In Governor I. Steven’s report on the Pacific Railroad surveys of 1853 to 1855 the following statement was written:
“At the crossing of the Snake River, at the mouth of the Peluse (Palouse), we met with an interesting relic. The chief of the band … exhibited, with great pride, the medal presented to his father, Ke-Powh-kan, by Captains Lewis and Clark. It is of silver, double, and hollow, having on the obverse a medallion bust, with the legend, ‘TH JEFFERSON, PRESIDENT OF THE U.S., A.D. 1801,’ and on the reverse the clasped hands, pipe, and battle axe crossed, with the legend, ‘PEACE AND FRIENDSHIP.’”
OLIN D. WHEELER, The Trail of Lewis and Clark, vol. II. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904, p. 124.
This may be the same medal discovered more than a century later, at the same location in Franklin County, Washington, in 1964, where the Palouse River empties into the Snake River.
Washington State ethnologists found it in a canoe burial while excavating an ancient village site. It is much like the Chief Yellept Medal found in 1890 in size and composition and structure. It differs, however, in that it has a perforation immediately above Jefferson’s head. Erosive effects have destroyed the finer details of this piece. Lewis and Clark made no mention of presenting medals to Indians at the mouth of the Palouse, though they did give one to Chief Cutsahnem at the confluence of the Snake and the Columbia Rivers.
On March 1, 1899, an engineer named Lester Hansaker, was doing some excavations for the construction of a roadbed for the Northern Pacific Railroad when he came across an Indian grave at the mouth of the Potlatch River (called Colter’s Creek by Lewis and Clark) in Nez Percé County, Idaho. In the grave he found a Jefferson Medal, which is now located in the American Museum of Natural History, New York. It was wrapped in many thicknesses of buffalo hide. This may be the same medal with the suspension ring which the captains gave to Twisted Hair, the Nez Percé chief and tewat.
The Oregon Historical Society has a Jefferson Medal that is silver, of the shell type, with a diameter of about 2¼ inches. It was found in the early 1890’s in a grave on an island near the mouth of the Walla Walla River and lacks the suspension loop and has suffered considerable damage due to unknown causes. This medal may be the one which Captain Clark presented Chief Yellept on the Expedition’s return journey. The explorers met Yellept’s Walla Walla tribe below the mouth of the Walla Walla River on the west bank of the Columbia, in what is now Benton County, Washington.
Recently some Indian treasures have been found at the ancient Chinook village of Wishram, in the state of
Washington. Among the treasures was a silver dollar with the date 1801 on it. Also two Washington Season Medals of silver, 1¾ inches in diameter and perforated. Originally they may have had suspension loops, though they are missing today. On the reverse the inscription “SECOND PRESIDENCY OF GEO WASHINGTON MDCCXCVI” has been completely eroded away, and the marginal wreath of oak and laurel leaves shows distinct wear. On the obverse all detail is gone except that the outline of the man sowing wheat and, below, portions of the letters, “USA.” These two medals are on loan to the Maryhill Museum, Washington, from Mary Underwood Lane, a granddaughter of Chief Chenoweth, a famous Cascade Chinook, who may have lived in a village just west of the present North Bonneville, Washington. As to the history of these medals, no one actually knows, but they might be the very ones given to the chiefs Chillahlawil and Comcommoly on November 20, 1805 by Lewis and Clark.
PAUL RUSSELL CUTRIGHT, “Lewis and Clark Peace Medals,” The Bulletin. St. Louis: The Missouri Historical Society, vol. 24, no. 2, 1968, pp. 160–67.