Too Né (Eagle Feather)

Lewis and Clark met a significant Arikara leader in early October 1804. That man rode upriver with the expedition in the weeks that followed to negotiate a peace settlement with the Mandan. In the spring of 1805 he went down river with the barge (called the ‘boat’ or ‘barge’ but never the ‘keelboat’) to St. Louis. After a series of delays, some having to do with the Arikara leader’s serious illness, he went to Washington, DC, to meet with President Jefferson. He died in the East and was buried, according to Jefferson, with appropriate obsequies.

The Man

An Arikara man known variously as Arketaranarshar, Ankedoucharo, Eagle’s Feather, Hawk’s Feather, Piaheto, and Too Né (hereafter Too Né) was one of the hereditary leaders of one of the three Arikara earthlodge villages at the mouth of the Grand River.^[3]Christopher Steinke, “‘Here is my country’: Too Né’s Map of Lewis and Clark in the Great Plains,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 71, no. 4, October 2014, 592. The people who met him in St. Louis and beyond saw more merit in him than did the captains. From St. Louis, General James Wilkinson reported, a bit breathlessly, that Too Né spoke “Eleven different Languages,” in addition to being a “Master of the Language of Arms, Hands & Fingers,” i.e., Plains Sign Language. “He is certainly a learned Savage,” Wilkinson concluded.^[4]Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, with Related Documents, 1783-1854, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 1:272-73. In Washington, DC, Secretary of War Henry Dearborn said, “The Ricardi [sic] Chief is an interesting character;-and we shall not fail of sending him away particularly satisfied. I most ardently hope, he will return home in safety.”^[5]Jackson, Letters, 1:305 (footnote 1). According to the artist, actor, novelist, and impresario William Dunlap, Too Né had a compelling way of reinforcing what he had to say through his mastery of Indian sign language. “His sign for speaking truth & the contrary is very expressive,” Dunlap wrote.^[6]William Dunlap, Diary of William Dunlap (1766-1839): The Memoirs of a Dramatist, Theatrical Manager, Painter, Critic, Novelist, and Historian, 3 vols. (New York: New York Historical Society, 1930), … Continue reading

Such details as we have of Too Né’s appearance and personality come not from William Clark but from individuals the Arikara leader met during his travels to Washington, DC. When we first glimpse him other than as an undifferentiated Arikara informant, he is sitting cross-legged on a mattress in a shabby hotel in the national capital trimming Guinea hen feathers. He is a large man, dark enough to be mistaken for an African-American, no longer young, stoically biding his time before addressing questions put to him by a couple of curiosity seekers, including US Senator Samuel Latham Mitchill (1764-1831) of New York. He is wearing a weathered US Army uniform coat and he has tied a blue kerchief around his head “in the French style,” according to Dunlap, a friend of Mitchill’s and an active diarist and letter writer who was visiting Washington, DC, for a few weeks.^[7]Dunlap, Diary, 389. Unfortunately, Dunlap, the author of this indelible word portrait of Too Né, did not make the Arikara leader the subject of one of his paintings.

His Diplomatic Missions

Too Né assisted the Corps of Discovery in several important ways. He later told Senator Mitchill and William Dunlap that “he guided him [Lewis, or perhaps more likely, Clark] westward & returned again with him.”^[8]Dunlap, Diary, 391. This was something of an exaggeration. He undertook not one but two diplomatic missions on behalf of Lewis and Clark. First he accompanied the expedition from the Arikara to the Mandan villages to negotiate a cessation of recent hostilities and to propose an alliance that might blunt the power of Sioux aggression on the northern Great Plains. In this he was moderately successful. According to historian Christopher Steinke, Too Né was sent on the diplomatic mission by another Arikara leader, Pocasse.^[9]Steinke, “‘Here is my country,'” 595. Then he let himself be talked into making the long journey to Washington, DC, to meet President Jefferson and observe firsthand the wealth, power, technology, and overwhelming population of the United States. His fellow Arikara tribesmen were uneasy about the proposed journey. According to James Wilkinson, Too Né’s decision to visit the Great Father was “contrary to the will of his whole People.”^[10]Jackson, Letters, 1:274.

Too Né’s remarkable map was not a standard, off-the-shelf Arikara portrait of the American West, though it had many of the elements and details of such a map. Too Né drew his map explicitly to pay respect to the unexpected arrival of the Anglo-Americans in the Upper Missouri country. The map charted not only place but time, right up to the moment he inscribed it. The two most prominent features of the map are the expedition’s councils with the Arikara on 12 October 1804, and with the Mandan and Hidatsa, including the Arikara peace initiative, on 29 October 1804. Too Né seems not to have made the mistake of some other Native American nations in regarding Lewis and Clark as ephemeral visitors, filled with self-importance, who spoke with consider.able huff and puff, but who soon enough moved over the lip of the horizon. Too Né gave the Corps of Discovery’s arrival the weight and significance that the captains themselves attached to their voyage. His map seems to endorse Jefferson’s statement to Sheheke (“The Wolf”) of the Mandan nation on 30 December 1806: “We are now your fathers; and you shall not lose by the change.”^[11]For Jefferson’s speech to Shekeke (White Coyote), whom he called “The Wolf,” see Presidential Speeches, Thomas Jefferson President, at … Continue reading A part of the original Too Né map has been lost. He charted his journey all the way to Washington, DC, and even drew pictures of the gifts he expected to receive from the Great Father.^[12]Dunlap, Diary, 392.

[Editor: For President Jefferson’s speech to the delegation and their response to it, see on this site Too Né’s Delegation.]

Ethnographic Guide

On the upriver journey across the bottom half of today’s North Dakota (12–26 October 1804), Too Né gave Lewis and Clark a running ethnographic commentary and geo-political lesson on the Upper Missouri country-extending all the way from the Dakota and Ojibwe homelands of the Upper Mississippi in today’s Minnesota and Ontario to the Black Hills, which for Lewis and Clark meant not only our Black Hills (South Dakota) but all the outlying ragged pine country east of the northern Rocky Mountains.

It was during that three-week period that Too Né informed of a “number of their Treditions” which Clark did not “think worth while mentioning-“^[13]Moulton, Journals, 3:180.

Between today’s Mobridge, South Dakota, and Stanton, North Dakota (approximately 150 miles), Too Né identified and named creeks, rivers, buttes, and bluffs on both sides of the river. He also explained Arikara and (to a certain extent) Mandan sacred places in the region. He identified the ruins of abandoned Arikara, Mandan, Cheyenne, and Sioux villages and encampments in the southern half of what is now North Dakota. And-later, probably in St. Louis-he drew the recently discovered map that might be called an Arikara projection of the trans-Mississippi West. He met with and impressed President Jefferson in Washington.^[14]According to Dunlap, Diary, 389, Jefferson called him “an extraordinary man.” There, unfortunately, on 6 April 1806, he died of natural causes.

The region in question-between the mouths of the Grand River in northern South Dakota and Knife River in central North Dakota, with today’s Bismarck approximately in the middle-is remote and sparsely populated to this day. The Missouri River is impounded all the way from Pierre, South Dakota, to just below Bismarck, North Dakota. This stretch of the massive Lake Oahe is little visited. Spanning the border on the west bank of the river is the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, home to the Lakota Sioux. Territory that in Lewis and Clark’s time belonged to the Arikara and (just to the north) the Mandan, now is one home of the Lakota Sioux. There are few stretches of the Missouri River less well known and less visited than the one through which Too Né provided his commentaries. In southern North Dakota the Missouri “flows” between rough and broken bluffs in a valley sometimes five miles wide, dotted by box and teepee buttes, some of which reminded Clark of “hiped [i.e. hipped] roofs” in Virginia.^[15]Moulton, Journals, 3:174. The major tributaries in this region come in from the west: in South Dakota the Cheyenne, the Moreau, and the Grand; in North Dakota the Cannonball, the Heart, and the Knife. There is virtually no historical signage along this entire stretch of the Lewis and Clark Trail.

Meriwether Lewis was almost entirely silent through the final leg of the 1804 journey. In the few natural history and navigational field notes Lewis kept during this period, he never mentions the Arikara leader. Clark, who was keeping the “captain’s log,” wrote down a significant amount of information offered to him by Too Né. He might have recorded more if he were not busy squeezing as much upriver mileage as possible out of the boat crews as the autumn advanced towards a Great Plains winter: falling leaves, shorter days, longer and colder nights, migrating herds and birds, and the increasing presence of ice on the river.

The expedition’s leadership was also distracted during this period by the most significant personnel crisis of the entire journey. For “having uttered repeated expressions of a highly criminal and mutinous nature; the same having a tendency not only to distroy every principle of military discipline, but also to alienate the affections of the individuals composing this Detachment to their officers,” private John Newman was tried by his peers on 13 October 1804, discharged from the permanent party, and flogged 75 times the next day on a sandbar in the middle of the Missouri River. Too Né was horrified by this savage punishment. Clark wrote, “The punishment of this day allarmd. the Indian Chief verry much, he Cried aloud (or effected to Cry) I explained the Cause of the punishment and the necessity He thought examples were also necessary, & he himself had made them by Death, his nation never whiped even their Children, from their burth.”^[16]Moulton, Journals, 3:170-71. See also on this site Corporal Punishment.

Geography Teacher

If Clark had been wired differently, or if he had had the leisure to listen to Too Né more carefully, he might have collected a major ethnographic profile of the northern plains tribes. If Too Né’s map had been completed during the winter of 1804-05 when Clark was close at hand and working on his own master map consolidating all that he had observed and learned during the first year of travel, he might have benefited more fully from his Arikara informant. Indeed, the lighter workload of the winter might have induced Clark to pay more attention to Too Né’s “Treditions about Turtles, Snakes, &.” According to Steinke, Clark did incorporate a number of place names in this region that he could only have obtained from the Arikara leader.^[17]Steinke, “‘Here is my country,'” 599.

Too Né deserves a larger place in American memory than he has received. The river Lewis and Clark named for him in northern South Dakota on 14 October 1804, Eagle Feather Creek, now bears the prosaic name Baldhead Creek. It flows into the Missouri about a mile below the North Dakota-South Dakota border. It is perhaps unjust that another stream in northern South Dakota is still called Pocasse Creek, after another Arikara leader Lewis and Clark met, but who played a much less significant role in the expedition than Too Né. In fact, Too Né is the only Native American individual of the expedition that Jefferson is known to have praised.^[18]Dunlap, Diary, 389. The map Too Né drew deserves to occupy a significant place in both our understanding of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and our understanding of the geopolitical dynamics of the northern Great Plains in the age of Jefferson. Unfortunately, the map was not re-discovered in time to find a place in the University of Nebraska’s authoritative Atlas, volume one of The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by Gary Moulton.

Too Né in the Journals

A close reading of the journals for the period of 10 October 1804 through 6 November 1804, provides a fascinating portrait of Too Né and a considerable amount of geographic, geopolitical, spiritual, zoological, and mythological information that somehow pierced through Clark’s relative indifference and found its way into the expedition’s journals. What survived of Too Né’s bioregional lessons, coupled with his remarkable native cartography, creates a fascinating “map” of the Arikara world in 1804.

On 13 October 1804, the same day that private Newman was court martialed, Clark jotted down one of Too Né’s “treditions” in his journal: “nearly opposit this creek a fiew miles from the river on the S.S. 2 Stones resembling humane persons & one resembling a Dog is Situated in the open Prairie, to those Stone the Rickores pay Great reverance make offerings whenever they pass (Infomtn. Of the Chief & Interpeter) those people have a Curious Tredition of those Stones, one was a man in Love, one a Girl whose parents would not let marry, the Dog went to mourn with them all turned to Stone gradually, Commenceing at the feet. Those people fed on grapes untill they turned, & the woman has a bunch of grapes yet in her hand on the river near the place those are Said to be Situated, we obsd. a greater quantity of fine grapes than I ever Saw at one place.”^[19]Moulton, Journals, 3:169.

This effigy has never been identified by non-Arikara ethnographers. During the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, property owners near Pollock, South Dakota, contacted a reporter from the Bismarck Tribune to report that they had “found” the rock in question. The Tribune’s Lauren Donavan visited the site, a few miles east of the Missouri River (Lake Oahe), and was shown a glacial erratic rock that could, with a large infusion of generous imagination and what on a different occasion Lewis called the “penetrating and inquisitive eye of the amorite,” be said possibly to resemble a woman and a dog.^[20]The author had the good fortune to join this little expedition. Bismarck Tribune reporter Lauren Donovan made all the arrangements. We viewed the stones from every possible angle, and tried as hard … Continue reading

On 15 October 1804, the expedition passed an Arikara hunting camp, consisting not of earthlodges but traditional plains teepees. The captains decided to camp nearby. They spent part of the evening in conversation with the Arikara. Too Né and Joseph Gravelines provided the interpretation. Clark did not record any of that discussion, but he did report that Arikara women were “verry fond of caressing our men. &.,” which suggests a good deal more than foreplay. The Arikara were particularly attracted to York.^[21]Moulton, Journals, 3:174.

On 16 October 1804, the expedition passed the remains of an old Cheyenne village on the larboard side. Clark could not possibly have known this arcane geopolitical fact had it not been for Too Né’s commentary. The Cheyenne had lived in the Minnesota-Great Lakes region for centuries before they migrated west during the eighteenth century. Too Né informed Clark that this abandoned village site was their first intermediate stop as they migrated west from the Red River of the North to their eventual homeland in today’s Montana and Wyoming. They were driven west by the imperial aggressions of the Sioux.^[22]For more on Too Né’s commentary on Cheyenne migration, see Clay S. Jenkinson, ed., The Writings of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in North Dakota, 1804-1806 (Bismarck: State Historical Society … Continue reading

On that same day, Too Né supplied Arikara names for creeks that Clark wrote down as Cheyenne Creek, Girls Creek, Womans Creek, Beaver Creek, and Elk Shed their Horns Creek. Too Né supplied these place names in Arikara, which Joseph Gravelines translated into English or French, and Clark dutifully recorded.^[23]See notes on these creeks and rivers in Moulton, Journals, 3:178.

On 17 October 1804, Clark wrote, “I walked on shore with the Ricara Chief and an Inteprieter, the told me maney extroadenary Stories.” Fortunately, though Clark decided not to detail all of the “Treditions” Too Né described during the shoreline walk, he does mention the “perticiler rock or Cave on the next river which informs of everr thing.” That is almost certainly today’s Medicine Rock in Grant County, North Dakota, not far from the “next river,” which was the Cannonball.^[24]Clay Jenkinson has been to both writing rocks in North Dakota. Medicine Rock in Grant County is on a sandstone outcropping surrounded by wheat fields and cattle pasture. The approach is on gravel … Continue reading

There are two known writing rocks in North Dakota. The one that Too Né refers to is on a bluff southeast of Elgin, ND. It is now maintained by the State Historical Society of North Dakota. The medicine bundles tied to the perimeter fence and strewn among the sandstone outcroppings indicate that it is still a sacred site. Members of the Long expedition of 1819-20 described the site.^[25]See Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., Early Western Travels, 1748-1846: A Series of Annotated Reprints of Some of the Best and Rarest Contemporary Volumes of Travel, Descriptive of the Aborigines and Social … Continue reading On 19 November 1833, the German Prince Maximillian of Wied-Neuwied wrote a detailed description of Mandan and Hidatsa pilgrimages to the Medicine Rock.^[26]Stephen S. Witte and Marsha v. Gallagher, eds., The North American Journals of Prince Maximilian of Wied, 3 vols. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008-12), 3:68. The other writing rock is in extreme northwestern North Dakota a few miles from the village of Grenora. Too Né’s map “locates”^[27]It is essential to remember that Native American maps generally follow a different set of cartographical protocols and conventions than Euro-American maps. While there is clearly some directional … Continue reading the “Place Where One Consults Destiny” well away from the Arikara villages, towards the confluence of the Yellowstone and the Missouri rivers, beyond and upstream from the Mandan and Hidatsa villages. It is at least possible that Too Né had the Grenora site in mind when he drew the map. Or it may be that Too Né’s drawing of the “Place Where One Consults Destiny” refers to an oracular site other than the two now identified in North Dakota. If so, it is not known to historians, cartographers, or anthropologists.

Clark’s Eurocentrism is clearly indicated in his journal entries for two consecutive days, 17 and 18 October 1804. On the first of those days he confessed that he did not consider Too Né’s accounts of Arikara sacred traditions “worth while mentioning.” The next day, however, Clark ventured away from the boats and the river to search for a couple of land features noted by the Welsh traveler John Evans (1770-1799), who explored that section of the Upper Missouri in 1796. Clark looked without success for places Evans noted on his map as “Jupiter’s Fort,” “Jupiter’s House,” and “the Hermit.” These are features identified on Evans’ map, a copy of which the expedition had in its possession. Clark wrote, “I walked on Shore, in the evining with a view to See Some of those remarkable places mentioned by evens, none of which I could find,).” In fact, Clark spent three days looking for the Evans’ sites, 18, 19, and 20 October 1804. In spite of significant effort, he never was able to identify any of the ruins or prominent landmarks he saw on Evans’ map.^[28]W. Raymond Wood, Prologue to Lewis and Clark: The Mackay and Evans Expedition, (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), 110. It is clear that Clark was unwilling to give even a fraction of that amount of attention to sites important to the Native Americans the expedition met. Evans’ fanciful geography meant more to Clark than Too Né’s “treditions.”

Describing the Mandan World

On 19 October 1804, Clark wrote, “I saw in my walk Several remarkable high Conocal hills, one 90 feet, one 60 and others Smaller- the Indian Chief Say that the Callemet Bird live in the hollows of those hills, which holes are made by the water passing from the top & &. I also Saw an old Village.” This is probably the “Earthen Pyramid where Indians Catch Birds” from Too Né’s map. Clark noted but did not visit the site.^[29]Moulton, Journals, 3:184-85.

When Too Né told this story the expedition was in the vicinity of Eagle Nose Butte, just north of today’s Huff, North Dakota, on ND 1806 (the Lewis and Clark highway on the west side of the Missouri River). If he was referring to Eagle Nose Butte, Too Né had reached the northern limit of Arikara territory and was beginning to comment on traditional Mandan sites. The Cannonball River was loosely regarded as the boundary separating Arikara territory from Mandan territory.

Near Eagle Nose Butte, Clark first reported an abandoned Mandan village site. By the time Lewis and Clark arrived in today’s North Dakota, the Mandan had migrated from their traditional Heart River homelands (near today’s Bismarck and Mandan, North Dakota) to new villages approximately 60 miles north in the vicinity of the Knife River. The Square Buttes (north of Mandan, North Dakota) were traditionally regarded as the northern boundary of the Mandan world, but smallpox and the aggressions of the Lakota Sioux had caused the Mandan to move north as far as Hidatsa tolerance would permit. At the end of October, Lewis and Clark found the Mandan living in close proximity to the Hidatsa, a cultural partnership that would prove to be permanent. This would not have been the case even forty years earlier. Lewis and Clark appeared in North Dakota at a time of geopolitical flux. They ascended the Upper Missouri just as the Arikara were in the very first phase of a series of decisions that would lead them, too, into the Hidatsa homeland. Too Né’s 1804 diplomatic mission to the Mandan may be seen as one of the preliminary initiatives of a long process that would culminate with the entire tribe relocating between the Knife and Little Missouri rivers in the 1840s and 50s.

Eagle Nose Butte was exceedingly important in the Mandan world. It was there that the culture’s most sacred ceremony, the Okipa, was inaugurated. Lewis and Clark had no way of knowing this at the time. They were traveling with an Arikara not a Mandan expert. Nor did they have the opportunity to observe the sacred Okipa ceremony during their winter sojourn among the Mandan. It wasn’t until Au.gust 1806, on the return journey, with the Mandan leader Sheheke on board the homecoming flotilla, that the captains had the benefit of a sustained Mandan commentary on the countryside flanking the Missouri River. Indeed, the country south of the Knife River through which they floated Au.gust 17-22, 1806, was the landscape on which the principal Mandan cultural traditions were grounded. That may help to explain the intensity and nostalgic feel of Sheheke’s 1806 downriver commentary. By then Sheheke, who had served as their host and caterer during the Fort Mandan winter, was a trusted informant. Moreover, the captains had good reason to listen carefully to Sheheke in August 1806. The fact that they were traveling with not against the current, sometimes 80 miles per day, gave them unprecedented leisure. They also wanted to show solicitude to a Mandan leader whom they had persuaded, against his better judgment, to accompany them to Washington, DC.

On 20 October 1804-the day of the expedition’s first grizzly bear encounter-Too Né pointed out abandoned Mandan sites on both sides of the river, and explained to Clark why the Mandan had migrated 40 miles north of those villages.^[30]Moulton, Journals, 3:187. Thanks to Too Né’s commentary, the expedition’s leaders were beginning to piece together an understanding of the geopolitical dynamics of the Upper Missouri in the second half of the eighteenth century. Smallpox had decimated the Missouri River tribes, particularly the semi-sedentary Arikara, Mandan, and (to a lesser extent) Hidatsa. The Sioux had taken advantage of the profound weakening of the earthlodge peoples to push westward and then across the Missouri River, thanks in part to their complete mastery of their newest cultural acquisition, the horse. The Arikaras had been reduced from a dozen or so villages to just three, characterized by a Thucydidean collapse of language and social hierarchies, noticed by Euro-American visitors.^[31]Steinke, “‘Here is my country,'” 594. After the smallpox epidemic of 1781, the once-mighty Mandan abandoned their villages near the mouth of the Heart River, including the one Too Né identified on 20 October, and moved up to the vicinity of the Knife River.

Diplomacy at the Mandan-Hidatsa Villages

The expedition arrived at the base of the five inhabited Mandan and Hidatsa villages on 26 October 1804. The captains spent the next week, 27 October 1804 to 2 November 1804, pursuing two goals. First, in accordance with President Jefferson’s instructions, they needed to enter into formal diplomatic relations with the Mandan and the Hidatsa-the usual ceremonies, speeches, parades, chief-making, tech show, and gift exchanges, but with more earnestness, both because they intended to spend the winter with these natives and not merely a few days and because these were the fabled Mandan Indians. Second, they needed to select a secure location for their winter quarters: far enough from the villages to feel secure, near enough to be in a position to engage in material and cultural exchange; a place close to the river where there were plenty of trees for fort construction and firewood.

High winds prevented the great council originally planned for 28 October 1804. Though the winds were only marginally less oppressive on 29 October 1804, the captains reckoned that it was important to state their purposes and establish friendly relations with the Mandan and Hidatsa, so the council was conducted shriekingly under an awning fashioned from the barge sail. Most of the council consisted of the usual peace-trade-Great Father formula, but the captains did not neglect the Arikara diplomatic initiative on that windy, crowded day. Clark wrote, “at the Conclusion of the Speech we mentioned the Ricaras & requested them to make a peace & Smoke out of the Sacred Stem with their Chief which I intreduced and gave him the pipe of peace to hand around, they all Smoked with eagerness out of the pipe held by the Ricara Chief Ar-ke-tar-na-Shar.”^[32]Moulton, Journals, 3:210-12. To make sure the Mandan understood the seriousness of this peace overture and the captains’ commitment to Too Né’s safety, Clark reports that “(I gave this Cheaf a Dollar of the American Coin as a Meadel with which he was much pleased) In Councel we prosented him with a Certificate of his Sincrrity and good Conduct &c.”^[33]Moulton, Journals, 3:210.

For some reason, Too Né felt uneasy virtually alone among 4,500 Mandan and Hidatsa. The formal council had no sooner ended than he approached the expedition’s leadership to request permission to go home. Clark wrote, “The Ricare Cheaf Ar-ke-tar-na-shar Came to me this evening and tells me that he wishes to return to his Village & nation, I put him off Saying tomorrow we would have an answer, to our talk to the Satisfaction & Send by him a String of wompom informing what had passed here.”^[34]Moulton, Journals, 3:210. In his first draft, Clark had written “our Ricara Chief Came told me,” and though that phrasing undoubtedly revealed the expedition’s colonialist attitude towards the Native Americans they adopted for their geopolitical purposes, Clark rephrased his entry more carefully at some later time.

Over the next few days the captains learned from a range of Mandan leaders-Little Raven, Posecopsahe, and Sheheke, among others-that the Mandan were cautiously willing to consider peace with the Arikara, that they would send someone down river to smoke the pipe and negotiate with the Arikara leadership at the Grand River villages, but that they doubted Arikara sincerity. The leaders of Mitutanka assured Clark “they never made war against them [the Arikara] but after the rees Killed their Chiefs they killed them like the birds.”^[35]Moulton, Journals, 3:224.

On 31 October 1804, the great leader of the Mandan, Posecopsahe, explained his nation’s position with respect to the Arikara peace initiative, and confronted Too Né directly (through interpreters): “he belived all we had told him,” Clark reported, “and that peace would be genl. which not only gave himself Satisfaction but all his people; they now Could hunt without fear & their women could work in the fields without looking every moment for the ememey.” Then Posecopsahe (Black Cat) turned to Too Né himself: “as to the Ricaras addressing himself to the Chief with me you know we do not wish war with your nation, you have brought it on your Selves, that man Pointing to the 2d Chief and those 2 young warriers will go with you & Smoke in the pipes of peace with the Ricaras—.” To underscore the importance of his promise, Posecopsahe invoked his distinguished visitors, Captains Lewis and Clark. To Too Né, he said, “I will let you see my father addressing me that we wish to be at peace with all and do not make war upon any-.”^[36]Moulton, Journals, 3:217-19.

The next day, 1 November 1804, the man who would become the expedition’s closest ally among the Mandan, Sheheke, provided his own explanation of the Mandan diplomatic position. Clark carefully recorded what Sheheke (Big White) had to say, Mandan to interpreter René Jusseaume, Jusseaume to French waterman François Labiche (or another French-English speaker), Labiche to Lewis and Clark. What follows is as close as we can get to an actual transcript of what Sheheke said.

“Is it Certain that the ricares intend to make good with us our wish is to be at peace with all, we will Send a Chief with the pania Chief and Some young men to Smoke and make good peace–? … The panias know’s we do not begin the war, they allway begin, we Sent a Chief and a pipe to the Pania to Smoke and they killed them–, we have killed enough of them we kill them like the birds, we do not wish to kill more, we will, make a good peace.”^[37]Moulton, Journals, 3:224-25.

Too Né started on his return journey to the Arikara villages on 2 November 1804. Clark wrote, “our recaree Chief Set out acccompanied by one Chief and Several Brave men.”^[39]Moulton, Journals, 3:226. The “Chief and Several Brave men” were Mandan. Four days later, on 6 November 1804, Clark reported, “Mr. Gravolin our Ricara Interpreter & 2 of our french hands & 2 boys Set out in a Canoe for the Ricaras Mr. ravelli is to accompany the Ricaras Chiefs to the City of Washington in the Spring.”^[40]Moulton, Journals, 3:230-31. Just why Gravelines lingered for four days after Too Né departed is never explained; that Too Né was determined to get home to the Grand River villages as quickly as possible is abundantly clear.

With the coming of the harsh Dakota winter (high winds, a subarctic chill as severe as minus 43 degrees Fahrenheit), most of the traffic in the corridor between the Grand and the Knife River villages shut down. Everyone’s energies were devoted to survival, not diplomacy. It wasn’t until late winter that the diplomacy narrative picked up again. On 28 February 1805, Clark reported, “Mr. Gravelin two Frenchmen & two Inds. arrive from the Ricara Nation with Letters from Mr. Anty Tabeaux [Pierre-Antoine Tabeau], informing us of the peaceable dispositions of that nation towards the Mandans & Me ne ta res [i.e., Hidatsa] & their avowed intentions of pursueing our Councils & advice, they express a wish to visit the Mandans, & Know if it will be agreeable to them to admit the Ricaras to Settle near them and join them against their common Enimey the Souis we mentioned this to the mandans, who observed they had always wished to be at peace and good neighbours with the Ricaras, and it is also the Sentiments of all the Big Bellies, & Shoe Nations.”^[41]Moulton, Journals, 3:304. Here was a diplomatic mouthful.

Too Né’s Significance

Lewis and Clark left Fort Mandan before they could determine whether the Arikara peace mission they sponsored was successful. In spite of the good tidings of Anthony Tabeau’s letter of 28 February, they had reason to share the Mandan leadership’s skepticism. As they prepared to send the barge downriver under the command of Corporal Warfington, they gave specific diplomatic instructions to Joseph Gravelines, who spent much of the winter at or near Fort Mandan, and who nearly replaced Charbonneau as the expedition’s interpreter among nations west of the Knife River villages. Gravelines was given responsibility for taking Too Né to Washington, DC, to meet the great father. And to return him safely to today’s South Dakota.

Now, as the expedition prepared to embark into what the captains considered true terra incognita, Meriwether Lewis came alive as the expedition’s principal journal keeper. His famous 7 April 1805, entry, in which he declares that “we were now about to penetrate a country at least two thousand miles in width, on which the foot of civillized man had never trodden,” also reports important details about Too Né’s more immediate diplomatic mission. Lewis wrote, “One of the Frenchmen by the Name of Graveline an honest discrete man and an excellent boat-man is imployed to conduct the barge as pilot; we have therefore every hope that the barge and with her our dispatches will arrive safe at St. Louis. Mr. Gravelin who speaks the Ricara language extreemly well, has been imployed to conduct a few of the Recara Chiefs to the seat of government who have promised us to decend in the barge to St. Liwis with that view.”^[42]James Ronda, Lewis and Clark Among the Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 54.

The story of Too Né’s epic journey to the American capital (and beyond) is fascinating and important. It deserves more attention than it has hitherto received. Too Né’s journey to Washington, DC, does not, however, illuminate the remarkable map he drew at some point in 1805 or early 1806.

Unfortunately, the Arikara were placed between what for Lewis and Clark were two more compelling Native American encounters. The Lakota Sioux crisis (24–29 September 1804, see Lakota Sioux Difficulties) meant that the equally long but harmonious encounter with the Arikara two weeks later represented something of a relief and an anti-climax to Lewis and Clark. President Jefferson had specifically mentioned the Sioux in his instructions of 18 June 1803, but he did not refer to the Arikara.^[43]Moulton, Journals, 4:7-10. Meanwhile, as ice began to form on the edges of the river, the expedition was eager to begin its encounter with the legendary Mandan, who already occupied a central place in the Enlightenment‘s understanding of Upper Missouri indigenous culture. In like manner, Too Né is typically overlooked in Lewis and Clark narratives in favor of Black Buffalo and the Partisan (both Lakota) and Sheheke and Posecopsahe (both Mandan). Similarly, Joseph Gravelines usually takes second seat to the more colorful characters Pierre Dorion, Sr. (interpreter among the Sioux), Rene Jusseaume (Mandan), and of course Charbonneau (Hidatsa + Sacagawea). The discovery of Too Né’s map (and the journal entries it now closely tracks) should lift his contributions to the expedition to a higher plane.