The museum also had a wonderful display about some of the members of the expedition that perhaps we didn’t know much about. This post will tell us more about Pomp who was the youngest member of the expedition, his mother Sacagawea, George Drouillard, Pierre Cruzatte, Nathaniel Pryor, York, and John Colter.
Pomp – baby on board
Captain Clark gave Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau the nickname “Pomp” because his name was too long and called him his “dancing boy.” He was carried on his mother’s back much of the journey to the Pacific Ocean.
Even though Pomp was very little, he was still important to the expedition. Indigenous people were sometimes afraid or worried to meet a group of white men. But when they saw Pomp and his mother, the tribes decided that men who traveled with a family might be friendly. [This may have been why the Salish welcomed the expedition in addition to the Shoshone guide who was with them.]
When he was 18, he met a German prince who took him to Europe for six years. He had lots of different jobs when he came back to the United States, including trapper, guide, gold prospector, and even Mayor of San Luis Rey Mission in California.
Sacagawea – the lone woman
In the autumn of 1800, during the annual buffalo hunt, a Hidatsa war party attacked her tribe at the forks of the Missouri River [three forks]. She was about 12 years old at the time and was taken hostage and transported to a large Mandan and Hidatsa trade center where she became the woman of French Canadian trader Toussaint Charbonneau. Charbonneau was hired as an interpreter in November 1804 with the expedition, and she went along with her son who was born a couple of months prior to their departure.
George Drouillard – invaluable interpreter, dependable outdoorsman
Soon after being baptized on September 27, 1775, by his French Canadian father and Shawnee mother, George and his mother moved with Shawnee relatives to Cape Girardeau, Missouri. There George learned to speak Shawnee, French, English, and Plains Indian Sign, as well as how to hunt and live off the land.
As the expedition moved forward, Drouillard became the only person Clark identified by first name in his journals. Whenever Lewis separated himself from the rest of the group to explore or to hunt, he asked Drouillard to join him. He was a very skilled pathfinder, tracker, hunter, and survivalist—one that could always be trusted, even in the most perilous circumstances.
After the expedition, Drouillard and some other members of the Corps traveled back up the Missouri River in the employ of the Spanish fur trader Manuel Lisa. During this time, he collected information for Clark to improve maps of the area. Drouillard was likely killed in 1810 by the Blackfeet and Gros Ventre while trapping beaver on the upper Missouri in present-day Montana where his remains were discovered alongside the remains of his horse.
Pierre Cruzatte – man of many talents
Probably born around 1770, Pierre’s father came from an early French settler family in St. Louis, and his mother was from the Omaha tribe. Cruzatte brought many useful talents to the expedition with his command of French and the Omaha language, as well as his skills in sign language that played a role during encounters on the lower Missouri River.
Cruzatte was one of the expedition’s principal hunters, despite being blind in one eye. His poor eyesight was the cause of Captain Lewis’s most critical injury on the journey home (see Ordway’s journal entry below on August 11, 1806). Cruzatte was also noted as a fiddle player whose talent boosted the group’s morale.
Nathaniel Pryor – steadfast sergeant
Nathaniel was one of the “nine young men from Kentucky” enlisted by Clark in 1803. The captains chose Pryor, a Virginia-born woodsman, as one of the three sergeants. Among his first supervisory tasks was the cutting of wood to construct buildings for the expedition’s 1804 winter at Camp Dubois. Later in the expedition, Pryor’s woodworking skills were put into service to repair two canoes purchased from Indians near Fort Clatsop near the Pacific Coast.
One of these tasks was a diplomatic mission on the way home to secure the assistance of the trader Hugh Heney and to barter horses for supplies needed for the final leg of the expedition’s return to St. Louis. When a Crow raiding party stole all of the horses under Pryor’s care, this mission ended almost as soon as it began. Pryor’s party rejoined the expedition by building bull boats and traveling down the Yellowstone River.
His contributions are memorialized by the many places named after him: the town of Pryor, the Pryor Mountains, and Pryor Creek. He died in June 1831.
York – involuntary ambassador
Even while living as property with Captain Clark’s family since birth, and then with Clark himself, York became an important instrument of diplomacy on the expedition as he was admired by many tribes for his large stature, strength, and very dark skin. He also proved to be a skilled hunter, which was a rare opportunity for an enslaved man who otherwise would not have been allowed to use a rifle. He was even sent as an emissary to trade with the tribes.
John Colter – the Mountain Man
Enlisting in the Corps of Discovery as a private in 1803, Colter soon became one of the expedition’s most valued hunters, scouts, and guides. Throughout the journey, he was routinely the first to be asked to hunt game and scout trails, and often succeeded in tracking down new tribes and finding lost horses. Colter’s ability to keep his cool in unexpected or threatening situations was an asset when talking and trading with certain tribes.
In the Mandan villages, some civilian fur trappers described their plan to head into the Upper Missouri River. Colter requested permission to leave Army service to join the trappers, and Lewis granted Colter an honorable discharge. With 20 beaver traps, 2 years of ammunition, and tools from the expedition, Colter returned to the frontier.
Later hired by Manuel Lisa for the newly formed Missouri Fur Company, Colter traveled alone through 500 miles in the Wind River Mountains, Teton Range, and Yellowstone Lake area. He is often credited as the first white man to explore the land now encompassing Yellowstone National Park. [In part 45 of our trip, we learned that in September 1809, Colter was captured by a band of Blackfeet around the three forks area. They thought they could catch him after giving him a head start as he ran through the prairie, but he outran them and got to safety.]
Colter re-enlisted to serve in the War of 1812 and died while in service, presumably of jaundice.
Now let’s look at Travelers’ Rest as we see it today.
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