July 27th, 1806 Blackfeet Country-
The young Blackfeet warrior aimed his British musket at
Merriweather Lewis’ head and pulled the trigger. The crisp summer morning air erupted with the
explosion. The explorer who was to usher
in the era of manifest destiny stumbled forward and hit the ground dead. The rest of his party never made it out of Blackfeet
country alive and his journal never made it back to St. Louis. What if…..
You’re right, this scene didn’t end that way. The young Blackfeet warrior missed by inches and
Lewis felt the wind of his bullet whizz by his head. But what if he hadn’t? Or what if the Core of Discovery’s
confrontation with the Teton Sioux on the Missouri in 1804 had ended in
violence? It would have been bloody on
both sides to be sure, but it would have almost certainly ended with the
victory of the Tetons and the annihilation of the expedition.
To be sure, there would have been other expeditions west,
but the fact that the entire Core of Discovery made it back alive (except Floyd
who would have died anyway), had to have been a blaring green light to the rest
of the country. If the message coming
back had been, “the Louisiana purchase is crawling with savages who want to
kill you”, the expansion may have taken on a more gradual approach. Keep in mind the US was in-between the Revolutionary
War and the War of 1812 and had plenty of other tribal conflicts to deal
with. Would a decisive attack on the
Core of Discovery delayed western expansion by 30 years? Or even 50?
Most Native Americans were on reservations by the 1880s, but
they didn’t receive citizenship and the right to vote until 1924. A slower westward expansion of the US
population, in concert with a changing national value of women and minorities
may have drastically changed the ownership of land and racial tension in the
western US. To be sure western expansion
of the US was inevitable, but if the US government would have thought of the
plains tribes as real people and a force to be reckoned with, it is quite
possible native tribes would have had more say in how the land was settled. With
more time to see the “wave” of settlers coming, the tribes could have adapted
better strategies in how to deal with them and shrewdly negotiated land
deals. Can you imagine if the tribes
could have curbed alcohol consumption on their lands, if they had saved part of
the buffalo herd or if they had maintained ownership of Glacier and Yellowstone
National Parks? What if the northern plains tribes had kept half their land and
their children had never gone to boarding schools? Life would look very different in Montana.
I know there is hope for reconciliation between whites and Natives. I know white America is ultimately at fault
for the suffering caused by western expansion among the Native Americans. I realize even if the Core of Discovery had
been repelled, it is unlikely the ultimate outcome would have changed, but
sometimes I wish that Blackfeet warrior wouldn’t have missed!
