Mighty Missouri guided Corps to Great Plains

By John Krist,
Senior reporter

Staff photo by John Krist A 100-foot-tall sandstone obelisk on a bluff in Sioux City, Iowa, marks the grave of Sgt. Charles Floyd. The 21-year-old Kentuckian was the only member of the Lewis and Clark expedition to die during the arduous 8,000-mile journey, succumbing to illness just three months after the group left the St. Louis area.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa -- On a bluff overlooking the Missouri River stands a 100-foot-tall obelisk, similar in design to the Washington Monument. It is the most imposing of all the markers denoting sites of significance along the 3,700-mile Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, and it commemorates a man whose place in history was assured by that most commonplace of human accomplishments.

He fell ill and died.

The white sandstone monument marks the grave of Sgt. Charles Floyd, a 21-year-old Kentuckian who died only three months after the Corps of Discovery left the St. Louis area and began ascending the Missouri River. He was the only member of the expedition to die during its 8,000-mile trip across some of the most rugged and dangerous terrain in North America -- a landscape that presented such threats to life and limb as grizzly bears, wolves, stampeding bison, potentially hostile natives, vicious hail and thunderstorms, sub-zero temperatures, blizzards, wild rivers, fierce summer sun, and the thousand possible accidents that could befall anyone whose daily routine involved shooting a muzzle-loading rifle, hauling heavy gear across rough country and wielding such sharp objects as knives, axes and tomahawks.

Floyd succumbed not to any of these hazards but to what medical experts today surmise was a ruptured appendix. What passed for medical science in 1804 could not have saved him even if he had been in the finest urban hospital instead of in a wilderness campsite on the edge of the Great Plains. In an era before antibiotic drugs -- before it was even understood that germs caused infection and disease -- even a simple laceration could kill. Floyd's death, rather than casting a shadow over the expedition, underscores how prudently it was conducted and how fortunate it was.

Although the Sgt. Floyd Monument is visible from nearly every part of Sioux City, which grew up around the bluff where he was buried, it is not particularly easy to reach by road. Or perhaps I was just having trouble with stop lights and intersections after so many days driving through small towns containing few of either. In any event, it took me several tries before I managed to figure out the city's odd tangle of streets and find my way to the parking lot near the marker.

There's an expansive view from the site, extending across the broad valley of the Missouri River and the rich agricultural landscape of Iowa and Nebraska. The monument was dedicated on Memorial Day 1901, and the speaker for the occasion was Elliott Coues, editor of an early version of the Lewis and Clark journals, who provided an inspiring summation of the journey:

"I must confess that I am what my friends call me -- a Lewis and Clark enthusiast. But I do not think that anyone can read that national epic of exploration without sharing my enthusiasm. It is one of the grandest episodes in the history of our country. Every American can be proud of it. Every person in Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, South and North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington -- for the expedition passed through all these states -- has an interest in the immortal achievements of these dauntless pioneers. For every Iowan, this interest focuses about the saddest incident of the whole journey -- the death of Charles Floyd."

There's nothing particularly sad or somber about the site today, with its scenic location and the gaily colored necklace of flowers planted all about. But Sgt. Floyd's extravagant monument, five times as tall as the modest obelisk marking Meriwether Lewis' grave in Tennessee, does provide a good excuse to think about the individual members of the expedition, who tend to be rendered anonymous by the shorthand label "lewisandclark" by which the company is so generally known.

If you spend much time on the trail, and particularly if you read from the expedition's journals while you travel, eventually you begin to feel as if you know the members of the expedition. Or at least some of them. Several remained anonymous during the trip, mere names in a log book, while others are mentioned again and again and are the subjects of published biographies.

But whether famous or obscure, they all stand as reminders that every remarkable historic event has at its core a cast of living characters -- flesh-and-blood human beings whose fears, hopes, dreams, foibles, failures and accomplishments together weave the tapestry of our past.

After paying my respects at the Sgt. Floyd Monument, I visited the nearby Sgt. Floyd Riverboat Museum and Welcome Center, a permanently drydocked Corps of Engineers boat used to move work crews, equipment and supplies, as well as to set navigation buoys, from 1933 to 1975 during the COE's "improvement" of the lower river. Situated on the bank of the Missouri not far from the Sgt. Floyd memorial, the museum features displays about the Lewis and Clark expedition as well as the history of steamboating on the Missouri. The exhibits underscore the danger the unruly river posed to boat traffic, presenting a roster of paddlewheelers that met ignoble ends after being impaled by snags or running aground on rocks and sandbars.

Staff photo by John Krist A rare free-flowing stretch of the Missouri River, visible from an overlook at Nebraska's Ponca State Park, displays the shallow, sand-clogged channel that made navigation so difficult before engineers dredged and straightened it.

Beyond Sioux City, the expedition's trail leads into Nebraska and to Ponca State Park, which occupies a prominent bluff overlooking one of the few stretches of the Missouri that still resemble the river Lewis and Clark navigated.

Downstream from Ponca, the Missouri is straitjacketed into a barge channel constructed by the Corps of Engineers, artificially narrowed, straightened, deepened, largely deprived of the sloughs, meanders and other features that made it such a difficult waterway to navigate but also filled it with life. Farther upstream lie the six enormous COE dams that have turned most of the upper Missouri into a nearly continuous string of lakes, as well as numerous smaller dams impounding much smaller lakes.

Ponca State Park, however, overlooks the start of a 59-mile segment extending upstream to Gavins Point Dam, near Yankton, S.D., that flows through a wide, braided, messy channel almost as wild as it was 200 years ago. Besides this segment -- which the federal government has designated a national recreational river under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act -- only three significant chunks of the Missouri remain in a semi-natural, free-flowing state:

• A 45-mile segment between the upper end of Lewis and Clark Lake, the reservoir impounded by Gavins Point Dam, and Fort Randall Dam, just over the Nebraska state line in South Dakota.
• An 87-mile stretch near Bismarck, N.D., between Lake Oahe and Garrison Dam.
• The 149-mile Upper Missouri National Wild and Scenic River in central Montana, extending from the upper end of Fort Peck Lake to the town of Fort Benton.

That's it -- of the Missouri's 2,341-mile-long course across half the continent, only 281 miles of channel still look and behave anything like the river Lewis and Clark saw.

As I discovered when I proceeded into South Dakota and reached the first of the big COE projects, the dams that helped transform the river are much more impressive statistically than they are visually.

There's no denying that they're huge. Fort Peck Dam in Montana is the largest dam of its kind in the world, stretching four miles across the Missouri River Valley and containing 126 million cubic yards of compacted earth fill. The others are likewise massive, ranging from Garrison Dam, 2.5 miles long, to Gavins Point Dam, the baby of the bunch at a mere 1.6 miles. Together, the six dams can generate 2.4 million kilowatts of electricity -- enough hydropower to light Los Angeles -- and huge transmission towers wired to their powerhouses march off across the plains in every direction like a metallic army of skeletal giants.

But against the vastness of the Great Plains, even these huge structures seem dwarfed. And they are not particularly interesting to look at. The main Missouri dams are brutes, lacking the engineering finesse and architectural elegance of the big concrete arch dams plugging other western rivers -- such awe-inspiring drainstoppers as Hoover and Glen Canyon. Basically, the Missouri dams are dirt embankments that rely on sheer mass to counter the power of the river. They are simply immovable objects plunked down in the path of a not-quite-irresistible force.

Staff photo by John Krist The visitor center overlooking Gavins Point Dam occupies the remnants of Calumet Bluff. On the bottomlands nearby, Lewis and Clark had their first formal introduction to Plains Indian culture, during a dramatic yet festive encounter with the Yankton Sioux.

I stopped at the large visitor center at Gavins Point Dam, which has many displays about Lewis and Clark, as well as the Missouri dam projects and the "taming" of the mighty river. The visitor center is located on what remains of Calumet Bluff, a landmark of particular importance during the expedition, offering a panoramic view of the dam and Lewis and Clark Lake. Much of the bluff was destroyed during construction of the dam.

The Corps of Discovery camped on the bottomlands just below Calumet Bluff on Aug. 30, 1804, and met there with the Yankton Sioux. This was their first diplomatic encounter with representatives of the most powerful nation of the American interior, and introduced the expedition to the complex nomadic culture of the Great Plains.

About 70 members of the tribe came to the council called by Lewis and Clark. It was an occasion of great drama and ceremony: The Yankton delegation was preceded by musicians; the American soldiers saluted them with a blast from the swivel gun mounted on the bow of one of the boats. Tobacco was exchanged, and then the speeches began.

Following the instructions of his president (see accompanying story) Lewis told the Sioux of America's interest in trade and peace, advised them to cease warring with their neighbors and invited them to send a delegation to the U.S. capital to see for themselves the power of the nation now exerting dominion over the plains. The captains handed out gifts -- medals bearing a likeness of President Jefferson on one side and two clasped hands on the other, a flag, a military uniform.

Later that evening, the Sioux danced in their paint and finery for members of the expedition, who responded with still more gifts -- bells, knives, tobacco. The night was lit by a great campfire, and the air throbbed with the beat of drums and the clatter of rattles.

"It always began with a houp and hollow and ended with the same," Sgt. John Ordway wrote in his journal, "and in the intervales one of the warriors at a time would rise with his weapon and speak of what he had done in his day and what warlike actions he had done."

A disappointed Patrick Gass, perhaps revealing one effect of the all-male expedition's lengthening passage through the wilderness, noted wistfully that "No Squaws made their appearnce among this party."

It was not far from Calumet Bluff and the eventual site of Gavins Point Dam that the expedition's hunters first encountered the totem animal of the plains, foundation of the domestic economy for scores of native tribes inhabiting one of the largest grasslands in the world.

"J. Fields Sent out to hunt," Clark wrote in his journal on Aug. 23, when the party was just south of today's Vermillion, S.D. "Came to the boat and informed that he had Killed a Buffalow in the plain a head. Cap. Lewis took 12 Men and had the buffalow brought to the boat."

Staff photo by John Krist The expedition's hunters shot their first buffalo not far from today's Vermillion, S.D. At the time, as many as 65 million of the creatures roamed the American plains, providing nomadic tribes with food, clothing and scores of other useful items. A century later, only a handful of buffalo remained, the species having been all but obliterated by commercial hunters and habitat loss.

That first buffalo, to be followed by many, many more shot and eaten with great relish in the coming weeks and months, was a sign the expedition was entering a new landscape, one that must have been astonishing to men raised in the hilly, heavily wooded countryside of the Alleghenies. Although much has changed in the 200 years since Lewis and Clark passed this way, the essence of the place remains much as it was: the vast sweep of the plains, the absence of trees, the way the sky arches overhead like a great blue dome, the wind that blows unhindered across the miles, ruffling the stalks of grain and grass like an invisible hand stroking the pelt of some great recumbent beast.

The air grew steadily drier and the countryside flatter as I continued northwest from Gavins Point Dam, following the river on its long, arcing swoop across the country. The course of the Missouri seems inexplicable at first glance, following a route that seems unnecessarily and extravagantly aimless. Its headwater streams flow east out of the northern Rockies and gather in Montana to form the Missouri proper, which then flows almost due north before making a 90-degree bend to the east and flowing into North Dakota. There, the river bends gently to the north again, nearly touching Canada before making an abrupt turn to the south, dropping halfway to Mexico before making another right-angle turn at Kansas City and heading east again toward its confluence with the Mississippi.

The river's course makes sense, though, once you understand the geologic history of the northern plains. When you look at a map of North America and trace the path of the Missouri, you are looking at a line that marks with almost perfect fidelity the southernmost extent of the great glaciers that bulldozed their way out of the arctic in the Ice Age.

Before the glaciers advanced, perhaps 2 million years ago, the Missouri ran northeast from its sources in Idaho and Montana, crossing Canada and emptying into Hudson Bay. The vast continental ice sheets that pushed down through Canada, however, steadily shoved the river's course to the south, cutting it off from its old mouth and forcing it into the Mississippi. Instead of mingling eventually with arctic waters, the snowmelt flowing off the Northern Rockies ended up in the Gulf of Mexico. Rather than bathing ringed seals and polar bears, it began tickling the gills of tropical fish.

The shape of the land surrounding the river itself offers a reminder of a more distant time -- north of the Missouri, the terrain is smoother and more rounded than it is to the south, having been shaped by an implacable blade of ice nearly a mile thick -- but the overall sense as the miles roll past on the plains is one of timelessness. Timelessness and space. It is a countryside of long views, where human beings and their handiwork dwindle into spatial insignificance.

Crossing into South Dakota, I detoured for a morning to visit the small town of Mitchell, home of the Corn Palace. The oddly Moorish building houses a public auditorium and is decorated inside and out each year with huge murals made of grain -- thousands and thousands of bushels of it. Think of an immobile Rose Parade float, but substitute kernels of corn for chrysanthemums, oats for orchids, wheat and rye for poppies and peonies.

Originally conceived as a public testament to the state's agricultural fertility (the first was erected in 1892), the Corn Palace is something of an icon on the northern plains, where farmers are at the mercy of inconstant rainfall, bitter winters and fluctuating commodity prices. The decorated building seems a monument to ambivalence and paradox, functioning as both a boast of horticultural success and as a talisman to ward off economic disaster.

The best time to visit is in autumn -- harvest time. I showed up in early summer, when the murals were being dismantled, and had to rely on postcards to appreciate the Corn Palace's seasonal glory. On the sidewalks around the building, the previous year's artwork had shed seeds and stalks, which gathered in papery drifts of floral dandruff.

From Mitchell I drove west to Chamberlain to visit the Akta Lakota Museum, on the campus of St. Joseph's Indian School. It has a remarkable collection of Sioux artifacts, along with artwork by contemporary painters and sculptors, and beautiful items made by practitioners of traditional crafts such as beadwork and leatherwork. Unlike many museums featuring exhibits of Plains Indian culture, the Akta Lakota Museum is run by the tribe and presents historical events from a native perspective.

Staff photo by John Krist At Roam Free Park, a tiny prairie preserve on a bluff just outside Chamberlain, S.D., native prairie grasses and wildflowers create a lush mosaic of vegetation.

From Chamberlain, the river led me northwest. On the way out of town, I pulled off the highway onto a short dirt road that ended atop a hillside next to a weathered, peeling sign identifying the place as "Roam Free Park." It's a bit of native prairie preserved on hills overlooking the river, a vest-pocket wilderness of thick, waving grass -- bluestem, grama, wheatgrass -- sprinkled with wildflowers and hidden pincushions of blooming pricklypear.

Although it is small, the park offers a taste of the landscape and the vegetation members of the Corps of Discovery would have seen when they left the boats and climbed the bluffs to get their bearings.

Lewis, in fact, did just that on Sept. 17, 1804, somewhere near Chamberlain, and described what he saw.

"(I) found the country in every direction for about three miles intersected with deep revenes and steep irregular hills of 100 to 200 feet high; at the tops of these hills the country breakes of as usual into a fine leavel plain extending as far as the eye can reach. From this plain I had an extensive view of the river below ... this senery already rich pleasing and beatiful was still further hightened by immence herds of Buffaloe, deer Elk and Antelopes which we saw in every direction feeding on the hills and plains. I do not think I exagerate when I estimate the number of Buffaloe which could be compre(hend)ed at one view to amount to 3000."

Although still "rich and pleasing," the scenery of the Great Plains today seldom includes much in the way of buffalo, elk and antelope, or even much native vegetation like that waving in the breeze at Roam Free Park. As I would discover later in my travels, there's a movement afoot to change that, to roll back 200 years of history and re-establish the native ecosystem that greeted the explorers and had sustained the Indians of the plains for centuries.