Frances Hunter
blog of the author To the Ends of the Earth
Frances Hunter's Journal
May 2005
May 25, 2005: Mammoth Cave
Mammoth Cave in Kentucky has a Lewis and Clark connection. William Clark's nephew, John Croghan, owned Mammoth Cave from 1839 until his death in 1849, and the family held the property until the 1920s.
The opening to Mammoth Cave was discovered by Kentucky hunters and settlers in the 1790s, when the Green River Valley became settled. There was extensive evidence in the cave of prehistoric activity, including well-preseved mummies.
Already dubbed "Mammoth," the cave became widely known to the public during the War of 1812, when it was opened up for its guano deposits. These deposits were very valuable because their rich calcium nitrate could be used to make saltpeter, a key ingredient in gunpowder. About seventy slaves were put to work mining the "Kentucky salt" and converting it into saltpeter for the war.
The cave had several different owners before being purchased by John Croghan, a successful doctor who was the son of Major William Croghan, a prosperous Louisville businessman, and Lucy Clark Croghan, the sister of William and George Rogers Clark. Croghan realized that the cave was a potentially lucrative tourist attraction. He improved the trails and bought a hotel nearby to serve cave visitors. He also purchased three slaves from the previous owner. One of these slaves was eighteen-year-old Stephen Bishop.
Like York in the Lewis & Clark expedition, Bishop managed to blaze his own trail in history despite being a slave. A witty, fun, and passionately curious man, Bishop had secured permission to explore the cave's passages in his off-hours. Bishop believed that the cave was one of the great wonders of the world. The discoveries of Stephen Bishop would bring world-wide fame to Mammoth Cave.
Bishop was the first man to see the famed underground lakes and rivers, the chambers covered with fantastical rock formations, the blind albino fish and animals, the immense vertical shafts and "bottomless" pits. Bishop made a sketch of the caverns for Dr. Croghan, who immediately realized that Bishop was the most valuable asset he had. He took Bishop to Locust Grove, the Croghan estate in Louisville, and put him to work for weeks creating a detailed map of every room and tunnel. Bishop's map, done from memory, would remain the standard for over six decades.
Bishop loved sharing the cave with visitors and became the cave's most celebrated guide and promoter. Tourists soon learned to ask for him by name. It was Bishop who conceived the vivid names for the formations that are so central to Mammoth Cave's appeal, such as Fairy Grotto, the Snowball Room, Purgatory, the Haunted Chamber, and River Styx. Bishop was eventually freed in 1856 by the terms of Dr. Croghan's will. The story goes that he hoped to save enough money to buy the freedom of his wife and children and resettle in Liberia. But Stephen Bishop was to die after only a year in freedom; he was 36 years old.
Another interesting aspect of the Croghan era at the cave was the establishment of a tuberculosis sanitarium. Health spas were important to tourism in those days, and Croghan believed that the cool humid air of the cave might be of great benefit to those suffering from consumption (tuberculosis). In 1842-43, Croghan built huts for tuberculosis patients inside the cave, but the experiment ended in failure. Croghan himself would die of the disease in 1849.
Croghan died a bachelor and left the cave to nine nieces and nephews, the last of whom died in 1926. One of the tragedies of this period was the ruthless exploitation of the timber reserves on the property, in which great old-growth trees of inestimable value were razed for cheap lumber. By the early 20th century, the conservation movement had begun, and people in Kentucky and elsewhere began to push for a change in Mammoth Cave's status so that its natural wonders could be preserved for the enjoyment of future generations.
Matters came to a head in the 1920s during the so-called Cave Wars. The whole nation was caught up in the Floyd Collins tragedy, and in its aftermath millions of Americans realized the danger posed to Kentucky's caves by unbridled private exploitation. Laws were passed protecting Mammoth and other Kentucky caves, and in 1928 the Kentucky National Park Commission filed an eminent domain suit to condemn the Mammoth Cave estate and take it over as a National Park. The suit was settled in the early 1930s, and the Civilian Conservation Corps began construction of the park in 1935. The vision for the park included 350 underground miles of cave, which rested under about 20 square miles of land. Besides the Clark/Croghan estate, more than 600 families were forced to sell out to the federal government to create the park, in some cases losing lands they had held for generations.
Mammoth Cave opened to the public as a national park in 1941.
May 23, 2005: Accommodations on the Natchez Trace
Last week I posted a couple of entries on travel along the Natchez Trace, where Meriwether Lewis died in 1809. The actual accommodations in the inns, or "stands," along the Trace, were a far cry from a modern motel room. As detailed in Jonathan Daniels' The Devil's Backbone, the typical stand of the period had one room set aside for the guests, sometimes in a separate cabin and sometimes just another room of the main cabin. This room generally lacked any amenities, even a bed, and often doubled as the family's storage shed for lumber and other supplies.
All of the guests would bunk down together, using whatever blankets or bedding they had brought with them. To prevent thievery, the guests would also bring in their baggage, saddles, bridles, and other accoutrements of the trail.
Lodging in a stand may appear to be unalluring to our modern sensibilities, but it did have a few advantages over simply camping in the woods. The traveler got protection from the weather and, at least in theory, increased security from outlaws (if you didn't happen to find them among your fellow guests).
Some travelers who didn't mind a night outdoors but still sought safety in numbers would camp in the yards of stands, paying the owner two bits for the privilege.
May 20, 2005: Panther in the Sky
One of the pleasures of getting into Lewis and Clark has been expanding my horizons to learn about other aspects of early American history. James Alexander Thom has written excellent historical novels about early America. My introduction to his work was Sign-Talker, a novel about George Droulliard, the half-Shawnee hunter who was a key member of the Expedition. I actually was not crazy about this book, but I was intrigued enough to seek out Long Knife, Thom's great novel about George Rogers Clark, and From Sea to Shining Sea, a saga about the Clark family that I just couldn't have enjoyed more. It's that good.
Thom strives to recreate historical accuracy in every detail. Branching out to some of his other work, I recently finished Panther in the Sky (1990). This novel is about the life and works of Tecumseh, the Shawnee chief who was at the center of Indian resistance to American expansion from the 1790s until the War of 1812.
Like other great Indian leaders before him (Pontiac, Joseph Brandt) and after (Crazy Horse), Tecumseh dreamed of uniting the Indian tribes and throwing back the white encroachment, carving out the space for the Indians to continue to practice their traditional way of life. He had many obstacles to overcome, not all of which were caused by the whites. In general, Indian societies were plagued by short-term thinking and an inability to grasp the big picture of what was really happening to their world. A number of Indian leaders were great tacticians, scoring big victories and then scattering while the whites regrouped and came relentlessly on. Only a few leaders were able to think strategically enough to actually slow the white advance. Tecumseh was one of these military geniuses.
The novel works as history, but it also works as a great story. Thom creates a sense of grief and regret about the loss of the Indians' world, but he doesn't whitewash the Indians. Tecumseh's brother, The Prophet, is depicted as a charlatan, and there are some brutal scenes of the torture that the Indians inflicted on their white captives. This low and cowardly behavior is a source of great despair for Tecumseh, who wants to elevate his people to a higher spiritual plane.
In a few spots in the book, Tecumseh appears too good to be true. I had a hard time believing that his goodness would have caused his arch-enemy, William Henry Harrison, to question the righteousness of his own cause. But overall the character of Tecumseh comes off as admirable but very human as he wrestles with spiritual questions, doubts, and vulnerabilites.
Panther in the Sky is another thoughtful, exciting, and moving novel by James Alexander Thom. Highly recommended!
May 18, 2005: Chowing Down with Lewis and Clark
In my Monday post about accomodations on the Natchez Trace, I didn't go into the matter of dining. Some of the stands along the Trace would serve food. Generally this "meal" would consist of cornmeal mush and milk. Thus, travelers of 1809 were well-advised to carry their own provisions. The well-equipped traveler would carry dried beef and hard tack, along with some flour, made either of Indian corn or Conte, made from the root of the China briar. This was said to be good when made into fritters sweetened with honey and fried in bear oil. (York, whip me up some Conte fritters!)
Figuring out what people ate back in the old days (called in academia "foodways") is an interesting field of study all in itself. Here's a couple of interesting recipe sites I recently ran across: Feeding America and Recipes for Historic Cooking. The recipe for jackrabbit stew is particularly horrifying. These sites focus on home recipes, but tavern food was also important to men in early America, as the tavern served as the focal point for social and business life. Frontiersmen like Lewis and Clark also spent much of their lives eating food they'd hunted themselves, which could be prepared in a number of ways. Here's another site with some interesting recipes from fur trade days.
By the way, the jackrabbit was unknown to science before Lewis & Clark. To read a little bit more about their contributions to scientific knowledge, check out this site from the Smithsonian.
May 16, 2005: The Music of Jack Gladstone
In Montana a couple of years ago, we had the pleasure of seeing Jack Gladstone perform. This Native American singer-songwriter writes music that is moving, intelligent, and immensely entertaining. His unique take on the history of the great American west ranges from biting satire ("Lewis and Clark Rag", "Hudson Bay Blues") to social history ("With the Coming of the Horse") to gentle nostalgia ("When the Land Belonged to God"). Gladstone's albums also include great songs about Native American folklore that are especially appealing to children ("When Napi Roasted Gophers", "The Bear Who Stole the Chinook"). If you enjoy your folk music with a healthy dose of irony, check out Gladstone's music at http://www.hawkstone.com/.
The Devil's Backbone
The best book on the Natchez Trace, where Lewis died, is The Devil's Backbone by Jonathan Daniels (1962). Very evocative details and a good map too. It's difficult to imagine traveling under such difficult circumstances as faced by people in early America. The Trace was considered an improved road; tree stumps in the road were required to be cut off shorter than 16 inches. As well as being rough traveling, the Old Trace was a dark, heavily forested, and creepy place. Some years later, Audubon made special note of the vultures that flew low to the ground in this area, looking for food. There were human vultures as well, as detailed in The Outlaw Trail, by Robert M. Coates (1930).
One entire chapter of The Devil's Backbone is devoted to Lewis's death. Among the tidbits you can pick up in this book is a well-written description of Grinder's Stand, the inn where Lewis spent his last hours.
Robert and Priscilla Grinder, who owned the inn, also had a farm, at which Mr. Grinder supposedy was on the night of Lewis' death. However, their main source of income was the "stand," which consisted of two log houses, unplastered and unchinked, and a barn that was 100-200 yards away. An inn like this would have provided food, liquor, and lodging. The book provides a good description of the trees that would have surrounded this clearing, newly hacked out of the woods. Nowadays, it is a park along the stupendous Natchez Trace Parkway, and a reconstruction of Grinder's Stand has been built so you can get an idea of how it might have looked. It was a hot and brilliant summer day when we visited. On the October night when Lewis died, we pictured a gloomy and desolate scene.
There were seven inns along the Trace in 1809, the year Lewis died. For our fictionalization of the events, we incorporated many of the stops along the Trace. Clark stays at Dobbin's Stand, six miles north of Grinder's, while conducting his investigation. For dramatic purposes, we also relocated a place called Mom Murrell's, a combination tavern, brothel, and thieves' market, so our characters would encounter it before they crossed the Tennessee River. In real life it was located about 20 miles from Grinder's near Columbia.
And speaking of thieves' markets, there were no AAA guides or Mobile travel guides in those days, so one way in which people decided whether to stay at a place was to note whether the landlord's ears had been cropped. Branding and ear cropping were common punishments of the day for robbery and burglary.
May 13, 2005: Under the Gun
A good deal of the research for Ends consisted of reconstructing Lewis' final days. What happened to Lewis was similar to what's happened to many of us as some point in our working careers -- somebody started gunning for him. Lewis had an arch-enemy in the Secretary of the Louisiana Territory, a man by the name of Frederick Bates. The reason for the extreme emnity between Lewis and Bates is somewhat unclear. Lewis was actually good friends with Bates' brother Tarleton, who had died earlier in a famous duel in Pittsburgh. The best guess is that Frederick or his brother had coveted the position of secretary to President Thomas Jefferson when he was elected in 1801. When Lewis beat them out for the job, Frederick at least never forgave. In addition, the two men were opposite in their approach to life. To quote Ends:
Frederick Bates was a handsome man--or at least Julia said so. Just past thirty, he always dressed in the latest fashion and wore his brown hair tousled so elaborately that Clark thought he looked like a frightened owl. Like Lewis, Bates came from a fine old Virginia family and was one of the best-educated men in town. But unlike Lewis, Bates was better suited to the life of a scholar than a frontiersman. With a doughy body and soft, almost feminine hands, he would have been out of place shouldering a rifle, paddling a canoe, or trekking through a mountain pass.
When James Madison succeeded Thomas Jefferson as President in early 1809, Bates saw his chance to get Lewis. Lewis had lost his political patron (and surrogate father, but that's for another post). Bates bombarded the new Secretary of War, William Eustis, with letters complaining of Lewis's conduct. (The territorial governments reported to the Secretary of War in those days.) Lewis, like all territorial officials, was particularly vulnerable in the area of finances. Back then, when communication between a remote territory and Washington could take months, officials were empowered to spend money by writing vouchers to cover the expenses. However, if the vouchers were not approved, the official could find himself held accountable for the money. It was this same method of doing business that had ruined William Clark's brother, George Rogers Clark, after the Revolutionary War.
Before he knew it, Lewis found his official standing badly undermined. The War Department started holding Lewis accountable for the bills. As a result, Lewis's private creditors called in all his debts as well. Lewis felt exactly as anyone have felt in similar circumstances -- angry, shocked, embittered. He packed up all his papers (including the journals) and headed for Washington to try to vindicate himself.
He seemed to have some premonition that he was going to die. He gave Clark his power of attorney so he could sell his land and pay off his debts in the event of his death. Along the way, he also made up his will, leaving everything to his mother. Lewis traveled heavily armed, with a rifle, two pistols, a dirk, and a pipe tomahawk with him.
May 11, 2005: Seeds
When researching this book, we began with seeds: known facts about Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and what happened to them after the Expedition. From there we began to try to understand what happened to Lewis and how a satisfying story might be built around the known facts.
There were signs of trouble in Lewis's life dating from six months after L&C returned from the West. For example, in March 1807, Lewis was confirmed by Congress as Governor of Upper Louisiana and Clark as his superintendent of Indian Affairs. Clark immediately departed for St. Louis with $6,896.34 in cash as payment for the men. Evidently, Clark was worried about Lewis when he left, for Lewis sent a note after him, saying:
“I took some pills last evening after your departure, from which I have found considerable relief and have no doubt of recovering my health perfectly in the course of a few days.” He told Clark that he would be in St. Louis by October and even had picked out the house he wanted to rent, telling Clark to contact the owner and have it fixed up for his arrival.
On his way back West, Clark became engaged to Julia Hancock, and wrote to Lewis about it and about another girl whom he thought might be good for Lewis. He also wrote that he had just discovered that Julia’s father was a “Fed, which I did not know until the other day. I took him to be a good, plain, Republican. At all events, I will hope to introduce some substantial, sincere Republicanism into some branch of the family, about January.”
Lewis was quite upset about personal attacks on him in the Federalist press, which tore him down in order to try to minimize the importance and peril of the expedition and make Jefferson look bad. Lewis was even accused of shooting himself in the ass to make himself more of a hero.
Before finally getting off for St. Louis in November, Lewis had gotten interested in at least three different women. He described himself as "restless" from the “void in our hearts which might, or ought, to be better filled…. I never felt less like a hero than at the present moment. What may be my next adventure, God knows, but on this I am determined, to get a wife.”
Evidently, though, he didn't have any more love interests after he went to St. Louis, except he does banter with Clark about “Miss Anderson,” Clark’s niece who lived with Clark and his bride when they went back to St. Louis from their wedding in June 1808.
May 9, 2005: St. Louis in 1804
One of the neatest L&C sites on the web is the interactive map of St. Louis in 1804 put up by the National Park Service. You can spend hours exploring the streets of old St. Louis, which is now entirely covered by the area of the Gateway Arch and its park.
Evidently, old St. Louis was a hard-driving town and not one much interested in preserving its early history. Most of the earliest buildings were log and did not survive fires and other vicissitudes of life. Even great mansions that were later built, such as that of Auguste Chouteau and the house later constructed by William Clark, were torn down to make way for warehouses and other commercial buildings. By the turn of the 20th century, the old town area was a giant rundown warehouse district that was not safe for people to visit. St. Louis grappled with this problem for decades before building the Gateway Arch Park in the 1960s. I'm sorry that there's nothing left to see from Lewis and Clark's time, but the Arch area is truly a gem. We visited last summer and had the opportunity to sit on the steps of the Arch and watch fireworks over the river. It was one of those great moments you sometimes get while traveling.
The Arch has to be seen to be believed. It's huge and dominates the entire skyline. I guess residents get used to it, but when we were driving in from the airport to our hotel downtown, the Arch loomed surreal and almost cartoonlike, as if we had entered a virtual St. Louis rather than a real place. I loved looking at it. There's also an excellent museum underneath the Arch, and we found the gift shop to be well-stocked with L&C souvenirs.
Our novel opens with Meriwether Lewis viewing old St. Louis from the Illinois side of the river. Nowadays, that view is still much more impressive than the view of Illinois from St. Louis. There just isn't much to see. While we were waiting for the fireworks to start, we saw the endless repetition of a huge casino sign touting, "Saturday Night Dance Party with Big Al Brock." Frankly it didn't look or sound too enticing. Fortunately the casino was nice enough to turn the sign off during the fireworks show.
May 5, 2005: Women in Early America
When researching the Julia character for To the Ends of the Earth, I found a web site with some essays on women in early America. These essays date from a little later than Lewis and Clark's time -- 1820s and 1830s, but they're still very interesting and enlightening reading. The essays are by travelers in America such as de Tocqueville and various other French, German, and British travelers. I assume these observations apply more to the ruling class than to more ordinary folks. A few tidbits:
- Young women in America had a great deal more freedom than women in Europe, and went to parties and had a good time. They were also pretty well-educated, studying history, literature, music, and French. Women in the South and West were more independent and had more rights than those in New England. The Europeans found the women to be alarmingly straightforward.
- Americans generally married for love rather than for money, and the girl was usually permitted to choose her own husband.
- The majority of women were married by age twenty, and were likely to have ten kids instead of just two or three. As a result, women aged prematurely and died young. The reason for the quick marriages is that there was a shortage of women, particularly out West, and if you saw somebody good you had to grab her off before someone else did.
- It would have been somewhat unusual for Lewis and Clark to stay single as long as they did. (Of course, they were busy!)
- Once a woman got married, she was expected to stay home and take care of the husband and the home. Again, expectations would have been looser in the South and West.
- The Europeans weren't too impressed with American men. They said Americans didn't know anything of the arts and tended to approach the marriage as a practical business matter, so they weren't any good at winning or pleasing women. (Sounds like Lewis.) Once they got married, the men spent all day working, then at home they just worked some more, read the newspaper, or sat around smoking and spitting with their feet up on the furniture. (Ouch.)
- It was worthy of note when the family had a dad who hugged and kissed his wife and children and seemed to enjoy spending time with them. These families were known as "kissing families." (Sounds like Clark.)
George Rogers Clark
One of the characters we became fascinated with while doing the research was William Clark's brother, the Revolutionary hero George Rogers Clark. Previously, I hadn't known any about GR Clark other than his role in the John Jakes' novel The Rebels. Here's a good short biography of George Rogers Clark that has some additional information on the Clark family. The Clarks were a large, affectionate, and close-knit clan.
One of the most interesting things I found out that that, like Lewis, GR Clark took personal responsibility for the debts incurred in his campaigns, and then couldn't get reimbursed. Like Lewis, he was hounded by creditors. One reason for the failure of the government to reimburse him was the slander committed against him by those seeking power in early Kentucky -- including James Wilkinson. Some of this reading was how Wilkinson started to emerge for us as the villain of the tale. This same site has a good short biography of William Clark that tells about his life before and after the expedition.
There is a web site called The Chronicles of George Rogers Clark that has this to say about what happened with Wilkinson. It's actually VERY interesting both in itself and as far as what happened with Lewis years later!
May 4, 2005: Hank Williams: Lost Highway
Last weekend we went to see "Hank Williams: Lost Highway" at the Zachary Scott Theater Center in Austin. It featured the great Nashville musician Kenneth Brian in the title role. This guy has an amazing voice -- if you close your eyes, you'd think Hank was back among us. Except Kenneth Brian was sober and showed up for the show.
The music was wonderful, but like a lot of shows about doomed stars, it felt ultimately unsatisfying. It's hard to fathom what drives some people to self-destruction. Hank Williams had a great talent, but he was plagued by alcoholism and loneliness, and his wild behavior and abusiveness ultimately drove away even his grasping wife and loyal friends. He might have been a folk-music genius, but the Lost Highway took a heavy toll.
May 2, 2005: Readability
I'd never much looked into readability testing before and always wondered how educators, librarians, &c. came up with their evaluations that a particular book was written at, say, the eighth-grade level. Now I know. According to this interesting article, readability tests were first designed in the 1920s to help publishers better target their books. Rather than having to take the time for someone to actually read the book, these tests broke readability down into quantifiable components such as the number of multi-syllable words and the number of words in a sentence. Obviously, the tests can't measure how enjoyable, exciting, or compelling a book is, but (according to the article) they're actually fairly useful when writing for children or a lower reading level. At a higher level, the background of the reader and his/her interest in the subject matter is just as important, if not more so, than the readability level.
You can put your own work into an HTML document and test its readability using three common measures. I tried it on the first chapter of Ends. By the Gunning Fog index it's pitched to the 8th grade level -- the same range as most popular novels. By the Flesch-Kincaid grade level measure, it scored at the 5th grade level. For what it's worth, these scores are considered pretty ideal for a book aimed at the average pleasure reader.
Welcome
Hello! Welcome to the new website of Frances Hunter, author of To the Ends of the Earth: The Last Journey of Lewis & Clark. Frances Hunter is actually two sisters who have put our life-long love of storytelling to work writing historical fiction. We completed our first novel last fall. Our great agent, Uwe Stender, is currently shopping the manuscript around to publishers. Uwe tells us that the market is tight -- very tight -- for historical fiction, particularly that by new authors. We believe in our novel and that we have something unique to contribute to the field of historical fiction. In this web journal, we'll share thoughts on Lewis & Clark, Robert E. Lee (the subject of our newest work-in-progress), our journey towards publication, and just life in general. Thank you so much for joining us, and we hope to offer worthwhile observations that will keep you coming back.