"we commenced wrighting &c." (1)
A Salute to the Ingenious Spelling and Grammar of William Clark
By Robert B. Betts
This article first appeared in We Proceeded On, Vol. 6. No. 4, November, 1980
William Clark was a fearless and resourceful man. In an extremely tense confrontation with the Teton Sioux, when warriors of that tribe threatened to attack the Lewis and Clark party, he boldly drew his sword, signaled his men to prepare for action, and faced the Tetons down. Later in the expedition, when he wanted to obtain food from some sullen Indians along the Columbia River, he adroitly won them over by using a magnet to make the needle of his compass spin and by throwing an artillery fuse into a sleeping fire, making flames magically flare and change color. Throughout the long journey across the trans-Mississippi West during the years 1804- 1806, Clark exhibited these qualities time and again. But nowhere did he exhibit them more consistently than in his journal entries, where he proved himself to be one of the most fearless and resourceful writers of English who ever lived.
Bernard DeVoto has observed that a large part of the charm of the original journals kept by Lewis, Clark, and several of their men is to be found in their misspelling of words. (2) This is especially true of Clark, who was not only the master misspeller of them all, but also displayed dazzling virtuosity in his approach to punctuation, capitalization, and simple sentence structure. Unfortunately, the full flavor of his prose can be savored only by reading his lengthy journals in their entirety, and few people today seem to be able to find the time to do that. The following sampler of some of his more delightful gems is therefore offered in the light-hearted hope that it will bring him long overdue recognition as an intrepid explorer of far horizons in the English language, just as he gained lasting renown as an explorer of far horizons in the American West.
In an age when spelling was haphazard at best and even the well- educated Thomas Jefferson sometimes wrote "knolege" (3) for "knowledge," William Clark stood out as a discoverer of orthographic possibilities hitherto unknown. For example, who but William Clark could take the five-letter word Sioux and spell it in no less than twenty-seven different ways? ("Scioux," "Seauex," "Seeaux," "Soux," and "Suouez" are just a few of his renderings, with perhaps the most bizarre being "Cucoux.") (4) Who but William Clark could relish the taste of "Water millions" (5) fresh from the gardens of the Oto tribe, swat pestiferous "Muskeetors" (6) along the Missouri, gratefully "bid adew to the Snow" (7) after crossing the Bitterroot Range, and, wonder of wonders, come upon the tracks of "bearfooted Indians" (8) in the wilderness of the Northwest? And who but William Clark could transform an ordinary sentence into a classic howler by writing, as he did on the day the expedition set out, "Many of the Neighbours Came from the Countrey Mail and feeMail"? (One can only wonder whether he referred to the distribution of letters among the men as "male call.")
Because Clark had little, if any, formal schooling, he spelled many words phonetically, and in this his ear was often true. Thus, celestial navigation understandably entailed taking "Looner" (10) observations, a tribe of Indians spoke with a different "axcent," (11) he was entertained by "10 Musitions playing on tambereens," (12) a sailing ship could be either a "Slupe" (13) or a "Skooner," (14) and the Pacific was an "emence Ocian." (15) On the other hand, his ear frequently failed him, and this was when he demonstrated his remarkable gift for picturesque inventions. An umbrella became an "Humbrallo," (16) a naturalist became a "natirless," (17) a botanist became a "Botents, (18) and a duct in the digestive tract of a candlefish became an "alimentary Duck" (19) In addition, some hard-bargaining Indians "tanterlised" (20) him, other Indians lived in houses built in "oxigon" (21) form; beaver swimming in a river made a "flacking" (22) noise, the Yankton Sioux wore "leagins and mockersons," (23) he and Captain Lewis "assended" (24) a hill, and, among the choicest of all his malapropisms, two rifles were damaged when they "bursted near the muscle." (25)
When it came to spelling the names of people and places, Clark abided by Emerson's maxim that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Although he never surpassed himself in the number of variations he discovered in the word Sioux, he did manage to take the last name of Toussaint Charbonneau, one of the expedition's interpreters and the husband of Sacagawea, and spell it at least fifteen different ways, not once correctly. ("Chabonat," Chabonee," and "Shabowner" are a few of his creations, with the closest to the mark being "Charbono.") (26) Admittedly, the French Canadian's name is not easy to spell, but one would expect the simple last name of Clark's longtime friend and co-commander of the expedition to have been inviolate. Yet even here Clark spurned consistency, on one occasion referring to Captain Lewis as "Cap Lewers" (27) and on another naming what is now called the Salmon River "Louis's river." (28) At no time, however, did Clark perform such an astonishing feat of legerdemain as when he made an interpreter for the Oto tribe disappear into oblivion by calling him "Fairfong," "Faufon," and Faufonn." (29) Whatever the interpreter's name really was. Clark's spelling was obviously far afield, for to this day scholars have searched in vain to identify the man. Nor can the river Clark referred to as the "Missoppie" (30) be positively identified. Was it the Mississippi, the Missouri, or, as Ernest Osgood has speculated, an ingenious combination referring to both? (31)
Clark was equally inspired in his use of capital letters. When Donald Jackson compiled his monumental Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783-1854, he had to struggle with many highly individualistic writing styles, yet he was forced to confess that "in the matter of capitalization, one man has utterly bested me." (32) Citing Clark's sentence "I send my Sister Croghan Some Seeds of Several Kinds of Grapes," Jackson commented: "William Clark, a creative speller, is also a versatile capitalizer - especially in handling words beginning in s. After many attempts to work out a sane norm I have retired in confusion." (33) To this Jackson might have added that at times Clark's syntax could also cause confusion, as in this convoluted sentence paying tribute to Jefferson's role as the guiding genius behind the expedition: "The Objcets of this Plan of Governments are Great and Worthey of that great Chaructor the Main Spring of its action." (34) Even Jefferson, who was interested in cryptography, would have had to labor to decipher that.
In fairness to Clark, it must be said that he was seldom guilty of writing so stiltedly as in the sentence just quoted above. For the most part, his prose is straightforward, vigorous, and clear, a refreshing contrast to Lewis's more sophisticated, often overly elegant, style. (35) What is more, his blissful disregard for syntax permitted him to cram as much information into a single sentence as others might take a paragraph to do. For instance, when he arrived unannounced in an Indian village and his white skin terrified the natives, he wrote, "I gave a fiew Small articles to those fritened people which added verry much to their pasification but not entirely as some of the women & Childn. Cried dureing my Stay of an hour at this place." (36) Thus, in a scant thirty-seven words, we learn that Clark's appearance caused great consternation in the village, that he gave the natives presents to assure them of his peaceful intentions, that despite this some of the women and children continued to cry, and that he remained an hour with these people. There are few who can write telegrams more tersely. (37)
Clark's prose is a delight to read, full of many unexpected surprises, especially when his misspelling and misapplication of works combine to form some startlingly ambiguous statements. Describing an aging Indian chief who transferred his authority to his son, Clark suggested a remarkable reversal in the flow of solar energy by writing that the chief "transfired his power to his Sun." (38) On the muddy Missouri, when some of the men were stricken with dysentery, he diagnosed both the ailment and its cause in a sentence containing not one, but two, magnificent verbal slips: "Several have the Deassentary, which I contribute to the water." (39) After Indians had stolen twenty-four of his horses on the Yellowstone, he prepared a scolding speech in which he based his accusation of theft on what appears to have been the testimony of talking horses. "Children," he wrote, "I heard from some of your people [blank space in M.S.] nights past by my horses who complained to me of your people haveing taken 4 [24] of their cummerads." (40) And although he was a most proper man, he was unwittingly indelicate when he named an extensive area of beautiful bottom land along the Columbia in honor of his youngest sister, Frances, who was known in the family as Fanny. He bluntly dubbed it "fannys bottom." (41)
There is evidence that Clark was aware of his deficiencies in spelling and grammar, perhaps even embarrassed by them. When Lewis sent Jefferson the journal Clark had kept as far as the Mandans, he cautioned the president to be discreet in its publication. "Capt. Clark," he wrote, "dose not wish this journal exposed in its present state, but has no objection, that one or more copies of it be made by some confidential person under your direction, correcting it's grammatical errors &c." (42) This request was eventually carried out when Clark's journals, along with Lewis's and those of several of the other men, were edited and polished into orthodox prose by Nicholas Biddle. Fortunately for us, however, the original manuscripts have survived the vicissitudes of time and are now safely preserved in the archives of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis, and the Yale University Library. What a loss it would have been if they had vanished forever. How much poorer we would all be if we were denied the pleasure of reading the dashing, uninhibited writing of this man who so proudly and ably served our country, a land he once referred to as the "Untied States." (43)
Notes
1. Thwaites, Reuben Gold, ed., Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 8 vols. (New York, 1904-05), 5:395
2. DeVoto, Bernard, ed., The Journals of Lewis and Clark (Boston, 1953), p. vii.
3. Jackson, Donald, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783-1854, 2nd ed., rev., 2 vols. (Urbana, 1978), 1:2.
4. The writer has counted twenty-six different spellings of the word Sioux by Clark in Thwaites, op. cit. The twenty-seventh spelling, "Cucoux," appears in Osgood, Ernest S., ed., The Field Notes of Captain William Clark, 1803-1805 (New Haven, 1964), p. 102.
11. Thwaites, op. cit., 3:185.
19. Coues, Elliott, ed., History of the Expedition under the Command of Lewis and Clark, 3 vols. (New York, 1965), 3:895-96, n. 99.
20. Thwaites, op. cit., 4:293.
26. The writer has counted fourteen different spellings of Charbonneau's name by Clark in Thwaites, op. cit. the fifteenth variation, "Chabonah," appears in Osgood, op. cit., p. 174.
29. Jackson, op. cit., 1:216, n. 1.
35. For an interesting comparison of the diverse writing styles of Lewis and Clark, see Criswell, Elijah H., "Lewis and Clark: Linguistic Pioneers", University of Missouri Studies, vol. 15, no. 2 (Columbia, 1940), pp. xxiii-xxiv. See also: We Proceeded On, Vol. 5, No. 1, p. 6.
36. Thwaites, op. cit., 1:210.
37. For an excellent example of Clark's ability to convey even significant scientific information telegraphically, see Cutright, Paul R., Lewis and Clark: Pioneering Naturalists (Urbana, 1969), pp. 224-25.
38. Thwaites, op. cit., 1:210.
41. Ibid., 4:205. Clark was not alone among the expedition's journalists in composing ambiguous sentences. Describing the celebration of New Year's Day, 1806, Sergeant John Ordway wrote, "The party Saluted our officers at day break this morning by firing at their quarters." Quaife, Milo M., ed., The Journals of Captain Meriwether Lewis and Sergeant John Ordway (Madison, 1916), p. 291.
43. Thomas, Samuel W., "William Clark's 1795 and 1797 Journals and Their Significance," Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society, vol. 25, no. 4, pt. 1 (July, 1969), p. 281, n. 21.
