The Lewis and Clark Expedition in my hometown
When I was kid, my friend Randy and I would occasionally ride our bikes down to La Benite Park to watch the Missouri River go by. The park is in Sugar Creek, MO, where we grew up. Recently, my interest in the Lewis and Clark Expedition was renewed, and I thought to take a look at their journal entries for the summer of 1804, when they passed through the Kansas City, MO area.
From the Moulton online version of their journal entries on June 25, 1804, we find Clark’s entry describing the camp at Bennett’s Creek. Note Footnote 4, where Bennett’s Creek is considered to be the same as La Benite, the name of the modern park itself, but then referring to a creek on the left hand side (south) side of the river.
Never did I go down to the park and peer out at the river, a thousand muddy feet wide and sweeping everything in its roiling path downstream, that I did not imagine the Expedition moving by, right to left (east to west), wondering what they looked like, what they did, what they talked about, what early 19th century spoken English in the West sounded like, what it would have meant to be with them. Watching and admiring Lewis, personal secretary to Thomas Jefferson himself.
Somewhere at a nearby curio shop I saw a set of after-dinner game cards printed with questions intended to stimulate conversation. One of these questions was: Would you rather spend a week living at some point in the past, or some point in the future? My answer, no contest: in the past, with the Expedition the day they paddled by my hometown.
