The Red and the White: A Family Saga of the American West (40 page)

22
    Hansen,
Old Fort Snelling,
124.

23
    Van Cleve,
Three Score Years and Ten,
78.

24
    Ibid., 80.

25
    Ibid., 99–101.

26
    Rachel Jackson died quite unexpectedly three days before Christmas 1828, plunging the president-elect into a state of bewildered grief. Along with the other military officers stationed in Nashville, Nathan Clarke traveled to Jackson’s splendid country estate, the Hermitage, to pay his respects and attend the funeral. Ibid., 80–86.

27
    For this correspondence, see Records of the War Department, Office of the Adjutant General, U.S. Military Academy Applications, Egbert M. Clarke 17–32, MTHS, HRR, MF 53a.

28
    Van Cleve,
Three Score Years and Ten,
105–9; and Van Cleve, “A Brief Story,” 14–15.

29
    For recent histories of the Texas Revolution, see H. W. Brands,
Lone Star Nation: How a Ragged Army of Volunteers Won the Battle for Texas Independence—and Changed America
(New York: Doubleday, 2004); James E. Crisp,
Sleuthing the Alamo: Davy Crockett’s Last Stand and Other Mysteries of the Texas Revolution
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2005); and William C. Davis,
Lone Star Rising: The Revolutionary Birth of the Texas Republic
(New York: Free Press, 2004).

30
    It is an indication of his celebrity that Crockett was the inspiration for the lead character in Knickerbocker James Kirke Paulding’s popular 1831 play
The Lion of the West.
Crockett quoted in Davis,
Lone Star Rising,
p. 208.

31
    James L. Haley,
Sam Houston
(Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2002).

32
    It is worth noting that the Texans also cried “Remember Goliad!,” which referred to the massacre of 350 rebel prisoners by Mexican soldiers on 27 March 1836, just three weeks after the fall of the Alamo.

33
    E. M. Clarke, claim no. 5914, 19 Dec. 1837, Texas State Library and Archives, Republic Claims, reel 18, 48–49.

34
    An oft-told story suggests that Clarke led a mutiny on board the steamship that ferried him from New Orleans to Galveston, because of poor treatment by the captain. According to this tale, Houston himself pardoned Clarke after hearing the details of the insurrection, and Malcolm was carried through the streets as a hero. See Van Cleve,
Three Score Years and Ten,
153.

35
    
Register of the Officers and Cadets of the U.S. Military Academy, 1835,
21, 23.

36
    Van Cleve,
Three Score Years and Ten,
154–55; “Lindsay S. Hagler,” Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/arti cles/fha08 (accessed 17 Dec. 2012).

37
    Volunteers who arrived in Texas prior to 1 Oct. 1837 were eligible for bounty claims, entitling the holder to a free section of land in Texas. Alternatively, bearers could sell the grant for cash. Though Clarke arrived in Texas before the cutoff date, for reasons that are unclear he seems not to have applied for such compensation. Lindsay Hagler, however, requested and received 1,280 acres in Atascosa County in Dec. 1837, and likely an additional 640 acres in Frio County in March 1839. Thanks to John Molleston of the Texas General Land Office for assistance with this research. For more information, see Thomas Lloyd Miller,
Bounty and Donation Land Grants of Texas, 1835–1888
(Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1967), esp. 313–14, for Hagler’s grant(s).

38
    Letter from Joel Poinsett to John Miller, 31 Dec. 1838, Records of the War Department, Office of the Judge Advocate General, Court Martial CC-48, MTHS, HRR, MF 53a.

39
    Maria R. Audubon,
Audubon and His Journals
(1897; New York: Dover, 1960), 2:87–89. Lesley Wischmann provides an excellent account of Audubon’s time at Fort Union in
Frontier Diplomats: Alexander Culbertson and Natoyist-Siksina’ among the Blackfeet
(Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2004), 98–107.

40
    Nathaniel P. Langford, “A Frontier Tragedy,” Yellowstone National Park Research Library, catalog 7492-7499, ACC 262, 5. A typescript copy of the manuscript can be found at the MTHS, Nathaniel P. Langford Papers (cited hereafter as NPL), SC 215, folder 2.

41
    Letter from [unknown correspondent] to Malcolm Clarke, 11 May 1841, Records of the War Department, Office of the Judge Advocate General, Court Martial CC-48, MTHS, HRR, MF 53a.

42
    Van Cleve,
Three Score Years and Ten,
155.

43
    Stephen S. Witte and Marsha V. Gallagher, eds.,
The North American Journals of Prince Maximilian of Wied
(Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 2:357–61, quote p. 360.

44
    William R. Swagerty, “A View from the Bottom Up: The Work Force of the American Fur Company on the Upper Missouri in the 1830s,”
Montana: The Magazine of Western History
43, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 18–33. Swagerty’s wage figures are from the 1830s, the closest available date to Malcolm Clarke’s arrival.

45
    Helen P. Clarke, “Sketch of Malcolm Clarke,”
Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana
(Boston: J. S. Canner, 1966), 2:257–58.

46
    Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve, “A Sketch of the Early Life of Malcolm Clark,”
Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana
(Boston: J. S. Canner, 1966), 1:93. In the late 1820s and early 1830s, Malcolm attended Alexander Kinmont’s Academy for Boys, which emphasized the study of religion, mathematics, and the classics. For more, see Charles Frederic Goss,
Cincinnati, the Queen City: 1788–1912
(Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1912), 2:381–82.

47
    John E. Sunder,
The Fur Trade on the Upper Missouri, 1840–1865
(1965; Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 87.

48
    Charles Larpenteur,
Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: The Personal Narrative of Charles Larpenteur, 1833–1872
(1898; Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1989), 142.

49
    Ibid., 142–43.

50
    There are multiple accounts of the so-called Fort McKenzie massacre. See, e.g., among others, James H. Bradley, “Journal of James H. Bradley,”
Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana
(Boston: J. S. Canner, 1966), 3:235–37; Larpenteur,
Forty Years a Fur Trader,
187–89; Wischmann,
Frontier Diplomats,
111–13; and John G. Lepley,
Blackfoot Fur Trade on the Upper Missouri
(Missoula, Mont.: Pictorial Histories Publishing, 2004), 135–39. Chardon, who was nearly as dissolute as Harvey, was in charge of the post only because Culbertson was downriver at Fort Union hosting John James Audubon.

51
    Bradley, “Journal of James H. Bradley,” 232. Though Bradley’s account suggests a date of 1840, he was almost certainly off by one year. See Wischmann,
Frontier Diplomats,
83, n. 22.

52
    The two best sources on the episode are Hiram Martin Chittenden,
The American Fur Trade of the Far West
(New York: Francis P. Harper, 1902), 2:696–97; and Sunder,
The Fur Trade on the Upper Missouri,
88–90. See also Larpenteur,
Forty Years a Fur Trader,
194–96. While they likely crossed paths again—though vast, the Upper Missouri was also intimate—Clarke and Harvey never faced off a second time, and Clarke no doubt breathed much easier in 1854 when he learned of Harvey’s death of illness. Sadly, the court case Sunder uses to such great effect,
U.S. v. James Lee, Jacob Berger, and Malcolm Clark,
Case No. 393, is now missing from the National Archives branch at Kansas City.

53
    See May G. Flanagan, “The Story of Old Fort Benton,” MTHS, May G. Flanagan Papers, SC 1236. For the definitive study of the post, see Joel Overholser,
Fort Benton: World’s Innermost Port
(Helena, Mont.: Falcon Press, 1987).

54
    Lepley,
Blackfoot Fur Trade,
128. For a sense of the Culbertson-Clarke working relationship, see letter from Malcolm Clarke to Alexander Culbertson, 5 Nov. 1849, Missouri History Museum, Chouteau Family Papers, Chouteau-Papin Collection.

55
    Letter from Nicolas Point to James Van de Velde, 5 July 1847, Archives of the Society of Jesus, St. Louis, Missouri, AA:415 (my thanks to Beth Vosoba for the translation from the French). For his portrait of Clarke, see Nicolas Point,
Wilderness Kingdom: Indian Life in the Rocky Mountains, 1840–1847: The Journals & Paintings of Nicolas Point, S.J., trans. Joseph P. Donnelly
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967), 215. For Clarke’s donation, see Cornelius M. Buckley,
Nicolas Point, S.J.: His Life & Northwest Indian Chronicles
(Chicago: Loyola Univ. Press, 1989), 383. As befitting someone who earned three times as much, Alexander Culbertson gave Point fifteen dollars. See also Howard L. Harrod,
Mission among the Blackfeet
(Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1971).

56
    Alexander Culbertson’s younger brother, Thaddeus, spent a week in Clarke’s company in the summer of 1850 when he took a break from his studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. He came away so impressed with Clarke’s deft maneuvering among the Blackfeet that he wrote, “[I]t is my opinion that in order to [have] a proper appreciation of the Indian, a long residence among them is necessary.” Thaddeus A. Culbertson,
Journal of an Expedition to the Mauvaises Terres and the Upper Missouri in 1850
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1952), 116. Sadly, Thaddeus died less than a month after he returned to Pennsylvania from his trip. Another trader described Clarke this way: “[He is] a veteran of over twenty years’ experience, and thoroughly versed in all the wiles and mysteries of Indian trading. Clark wears a blue blanket capote, and displays a tobacco-sack of scarlet cloth beautifully garnished with beads, the handiwork of his Blackfoot wife.” Henry A. Boller,
Among the Indians: Eight Years in the Far West, 1858–1866
(1868; Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1959), 13–14. Boller credited Clarke with three years more than he had actually been on the Upper Missouri.

57
    Clarke, “Sketch of Malcolm Clarke,” 256.

58
    Clarke’s whereabouts during the mid-1850s are difficult to track. It appears that he quit the AFC around 1855, perhaps because of a dispute over wages, though one historian speculates that it was because his temper and reputation for violence had thwarted his advancement within the company. See Lepley,
Blackfoot Fur Trade,
128. After his return from the Midwest, he joined in a limited partnership with Charles Primeau, another former AFC man, and operated from two small posts at Forts Campbell and Stewart (near Forts Benton and Union, respectively). Their fledgling outfit did well enough that the AFC absorbed it “under pressure” in the spring of 1860, with Clarke subsequently assigned to Fort Union as its bourgeois. He lived there until 1862, when, with the fur trade nearly extinct, he moved with his family into the adobe ruins of the defunct Fort Campbell. For information on Clarke’s activities as an independent trader, see “The Fort Benton Journal, 1854–1856” and “The Fort Sarpy Journal, 1855–1856,”
Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana
(Boston: J. S. Canner, 1966), 10:1–99, 100–187. Clarke appears sporadically in these pages, usually as a visitor to Fort Union (even after leaving the AFC, Clarke maintained friendly relationships with Alexander Culbertson and Andrew Dawson). See also Sunder,
The Fur Trade on the Upper Missouri,
213–14, 238.

59
    Barton H. Barbour,
Fort Union and the Upper Missouri Fur Trade
(Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2001), 130. It is worth noting that Kipp remained in touch with his native family until the end of his life. See, e.g., letter from James Kipp to Joseph Kipp, 15 Aug. 1878, MTHS, James Kipp Papers, SC 936.

60
    Quoted in Clarke, “Sketch of Malcolm Clarke,” 259. Alexander Culbertson was also an exception to this rule. In the mid-1850s he settled his family in Peoria, Illinois, where they lived in high style for more than a decade before extravagant spending drove him into bankruptcy, precipitating a move back to Montana. See Wischmann,
Frontier Diplomats,
272–84.

61
    The birth dates for Nathan and Isabel are known with certainty, but some confusion exists in the cases of Helen and Horace. The dates above are those given by Horace’s granddaughter and Helen’s great-niece, Joyce Clarke Turvey. Author interview with Joyce Clarke Turvey, Oct. 2006.

62
    Quoted in Clarke, “Sketch of Malcolm Clarke,” 258, 255.

63
    Martha Edgerton Plassman, “A Double Heritage,” MTHS, Martha E. Plassman Papers, MC 78, box 4, folder 18.

64
    Peggy Pascoe,
What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009), 19–22, 94–104. It is worth noting, however, that as racial boundaries hardened in the later nineteenth century, several states—including Maine and the Carolinas in the East as well as Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, and Oregon—outlawed marriages between whites and Indians. See also Karen M. Woods, “A ‘Wicked and Mischievous Connection’: The Origins of Indian-White Miscegenation Law,” in
Mixed Race America and the Law: A Reader, ed. Kevin R. Johnson
(New York: New York Univ. Press, 2003), 81–85.

65
    See David D. Smits, “‘Squaw Men,’ ‘Half-Breeds,’ and Amalgamators: Late Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Attitudes toward Indian-White Race-Mixing,”
American Indian Culture and Research Journal
15, no. 3 (1991): 29–61; and Clark Wissler,
Indian Cavalcade; or, Life on the Old-Time Indian Reservations
(New York: Sheridan House, 1938), 217–36.