William Clark (explorer)

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William Clark

Born August 1, 1770
Virginia
Died September 1, 1838 (aged 68)
St. Louis, Missouri
Occupation Soldier, explorer, government official
Parents John Clark III,
Ann Rogers Clark
For other persons named William Clark, see William Clark (disambiguation).


William Clark (August 1, 1770 – September 1, 1838) was an American explorer, soldier, Indian agent, and territorial governor who, with Meriwether Lewis, led the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Contents

[edit] Early life

William Clark was born in Caroline County, Virginia, on August 1, 1770, the ninth of the ten children of John and Ann Rogers Clark.[1] His parents were natives of King and Queen County, and were of English and possibly Scottish ancestry.[2] The Clarks were of the lesser Virginia gentry, owners of modest estates and a few slaves,[3] and members of the Anglican Church.

Clark did not have any formal education, but like many of his contemporaries he was tutored at home. In later years, he was somewhat self-conscious about his convoluted grammar and inconsistent spelling—he spelled "Sioux" twenty-seven different ways in his journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition—and sought to have his journals corrected before publication.[4] But the spelling of American English was not standardized in Clark's youth, and his vocabulary suggests that he was well read.[5]

Clark's five older brothers fought in Virginia units during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), but William was too young to go off to battle.[2] His second-oldest brother, George Rogers Clark, rose to the rank of general, spending most of the war in Kentucky fighting against British-allied American Indians. After the war, George Rogers Clark and Jonathan Clark, the oldest Clark brother, made arrangements for their parents to relocate to Kentucky. William, his parents, his three sisters, and the Clark family's slaves arrived in Kentucky in March 1785, having traveled overland to Redstone Landing before completing the journey down the Ohio River by flatboat. The Clark family settled at "Mulberry Hill", a plantation along Beargrass Creek near Louisville. This would be William Clark's primary home until 1803. In Kentucky, George Rogers Clark taught William wilderness survival skills.[6]

[edit] Military career begins

Although the Revolutionary War was over, Kentuckians continued to fight an undeclared war with American Indians north of the Ohio River. In 1789, nineteen year-old William Clark began his military career by joining a volunteer militia force under Major John Hardin.[7] Clark kept a detailed journal of the expedition, the beginning of a lifelong practice. The targets of Hardin's expedition were Wea Indians on the Wabash River who had been raiding settlements in Kentucky. Unfortunately, the undisciplined Kentucky militia instead attacked a peaceful Shawnee hunting camp, killing eight men, women, and children.[8]

In 1790, Clark was commissioned by General Arthur St. Clair, governor of the Northwest Territory, as a captain in the Clarksville militia. The exact nature of his services that year are unclear; one older source says that he was sent on a mission to the Creek and Cherokee Indians.[9] He may have visited New Orleans at that time. His travels prevented him from participating in General Josiah Harmar's disastrous campaign into the Northwest Territory that year.[10]

In 1791 he served as an ensign and acting lieutenant with expeditions under Generals Charles Scott and James Wilkinson. Clark was commissioned as a first lieutenant by General Washington in the fourth legion under General Anthony Wayne in 1793. He was involved in several skirmishes with Indians, and was thanked by General Wayne for his good conduct during the campaign.[11] He distinguished himself at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 by commanding of a company of riflemen which drove back the enemy on the left flank, killing a number of Indians and Canadians.

In 1795 he was dispatched on a mission to New Madrid.

[edit] Lewis and Clark Expedition

Main article: Lewis and Clark Expedition

William Clark resigned his commission in 1796 and retired due to poor health and constipation, returning to Mulberry Hill, his family plantation near Louisville. In 1803, he was asked by Meriwether Lewis to share command of the newly-formed Corps of Discovery. Clark spent three years on the expedition, and although technically subordinate to Lewis in rank, he exercised equal authority at Lewis's insistence. He concentrated chiefly on the drawing of maps, the management of the expedition's supplies, and leading hunting.

[edit] Indian affairs and war

Clark was appointed the brigadier general of the militia in the Louisiana Territory in 1807, which made him the agent for Indian affairs. He set up his headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. During the War of 1812, he led several campaigns, among them in 1814 one along the Mississippi River, up to the Prairie du Chien-area, where he established short lived Fort Shelby, the first post in what is now Wisconsin. It was captured by the British soon. When the Missouri Territory was formed in 1813, Clark was appointed governor. When Missouri became a state in 1820, Clark was defeated in the run for governor by Alexander McNair. In 1822 he was appointed Superintendent of Indian Affairs by president James Monroe, a new position created by congress after the factory system was abolished. Clark remained in that capacity until his death, his title changed with the creation of the Office of Indian Affairs in 1824 and finally the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1829, both within the War Department.[12]

In 1824/25 he was additionally appointed surveyor general of Illinois, Missouri and the Territory of Arkansaw.

Clark married Julia Hancock on January 5, 1808, and had five children with her: Meriwether Lewis Clark (1809-1881) named after his friend Meriwether Lewis; William Preston Clark (1811-1840); Mary Margaret Clark (1814-1821); George Rogers Hancock Clark (1816-1858), named after her older brother; and John Julius Clark (1818-1831). After Julia's death in 1820, he married her first cousin Harriet Kennerly Radford and had three children with her: Jefferson Kearny Clark (1824-1900); Edmund Clark (1826-1827); and Harriet Clark (dates unknown; died as child). His second wife died in 1831. His stepdaughter Mary Radford married Stephen Watts Kearny

Clark died in St. Louis on September 1, 1838 and was buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery, where a 35-foot (10.6 m) gray granite obelisk was erected to mark his grave.

[edit] Legacy

Although his family had established endowments to maintain his grave site, by the late 20th century the grave site had fallen into disrepair. His descendants raised $100,000 to rehabilitate the obelisk and celebrated the re-dedication with a ceremony May 21, 2004, on the bicentennial of the start of his famous expedition. The ceremony was attended by a large gathering of his descendants, reenactors in period dress, and leaders from the Osage Nation, and the Lemhi band of the Shoshone Native American people.

Clark was a member of the Freemasons. The records of his initiation do not exist, but on September 18, 1809, Saint Louis Lodge No. 111 issued a traveling certificate for Clark. [1].

On January 17, 2001, in one of his last acts as President, Bill Clinton posthumously raised Clark's regular army rank to captain. Descendants of Clark were there to mark the occasion. [2]

The western American plant genus Clarkia (in the Evening primrose family Onagraceae), is named after him, as are the Western cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki), Clark's Grebe (Aechmophorus clarkii), and Clark's Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana), a large passerine bird, in the family Corvidae. Several states have named a county in his honor: Arkansas, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, and Washington. He also has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. Clarks River in western Kentucky is named for him.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Foley, Wilderness Journey, 2–3.
  2. ^ a b Foley, Wilderness Journey, 2.
  3. ^ Foley, Wilderness Journey, 1.
  4. ^ Foley, Wilderness Journey, 18.
  5. ^ Foley, Wilderness Journey, 19.
  6. ^ Foley, Wilderness Journey, 13–17.
  7. ^ Foley, Wilderness Journey, 23.
  8. ^ Paul David Nelson. "Hardin, John"; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000; Wiley Sword, President Washington's Indian War (University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 77. Foley, Wilderness Journey, 24–25, mentions the attack on the camp and the casualties, but does not identify the Indians as peaceful or as Shawnees.
  9. ^ Indiana Historical Bureau
  10. ^ Foley, Wilderness Journey, 25–26.
  11. ^ Indiana Historical Bureau
  12. ^ Buckley, Jay H. William Clark: Indian Diplomat. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008.

[edit] References

  • Foley, William E. Wilderness Journey: The Life of William Clark. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8262-1533-5.

[edit] External links

Preceded by
Benjamin Howard		 Governor of Missouri Territory
1813-1820		 Succeeded by
Alexander McNair (statehood)