humbled into misery by successive plagues of smallpox, come up with a gift of watermelon?

Watermelons are not native. They were introduced by the Puritans who  deliberately sowed and reaped by 1629. In all likelihood, the Oto and Missouria got seeds in trade with other tribes and bands, and eventually learned on a hot day, a cold bite of fresh watermelon was like nothing else.

There's a little park high above Omaha, in Council Bluffs. It's quite a climb, but you can get up there easily if you follow the signs--they're small, but just follow 'em up. The place affords a gorgeous view of the city, but it's not where this very first meeting took place.

That's up river a couple of miles and totally indistinguishable today, the river being, back then, a wily snake of a waterway, cutting a new path whenever it darn well felt like it. 

It's comforting to know that that that much-anticipated first meeting was no big deal. Lots of smiles, lost of signing, and a promise from L and C that a bunch of them would come to their campfires the next morning to parley a bit. 

All went well, really. Eventually, the Corps would have their moments with those they met on the river. On the way back to St. Louis, Lewis went so crazy with the thievery of those blasted Chinooks--they stole his dog, Seaman, for pity sake!--that he gave the men license to shoot thieves. Blessedly, no one did.

All of that was ahead of them, of course. They'd have their moments, but during that evening and the next day too, their first meetings rolled right along like the river itself, just rolled along pleasingly, the whole bunch eating watermelon.