W. Raymond Wood - Prologue to Lewis and Clark: The Mackay and Evans Expedition

PROLOGU TO E LEWIS AND CLARK

THE AMERICA E N XPLORATIO A N D TRAVE S L EFUES

Prologue to Lewis and Clark

THEMACKAY AND EVAMSEXPEDITION

W. RAYMOND WOOD FOREWOR B D Y JAMES P. RONDA

UNIVERSIT OF YOKLAHOMPARESS : NORMAN

To

Aubrey Diller, Abraharn P. Nasatir, and John L. Champe,

who pointed the way

FOREWORD

T uesday, January 10,1803,was not William Clark's best day at Camp Dubois outside St. Louis. The day before he had fallen through the ice while attempting to cross a nearby pond. Now he admitted in his journal, "I am verry unwell today, owing I believe to the Ducking and excessive Cold which I underwent yesterday." But sometime that Tuesday Clark entertained a noteworthy guest. This was no ordinary visitor at the Corps of Discovery's camp, but James Mackay, surely one of the most widely traveled fur-trade explorers of the age. Just a few days before, important exploration journals and maps from Mackay had come into Meriwether Lewis's hands. Those materials would give the American explorers an unparalleled view of the Missouri River up to the Mandan villages. Now it was Clark's turn to hear firsthand about the recently acquired West up the river and out across the Great Plains. Despite the momentary miseries of the day, Clark's career was on the rise; Mackay's great days as a western explorer were over, and he was about to slip into undeserved obscurity. But it had not always been so. h the decade before the Lewis and Clark expedition, Mackay and his able lieutenantJohn Thomas Evans were-so one Spanish official put it-"the two most famous travelers of the northern countries of this continent." To follow the journeys made by Mackay and Evans up the Missouri and across the plains in 179597 is to begin to appreciate the kind of world Lewis and Clark found when they voyaged up the river in 1804.Thomas Jefferson's Corps of Discovery followed in the wake of James Mackay and John Evans.

W.Raymond Wood's ProloguetoLewis and Clark: The Mackay and Evans Expedition is really two books in one. It is the remarkable story of JamesMackay-Scotsman turned Spanish citizen, fur trader, explorer, entrepreneur, and agent

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of empire. And it is also the intriguing tale of John Thomas Evans, Welsh nationalist, visionary, traveler, and star-crossed adventurer. This improbable pair-the tough-minded trader and the dreamer-were bound together by a common enterprise in an expedition up the Missouri and into the country of the Mandan and Hidatsa people. That story alone, and its connections to the Lewis and Clarkjourney, is worth the telling. But this is also a book that illuminates some of the central themes in the history of the American West. One theme is the story of western rivers. Of all those waterways, none has captured the American imagination more than the Missouri. "Across the wide Missouri" is not only a song lyric; it represents both a highway into the West and a boundary in western migrations. The Missouri runs like a thread through this book. It is a river of promise, of dreams, and of dreams denied. Like Bernard DeVoto, Wood knows that to write about the Missouri is to explore the larger West.

Another theme that runs through the book is the clash of empires. Beginning in the sixteenth century, the political and cultural future of North America was shaped by imperial rivalries. In those struggles the West was both battleground and prize. England, France, Spain, Russia, and ultimately the United States all sought imperial sway in the West. And in those contests for power and place, explorers were the advance guard of empire. At the end of the eighteenth century, Spanish officials believed they had much to fear for their North American empire. Everywhere they looked there were rivals busy encroaching upon the Spanish domain. From its base at New Archangel (mod-em Sitka),the Russian-America Company was on the move along the north-w e s t c o a s t . B r i t i s h m a r i t i m e f u r t r a d e r s , h a r d o n t h e h e e l s of v o y a g e s b y C a p t . Jarnes Cook and Capt. George Vancouver, were intent on capturing the rich trade in sea otter pelts. And there were growing fears about the expansionist energies of the new American Republic.In 1792 the French trader and explorer JacquesD'Eglise reached the Mandan villages and brought news to St. Louis confirming what Spanish officers feared-that British traders from Canada had engrossed the fur business at the northern reaches of Spanish Louisiana. This was not just an economic threat; it was a direct challenge to Spain's sovereignty in the West. That news and the desire to expel British traders set in motion the Mackay and Evans expedition.

Like the river itself, what threads its way through the lives and travels of Mackay and Evans were compelling illusions about continental geography and the native peoples of the West. The quest for a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific had fascinated explorers and imperial planners since the time

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of Colurnbus. Lewis and Clark were part of that quest, so were Mackay and Evans. In the years after Fr. Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet first identified the mouth of the Missouri and then speculated on its course, cartographers and imperial planners pondered the possibility that the river might stretch to the Pacific. By the end of the eighteenth centuq, many geographers believed that the Missouri was the key river in the passage through the West. Following the Missouri might lead travelers to the eastern edge of the Rockies. Once over what was envisioned as a narrow ridge of mountains, travelers were sure to find rivers flowing directly into the Pacific. Here was the elusive Northwest Passage, and Spanish officials such as Governor General baron de Carondelet were determined that Spain should control this plain path to the Pacific. Prompted by Carondelet and a substantial financial reward, Mackay hoped Evans could make the transcontinental passage. What Mackay prepared for Evans were exploration instructions similar in Enlight-enment spirit to those drafted for Lewis and Clark and the Russian explorer Nikolai Rezanov. But the dream of the Northwest Passage was not the only illusion to dance in Evans's mind. Welsh nationalism burned with renewed fire, a cultural aspect of which was the search for ancient roots, a search that involved the mythic journey of Prince Madoc to America. Now, so the leg-end went, there were Welsh Indians with blue eyes and pale hair living along the upper Missouri. These lost Welsh needed to be found and brought into the ethnic fold. Perhaps more important for Welsh cultural nationalism, Wales could now claim to be the real home of the European discoverers of America. John Evans went up the Missouri to find Madoc's descendents and claim Wales's place in the history of exploration.

Prologue to Lewis and Clark is one of those remarkable books that draw on many disciplines to tell an important story. Ray Wood has had a distinguished career as one of the foremost northern plains archaeologists. His work on Mandan and Hidatsa sites is a monument to painstaking fieldwork and meticulous research. Wood has also been a pioneer in the use of historical evi-dencetoexpandandexplainthearchaeologicalrecord. His discussionof the origin and various versions of the landmark Antoine Soulard map as well as his masterful analysis of the map of the Missouri held by Yale's Beinecke Library and the other cartographic sources associated with the Mackay and Evans expedition suggest how much can be learned by knowing both the ground and the written record. Prologue is informed by this kind of superb, interdisciplinaryscholarship.And no reader should miss Wood's remarkable tourdeforceneartheendofthebook-a remarkablerecreationofMackay's

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journey into northeastern Nebraska in company with Omaha buffalo hunters during the fall of 1796. James Mackay and John Evans will never enjoy the public recognition accorded to Lewis and Clark, but thanks to Ray Wood they now have a secure place in the larger history of the exploration of the West.