Frances Hunter

blog of the author To the Ends of the Earth

 

Frances Hunter's Journal
February 2008

Winner, Violet Crown Award for Fiction

Silver Medal Winner, Independent Publisher Book Awards

Finalist, Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year Awards

 

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February 26, 2008: Defending Louisiana

When the Spanish controlled Louisiana, their policy was to reduce the American threat to their territory in Texas, Mexico, and the West by closing American access to the lower Mississippi. They controlled access to the upper portion of their territory (today's Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, and the Dakotas) by their defense of St. Louis, the embarkation point for any journey on the northern Missouri.

Over the years, a number of Americans, including William Clark's brother George Rogers Clark, hatched schemes to wrest control of both sections of Louisiana from the withering Spanish empire. But by the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the Spanish themselves had lost control of Louisiana to France. To Spain's dismay, Napoleon sold off the territory to the United States, and Spain's greatest fear had materialized. An aggressive, expansionist United States was knocking on their door.

Louisiana presented new national security problems for the United States as well. If the United States were to hang on to the territory, we had to maintain control of New Orleans and the western bank of the Mississippi. This was a constant struggle for the new nation, and our unquestioned right to these territories was not secured until Andrew Jackson's victory over the British in New Orleans in 1814.

Outside of the crucial New Orleans area, the United States had acquired over 800,000 square miles of territory that had to be managed. President Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark up the Missouri River to explore the territory of Upper Louisiana and go beyond it to stake a claim to the Rocky Mountains and the Oregon country. But, just as the Spanish feared, Jefferson also had his eye on Texas. He moved immediately to occupy the lower Missouri, Red River, and Arkansas River, and claimed that the Louisiana Purchases gave the United States the territory all the way to the Rio Grande. Years later, in 1819, the United States would sign a treaty with Spain giving up its claims on Texas in order to negotiate possession of Florida.

Spanish documents reveal that the Spaniards were very concerned about American territorial claims in Texas and about the expedition of "Captain Merry" and his men. Shortly after the territorial transfer in 1803, the Spanish paid $12,000 to our old friend James Wilkinson, the traitorous commander of the United States Army, for a document he wrote called "Reflections." In the Reflections, Wilkinson wrote that any yielding to American pretensions would mean giving the keys to the kingdoms of Mexico and Peru to "an army of adventurers similar to the ancient Goths and Vandals."

Wilkinson urged the Spanish to stop Lewis and Clark and drive Daniel Boone, who had moved to Spanish Missouri in 1799, back east of the Mississippi.Though the Spanish didn't succeed in tracking down and arresting Lewis and Clark or Boone, the antagonism continued between the Spanish and the Americans. The Spanish considered the American frontiersmen "mere hogs" who "did not live like Christians." For the Americans' part, they found the Spanish inhabitants of their new territory to be "ignorant almost to stupidity," and said they seemed to believe that the American government was mere "hocus-pocus."

Always one for the double-cross, Wilkinson also conspired with Aaron Burr on a bizarre plan unfolded in which Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and parts of Georgia and Carolina would be bribed to leave the United States with plunder from a military expedition against Mexico. As details of the plan leaked out, Wilkinson knew he would be ruined both with Jefferson and Spain -- so he betrayed Burr. Meriwether Lewis would later attend the Burr trial as an observer for President Jefferson.

The tangled web of security and intelligence questions surrounding the Spanish territory would not be resolved until the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War in the 1840s.

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February 6, 2008: Powdered Hair

Until I got interested in Lewis & Clark, I was always put off by early America, in no small part because of the strange white hair so many of the Founding Fathers have in their portraits. What was the deal about men's hairstyles in the colonial and Federal period, anyway?

According to the great website Hair and Hairdos of the 18th Century, short hair was the fashion among men for most of the colonial period. On a dress-up occasion (such as having one's portrait painted), a man would brush his hair back and either wrap it in a queue or pigtail, or tuck it into a black silk bag called a bourse or bar-wig.

Older men, who then as now often didn't have much hair, wore wigs, and generally powdered them and the hair so that they would all be the same color. Both wigs and hair were greased with hair pomade so that the powder would stick.

The best wigs were made with human hair, usually sold by young women who needed money, and for that reason were not necessarily white. The white color comes from the powder, which was made from potato or rice flour and a coloring pigment, and perhaps a perfumed oil.

By the time Lewis and Clark were coming of age in the late 18th century, wigs were going out of style and men wore their hair in a more natural look. But as can be seen from the formal portraits of Meriwether Lewis, the truly fashionable kept the powdered look going.

Meriwether Lewis by Charles Saint-Memin

Meriwether Lewis by Charles Willson Peale (Is it powder or was his hair going gray? Only his hairdresser knew for sure.)

By contrast, none of the portraits of William Clark show him wearing any powder.

William Clark by Charles Willson Peale

William Clark by John Wesley Jarvis

Check out the Thomas Jefferson Wiki for an interesting discussion on wigs and hair powder.

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February 1, 2008: New Review from Blogger News Network

To the Ends of the Earth got a great review from Celia Hayes on Blogger News Network! Celia is a historical fiction author herself of the recent To Truckee's Trail, the story of the tragic California-bound Stephens-Townsend Party of 1844, and one of the driving forces behind the very promising Independent Authors' Guild. Check it out:

It was once explained to me by a literary agent that the perfect recipe for a best-selling historical novel was to write about an unknown aspect of an event or person that everyone had heard about. He gave as an example “Cold Mountain” – everyone has heard about the Civil War, right? But the distinct un-enthusiasm of many nominally Confederate soldiers for the Southern cause was the perfect unknown aspect. By this principle, “To the Ends of the Earth” is a striking example of this axiom. Everyone has heard of the Lewis and Clark Expedition; that daring, two-year long mapping and scientific exploration of the then-newly-acquired Louisiana Territory. That acquisition expanded American possessions from a bare coastal toehold plus mountain range country to most of a continent, from sea to sea, but at the time it was very much a pig in a poke. It was the challenge of two daring young Army officers, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to go and see what Thomas Jefferson had wrought, or at least purchased.

And so they did, and to great acclaim, popular, political and scientific… but this book is a speculative account of what happened afterwards; primarily an exploration of the mystery surrounding the death of Meriwether Lewis, who was on his way back to Washington, to account for his use - or misuse - of government funds. Was he murdered, as part of a plot by a vicious and sinister political enemy? Or – chronically ill, depressed and self-medicating with alcohol and patent medicines - did he kill himself? How valuable were his expedition journals, maps and scientific observations on every aspect of what he and his good friend had seen on their journey to the Pacific Coast? How much would a foreign power pay for them?

“To the Ends of the Earth” is more than a period thriller; it is also a deftly drawn and sympathetic portrait of friendships and relationships, in an age when the political and the personal merged. The deep friendship between Lewis and Clark is only the central facet. Of similar interests and complimentary temperaments, the great expedition had been the professional high point of both their lives, something that they had both longed to do and planned for. The close father-and-son affection between Lewis and Thomas Jefferson, his political and intellectual patron is implied, but powerful. Then there is the fraught relationship between Clark and his slave, York. York, who accompanied the two explorers into the west, is torn now between loyalty and affection. His growing dissatisfaction at being merely property, a chattel is more fully developed, as the two of them follow Lewis along the Natchez Trace on what would become Meriwether Lewis’ last journey. And then there is Clarks’ marriage to the pretty and feisty Julia, and her growing sense of independence.

The narrative is a web of relationships, but the force that drives the plot the malign character of James Wilkinson. Wilkinson – a political general and military incompetent – is known to have been entangled in all kinds of traitorous and self-serving plots during the early days of the American republic – including that which entangled Aaron Burr. Historically, Wilkinson seems to have been as corrupt and slippery an operator as is painted here; as such he makes almost too satisfactory a villain, cheerfully taking money from a foreign power and planting malicious gossip about people who have crossed him politically.

“To the Ends of the Earth” is a gripping and accomplished read, well-researched and unfailing in it’s portrayal of a time when the United States was still new and uncertain – and yet blessed with the services and devotion of men like Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. The book was awarded a silver medal in the historical/military fiction category in 2007’s Independent Publisher Book Awards.

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