Joseph Mussulman
Marc A. Hefty photo.
Photo by Bill Bevis.
Left to right: Two concerned dugout canoe owners, one concerned expert paddler, and Joe grinning with delight
Joseph A. Mussulman (1928–2017) was the founding producer, editor and writer for Discovering Lewis & Clark. After five years of preparation and experimentation the website went online in 1998, under the auspices of a non-profit entity called VIAs Inc., and funded by grants from various sources, especially–throughout the bicentennial observance from 2003 to 2006–the Challenge Cost Share Program of the National Park Service. In 2009 the site was taken over by the Lewis & Clark Fort Mandan Foundation of Washburn, North Dakota.
Dr. Mussulman earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music history and literature at Northwestern University in 1950 and 1951. As a Danforth Scholar he earned a doctorate in humanities from Syracuse University in 1967.
He has written and produced a number of interpretive programs in collaboration with audio specialist Richard H. Kuschel, also of Missoula Montana. In 1986, he wrote, narrated, and co-produced a multimedia presentation for the Blaine County Museum (MT) titled Forty Miles from Freedom, about the Non-Treaty Nez Perce Indians’ final battle with the U.S. Army, at the Bear Paw Mountains in 1877. In 2012-13 Mussulman and Kuschel revised the 20-minute onsite production and updated it in High Definition video. In 1994 their interactive self-guided audio-CD tour of Yellowstone National Park, a five-hour program produced for Tour Technologies, Inc., received first prize in the category of media productions from the National Association for Interpretation. Their Two Days to Destiny, an audio interpretive tour of the Little Bighorn Battlefield, won first place from the NAI in 1995.
Mussulman is the author of five articles on Lewis and Clark that appeared in We Proceeded On, the official journal of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Inc.: “My Boy Pomp’: About That Name,” Vol. 21, No. 2 (May 1995); “Soundscapes: The Sonic Dimensions of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” Vol. 21, No. 4 (November 1995); “Men in High Spirits: Humor on the Lewis and Clark Trail,” Vol.22, No. 2 (May 1996); “‘In Greatest Harmoney’: ‘Meddicine Songs’ on the Lewis and Clark Trail,” Vol. 23, No. 4 (November 1997); and “Pomp’s bier was a bar,” Vol. 27, No. 1 (February 2001).
Dr. Mussulman has designed and produced maps for various books, brochures and study guides about Lewis and Clark, including 58 full-color maps illustrating the expedition’s entire route from coast to coast for the travelers’ guide, Along the Trail with Lewis and Clark, by Barbara Fifer and Vicky Soderberg (2nd ed., Helena: Montana Magazine, 2001). Those maps also appeared in the same publisher’s annual Lewis and Clark Travel Planner and Guide. They may be seen in Discovering Lewis & Clark at Discovering Lewis & Clark from the Air. In 1998, he created a poster illustrating the trail from Washington, D.C. to the Pacific, for Farcountry Press.
His other publications include a biography, Dear People . . . Robert Shaw (Indiana University Press,1979; reprint, Chapel Hill, NC: Hinshaw Music, 1996), and Music in the Cultured Generation (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974). From 1987 through 1998 he was the interpretive writer and designer of Montana Afloat, a series of sixteen maps of Montana’s major floatable rivers.
Dr. Mussulman was a 1999 recipient of a Montana Governor’s Arts Award. Several years later he received an award of meritorious achievement from the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation “for outstanding contributions in bring to this nation a greater awareness and appreciation of the Lewis and Clark expedition.” In 2005, he received the Montana Governor’s Humanities Award.
Contributions to this Site
Meeting the Salish
Multiple perspectives
by Joseph A. Mussulman
The story of Lewis and Clark meeting the Flathead Salish on 4 September 1805 at Ross Hole is told by one expedition member, four Salish Indians, and one western artist.
Outfitting the Expedition
Buying supplies in Philadelphia and St. Louis
by Frank Muhly, Joseph A. Mussulman
The original shopping list contained more than 180 items, including various “Mathematical Instruments”, arms and accouterments, ammunition, clothing, camp equipage, provisions, Indian presents, medicine, and packing materials.
Caching Supplies
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Lewis records the method for hiding and storing goods, which he learned from the French members of the Corps.
Sage Grouse
Centrocercus urophasianus
by Joseph A. Mussulman, Mark Behan
“The Heath Cock or cock of the Plains is found in the Plains of Columbia and are in great abundance from the enterance of Lewis’s river to the mountains which pass the Columbia between the Great falls and Rapids of that river.” Thus we have a historic account of sage grouse range and abundance.
Deists in the ‘Wilderness’
by Joseph A. Mussulman
As deists in the ‘wilderness,’ Lewis and Clark simply wanted to observe and admire the surrounding world and learn to understand the relationships that held it together.
Bison in Decline
An interview with Dan Flores
by Dan Flores, Joseph A. Mussulman
In this interview, Dan Flores, A.B. Hammond Professor of History at The University of Montana, sets the scene at the time of Lewis and Clark, and then discusses some of those circumstances which brought the American bison to the brink of extinction.
Fort Rock
Refuge at The Dalles
by Joseph A. Mussulman
The party “Came too, under a high point of rocks on the Lard. Side below a creek”—Quenett (“salmon”), now Mill Creek—a “Situation well Calculated to defend our Selves,” and duly named their bivouac “Fort Rock Camp.”
Long Beach
Mementos
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Clark’s party continued north along the beach for four miles, to the vicinity of today’s Long Beach, Washington. Here Clark memorialized their first visit to the Pacific Ocean by marking his name and the date on a small pine tree.
The Great Fall by Air
"Sublimely Grand"
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Shortly before noon on the 13 June 1805, Lewis’s ears “were saluted with the agreeable sound of a fall of water,” which “soon began to make a roaring too tremendious to be mistaken for any cause short of the great falls of the Missouri.”
The Judith River
by Joseph A. Mussulman
“at the distance of 2½ miles passed a handsome river which discharged itself on the Lard. side, I walked on shore and acended this river about a mile and a half in order to examine it”
Naming Travelers’ Rest
Thinking of South Carolina?
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Lewis and Clark and their men camped on 9–10 September 1805 and again on 30 June though 2 July 1806 beside a stream they called “Travelers Rest Creek.” Meriwether Lewis may have seen or sensed a comparison between it and the Travelers Rest in South Carolina.
Lost Trail Pass
Uncertainty
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Where did they camp? This was not the only time Toby was unsure of himself, nor that the captains were temporarily baffled, but it is perhaps the one that most readily invites study and discussion.
The Beaverhead Canyon Gateway
Last gate of the Rockies
by Joseph A. Mussulman, Robert N. Bergantino
Lewis’s simple, orderly concept of the Rocky Mountains began to crumble. The truth was, this was not the easy portage to the Pacific Ocean they had expected from the beginning. Countless “chains” of mountains still intervened.
Father De Smet’s Arrival
Did they know any Lolos?
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Among the most faithful of the missionaries’ converts to Catholicism was a half-breed trapper named Lolo who was killed by a grizzly bear in November 1850.
Rattlesnakes
Crotalus sp.
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Lewis awoke to find “a large rattlesnake coiled on the leaning trunk of a tree under the shade of which I had been lying.” It certainly wasn’t the first rattlesnake seen on the trip, but he killed this one, and took time to study it.
Naming the Marias
"in honour of Miss Maria"
by Joseph A. Mussulman
“The whole of my party to a man except myself were fully perswaided that this river was the Missouri, but being fully of opinion that it was neither . . . I determined to give it a name and in honour of Miss Maria W____d.”
Columbia River near Blalock
Greatest chief
by Joseph A. Mussulman
This scene’s most arresting feature is still the “high mountain of emence hight covered with Snow” on the photo’s horizon. Clark mistook it for Mount St. Helens. The Indians called the mountain Pahtoe. Since 1838 it has been known as Mount Adams.
Fort Clatsop Today
Reconstructing the fort
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Today’s Fort Clatsop stands at or near the site of the Corps’ winter encampment of 1805-06 was built on the same floor plan that Clark drew on the cover of the Elkskin-covered Journal. The rest of the present structure resembles the original only in a remote sense.
The Lost Trail Divide
Leaving the Indian road
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Continuing north up the North Fork Salmon River, they leave a good Indian road and must cut their own trail. Were they lost? Sergeant Gass’s laconic remark gives us a hint: “This was not the creek our guide wished to have come upon.”
Unviolated Forests
The Bitterroot National Forest
by Joseph A. Mussulman
The orator spoke of the promises of “regions yet groaning under unviolated forests.” Lewis responded similarly: “With you I trust, that the discoveries we have made will not long remain unimproved.”
Smoking
Smoking on the expedition
by Joseph A. Mussulman, Kristopher K. Townsend
The captains would have to ration their dwindling supplies, and the smokers would have to extend their tobacco with leaves and inner bark from local plants and trees. The captains would also learn the endless variety of ceremonies practiced when sharing a pipe the People they met.
Songs They Sang
by Joseph A. MussulmanIn response to numerous requests from teachers and community musicians, we present the following lists of songs that might have been sung by the men on the expedition, or by the folks back home.
Larocque at Fort Mandan
by Joseph A. Mussulman
In the fall of 1804, Larocque’s job was to take a supply of North West Company merchandise to the Mandan and Hidatsa villages and trade for furs. While there, he asked the captains if he could join the expedition.
The Blackfoot River by Air
Prairie of the knobs
by Joseph A. Mussulman
On 6 July 1806, Lewis’s eleven-man party had broken camp at the mouth of a Blackfoot River tributary they named Seamans Creek, after, and headed on up the river along the “road” that Indians living in the Rocky Mountains called the Cokahlahrishkit—the Road to the Buffalo.
Columbian Ground Squirrel
Spermophilus columbianus
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Labiche brought a specimen into Long Camp on the Clearwater River and four days later, Meriwether Lewis penned one of his longest and most meticulous descriptions of any small mammal.
Edgar S. Paxson
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Edgar Paxson captured the essence of the fast-disappearing Old West as he personally experienced it. In 1895, he painted “Over the Trail of Lewis and Clark,” his first known scene from that episode in western history.
Estimate of the Eastern Indians
Early intelligence report
by Joseph A. Mussulman
The expedition had one major outcome that was made available to the public well before the expedition was over, the “Estimate of the Eastern Indians,” which Lewis and Clark sent back on the barge in April 1805.
Salt-curing Meat
Preserving without refrigeration
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Salt served functions that were equally as important as dietary needs: drying meat—namely, and tanning hides for clothing and moccasins.
Experience the Lewis and Clark Trail
The Lewis and Clark Trail Experience—our sister site at lewisandclark.travel—connects the world to people and places on the Lewis and Clark Trail.
Discover More
- The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Day by Day by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). The story in prose, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
- The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery (abridged) by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2003). Selected journal excerpts, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
- The Lewis and Clark Journals. by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001). The complete story in 13 volumes.
This site is provided as a public service by the
Lewis and Clark Trail Alliance
with additional funding from the following:
