Missouri Indian Oto Indian Chief or the Puncas
with Arlie Neskahi
[audio:https://www.wisdomoftheelders.org/s2_progs/201_hi.mp3]
Arlie Neskahi:
This is Wisdom of the Elders. I’m Arlie Neskahi.
12 pipe tomahawks, 47 1/2 yards of red flannel, a dozen ivory combs, 2800 fish hooks, 130 rolls of tobacco. those are just a few of the items on Lewis and Clark’s list of Indian presents to be carefully sorted and packaged in water-proof bags, hauled up the Missouri, and handed out to the ambassadors of the native nations they would contact. Experience showed that venturing forth on a journey across the continent without gifts would be foolhardy. In the months before setting out, the expedition’s leader Captain Meriwether Lewis and second in command, Captain William Clark, poured over maps, picked the brains of traders and voyageurs, and spoke to a number of Indians to find out as much as they could about the land and the people they were destined to encounter.
Their keelboat and two pirogues were loaded with gifts. Dozens of butcher knives, calico shirts, blue and red glass beads, needles, vermillion face paint, moccasin awls and brass buttons, an array of goods calculated to help fulfill Thomas Jefferson’s marching orders: to establish friendly relations with the many potential trading partners along the Missouri and across the continental divide. Historian James Ronda, author of Lewis and Clark Among the Indians :
James Ronda:
So those bundles of goods are not just stuff. They are part of a large scale diplomatic, commercial effort to expand the American empire. these aren’t gifts just to be nice. They are gifts that have an imperial agenda, imperial power behind them.
Lewis and Clark: The Departure from St. Charles, May 21, 1804 by Gary R. Lucy. Courtesy of the Gary R. Lucy Gallery, Inc. Washington, MO. - www.garylucy.com
Neskahi:
As the explorers pushed their way up the Missouri into present day Kansas and Nebraska the central plains territories of the Otoe, Missouri, the Omaha and the Osage, they knew that gifts were a necessary prelude to any meaningful contact.
The tradition of gift-giving among Indian people is as alive today as it was in 1804. The offering of a gift forms an immediate bond and opens the way for continued relationship of mutual regard and respect. Gift giving is done nation to nation, clan to clan, person to person. Gifts are also given between this world and the spirit world.
On August 3 rd, Missouri and Otoe Indians gathered in the morning fog at a place called Council Bluff across the river from today’s Omaha, Nebraska. They were curious to find what these well-equipped white men had to offer.
The Indians sat under an awning of sailcloth and witnessed a demonstration of military prowess, after which gifts were distributed and the Indian leaders each acknowledged the honor with words of their own. But the Indians were full of questions and doubts. What was there to gain, what to lose? How would their world change? The explorers, on the other hand, may not have fully appreciated the complexity of the intertribal network that had been functioning for thousands of years.
"Captain Lewis & Clark holding a council with the Indians," an etching in A Journal of the Voyages and Travels of a Corps of Discovery, Under the Command of Capt. Lewis and Capt. Clarke, by Patrick Gass. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, LC-USZ62-17372 www.loc.gov
Ronda:
It is just that they are stepping into a world that is infinitely more complex and infinitely more convoluted than they imagined. They imagined that by simply saying the word, “You have a new great father,” they could alter reality. And they thought simply by saying the word, they could change the shape of the present, and they could certainly change the shape of the future.