Elk. Elk. Elk. Breakfast. Dinner. Supper. Rain. Rain. Rain. Morning. Noon. Evening.
RIVERS, EDENS, EMPIRES CAN BE SEEN THROUGH
JANUARY 9, 2005
N ORTH D AKOTA M USEUM
OF
A RT
CENTENNIAL DRIVE GRAND FORKS, NORTH DAKOTA (701) 777-4195 www.ndmoa.com SUGGESTED DONATIONS $5 FOR ADULTS CHANGE FROM CHILDREN
Rivers, Edens, Empires L e w i s & C l a r k a n d t h e R e v e a l i n g of A m e r i c a
When Sergeant Floyd dies the nearby river goes right on flowing.
Library of congress exhibition comes to the North Dakota Museum of Art Rivers, Edens, Empires: Lewis & Clark and the Revealing of America continues through January 9, 2005, at the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks. Organized by the Library of Congress, the exhibition gives a sweeping overview of the exploration and mapping of North America, including rare glimpses into the native world that already existed. Rare documents and art works from both the European and the Indian worlds, firsthand observations, and spectacular maps enable the viewer to trace an emerging picture of the continent as a complex web of geographic features and territorial claims as revealed through the experiences of early explorers and the native people they encountered along the way. Museum Hours: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 9 – 5 pm; Thursday from 9 – 9 pm; Saturday and Sunday from 11 – 5 pm, including New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Suggested Donations: $5 from adults and change from children. Cover Image: Joseph Ingraham, manuscript journal with wash color drawings, 1790–1792, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Poem Excerpts: William Kloefkorn’s relining of parts of Patrick Gass’s Lewis and Clark journal, published in the North Dakota Quarterly, Spring 2004. North Dakota Museum of Art Post Office Box 7305 Grand Forks, North Dakota 58202 Phone: (701) 777- 4195 Email: ndmoa@ndmoa.com
Rivers, Edens, empires Lewis & Clark and the Revealing of America
INTRODUCTION American Indians drew pictographic winter counts on hide to record the passage of time and important events. They told stories and sang songs to describe their landscapes. Western explorers, on the other hand, were determined to write it all down. Europeans, Americans, and Canadians drew maps, wrote journals, and made drawings and watercolors to create a completely different understanding of the same places. Although Native Americans carried navigation guides in their heads, they also made sophisticated and complex maps. The Mandan and Hidatsa were particularly skilled in mapmaking and gave valuable help to Lewis and Clark as they made their way west. Such maps often covered thousands of miles of terrain. At first glance Indian maps often appear quite different from those made by Europeans and Americans. Some were flat drawings made on skins or mats while others were threedimensional relief maps made in sand. Instead of plotting latitude and longitude and measuring distances in miles, Indian mapmakers often oriented their maps along sunrise
and sunset lines or toward the direction of travel. Distances were measured in terms of travel time and directions were expressed in words such as "above" and "below." Also there were important differences that reflected distinctive notions about time, space, and relationships between the natural and supernatural worlds. Clearly, there are many ways to know a place. Rivers, Edens, Empires: Lewis & Clark and the Revealing of America brings together dozens of disparate understandings of place. Examples of maps which illustrate different geographic perspectives include the exhibit’s opening map by British cartographer John Mitchell. Published in 1755 on the eve of the French and Indian War, Mitchell’s map failed to acknowledge the French claims in the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, as defined by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). Instead, he showed individual English colonial claims extending west over the Alleghenies to the western margin of the map. A note found near the edge of the map illustrates the prevailing belief in the geographical concept of continental symmetry: "Missouri River is reckoned to run Westward to the Mountains of New Mexico, as far as the
You climb the ladder whatever composition, one rung at a time—and with patience. I am going away, my friend. But by way of this letter know this: You shall not be forgotten.
tonight the skin I’ll lie under was this morning the framework of a giant buck whose meat to be protected from whatever vultures Ohio does Eastward." Over and over again, European explorers were to find that North America is not symmetrical—the gentle, rolling Allegheny Mountains of the East were not echoed by the formidable Rocky Mountains.
Above: Sitting Rabbit’s map of the Missouri River, 1906-07, colored pencil and ink on canvas, courtesy of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, Bismarck.
must be guarded by the likes of me who
Below: Nineteenth Century Mandan Bear Shield
with the help of others will tomorrow pack the gutted creatures on the backs of horses
The second section of the exhibition features a striking comparison between a map originally drawn by William Clark and a portion of a map drawn by Mandan Indian Sitting Rabbit of the same geographic area. Sitting Rabbit (I Ki Ha Wa He, also known as Little Owl) had been asked to create a map of the Missouri River from the South Dakota-North Dakota Boundary to the mouth of the Yellowstone River by an official at the North Dakota Historical Society in 1906. Although he used a Missouri River Commission map as a base, Sitting Rabbit recorded a traditional Indian perspective of the river’s geography, especially noting former Mandan village sites with earthen lodges in a pictographic map more than twenty-eight feet in length.
Above: Over 3,000 school children have visited the exhibition with their classes, including this group from Thompson, N.D.
that one day might be breakfast as moving from here to there we likewise move, and up and down, from feast to famine. One the most highly respected men on the Lewis and Clark expedition was its chief carpenter, Patrick Gass. “Though not a poet, Sergeant Gass nonetheless had a lot of poetry in him.” according to William Kloefkorn. For the Spring 2004 issue of the North Dakota Quarterly, Kloefkorn relined various passages of Patrick Gass’s journals into the free-verse format. Excerpts from those poems are reproduced throughout this publication.
*
Dear North Dakota Museum of Art Staff: Thank you for inviting us to the museum for a visit even if we didn’t see everything. My favorite part was the medicine tools and the buffalo shield. it was very interesting. I think I’ll bring my parents. Sincerely, Summer Century School
*
*
*
*
My favorite piece in the Lewis and Clark exhibition exhibit was a small watercolor by Titian Ramsay Peale, son of Charles Peale. The Peale family, especially Charles Willson Peale, trained Meriwether Lewis to gather specimens, illustrate fauna and to catalog the same. Charles Peale was America’s foremost museologist and naturalist at the turn of the century. Raphael Peale became America’s best still life painter in the early 1800s and is one of my favorite American artists. He was the eldest son of Charles and brother of Titian. Titian was only 4 years old when the Lewis and Clark expedition occurred but later he led expeditions to discover the source of the Platte River. —Marley Kaul, artist from Bemidj, MN.
I have heard the Captain’s speech to the Indians so many times I’m blamed if I don’t believe it. Yes.
“Clark in Council with the Indians,” one of a series of illustrations that accompanied an early printing of Sergeant Patrick Gass’s journals.
EXHIBITION DESCRIPTION Rivers, Edens, Empires presents a century of exploration that features the expedition of the Corps of Discovery as the culminating moment in the quest to connect North America by means of a waterway passage. Like so many other exploration stories, the Lewis and Clark journey was shaped by the search for navigable rivers, inspired by the quest for Edens, and driven by competition for empire. Thomas Jefferson was motivated by these aspirations when he drafted instructions for the Corps of Discovery, sending them up the Missouri River in search of a passage to the Pacific. Writing to William Dunbar just a month after Lewis and Clark began their expedition, Jefferson emphasized the importance of rivers in his plan for western exploration and national expansion. “We shall delineate with correctness the great arteries of this great country.” River highways could take Americans into Eden, Jefferson’s vision of the West as the “Garden of the World.” And those same rivers might be nature’s outlines and borders for empire. “Future generations would,” so the president told his friend, “fill up the canvas we begin.”
The Library of Congress used its unparalleled collections to launch this exhibition focusing on western exploration. The Library is home to the 1803 annotated map that the Corps of Discovery took on their journey. The Library is also the repository for Thomas Jefferson’s papers and holds important documentation about his enduring interest in exploring the western portion of North America including instructions to Meriwether Lewis for the journey and his speech to the Indian chiefs (representing the Osages, Missouri, Otos, Panis, Cansas Ayowais, and Sioux) on their historic visit to Washington, D.C., in January 1806.
Botanical Garden, artist and naturalist Titian Peale’s drawings made as a member of the Long expedition from the collection of the American Philosophical Society, and the Sitting Rabbit map and a Winter Count attributed to High Dog from the North Dakota Historical Society. Those expeditions and others are explored in the exhibition and place the remarkable trek made by the Corps of Discovery in the broad context of a century of exploration of the North American continent.
Not only is the Library rich in Lewis and Clark related material, it also holds impressive collections of other important expeditions including those led by Zebulon Pike, Stephen Long, Charles Wilkes, and John Frémont.
The exhibition closes with an epilogue focused on the construction of the transcontinental railroad, which closed the door on the quest for a direct water passage to connect the East with the West. The final image of a train passing through a flood was taken the same year as the North Dakota Museum of Art’s 1907 building came into being.
Library materials are supplemented by loans from important collections including: Indian artifacts from the National Museum of the American Indian, botanical specimens collected on various western expeditions from the National Museum of Natural History, Kew Gardens in London, and the New York
John Logan Allen, author of Passage through the Garden: Lewis and Clark and the Image of the American Northwest, and James P. Ronda, author of Lewis and Clark Among the Indians, as well as Carolyn Gilman, author of Lewis and Clark: Across the Divide, served as curatorial advisors to the exhibition.
We whites, numerous as stars in the sky, as leaves on the trees, are gun-men, and not afraid. Yes.
Sacagawea’s young body refuses to deliver. She lies in her lodge, in misery, yet doing her best not to show it. But her face is a page that even a carpenter with a total of nineteen days of schooling can read, her dark eyes slitted in pain. Captain Lewis, at the end of his makeshift rope, acts on the advice of Jessaume, mixes the crushed rattle of a snake with water, offers it then to Sacagawea, who in her agony drinks it, who in ten minutes delivers. The moment brings forth more than a baby, a boy, Jean Baptiste: joy unspeakable on the countenance of the almond mother, on the face of the Captain belief doing battle with doubt. And Charbonneau: so inflated you’d think he’d done something. I go to sleep that night with the name of my firstborn determined: Benjamin, or maybe William. I’ll discuss it with the woman, Maria, I’ll marry. I go to sleep with Maria and our child, and the child I hear crying, on my mind. EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS 1) JoHn MItCHEll’S MaP of BrItISH anD frEnCH DoMInIonS In nortH aMErICa — John Mitchell’s 1755 map shows individual English colonial claims extending from the Atlantic west over the Alleghenies to the western margin of the map. 2) JoHn farrEr’S 1651 MaP of VIrgInIa — East is north on this map which plots the width of the continent from Virginia’s coast to the Pacific as a narrow strip of land that could be traveled in only "ten days marche." 3) fry anD JEffErSon MaP of VIrgInIa — Thomas Jefferson probably inherited his interest in geography and mapping from his father Peter who, with fellow surveyor Joshua Fry, created the first reasonably accurate map of the Virginia. This 1755 map was the pre-eminent cartographic representation of Virginia during the French and Indian War and the American Revolution.
Samuel Lewis after William Clark. “A Map of Lewis and Clark’s Track” from Nicholas Biddle and Paul Allen.
4) SPanISH MaP of SoutHwESt — José de Urrútia and Nicolás la Fora created this detailed map of northern Mexico and southwestern United States in 1769. From the 1530s the Spanish explored much of the western coast of North America and by the 1700s had documented their knowledge of the Southwest, its inhabitants, and geography, through maps and documents. The Spanish did not want to share their knowledge; therefore they kept their documents in manuscript form, unpublished. 5) Von HuMBolDt’S atlaS of MExICo — The German Baron, Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), was an esteemed geographer and man of science who visited Mexico in 1803. Von Humboldt’s general map of Mexico brought knowledge of the geographic relationship of the emerging United States with the American Southwest to a broad reading public. 6) tHoMaS JEffErSon’S lEttEr to Baron Alexander von Humboldt, June 9, 1804 — President Jefferson sought information on the territory west of the Mississippi River from a wide variety of sources. When Baron von Humboldt visited Washington in 1804, after his South American tour, Jefferson took the opportunity to gather information about the newly acquired Louisiana territory. In this note to von Humboldt, Jefferson was particularly interested in the population “of white, red, or black people.”
7) MaCkay-EVanS MaP of tHE MISSourI — Although several copies of this detailed and influential manuscript map were made, only this copy survives. It was drafted for the use of Lewis and Clark and carried by them on the first leg of their journey up the Missouri River. Based on surveys up to the Mandan-Hidatsa villages by explorer-trader James Mackay (1759–1822) with the assistance of John Evans (1770–1799), the map is recognized as a milestone in Great Plains cartography since it was the first to employ extensive astronomical observations and compass readings. 8) 1802 arrowSMItH MaP of nortH aMErICa — This hand-colored engraved map is one of the most significant documents in the exhibitions. Made by British mapmaker, Aaron Arrowsmith in 1802, this map was studied closely by Lewis and carried on the first leg of the expedition. Among Arrowsmith’s sources were Indian maps, reports and manuscript maps from the British fur trade, and British Navy exploration reports and charts of the Pacific Coast. But various elements in the map reinforced Jefferson’s misconceptions of western geography, among these were depictions of the Rocky Mountains as a single long chain and the headwaters of the upper Missouri at the eastern edge of the Rockies, suggesting those mountains were readily portaged. 9) InDIan MaP of tHE MISSourI HEaDwatErS — Peter Fidler (1769–1822), a surveyor, explorer,
Each endless evening I stand outside among the raindrops spanking pillow and blanket with a tin-eared fist. Each morning pillow and blanket crawl with multitudinous creatures who must have spent the bulk of the night reproducing.
and cartographer for the Hudson’s Bay Company, drew this highly stylized map in 1801 from one provided to him by Ac Ko Mok Ki, a Blackfeet Indian chief. The map illustrates the headwaters of the Missouri and Saskatchewan River systems flowing eastward from the Rocky Mountains. 10) tHoMaS JEffErSon’S ManuSCrIPt lEttEr to JaMES MonroE, January 13, 1803 — In order to capitalize on France’s inability to quell a slave revolt in St. Domingue (Haiti), Jefferson wrote to James Monroe underscoring the urgency to begin the process of acquiring Louisiana. Jefferson states: “…you cannot too much hasten it, as the moment in France is critical. St. Domingue delays their taking possession of Louisiana, and they are in the last distress for money for current purposes.” 11) ManuSCrIPt of JEffErSon’S SPEECH to a DElEgatIon of InDIan CHIEfS anD tHEIr rESPonSE, January 4, 1806 — Before leaving St. Louis, Lewis and Clark began organizing Indian delegations to visit the new “great father” in Washington. Jefferson’s speech is an arresting combination of friendship, promises of peace in a shared country, and thinly veiled threats if they rejected American sovereignty. In response, the Indian delegation did not accept their status as “children” in the new American order. They aptly voiced their concerns over the troubled economic relationship between native people and Federal trading posts, and the rising tide of violence Indians suffered at the hands of white settlers. 12) SIttIng raBBIt’S MaP of tHE MISSourI — Sitting Rabbit [I Ki Ha Wa He, also known as Little Owl] was a Mandan Indian. In 1906 the North Dakota Historical Society commissioned him to map the Missouri River through North Dakota to the mouth of the Yellowstone. Although he used a Missouri River Commission map as his base, the content provides a traditional Indian perspective of the river’s geography and starkly contrasts Clark’s route map (exhibited nearby) of the same area. Clark’s map is often emptier than Sitting Rabbit’s as he was not attempting to show the layers of history
and meaning surrounding every stream and hill. 13) tHoMaS JEffErSon PEaCE MEDal MaDE By tHE unItED StatES MInt In 1801 — Lewis and Clark brought at least eighty-nine government issued peace medals, in five sizes in order to designate five “ranks” of chief. In the eyes of Americans, Indians who accepted such medals were also acknowledging American sovereignty as “children” of a new “great father.” And in a moment of imperial bravado, Lewis hung a peace medal around the neck of a Piegan Blackfeet warrior killed by the expedition in late July 1806. 14) tHoMaS JEffErSon’S InStruCtIonS for MErIwEtHEr lEwIS — Letterpress copy of manuscript, page 3, June 20, 1803. No document proved more important for the exploration of the American West than the letter of instructions Jefferson prepared for Lewis. Jefferson’s letter became the charter for federal exploration for the remainder of the nineteenth century. Jefferson sketched out a comprehensive and flexible plan for western exploration. That plan created a military exploring party with one key mission—finding the water passage across the continent “for the purposes of commerce”—and many additional objectives, ranging from botany to ethnography. 15) wooD EngraVIngS froM tHE Journal of PatrICk gaSS (1771–1870) — Gass was a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. 16) HanD-ColorED lItHograPH By gEorgE CatlIn, “BEar DanCE of tHE SIoux” 1832 [printed 1844] in North American Indian Portfolio — Artist George Catlin painted a dance held in preparation for a traditional Sioux bear hunt. 17) HErBarIuM SHEEt froM tHE Plant CollECtIon of MErIwEtHEr lEwIS — Meriwether Lewis oversaw the collection and description of nearly two hundred species of plants. Although Lewis wrote scientifically accurate descriptions of many plants, he never gave them the Latin names that scientists use for precise identification. If he had, he would have gotten credit for recording the first scientific descriptions of many of the plants he collected. Since he didn’t, that honor had to wait until botanist Frederik Pursh (1774-1820) named many of his specimens a few years after the expedition had returned. 18) nInEtEEntH CEntury ManDan BEar SHIElD — The shield was an object of reverence for
And another day of rainfall and elk begins. And here is what your tin-eared carpenter learns: What lasts forever goes on for a long, long time.
Ultimately, the transcontinenetal railroad, completed after the Civil War, replaced the dream of a river that flowed across the continent from East to West.
the Plains warrior.. Among the Northern Plains Indians no animal commanded more respect than the bear, which they believed was among the animals imbued with human characteristics and healing powers. This buffalo hide shield is painted with a bear as its central figure, encircled with clawed paws to ward off enemies from all directions. The bear paw symbolizes the fearsome strength and spiritual power of the bear. 19) T hE P RAiR iE By JaMES fEnIMorE CooPEr — The Prairie, published in 1827, is one of five novels that make up James Fenimore Cooper’s enduring Leatherstocking Tales. In this third novel of the series, protagonist Leatherstocking, despondent over the destruction of the forests, escapes to the Great Plains. Cooper’s vivid descriptions of the central plains were deeply influenced by the published report of the Long expedition. 20) CurrIEr & IVES lItHograPH “wEStwarD tHE CourSE of EMPIrE takES ItS way” FRoM A C R o s s T h E C o nT i nE nT ThE bo ok PubLish Ed i n 1868 — The subtitle of this popular Currier & Ives print comes from the sixth stanza of Anglican bishop and philosopher George Berkeley’s 1726 poem “On the Prospect of Planting
Dear N.D. Museum of Art Staff: Thank you for letting me come to the museum. All those jourals and Arrowsmith maps were really cool. I wish I could see the whole exhibit. I liked that single-shot rifle. My dad would be interested in that. I couldn’t read the journals and papers, it wasn’t that ledgible. All of it was really fascinating. Thanks again. Jared, Century Elementary
Arts and Learning in America,” in which he views America as the grand culmination of the progress of civilization. 21) waSHIngton IrVIng’S Book T hE R oCk y M ounTAi ns , oR , s C EnEs , i nCidE nTs , And A dv EnTuREs in ThE F AR W EsT — Captain Benjamin Bonneville sold the story of his adventures in the fur trade to Washington Irving (1783–1859), who, in 1837, turned it into a book. The two-volume publication was enormously popular and among the most important literary descriptions of the Rockies and the West prior to the reports of the government sponsored expeditions of the 1840s and 1850s. 22) DaVID Burr’S 1839, HanD-ColorED EngraVED MaP of tHE unItED StatES of nortH aMErICa wItH PartS of tHE aDJaCEnt CountrIES . . . . — David Burr (1803–1875), geographer to the House of Representatives, was
one of the most accomplished, early nineteenthcentury American cartographers. In addition to government maps, he produced a large body of commercial maps and atlases. In this map he utilizes the geographic knowledge of fur trader Jedediah Smith. Pembina is the only town noted on the Red River in present day North Dakota. 23) wIntEr Count — Attributed to High Dog (Lakota), it was made before 1912 with colored pigment on muslin cloth. Winter counts are chronicles of significant events in the lives of the Plains Indians in which a symbolic image or a simple scene represents an entire year. Buffalo hunts, tribal warfare, famines, and the outbreak of disease are just a few of the occurrences depicted in these communal histories. Although encounters with missionaries and fur traders appear throughout High Dog’s winter count, there are no discernible depictions marking the passage of the Corps of
When a good thing happens sometimes it goes on happening, and if you are standing at the rim of its center you find yourself reduced to thankfulness, to a moment when spite and vinegar evaporate and dissolve, and wedge and barrier give way to seem and circle.
This Library of Congress exhibition and its national tour were made possible through funding from the United States Congress.
Representatives Doug Bereuter and Earl Pomeroy.
This exhibition at the North Dakota Museum of Art is
Underwritten by David Rognlie, who graduated from the University of North Dakota in 1956.
Congressional funding was secured by the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Congressional Caucus and its co-chairs, Senators Conrad Burns, Larry Craig, and Byron Dorgan
With additional funding from Grand Forks Herald Grand Forks Public Schools Johnson Laffen Galloway Architects Land OLakes Foundation Margery McCanna-Jennison Nash Family Foundation Nodak Electric Trust North Dakota Council on the Arts North Dakota Department of Commerce-Tourism Division University of North Dakota Office of Academic Affairs Department of Facilities Xcel Energy The Museum receives general operating support from the Bush Foundation.
This tabloid is underwritten by the Grand Forks Herald and Nodak Electric Cooperative – Operation Round Up.