25
Up the Missouri

In the weeks leading up to and immediately following his wedding day, Long was furiously busy with preparations for the expedition. Besides working on the design of his steamboat and overseeing its construction, he was assembling supplies, forming his boat crew and military escort, recruiting the scientific members of the party, and corresponding with Calhoun and various officers in charge of the military arm of the combined expedition. The Yellowstone expedition, as it was now called by the nation’s press, was the most ambitious operation the army had ever undertaken in peacetime. It had the triple aim of establishing army posts on the upper Missouri, experimenting with steamboat technology, and expanding scientific knowledge about the West. Long’s arm of the expedition was to be the first army exploration in the Trans-Mississippi West with trained scientists on board.¹

Long saw the expedition up the Missouri as a springboard to a comprehensive scientific survey of the region that would stretch over a number of years and would entail multiple trips. The steamboat would carry the party up and down the main stem of the Missouri and its major tributaries, returning to St. Louis for more supplies between trips. He himself would return to Washington and Philadelphia from time to time. With this grand view in mind, he aimed to recruit scientists who would commit to the project for three to five years. Initially he thought they might serve without regular salary, volunteering their time in exchange for the privilege of having all their travel expenses paid by the government. Only after the first of the year did he receive authorization to nominate civilian scientists for a handful of paid commissions. In the meantime, he turned to the American Philosophical Society for advice on likely candidates. One of his early picks, a New York physician and amateur geologist by the name of John Torrey, backed out because of uncertainty over the terms of compensation. Finally, in February and March, the issue of pay was cleared up and the roster of scientists began to take shape.²

A total of five civilians were commissioned. Dr. William Baldwin was to serve as botanist as well as physician and surgeon for the expedition. One of the most eminent American scientists of the day, he had been schooled in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, practiced medicine for some years in Wilmington, Delaware, and then moved to Savannah, Georgia, where he sought a warm climate to improve his health. Despite his health problems, he thought he could survive the rigors of the expedition.

Thomas Say was the expedition’s zoologist. The owner of a Philadelphia apothecary, possessing little formal education, Say had distinguished himself as the founder of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. He had recently published the first volume of his three-part tome, American Entomology.

The position of geologist vacated by Torrey was assigned to Augustus E. Jessup. An amateur scientist like Torrey, he was a wealthy Philadelphia merchant who had made his name in the scientific community through his membership in the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences.

Titian Ramsay Peale was to serve as assistant naturalist to the first three men, collecting, preparing, drawing, and maintaining specimens. He was the youngest son of Charles Willson Peale, the Philadelphia portrait painter and museum curator.

Finally, there was Samuel Seymour, a Philadelphia painter and engraver, whose task was to provide the expedition with sketches of the more dramatic landscapes through which it passed and to make portraits of Indian chiefs and scenes of Indian life.³

Besides the five civilians, the expedition included Lieutenant James Duncan Graham and Cadet William Henry Swift, topographical engineers who were to assist Long in taking astronomical readings and making surveys, and Major Thomas Biddle, Jr., who was assigned to keep the official journal of the expedition. Benjamin O’Fallon, US Indian agent, was to join them in Missouri. Filling out the expedition was a military escort of eight privates and one sergeant, and a six-man crew for the steamboat.⁴

Calhoun wrote to the American Philosophical Society for advice on the scientists’ instructions. The Society responded by appointing a committee to develop a list of topics for inquiry. Long’s new in-law, Dr. William P. Dewees, was on the committee. The committee’s “Suggestions for Inquiries by the Scientific Members of the expedition to the Yellowstone river” ranged across many topics relating to Indian life—including such specific questions as whether Indians practiced circumcision and what were the customs attending menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth. It recommended two essential texts that the expedition members should pack along: Jonathan Carver’s Travels through the Interior Parts of North America and Benjamin S. Barton’s New Views of the Origins of the Tribes and Nations of America. It also presented Long with a copy of the first volume of the Society’s Transactions and an unpublished dictionary of the Osage language. To these items, Calhoun added former president Jefferson’s instructions to the Lewis and Clark expedition.⁵

The army did its part to draw public attention to the endeavor. It had special uniforms designed for the expedition members, and it commissioned artist Charles Willson Peale to paint individual portraits of the commander and the five civilians seated in their smart new uniforms. Long was first to sit for Peale, and when the artist had finished with him Baldwin went next. Baldwin was surprised how much time was devoted to this exercise when there was so much else to be done; he had to sit for the artist for nearly twelve hours. While Baldwin sat, Peale confided to him that Long had not been an easy subject—always fidgeting and impatient. On Long’s last session with the artist, shortly after his wedding day, he was drowsy from lack of sleep and explained that his wife had been ill. Baldwin thought the drowsiness showed in Long’s portrait, which he described to a friend as “defective—particularly about the eyes.”⁶

Toward the end of March, the members of the expedition began to gather in Pittsburgh, where Long’s steamboat, the Western Engineer, was undergoing trial runs and final adjustments. Measuring seventy-five feet long and thirteen feet across the beam (almost twice the size originally envisioned), the craft drew thirty inches of water fully loaded, much more than hoped. Its paddlewheel was placed in the stern to give the paddles maximum protection from damage by snags and floating debris. Its engine featured a cam cutoff, a device of Long’s own invention, which increased the amount of steam compression by cutting off the steam’s flow into the cylinder before each stroke was completed. This innovation was soon adopted in other steamboat designs.⁷

The boat’s superstructure had another unusual feature. The bow was in the form of a serpent’s head, its long neck jutting forward menacingly. It looked like the bow of a Viking ship but with an added touch of the new industrial age: with the aid of an exhaust pipe below deck the serpent’s head could be made to belch black engine smoke from its mouth. One newspaper correspondent, observing a demonstration of the steamboat in action, tried to imagine for his readers how the noise and exhaust would awe the Indians. “Neither wind or human hands are seen to help her; and, to the eye of ignorance, the illusion is complete, that a monster of the deep carries her on his back, smoking with fatigue, and lashing the waves with violent exertion.”⁸ Just in case the serpent’s head failed to intimidate the Indians, the Western Engineer carried five small cannon on deck, three mounted on wheeled carriages and two on swivels.⁹

The expedition members left Pittsburgh on May 5, 1819, following a month’s delay as various bugs were worked out of the Western Engineer. Problems with the steamboat were to dog them all the way. Descending the Ohio River, they had to make frequent stops for engine repairs, and on one stormy night a severe gust of wind toppled the mast. Below deck, the quarters proved to be leaky and damp. The men could not keep their clothes dry, and Baldwin’s fragile health began to fail. In Cincinnati, they halted for six days for repairs and then another three days for Baldwin to get well enough to continue downstream. Twice the boat took the wrong river channel and ran aground on sandbars. When they reached the Mississippi and turned upstream, the steamboat made slower progress than expected even against the rather languid current. It was June 9 when the expedition at last reached St. Louis, and the Western Engineer had not yet been tested against the much stronger current of the Missouri.¹⁰

If these problems and delays were not disappointing enough, Long now learned that the military arm of the expedition was experiencing even greater transportation difficulties. The previous December the army had contracted with James Johnson of Kentucky to furnish at least three and perhaps as many as five steamboats in the spring for transporting men and supplies from Pittsburgh to the Missouri. Like the Western Engineer, Johnson’s steamboats suffered numerous delays in getting from Pittsburgh to St. Louis. Worse yet, there were just two operable steamboats. A third boat had been impounded and the fourth and fifth never got out of the shipyard. Johnson’s problems were not so much technological as financial. He was caught in the sharp economic downturn known to history as the Panic of 1819. As the national economy faltered and credit became scarce, Johnson came up short of funds. By June he was heatedly demanding advances on his government contract on one hand while fighting off bank creditors on the other. When the first of Johnson’s steamboats arrived at Fort Belle Fontaine laden with supplies, he would not allow its cargo to be offloaded for inspection by the Quartermaster’s Department, as he feared that the Bank of Missouri would try to seize the goods and hold them against his debt. This standoff was still unresolved when Long arrived in St. Louis on the Western Engineer. Given the mounting difficulties over the use of steamboats, Colonel Henry Atkinson, the expedition commander, informed Long that he would resort to keelboats and proceed with the troops only as far as Council Bluffs that year—far short of the Yellowstone. Long had no choice but to adjust his plans accordingly, since the two separate arms of the expedition were supposed to be coordinated.¹¹

The Western Engineer left St. Louis on June 21 and began its tortuous ascent of the Missouri. The effect of the current was even greater than Long had anticipated. In places the strong current brought the chugging steamboat almost to a standstill. Every bend in the river was an obstacle: the outside current was apt to be too strong, while on the inside the boat might run aground on shoals and snags concealed beneath the surface of the roiling, muddy waters. The great volumes of mud carried by the stream clogged the boilers and played havoc with the joints and cylinders of the engine. It was necessary to stop about every fifteen hours to cleanse the boilers and readjust the engine valves. At each stop the soldiers went ashore to replenish the supply of wood fuel. Felling trees, chopping them into cords, and loading the cords in the steamboat took much time and, as the wood was unseasoned, it did not burn efficiently. Still, despite these adversities, Long believed the steamboat offered distinct advantages over the alternative. Steamboats were considerably safer than keelboats, which were exposed to the hazardous tangles of driftwood floating down the river, and as pilots gained experience with the river there would be many fewer delays caused by running aground.¹²

The expedition’s progress was so slow that Long assigned half of the men to a shore party—both to lighten the load and to give the scientists more opportunity to observe the country. Under the leadership of Major Biddle, Long’s second in command, the shore party traveled up the Kansas River, where it was welcomed by the Kansa Indians at their main village. However, a few days after leaving the Kansa village the shore party was robbed by a group of about 140 Pawnee warriors. Although the men got through this incident unscathed, it caused them to abandon their plan of continuing overland to the mouth of the Platte River. Instead, they beat a retreat back to the Missouri to catch the lumbering Western Engineer. Finding that the steamboat had already passed upstream, Biddle divided the shore party in two, sending the stronger members ahead to overtake the steamboat while the slower group followed behind. When the faster group at last caught up with the Western Engineer, Long called a halt to await the remainder of the ill-fated shore party.¹³

Before the expedition reached Council Bluffs, Long had to contend as well with the loss of one scientist and the insubordination of his second in command. Baldwin became so ill he had to remain behind in the frontier settlement of Franklin, Missouri. This left the expedition without a surgeon and botanist. Baldwin hoped to work on reports while he convalesced and then rejoin the expedition later, but his condition only worsened and he died two months later.¹⁴

Major Biddle, meanwhile, had decided that Long’s idea to navigate the Missouri by steamboat was ill conceived. He believed Long was so stubbornly wedded to the idea that he was unfit for command. Moreover, Biddle blamed Long for the shore party’s humiliating “defeat” by the Pawnee, which he believed might prejudice his own chances for promotion in the officer corps. At one point Biddle even challenged Long to a duel. (He was deadly serious; the hot-headed army major met his end a decade later in a duel with another man.) Long avoided a duel, but his relationship with Biddle was irreparably damaged. Faced with such an unending string of setbacks and frustrations, Long felt profoundly discouraged as the summer drew to an end, so much so that other members of the expedition noted it and observed that his seemingly indomitable spirit of optimism had finally deserted him.¹⁵

Reaching Council Bluffs in September, Long and his men made winter quarters at a point on the river about five miles below where Colonel Atkinson established his own winter quarters. With the men’s quarters built and the Western Engineer safely tucked away in a cove for the winter, Long prepared to float back down the Missouri in a canoe with one soldier and Jessup (who decided he had had enough). He gave instructions to the remaining scientists to pursue their studies in the surrounding area through the winter; meanwhile, he would travel back to the nation’s capital to report on the expedition’s travails and set new objectives for the coming year. He left the engineers’ cantonment in the middle of October, visited his family in Philadelphia at Christmas, and was back in Washington around the first of the year.¹⁶

By the time Long reported to the War Department, he had recovered his characteristic enthusiasm. On January 3, 1820, he gave Calhoun an account of the expedition’s numerous setbacks during the past summer: the steamboat’s many defects at the outset of the journey, the surprising force of the Missouri River (“far greater than the most exaggerated accounts had authorized us to expect”), the plundering of the shore party by the Pawnee, the illness and eventual death of Dr. Baldwin, the insubordination of Major Biddle. Yet in spite of all those mishaps, he proposed an ambitious plan for the coming year. First, he wanted to return to his men by way of a more northerly route. He would set off at the head of Lake Superior, travel overland to the mouth of the St. Peter’s River, proceed up that river and overland again to the Great Bend of the Missouri, and float down the Missouri to Council Bluffs. Once reunited and supplied with horses and provisions, the expedition would then follow the Platte River to its source in the Rocky Mountains, head south to the source of the Red River of the South, and down that river to the Mississippi, and finally homeward by way of New Orleans. As for the Western Engineer, he no longer thought it the preferred “mode of service” for exploring the West.¹⁷

Long soon learned that his plan was far too expansive. With the nation’s economy still in a sharp downturn, Congress aimed again at slashing the War Department budget. On December 21, 1819—just two weeks before Long submitted his report—the House committee on military affairs began an investigation of the Yellowstone expedition and its costs, starting with the botched contract with Johnson for steamboat transportation. Calhoun duly assembled this information during the month of January and submitted it to the House committee on February 3, 1820. Calhoun did not begrudge Long for the army’s problems with steamboats the previous summer; indeed, the secretary of war still wanted Colonel Atkinson to use steamboats on the upper Missouri in the coming year, for he believed that they would add color to the expedition and impress both the British and the Indians with the power of the United States. But in the following weeks, as Congress moved to slash the expedition’s funding, Calhoun became convinced that the whole military operation must be recast. The original objective of establishing a fort at the mouth of the Yellowstone was too ambitious. He apprised Long that the scientific expedition would have to be scaled down as well.¹⁸

Long worked with the secretary of war to develop a plan that would keep the scientific expedition going and still meet with Congress’s approval. In the meantime, he forged ahead with preparations. First, he had to attend to the unpleasant duty of delivering Baldwin’s personal letters and other effects to Baldwin’s widow. Then he turned to finding a junior officer to replace the insubordinate Biddle, who had been quietly transferred to Colonel Atkinson’s command. The man he chose was Captain John R. Bell, an instructor of tactics at West Point Military Academy. Long also required a single individual to replace the two scientists no longer with the expedition. He made an excellent choice in his selection of Dr. Edwin James of Vermont. Although just twenty-two years of age, James had studied medicine and had published papers in both geology and botany. He not only filled the roles of surgeon, geologist, and botanist, he would eventually assume the role of lead author and editor of the official account of the expedition.¹⁹

At last, in early March, Long received his new orders from Calhoun. He was to return to Council Bluffs by way of St. Louis and the Missouri River. After sending the Western Engineer back down the Missouri for repairs and purchasing horses for the expedition’s further travels, he was to proceed up the Platte River to its source in the Rocky Mountains, then explore southward to the Arkansas River. From that point the expedition would split up, with one party continuing southward to the Red River. The two separate parties would then head eastward across the southern plains, descending the Arkansas and Red rivers respectively, rejoining on the Mississippi.²⁰ Calhoun did not need to remind Long of the geographical significance of the Arkansas and Red rivers. Each formed a section of the transcontinental boundary between the United States and New Spain under the terms of the Adams-Onís Treaty signed in February 1819. Besides compiling topographical and scientific data about the West, the expedition would be surveying the new territorial limits of the United States.²¹