Lewis and Clark spelled words the way they sounded

By John Krist,
Senior writer

By modern standards, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were terrible spellers. And as the journals of their expedition demonstrate, their grammar, punctuation and capitalization were as bad as, if not worse than, their spelling. There are a number of reasons for their unconventional writing, just as there are sound reasons for preserving it in the excerpts chosen to accompany these stories.

For one thing, neither man had much formal schooling. Lewis was more educated than Clark and was the more eloquent and expressive writer, but his education consisted of a few years' tutelage in his teens at the hands of private instructors. Clark had no formal education at all, although he received some tutoring from his older brother.

Both were literate, and they eventually acquired great practical knowledge and skill in such fields as surveying, navigation, botany and cartography, but the journals they kept reflect their uncertain grasp of orthography. It bears noting that even among the most highly educated men and women of the day, spelling was often inventive, for standardized spelling guides had only recently come into use. The first truly American dictionary was not even published until 1806, when the explorers were still on the trail. In addition, the journals available to us today were in essence the field notes both men kept while traveling under difficult conditions, not the polished prose they would have produced with editorial help for public consumption.

Reading the expedition journals is often an or thographic adventure, but it is one certainly worth taking. Because they often did not know the "proper" spelling of even common words, both Lewis and Clark tended to spell them phonetically, which means that reading the entries as originally written is like hearing the men's actual voices. Thus, when Clark refers to the "mockersons" his men were wearing on their feet, or to the "muskeetors" that tormented them, it's a pretty fair bet that he pronounced the words that way. To "fix" their spelling would be to deprive the journal entries of their charm and personality.

Readers also may notice variation in the spelling of the name of the teen-age Shoshone girl who accompanied the explorers during much of their journey. Sakajawea, Sakakawea, Sagacawea -- each variant has its advocates and detractors. "Sacajawea" is the preferred spelling in the Pacific Northwest and among the Lemhi Shoshone of Idaho (her tribe by birth), whereas in North Dakota, particularly among the Hidatsa (who kidnapped her when she was about 12 and among whom had been living for about five years when Lewis and Clark met her), "Sakakawea" is preferred.

In this series of stories, "Sacagawea" is the preferred spelling, used in all cases except direct quotes or when a different form is officially appended to a visitor center, park or other feature. According to Lewis and Clark scholar Irving Anderson, Sacagawea's name appears 14 times in the Lewis and Clark journals, three times on the maps they made, and once in a journal kept by one of the expedition's men. In all 18 instances, the name is spelled with a "g" in the third syllable. It seems most likely that this is the correct pronunciation -- since it was written down repeatedly by the only journalists known to actually have spoken with her -- and it therefore seems the most reasonable version to use.

One journal entry provides an even stronger clue. On May 20, 1805, Lewis wrote, "a handsome river of about fifty yards in width discharged itself into the shell (Musselshell) river É this stream we called Sah-ca-ger we-ah or bird woman's River, after our interpreter the Snake woman." In the Hidatsa language, "sacaga" means bird and "wea" means woman. The word for bird might also be rendered as "sakaka," although none of the journalists wrote it down that way, but never as "sacaja," according to experts on the Hidatsa language.