III. THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION THROUGHOUT THE NEW WORLD
Shortly after their arrival on Saint-Louis' shores the Frenchmen begun explorating the inlands. At first it was only minor scouting, that mainly consisted in mapping attempts of Charleroi's surroundings and of the newly discovered coasts - the precarity of their early settlements prevented expeditions of greater measures. It is after the conquest of Isabella and the routing of Spain out of Saint-Louis' main landmass that the French grew enough assurance to plan a serious exploration of their New World.
At the time of Lewis and clark's expedition, Charleroi was a strong city, Sainte-Sourire had been built, and relations with the natives couldn't be better. Their help proved unvaluable, acting as scouts, delivering precious information or giving refuge to the tired explorers. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, along with their men, traveled Westward through the northern forests, then South-East towards the plains and the great rivers where the Cherokees live, then West again in the desert, where they found the Pacific.
They brought with them many horses, trinkets and trade goods, indians guides, landscape painters, and one geologist. Lewis and Clark's explorations were well prepared and very ambitious for their time, and brought back the very first maps of the New World, as well as countless stories and myths that excited Europeans' curiosity for many decades to come.
THE IROQUOIS
The very first step of their travel was the Iroquois' capital city, north of Charleroi, which greeted them with benevolent curiosity and great interest. The Europeans lived for a time among the natives, discovering their culture and their language, many times surprised by what they saw. They took many notes and painted many scenes ; here is what Lewis diary of the expedition relates :
« The Iroquois, or Haudenosaunee as they call themselves, are a very strange people. They live in long wooden houses three to four time longer than they are wider ; these houses often contain more than one family inside them, separated by walls, with a wide hallway in the middle, where the natives make the fires. These houses are very tall and their doors are very low.
« These people are only one member of a federation of native tribes, bound together by a law they call "Gayanashagowa" which means "Great Law of Peace" or "Great Law of Unity" if I understood it well. It is a law transmitted by means of voice and memory, not by writing as we are accustomed to ; and their law is peculiar indeed. Each tribe decides for herself, and they make their decisions in common ; there is no king among them, and it is the women who makes the decisions here. The Iroquois say their law was conceived by a great prophet (or "shaman" as they call it) named Deganwidah, and was spread and finally accepted by the many tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy thanks to his spokesman Hiawatha. Me and Clark managed to wrote a fair sample of them, and I hope such curiosity will interest the educated among Charleroi and Europe ; there is much to learn about the Iroquois and their customs, and we can only stay in their village for so long.
« The village chief indicated to me the different tribes of his Confederacy and where they reside. The five tribes of the Iroquois people name themselves the Guyohkonhyo, the Kanienkehaka, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, and the Tsonnontouans ; we settled on meeting the Iroquois residing in the forests of the north, then moving westward toward the other tribes. The local chief gave us shells and other tokens of friendship to prove to the other tribes that we are not ennemies of their nation ; this is a very reassuring gesture and I am glad we are not alone in these unknown lands. Our expedition start well.
« The Kanienkehaka tribe were pleasantly surprised at our arrival by our marks of friendship and peace. The only Europeans they knew were the Spanish, with whom they were at war, and our scouts told them tales about the plunder of Isabella, which the elders of the village completed by stories about the Spanish's cruelty. With the ending of Spanish raids and with our friendship with the southern Iroquois, we had no incidents to report during our stay in their longhouses. At our departure the chief gave us precious pearls and treasures plundered from the spanish to bring back to our leader as sign of peace. We then went our way westward as planned.
« We travelled through miles and miles of cold forests and wild landscapes. We charted a group of lakes, truly great by their size, to the point where they looked more as a small inland sea to us, if it wasn't for the freshwater. Many Iroquois villages settled themselves along their coasts and we visited a fair number of them. I can now safely say the Iroquois nation is in peace with the French, and that we can count them as friends if hardships arises - they saved our expedition from certain failure twice by now.
THE SIOUX
« Eventually we had to leave the lands our Iroquois allies occupied to go visit places even them did not knew very well. We went west once again, and west of the great lakes the forests cleared to leave place for great plains and prairies, and west again on the horizon we could see a great mountain range, going from north to south and blocking the way.
« These plains are home to another tribe of red-skinned men living in circular tents and adorning themselves with feathers taken from birds of prey. Our native guides call them "Sioux" and they call themselves "Oceti sakowin oyate" which roughly translate as "the people of the seven fires" in reference to their mythical seven original tribes. They were not too pleased to see Iroquois within our ranks it seemed, but they welcomed us nonetheless, as our group was mainly pacific foreigners to them. (I believe our many presents helped too.)
« We stayed in their settlement for a while, presenting them the French civilisation on the eastern shores, as well as the goal of our expedition, while they presented us their tribe and their culture in exchange. We had the luxury of drawing plenty of their houses and their costumes as well as taking notes about the stories their elders shared, stories about their people and their lands. I hope this will be of interest to the people of Charleroi. From what we gathered the Sioux are still quite a primitive people, far from the level of progress attained by the Iroquois ; fixed localisations only appeared recently in their culture and they still have a semi-nomadic way of life.
« We signed a peace treaty with the Sioux on behalf of the people of Saint-Louis, which is not an important achievement considering how far we are from home now. The distance between our two people is simply too great, and the lands too wild, for trade or any other activities. In fact, I seriously think we are not to meet the sioux anymore unless we actively search to make contact once again.
THE APACHES
« Our expedition went north, trying to walk around the mountains, until we were stopped by the cold ; we then went south again, leaving forests and plains for gentler prairies and grasslands, the mountain range still blocking our way west. I feel we've encountered a major geological feature here, our geologist seems very excited, but the rest of us are growing tired of this long walk. We must find a way to cross these mountains, else I believe my men will become weary of this expedition and leave. It does feel like we've been walking in circles for a long time trying to get around these mountains.
« The gentler climate helps keeping the spirits up however. Here live the "apaches" people, as our guides calls them. They are the least advanced natives we've met, not even a unified people but only a loose alliance of different tribes. They don't share the same language, they live as hunter-gatherers and occasionnaly thieve their neighbors, but they do seem to have a common culture - their danses are fascinating. I am happy to say we haven't had any incident with them yet, as their curiosity and our generous showering of trinklets and other gifts kept them away from raiding us.
« We made contact with many different tribes as we needed shelter and supplies during our travel ; we taught them rudiments of our language, our culture and our religion. They taught us their in exchange and we left each tribe with a peace treaty, which like the sioux's doesn't mean much considering their political backwardness and the distance between our two countries. Nonetheless we visited each major tribe and made peace with each of them ; in the end I can safely say the french are friends of the Apaches in general, even if this is unlikely to be of any benefit to either of us.
« Here are the last maps our painter drew, complete with annotations of other possible civilisations and geographic deductions from natives' tales. The first one is of the lands of the sioux.
« The second one is of the lands of the apaches.
« There is a lot of talk about a great native civilisation in the south, on par with small european nations, which would be an amazing discovery if it revealed itself to be more than mere legends. I feel we're also going to have to cross these mountains rather than go around ; however I wonder how will my men take this decision. »
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