Prologue to Lewis and Clark: The Mackay and Evans Expedition by W. Raymond Wood

Author:W. Raymond Wood [Wood, W. Raymond]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Travel & Adventure, Northwest History, Northwest Passage, Northwest, to read, Nonfiction
Published: 2005-10-08T06:42:18+00:00

DENOUEMENTAND DISILLUSION

Fig. 20. The Indian Office map as prepared by JamesMackay. (CourtesyNational Archives and Records Service, Washington, D.C.)

irom its mouth as far as the riviere BEanche [White River, South Dakota] which includes about three hundred and fifty leagues. You will receive this map as soon as it is distinct."17 Any final map purporting to illustrate the expedition's full range of discoveries would have to await Evans's return, for Mackay himself is not known to have gone up the Missouribeyond Bad Village, though he had been along the lowermost reaches of the Niobrara River. Evans did not

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PROLOGUE TO LEWIS AND CLARK

return to St. Louis until about July 15. During his excursion, he had made a map of his voyage to the Mandans, illustrating the river from Fort Charles to their villages. Without Evans's contribution, Mackay's product could not haveshowntheMissouriRiverabovetheWhiteRiver.TheIndianOfficemap is, therefore, a composite product of the two men.

At least two separate copies of the enlarged map appeared over the next few months. Clamorgan received the first of them. When Mackay reported to Clamorgan upon his return, the director dutifully passed this information on to higher Spanish authorities. On October 14, five months after Mackay's return to St. Louis, Clamorgan forwarded to Secretary Manuel Andres Lopez de Armesto a copy of "the map of the Missouri well drawn up at the cost and expense of the company."18 If this draft remains in the Spanish archives, it has yet to be discovered.

ThesecondenlargedmapwasdrawnupforZenonTrudeau.Threemonths after Clamorgan sent his map to New Orleans, Trudeau sent Manuel Gayoso de Lemos (Carondelet's successor in New Orleans) a map of the Missouri River. This version, apparentlynow "distinct," included the course of the river "as far as the Mandan nation." Trudeau wrote: "I am enclosing to Your Excellency a relacion of a voyage which M. Mackay has made in the Upper Missouri, and the map of the said river, as far as the Mandan nation, made by the same person, which I believe to be the most exact of those which have been formed up to the present."19

One of the Chouteau brothers of St. Louis, on a periodic business visit to the capital in 1798, delivered the map to Gayoso de Lemos. A letter to the governor general by Trudeau documented this delivery and specified that Mackay was "the author of the map which Mr. Chouteau will deliver to

No trace of this map remains.

Mackay in a letter to Gayoso de Lemos dated June 8,1798, claimed to have madeamapoftheMissourifromitsmouthtothe"wanutarieswdatsa]nation."21 His claim did not mention the contribution made by his assistant Evans. Mackay earlier, of course, had visited the Mandan and Hidatsa villages, but he did so by coming down from Canada in 1787, before he moved to St. Louis. Possibly some of the details on this small upper portion of the map could reflect his own personal experiences during that previous visit.

Another copy of the map, also now lost, came into the possession of Daniel Clark Jr. of New Orleans. Clark, a native of Ireland, came to New Orleans in 1786,becoming a wealthy merchant and attorney.

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