Made In America - Bill Bryson [80]
Though Lewis and Clark were not the first to venture into the western territories they were the first to approach the matter scientifically. With unflagging diligence they labelled, mapped and inspected everything that passed before them, recording their findings in their famous journals, which still make marvellous reading today. It is impossible to read Clark’s notes in particular without developing a swift affection for his rough spelling and erratic grammar, which at times, in the words of George R. Stewart, ‘approached the inspired’. From his first entry upon setting off – ‘We proceeded on under a jentle brease up the Missourie,5 – his directness of description and eccentricity of composition make the whole hazardous undertaking come alive:
Sunday 25th a fair morning river rose 14 Inch last night, the men find numbers of Bee Trees, & take great quantities of honey, at 11 oClock 24 Sauckees Came pass from St Louis, and asked for Provisions... . Guterge [his spelling of Goodrich] returned with Eggs & [illegible], Willard brought in 10 pr. Hinges George Shannon Caught 3 large Cat fish – The musquetors are verry bad this evening.6
Under his uncertain hand, circumference became secumpherance, rheumatism became rhumertism, and Missouri became almost anything – Missouris, Missouries, Missourie – often taking on two spellings in the same line. Sacagawea, the heroic Indian girl who guided the party across the wilderness, he wisely steered clear of, referring to her as ‘the squar’. Lewis, though himself an erratic speller, brought a more assured style to the journals. Between them they coined almost a thousand terms for animals, plants and features previously unrecorded on the landscape. They discovered 178 plants and 122 animals, among them the grizzly bear and great-tailed fox, and several species of pike, catfish and squirrels. No other explorers or naturalists in American history have named more objects.
Among the words not previously recorded in English are great plains, prairie dog (though Clark preferred ground rat) and cache for a secret hole in the ground (taken evidently from French trappers and spelled, almost inevitably, ‘carsh’ by Clark). Some of their words didn’t catch on. Their term small wolves was eventually displaced by the Mexican-Spanish coyote (from the Nahuatl coyotl). They also named every feature of the landscape that didn’t have a known name already, though quite a number did. Yellowstone, for instance, is no more than Lewis’s literal translation of the French trappers’ Roche Jaune. Yet relatively few of their geographic names survived. They gave the noble name Philanthropy River to a tributary of the Missouri, but it didn’t stick. Later passers-by renamed it Stinking Water. The Lewis River later became the Shoshone. Philosophy River became Willow Creek.
Despite having three interpreters to call on, Lewis and Clark often encountered extraordinary language difficulties with the native Americans. At one meeting, in a kind of pass-the-parcel round of translating, Lewis’s English was translated into French by one listener, from French into Minitari by another, from Minitari into Shoshone by the next person in line and finally from Shoshone into Nez Percé. The Indians themselves obviated such difficulties with a universal sign language of about a hundred gestures, which could communicate, if baldly, most needs. The party also experienced remarkable good fortune, most notably during a potentially tense encounter with Indians when Sacagawea realized that one of the opposing braves