Lewis, Powell, & Roosevelt

On August 1, 1804, Captain William Clark turned 34 years old. Hardly more than two weeks later, on August 18, Meriwether Lewis turned 30.

At that point the Thomas Jefferson appointed Corps of Discovery was traveling upstream along the Missouri River between modern day Iowa and Nebraska. The expedition was composed of three squads of soldiers each led by one sergeant. In an unusual hierarchical structure, Lewis and Clark shared co-command as captains. This was the first official delegation to the Indian Tribes along the Mississippi – the Otos, the Osage, the Sioux, the Mandans – after the transfer of the Louisiana Territory from France to the United States, but the main goal of their mission was to find a water passage to the Pacific Ocean, a trip that took two years to complete.

Before embarking on the journey Lewis spent several months in training. First with the President himself, learning the Linnaean classification system, studying botany, taking practical lessons in the sextant (used for measuring distance between celestial bodies and therefore determining longitude and latitude), and studying all available maps in existence on the North American continent, which wasn’t much–a lot of blanks and guesses and assumptions. For example, Jefferson and Lewis knew of the Rockies but estimated their size to be those of the Blue Ridge Mountains in western Virginia. They were off by 10,000 feet.

After intense training with Jefferson, Captain Meriwether Lewis went to Pennsylvania for further instruction with America’s leading scientists. What followed were more crash courses in celestial navigation, medicine, cartography, more botany, studies in taxidermy and the preservation of plant and animal specimens, and anatomy. Stephen E. Ambrose, author of Undaunted Courage, describes Lewis at the start of his journey this way:

Two years of study under Thomas Jefferson, followed by his crash course in Philadelphia had made Lewis into exactly what Jefferson had hoped for in an explorer–a botanist with a good sense of what was known and unknown, a working vocabulary for description of flora and fauna, a mapmaker who could use celestial instruments properly, a scientist with keen powers of observation, all combined in a woodsman and an officer who could lead a party to the Pacific.

This gave rise to what historian Michale Brodhead refers to as a uniquely American phenomenon: the military naturalist. Later versions of this Lewisian archetype would include John Wesley Powell and Teddy Roosevelt.

Powell, the son of two Welsh-English immigrants, was born in Mount Morrison, New York, in 1834, 30 years after Lewis set out on his trans-continental expedition. The West was opening up, and by this time the US was expanding rapidly toward the Pacific. The Army Corps of Engineers had mapped much of the territory that only 30 years before had been a gaping hole on the map, however there were still large swathes of the country uncharted and unexplored, mainly in the Southwest. It was Powell who helped put modern Colorado, Utah, and other areas along the Colorado River on the map.

Naturally curious, Powell spent his childhood roaming the woods and rivers in New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Kentucky collecting specimens, traveling rivers, and falling in love with the outdoors. His father, a tailor by trade, and his mother stumbled into land speculation in the early days of the West and continued to buy and sell land, moving the family at least seven times in Powell’s early childhood.

As Donald Worster recalls in his biography of Powell, A River Running West, on the 1860 census Powell listed his occupation as “naturalist”, a classically American exaggeration of his real skills, knowledge, and abilities. “His training was minimal,” writes Worster, “his experience limited. He was puffing himself up to an identity that, at age twenty-six, he had not yet established.” What’s more, his primary source of income was teaching school in a one room schoolhouse in Hennepin, Illinois. His education, generally, had been a failure. His early years were often interrupted by the frequent moves of the Powell family or the need to earn income or work the farm. When he left home, he attempted to put himself through college, but never made it past his sophomore year—often for lack of money to pay tuition. At 23, he was forced to move back home briefly with his parents. In the midst of this turmoil, he somehow found time to take excursions down the Mississippi River, to wander out in nature to collect specimens, and to borrow books from well-to-do neighbors to further his education. Then, at 27, “Wes” enlisted in Company H of the Twentieth Illinois Infantry Regiment of the United States Army. The Civil War had begun.

Shortly after enlisting he was promoted to second lieutenant. He had a sharp mind, and briefly served as a consulting engineer on army fortifications, even briefing General Ulysses S. Grant who promoted him to captain and cross-assigned him to an artillery company. Then, in April 1861, at the battle of Shiloh, as Wes led his light artillery battery, a bullet hit him in the wrist. Caught up in the adrenaline of the moment he didn’t notice it until a medical officer rode up to him, insisting he be examined. At this point, he went into shock. He was thrown on his horse and rode, delirious, to the back of the Union lines. The next day an Illinois surgeon amputated his arm two inches below the elbow. It was his dominant hand, his right arm.

Given his shoddy education and maiming at 27, one would hardly think that Major Powell had a future as the war drew to a close. However, in 1869, Wes Powell became the first recorded person to lead an expedition down the Colorado River, charting and mapping the river, meticulously observing the geology and collecting specimens for museums back East. During that same period he climbed Pikes Peak, Longs Peak, and several other 14ers in modern day Colorado. Modern day Americans like to boast of of their achievements by ‘peak bagging’ 14ers in Colorado. Imagine doing it without modern equipment, without a set trail, without the Weather App … and without a right arm. To this day hikers still die each year trying to climb Long’s Peak just north of Denver.

Naturalist, geologist, explorer, Powell was also an efficient ethnologist, learning several Indian languages and recording their customs, languages, and religious practices. He maintained an intense interest in Native American culture up to his death.

As if doing it once with only one arm wasn’t enough, Powell repeated his Colorado River expedition several years later with a different team of people, leading a second expedition rafting down the river. As Powell was completing his first Colorado River expedition, Teddy Roosevelt was turning eleven years old. They couldn’t have been more different.

Roosevelt was born into the affluent clan of merchants descended from Dutch immigrants, and his family was well established in New York society by the time of his birth. His parents made his education a primary focus, and he also had access to a broader education through travel, completing a first trip to Europe in 1870. His start as a naturalist also began early, and many of his biographers record his trip to Egypt in 1872, where his family rented a boat to float down the Nile. Teddy would debark to travel along the shore and shoot birds and other animals which he then preserved and classified. The American Museum of Natural History (started by Teddy’s father) in New York City began with many of the young Teddy’s collections.

Like Lewis and Powell before him, Roosevelt combined the traits of scholar and outdoorsman into one. And like his predecessors, he also served briefly in the U.S. Military, earning the lifelong title of Colonel Roosevelt at the head of his Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War at the turn of the century.

When I look at Lewis, Powell, and Roosevelt and compare myself to them I’m embarrassed, but the question I keep asking myself is should I be? The 1800s were a different time. America, in many ways, a vastly different continent. The direct comparison, in other words, may not be relevant; but one can’t help it.

My practical knowledge of the world around me is limited. I can’t identify a single star – other than our beloved, dying sun. I can’t name with any great accuracy the flora and fauna growing in the mountains, prairies, and forests of my home state of Colorado. I can hardly identify the plants and flowers growing in my own garden. My time in the Marine Corps redeems me, but only for a moment – I can disassemble, reassemble, clean and fire a weapon accurately at hundreds of yards, but if I were to hit something, like Lewis and his men who hauled in over two tons of meat in one day, I wouldn’t know how to skin it, clean it, preserve or cook it.

The logical response to this might be, “Well, that’s a silly argument.” There’s no need for those skills which were once required on the frontier or farm in 1800s America. And I agree. But I still feel that something important is missing.

Part of it has to do with the power of naming things. We name things in order to give ourselves a sense of ownership over them. The Linnaean classification system is more than a useful scientific technique—it’s power. Even the ability to conjure up the common names of plants and animals gives us a sense of meaning and belonging. I think that part of the reason we deal with such existential malaise in our modern world is because we feel so out of place. We can’t describe with any accuracy the names of the worlds that we inhabit. In Arabic the word noun and name are both the same*, اسم,* transliterated as ism in English. It’s no coincidence that in Genesis God brought Adam the animals to name them. He was exercising the power of language, creating a place for himself, a being at home in the world.

That world has changed drastically in the last 200 years. Technological change through the Industrial Revolution, the Atomic Age, and the Digital Revolution have transformed our world and our ways of life. Capitalism, specialization, and the division of labor have further winnowed the skills we need in order to survive. I no longer change my own oil, run my own electricity, or fix my plumbing. These are still necessary things but I outsource them to experts and tradesmen.

So, sure, skinning an animal, navigating by the stars, or building a canoe are all archaic skills for most of us in today’s world, but I don’t think that diminishes their importance. We have moved away from skills predicated on survival to ones predicated on…what exactly? What skills are required in this age? Is it possible to get by in this world with hardly any skills at all?