Undaunted Porridge
Rivers of Rum and Other Memories
By Cal GloverOkay, my story, the short version:
Baby Boomer born — ouch! — in 1951. Junior High and High School Fort Liquordale, Florida. At nineteen, I stick out my thumb and end up washing dishes in Yellowstone National Park. Quick cut to 2007. I run a small tour guiding business of Grand Teton and Yellowstone parks.
I narrate of geology, flora, fauna and, of course, history. I start with Lewis and Clark, departing from St. Charles, Missouri, to explore the new Louisiana Purchase. I start with L&C because one of their men, private John Colter, received permission to stay behind on the 1806 return trip, then was persuaded to be the first white man to come into this area. That narrative leads into the mountain man era, searching for “soft gold,” i.e. beaver pelts. Somewhere in there I hold up a gold coin and give it away if anyone can tell me the name of the Indian girl engraved on the coin who accompanied Lewis and Clark. Often enough, over these last few years, my clients ask, “Did you read Undaunted Courage?” Steven Ambrose’s #1 Bestseller chronicling the Expedition, and Meriwether Lewis’ life before and after.
October of 2007, the girlfriend and I are off to Belize and Undaunted Courage surfaces on my list. I know to hide from the cruel tropical sun for long stretches during midday, and as Undaunted Courage is a long book…
Paraphrasing Ambrose: As a child young Meriwether watched as a British raiding party swept through his farm in 1781. Colonel Tarleton burned all the crops, corn and tobacco, the barns, took cattle, sheep, hogs for his army, carried off all the capable horses, cut the throats of the rest and burned the fences. Lewis’ father died, and by the age of eighteen, Meriwether was the head of a plantation of two dozen slaves and two thousand acres of land. He learned of soils, crops, distillery, carpentry, blacksmithing, shoemaking, timbering, killing and dressing, skinning, preserving, repairing farm equipment and rifles, treating the sick.
By the age of twenty, Lewis was an Ensign in the army. Ambrose: “Lewis’s views — and his drinking — soon got him into trouble.” A General Courts Martial was brought against Lewis. Charges were dropped.
America, 1801. March 4th. Jefferson took the Oath of Office as the third president. U.S. population, 5,308,483. One out of five was a Negro slave. Commerce, Ambrose tells us, hadn’t changed since the birth of civilization. “Americans…could not move goods or themselves or information by land or water any faster than had the Greeks and Romans.” Rivers dominated Jefferson’s thinking. He sought a water route through the western 2/3rds of the continent. In 1801, Jefferson retained Lewis as his private secretary. Lewis biographer Richard Dillon wrote that the President’s House “served as an ideal finishing school for Lewis.”
Ambrose: “Lewis advanced his scientific education...Jefferson introduced him to instruments of navigation, discussions of the geography of North America, and of the Indians…he heard experts on birds and animals and plant life…”
In the late summer or fall of 1802, Jefferson informed Meriwether Lewis, now Captain, that he would command an expedition to the Pacific. The idea being, “Beyond the fur trade and other commerce…to tie the two coasts together using the Missouri-Columbia waterway…in order to create a continent-wide empire for the U.S.” That is, steal the burgeoning fur trade from the British in the Northwest.
October 22nd. Kim and I hop skip and jump Salt Lake to Dallas. Dallas to Belize City, then water taxi at sunset to the island of Caye (pronounce Key) Caulker. We plunk ourselves down at the first outside restaurant. A long day. I need a rum drink. “Panty Rippah’s,” says the young beige bartender with the Caribbean accent. “It’s an island specialty.”
“We’ll have two.”
Actually we suck down seven between us. Drunk. Eating sea food. I like this place. No cars; bicycles and golf carts quietly roll past us. We find a hotel. A place to take us snorkeling in the morning. Gentle breeze rustles the palms. No worries. And I like the lilting accent of the locals. Sentences end on an up-swinG.
Well, snorkeling the next morning was a fair cure for hangover. I did not upchuck on the sting rays.
We spend a couple of days on Caye Caulker. Book a sailboat trip that would take us three days, two nights to the town of Placencia. Highly spoken of by some we had talked to. We cast off on a Wednesday morning, a party of ten white folk: Kim and I, another young couple — the girl being of the pin-up variety. Two Portland girls outdoorsy 30-somethings; then three 20-something guys and a girl, just finishing 2-3 year stints as Peace Corps volunteers in Costa Rica; a captain, Miguel, and his mate, Dice, our ebony crew. They anchor us off at the good snorkeling spots above the world’s second-longest reef — all the usual suspects are below to greet me.
We sail, sunbathe, chat with our shipmates. In the hot part of the day I seek shade below deck, and go back and forth between Undaunted Courage and Lonely Planet’s edition of Belize.
Paraphrasing Lonely Planet: Belizean Maya culture dates to 2400 years BC, not an empire but a scatterbug of city states sharing a common culture. The Spanish arrive in 1508, possibly already bringing diseases such as smallpox, yellow fever, and measles, which would decimate the Mayan population. LP: “In 1544 a notoriously cruel Spanish expedition…succeeded in conquering Maya settlements…the Spanish set up Christian missions…the Maya rebelled…in 1638 expelled the Spanish from most of Belize.” Enter pirates…who figured out that cutting the valuable logwood would be more profitable than stealing it, and less dangerous. These “Baymen” were “…an infamously rude and drunken lot who…laid down a foundation of rum bottles and woodchips for the future Belize City to be built on.”
Via the Treaty of Versailles in 1783, Spain allowed the Baymen to cut the logwood and another type of timber, mahogany. The deal was Britain agreed to abandon the Mosquito Shore of Nicaragua, and 2,214 new settlers came to Belize; three-fourths of the newcomers were slaves of African origin. As loggers and their slaves moved inland and up the rivers, they “met with sporadic attacks from the depleted Maya.”
Toward late afternoon of that first day the wind picks up mightily. We put the prow of Ragga Gal on Rendezvous Island, all of thirty yards long, ten yards wide. Elevation, about eight inches. A couple of palm trees, howling wind, pelting rain. Setting up unfamiliar tents is a daunting task; Dice has to help. (For shame, in light of what I was reading of L&C’s travails.) Somewhere in there rum drinks start flowing. It is Peace Corps volunteer Eric’s 24th birthday.
The weather diminishes, the good island vibes settle to the marrow as Dice’s punta reggae rock party mix CD blares over the loudspeaker — pick any number of reasons — but the buzz is at fever level.
Oh yes oh yes. I was There again. In that Perfect Moment In Time Place. A you-have-to-be-there moment. I’d seen it in a Yellowstone geyser basin yellow-and-pink-steamed sunset; in a dory in the Grand Canyon looking up 5,000 feet, two billion years; from the neck of an elephant, jungle grazing in Thailand; standing on Franz Joseph Glacier in New Zealand. Again tied at the top with a hundred places as the most beautiful I’ve ever been.
We toast and drink, dance and howl, a rambunctious tribe of drunken pirates. At some point, we throw Eric backward into the Caribbean. Someone calls, “Hey birthday boy, let’s see your birthday suit!”
“I will if there’s a second volunteer.”
Of course I raise my hand. Eric steps out of his suit, I desuit, throw down a short tribal disco shimmy for everyone aboard, jump overboard into that soft warm azure fluid. Kim gets naked. The other girls get naked, splashing, swimming, diving, dancing, total defiance of pre-trip rule #4: No naked people.
We eventually get dressed, dance some more, eat the barracuda Miguel caught, stagger to the tents. The wind dies down, the moon comes out.
Back on board the next day. By mid-day, enough sun. I slip below, open my book.
1803. The Louisiana Purchase. The Indians of the West were now on American territory. Ambrose: “It was Jefferson’s notion that the land west of the Mississippi could be turned into a vast Indian reservation…the natives could farm and become good citizens.” Jefferson’s instructions to Lewis regarding the Indians: “Tell them they have a new father.”
May 21st, 1804, they pulled away from the shore of St. Charles to the cheers of a crowd on the bank. They made 3½ miles that first day, camped on an island; a hard rain lasted through the night. Up they go. By June 17th Clark reported that several men had “the Disentary, and two thirds of them with ulsers or Boils, Some with 8 or 10 of those Tumers.”
The Expedition worked its way upriver, hunting their way along, dining on deer, elk, beaver, and by August, buffalo. They encountered their first Upper Missouri Indians. The Otos would hear Lewis’ message, as would so many tribes ahead. Translating slowly, “Children, we have been sent by the great Chief of the Seventeen great nations…the Missouri River country now belongs to the United States, all who live in that country, whether white or red, are bound to obey the commands of their great Chief the President, who is now your only great father…to whom you can now look for protection…who will take care to serve you & not deceive you.” Gifts were given, engraved images of Jefferson. The Indians wanted guns and powder.
The Sioux chiefs derided the paltry gifts of L&C; they demanded more whiskey. No go. Tense moment. Ambrose: “Lewis ordered the swivel gun loaded with sixteen musket balls, the blunderbusses were loaded with buckshot, the men…loaded their rifles, and prepared to fire. The warriors strung their bows and took out their arrows from their quivers, or began to cock their shotguns.”
Sioux chief Black Buffalo stepped in to avoid a conflict, or early Western America history might have been quite different.
Upriver. They run into the Arikara tribe, recently decimated by smallpox. They confront grizzlies; Lewis runs for his life, into the river, he fends the grizzly off with his espontoon.
Historian James Ronda: Lewis and Clark “shared a naïve optimism typical of so much Euro-American frontier diplomacy. They believed they could easily reshape upper Missouri realities to fit their expectations…but to the surprise of the explorer-diplomats, virtually all Indian parties proved resistant to change and suspicious of American motives.”
Hmmm. Why on Earth?!
The Arikaras turned down L&C’s offer of whiskey. They were surprised this new great father should present to them a liquor which would make them act like fools.
Ambrose: “The soldiers, meanwhile, enjoyed the favors of the Arikara women, often encouraged to do so by the husbands, who believed that they would catch some of the power of the white men from such intercourse. Lewis’ slave York even got some. L&C’s men got venereal disease. Fair trade.
Winter of 1804/05 with the friendly Mandans, where they enlisted Charbonneau and his fifteen-year-old-wife, Sacagawea (pronounced Sah-Kah-ga-wea — Bird Woman.)
April 7th, 1805, the Corps of Discovery disembarked. Now they traveled in six canoes, fashioned from cottonwoods, and two pirogues; it was hard work paddling or pulling the boats upriver; hunters were sent out, the men would eat as much as nine or ten pounds of meat per day. They encountered herds of elk, antelope, buffalo and gray wolves.
They came to a fork none of the Hidatsas had ever described, and after days of exploring Lewis got it right. Left was the true Missouri. The Hidatsas reported one major falls they would have to deal with. It was five — the Great Falls of the Missouri. They had hoped the portage would be a day, maybe two. They spent most of a month getting the canoes and pirogues over the eighteen-mile portage, enduring hail the size of apples, prickly pear cactus, cold rain, rough terrain, incessant mosquitoes, marauding grizzlies, to which Lewis’ Newfoundland, Seaman, alerted the men throughout the night.
Lewis and three other men forged ahead to today’s Lemhi Pass, where decades of theory are shattered by a single mountain gaze (gazette?!): There was no easy Northwest Passage — the Bitterroot Mountains loomed ahead. Below the pass, for the first time, the Shoshone encountered white men. The Shoshone were in a bad way, as the English were selling guns to the Shoshones’ enemies, the Blackfeet and Hidatsas — the Shoshones were forced to hide in the interior of the mountains for most of the year. Lewis told chief Cameahwait that if the Shoshones did not help them in obtaining horses, no white man would come to bring them arms and ammunition. Clark arrived, Sacagawea was reunited with her people and her brother, chief Cameahwait.
With horses from the Shoshone and Old Toby as their Indian guide, they set out to cross the mountains. Ambrose: “September 16th was the worst day the expedition had experienced to date. It began to snow three hours before dawn…six to eight inches deep…difficulty in keeping the trail…” Clark wrote he was “…as wet and as cold…as I ever was in my life.” Horse meat for dinner.
Onward. Over the Bitterroots. Nez Perce Indians — the excellent horsemen. Dugout canoes, cumbersome, down the rapids, down the Columbia. To the Pacific and a cold, wet, hungry winter at Fort Clatsop. Men sick and injured. Tormenting fleas. Thieving Chinook Indians. The long journey back. A skirmish with Blackfeet Indians—at least one killed.
September 23rd, 1806, Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery drifted back into St. Louis, to the cheers and adulation of those lining the shore. Lewis became quite the man about town. Ambrose: “At thirty-three, he was the most celebrated man in Philadelphia…the protégé of the president…balls and testimonials were held in his honor…generously rewarded by Congress, praised by scientists…appointed governor of the biggest territory of the United States (Louisiana), and was the center of attention wherever he went.”
Perhaps there were too many balls, with too many toasts. He failed to get his diaries in order, to the dismay of Jefferson. He shirked in his duties as governor. Lewis was drinking heavily, and taking opium or morphine. He suffered financial woes. He showed hints of manic-depressive psychosis.
In the early morning of Oct. 11th, 1809, along the Natchez Trace near Nashville, at Grinder’s Inn, Meriwether Lewis pulled out a pistol and aimed it toward his head, the bullet grazed his skull. He pulled out a second pistol, fired at his chest. This ball ripped through his body and out his backbone. He collapsed on his buffalo robes. At first light he showed his servants his wounds, said, “I am no coward, but I am so strong, it his hard to die.” He begged them to shoot him and finish him off.
Just after sunrise, his heart stopped.
Perhaps, then, you see where all this leads me.
The Ragga Gal sails past yet another tropical feng swaying shui island. I take off my reading glasses and it comes into focus: My search for the perfect tropical paradise ties into intrinsic desires for exploration and discovery. Tie this to invasion of weaker cultures in the name of commerce, religion, politics, some notion of superiority. We’ve seen it on the Upper Missouri, in Belize, the Middle East, on CNN.
And link into intra-personal themes of exploration into nihilism. Did I neglect to mention that Billy Hanna, esq., the one who packed me off with Kerouac’s On the Road back in 1971, was in a terrible motorcycle accident in his early twenties? He never recovered physically, losing half his right foot. He never recovered emotionally either. He was living with his mother who, on the morning of his 50th birthday, found Billy sitting up in bed, no longer of this world. After the accident, Billy did everything wrong. He ate poorly, got no exercise, smoked too much, and drank too much.
And Meriwether, after that greatest of accomplishments, augured as far as you can go the other way.
And I neglected to mention what happened to Jeffrey. J Dub. My best friend in the world. He never picked me up at the airport the night I flew into Kauai a year ago. I spent the night on the ground outside the Kauai airport. “I had a fight with my roommate,” he told me via cell phone that next evening, “then drank too much vodka. I’m so sorry. It’s not something I’m proud of. Where are you? Let’s get that rental car back.”
By then I was too far away. Which is hard to do on an island about a third of the size of Yellowstone. Six days on Kauai and I never saw him. He died a few months back. “Enlarged heart,” they told his mom. Alcohol, we all knew.
He would have liked Belize, and I can see him sitting there on the prow of Ragga Gal. I like Belize. I’ll go back to Placencia. I’ll go back and swim in that embryonic tropical luxuriant sea water. Maybe have a drink or two. Maybe get a little nuts. But then I’m running out of places to explore and celebrate. Places safe. Places untrampled. That hundred-and-first place.
Now what’s all this I hear about North Dakota? I hear they serve a mean Carhartts Rippah in Bismark.
MG
