Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark have left their mark on the Yankton area, most notably in the naming of Lewis and Clark Lake behind Gavins Point Dam.

Strangely, though, we tend to have little appreciation for -- or knowledge of -- the few days that the historic expedition spent in the vicinity 190 years ago.

Most everyone with a modicum of interest in history knows that the vast Louisiana Territory was purchased from France in 1803 for some $15 million when Napoleon needed money more than far-away land. It was one of the best real estate bargains of all time, but little was known of the land and the people who inhabited it, so President Jefferson gave orders for an exploratory party to travel through the region and on to the Pacific Ocean, recording as much information as possible.

Thirty-year-old Meriwether Lewis, Jefferson's private secretary, was first chosen to head the expedition. Later, William Clark, four years older and with considerable military experience, was added in a co-leadership role.

On May 14, 1804, 45 men with a 55-foot keelboat and two flat-bottomed pirogues set out on their great adventure up the Missouri from St. Louis. Most of them were in their 20s, although George Shannon was just 17. The sergeants (three of them) reportedly were paid $8 a month and the privates just $5.

Volumes have been written about the expedition, and the journals of the participants have been published with great detail. However, this limited article will deal with only the brief period when the party was at or near the future site of Yankton.

On Aug. 27, 1804, a camp was established on an island or sandbar near the mouth of the Jacques (James) River. A week earlier the only man to die on the journey -- Sgt. Charles Floyd -- succumbed to what Clark described as "biliose chorlick" (later assumed to be a ruptured appendix). He was buried a mile or so from the river at a bluff named in his honor near what is now Sioux City.

The next day -- Aug. 28 -- the party proceeded to a campsite near Calumet Bluff, so-called in the journals. This is where the exact location gets hazy. Most likely it was on the Nebraska side across from the Gavins Point Dam, but just where it was in relation to present-day Yankton remains a mystery.

What is clearly known from the written record is that contact was made with a band of Yankton Sioux, and on Aug. 30-31, parleys were held in which the Indians were represented by chiefs Shake Hand, White Crane, Half Man and others.

Medals, tobacco, knives, bells and assorted gifts were given to the assembled Sioux; but the chiefs, in turn, made speeches stressing how poor their people were and what they wanted was clothing for their women, powder and ball and some "Great Father's milk," as whiskey was called.

By all indications the meetings went well and there were no confrontations. It was noted that the Indians provided a "fat dog, already cooked" of which the men "partook heartily and found it well flavored."

There is a persistent legend that in late August Lewis and Clark wrapped a new-born Indian baby in an American flag near Yankton and that the child grew up to be Chief Struck-by-the-Ree (or Strike-the-Ree). However, no mention of that event can be found in the journals, so whether it really occurred still remains historical conjecture.

There is another sidebar story that is well documented, though. While the commanders were meeting with the chiefs on Aug. 28, the expeditions two horses wandered away, and young Shannon was sent to look for them. He, too, became lost.

Imagine, if you will, a youngster of high school senior age, all alone in a strange land, separated from the expedition and not knowing whether the Indians he might meet would be friendly or hostile.

Shannon eventually found the horses, but then he made a miscalculation about where his comrades were. Because of some tracks he came upon, he concluded that the expedition was ahead of him, so he proceeded upriver.

He had a musket and a few bullets or balls which he quickly used up in quest of food. The tracks he first followed turned out to be those made by Indians. However, he kept going, not knowing that he was leading the way into an uncharted wilderness.

Capt. Clark made a note that on Sept. 2 "the wind became so violent, attended by a cold rain, that we were compelled to land" on Bon Homme Island. Pvt. Shannon was caught in the same storm, then considerably west of the Yankton area.

By this time he was subsisting almost entirely on grapes he found along the river. The chilling intermittent rains continued as the boy moved ever farther ahead of the expedition. Finally, in desperate need of food, he carved a wooden bullet for his gun and was fortunate enough to bag a rabbit.

He did not want to slaughter either of the horses because he knew the expedition needed them. However, with each passing day he began to despair of ever finding the party again. Eventually he abandoned the weaker of the two horses and decided to turn back downriver in hopes of meeting a fur trapper or trader along the way.

Meanwhile, Clark wrote in his journal that they were "very uneasy" about the boy's safety, but after the first day or two there seemed to be no special effort made to locate him.

Finally, on Sept. 11, Clark noted: "In the morning we observed a man riding on horseback down toward the boat, and we were much pleased to find it was George Shannon."

The reunion occurred along the Missouri apparently in today's Gregory County, although the point is not pinned down specifically in the records. For more than two weeks the teenager had been the solitary vanguard of one of America's most historic explorations.

Whether or not Lewis and his red-headed partner stopped in the Yankton area on the return trip in 1806 is not known. Suffice to say that the expedition they headed was instrumental in opening the Upper Missouri region to white settlement with all its benefits and drawbacks.

Afterwards, there was much fact and fiction written about Capt. Clark and his supposed affair with Sacajawea, the Shoshone Indian girl who acted as a guide for the expedition. Before he died in 1838, Clark was governor of Missouri Territory headquartered in St. Louis.

From 1807 to 1809 Lewis served as governor of the territory he had traversed. Then, on a trip along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee, the young explorer -- only in his mid-30s -- died mysteriously of gunshot wounds on Oct. 11, 1809.

His death became a subject of continuing controversy: whether he was murdered and robbed, or whether he committed suicide because of intemperance, a falling out with Jefferson, a history of depression or other unknown reasons.

George Shannon, who later lost a leg in a fight with Indians, became a circuit court judge and state senator in Missouri where he died at age 49 in Palmyra.

Needless to say, they and their comrades of 1804 deserve at least a small niche in the pre-settlement history of Yankton.

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Originally published April 25, 1994