Lewis’s Air Gun

The air gun illustrated in the animation is 48.5 inches long overall, including a 32.8 inch barrel. The total loaded weight is nine pounds. The 51 caliber barrel is rifled with 12 grooves having one turn in the length of the barrel. The magazine has a capacity of 20 lead balls. Each air-rifleman in the Austrian Army carried two spare buttstock reservoirs and four refill tubes of rifle balls.

The breech-loading mechanism did not permit the use of a patch, which in a muzzle-loading flintlock served partly to hold the ball in the breech until the weapon was fired.Therefore the balls for this gun had to be molded with extreme care. If too large, a ball would jam in the barrel; if too small, air escaping around it would diminish the muzzle velocity.

The animation is based on measurements and photographs of an authentic Girardoni repeating air rifle in the collection of the Tower of London. Through the cooperation of the staff of the Royal Armouries, the specifications were secured in person by Geoffrey Baker and Colin Currie of England, who then built a working replica for study and testing.^[1]Geoffrey Baker and Colin Currie, The Construction and Operation of the Air Gun, Vol. 1, The Austrian Army Repeating Air Rifle (London, England: Privately Published, 2002).

An Austrian air-rifleman’s assistant recharged the buttstock reservoirs from a large mechanical pump on a horse drawn wagon by attaching the buttstock pump to a similar foot plate on the pump. If Lewis’s rifle resembled an Austrian army weapon, he could have stood on the foot plate and pumped up and down–as with a modern bicycle pump, although filling an air gun reservoir would have required a great deal more work than that. Approximately 2000 strokes, or more than 30 minutes of nonstop manual labor, would have been required to charge the reservoir of a Girardoni to the maximum working pressure of as much as 1,000 pounds per square inch.

Seven days out of Pittsburgh, on 7 September 1803, Lewis docked at Wheeling, (now West) Virginia, a “pretty considerable Village” of about fifty dwellings. It was, Lewis wrote, “remarkable for being the point of embarkation for merchants and Emegrants who are about to descend the river, particularly if they are late in getting on and the water gets low as it most commonly is from the beginning of July to the last of September, the water from hence being much deeper and the navigation better than it is from Pittsburgh or any point above it.” In fact, he himself had sent a wagonload of supplies by land to a merchant named Caldwell, and found themin good order on arrival.^[2]Rodney and his companions hired two young men to build a “batteau” 30 feet long and eight feet wide, with four oars and a square sail, plus four berths covered with painted canvas. The … Continue reading There at Wheeling he also chanced to meet Colonel Thomas Rodney, who was en route to Mississippi Territory to assume a federal judgeship, by appointment of President Jefferson.

Rodney himself recounted their meeting on the eighth. He and his friends William Shields^[3]William Bayard Shields was also en route to Mississippi where he would become a lawyer and a judge. Shields had studied law under Thomas Rodney’s son, Caesar (which Lewis spelled phonetically … Continue reading and Major Richard Claiborne,^[4]Richard Claiborne of Virginia became clerk of the board of commissioners headed by Thomas Rodney, which adjudicated land claims in Mississippi Territory. visited “Captain Lewess barge,” and the captain showed them his air gun:

. . . which fired 22 times at one charge. He shewed us the mode of charging her and then loaded with 12 balls which he intended to fire one at a time; but she by some means lost the whole charge of air at the first fire. He charged her again and then she fired twice. He then found the cause and in some measure prevented the airs escaping, and then she fired seven times; but when in perfect order she fires 22 times in a minute. All the balls are put at once into a short side barrel and are then droped into the chamber of the gun one at a time by moving a spring; and when the trigger is pulled just so much air escapes out of the air bag which forms the britch [breech] of the gun as serves for one ball. It is a curious piece of workmanship not easily described and therefore I omit attempting it.^[5]Smith and Swick, 50.

Rodney’s account that Lewis was still imperfectly acquainted with the operation of his exotic weapon, which might have been a contributing factor toward the air gun accident on Brunot’s Island. Rodney also makes it clear that the gun was a repeater. In fact, his description indicates it might well have been the type originally designed by the Tyrolean clock-maker Bartolomeo Girardoni (b. 1744).^[6]An authentic Girardoni used a 20-ball magazine. Either Rodney–or perhaps Lewis–misspoke, or else the gun was a modified copy of a Girardoni that used a magazine of 22 balls. Charles McKenzie, a … Continue reading

The Austrian Army ordered 1,500 air rifles of the Girardoni design between 1787 and 1806, when the weapon was withdrawn from the Austrian arsenal. Meanwhile, the Girardoni rifle was copied by manufacturers of weapons for wealthy sportsmen, and some of those guns might have been brought to the United States. Indeed, item 95 in the catalog of Lukens’s estate might just as well been of the Girardoni type, which certainly would have qualified as “a great curiosity,” which was to say, a rarity.

If Lewis’s air gun was of the Girardoni type, then Blaise Cenas, “being unacquainted with the management of the gun,” may have unwittingly set up the accident himself. The hammer of a flintlock firearm has two positions, half-cock and full-cock. The first, or half-cock, position raises the frizzen so that flash powder can be poured into the pan. A powder-and-ball weapon can only be fired after the hammer, or cock, is pulled all the way back to full-cock position; it can’t possibly “go off half-cocked.” Repeating air guns of Girardoni’s design could have had either a one-position (full-cock only) or a two-position (half-cock and full-cock) tumbler. If Lewis’s gun was the first type, perhaps Cenas pulled back the hammer until it caught, and assumed it was at half-cock. A jolt, or an accidental touch on the trigger, might then have caused the gun to fire when the muzzle was pointed haphazardly–toward an innocent bystander–and Lewis had left a ball in the chamber.

The Luken’s Model

The history of the air gun began among primitive tribes with the lung-powered blowgun, a hollow reed through which a missile such as a poison-tipped dart was propelled by lung power. The first trigger-operated weapon powered by compressed air from a tank attached to the gun was built in the 1580s.

When the fact that Lewis carried an air gun came to the attention of gun historians around the middle of the 20th century, the initial guess was that it was powered from a ball-shaped tank suspended beneath the gun’s breech, a design that apparently was used in many popular sporting air guns made in Europe during the 18th century. For some years air guns of that design were exhibited in various museums as illustrations of the type Lewis was thought to have carried.

In 1977, however, gun historian Henry M. Stewart, Jr., made a discovery at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia that seemed to point to a different make of air gun. He found an auction catalog for the estate of Isaiah Lukens, a Philadelphia clock maker who died in 1846. It included several air guns, one of which, listed as item 95, was a large gun “made for, and used by Messrs Lewis & Clark in their exploring expeditions.” It was “A great curiosity.”^[7]Donald Jackson, ed., Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with Related Documents, 1783 -1854 (2nd ed., Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978, 2:735. The maker was not named, and no record of the disposition of the item after the auction has yet been found.

Catalog item 78, evidently not an air gun, was “1 superior Rifle, silver mounted, telescoping and graduating sights, &c., with mahogany case. Made by Isaiah Lukens for his own use.” The twelve items numbered 79 through 90 were collectively identified as “Air Cane Gun, complete” (which today might be considered an even greater “curiosity” than item 95). Item 93 was “1 large Air Gun, in order,” which no doubt meant working order; item 94 was a small air gun, similarly “in order.” Some gun historians have inferred from this document that some or all of the weapons listed could have been made by Isaiah Lukens, and that item 95 might have been made expressly for Meriwether Lewis, and either sold or loaned to him.

An air gun purportedly manufactured by Lukens, which is now in the collection at Virginia Military Institute at Lexington, Virginia, is still believed by many authorities to be the kind that Lewis carried, and some believe it shows direct evidence that it was the very one. At the mouth of the Marias River on 9 June 1805 Lewis recorded: “as we had determined to leave our blacksmith’s bellows and tools here it was necessary to repare some of our arms, and particularly my Airgun the main spring of which was broken, before we left this place.” The next day, the Corps’ gunsmith, Private John Shields “renewed” it. The main spring of the air gun at VMI appears to have been broken, and repaired.

However, in 2002 another gun historian, Michael Carrick, determined through research at the Library Company of Philadelphia that Lukens is not known to have been in business in Philadelphia before 1814.^[8]Personal communication from Michael Carrick, 7 August 2003. In 1803, at 23 years of age, he was still an apprentice to his father, a horologist (clock-maker), in Horsham Township, fifteen miles north of Philadelphia.

With thanks for information and advice provided by Geoffrey Baker, William K. Brunot, and Michael Carrick. Animations by Bob Gilman, BobFX and directed by David E. Nelson.

Indian Demonstrations

My Air-gun . . . astonishes them very much, they cannot comprehend it’s shooting so often and without powder; and think that it is great medicine which comprehends every thing that is to them incomprehensible.

—Meriwether Lewis, 24 January 1806

All questions aside concerning the airgun’s make and size, or where, when, and why Lewis acquired it, or what happened to it afterwards, the importance of its principal use remains paramount among them all, and is adequately documented in the journals. Apparently Lewis never used it for hunting, and only once considered it as a combat weapon. He may have had a more important use in mind from the outset, for he often exhibited it as part of the official council held with each native nation.

Formal councils were tightly scripted scenarios for political and cultural diplomacy. Timing was everything. First, the harangues: “My Children . . . ” Then the Indians’ responses: “My Fathers . . . ” and the white men writing down everything the speakers said, which must itself have been a powerful gesture, inspiring wonder mixed with fear. Then some solemn Chief-making, confirmed with Indian peace medals, Indian commissions (paroles), and other, more practical gifts. A brotherly smoke. A “Drop of Milk” (whiskey, that is), perhaps a song, or a dance to the accompaniment of Pierre Cruzatte‘s fiddle. Then a display of “Curiosities.” A “portfire,”^[9]A portfire was a tube of paper perhaps half an inch in diameter and sixteen inches long, filled with a mixture of sulfur, saltpetre and black powder in proportions that would ensure it would ignite … Continue reading A compass arrow that always pointed in the same direction no matter which way the instrument was turned. Perhaps Clark’s personal black slave, York, was brought front and center. Or maybe Lewis would demonstrate the “sagacity”^[10]Noah Webster, in his Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806), defined sagacious as “quick of scent or thought, acute.” of his big, handsome Newfoundland working dog, Seaman, a giant among the typically small canines that infested many an Indian village.

Then the climax—a few shots from the air gun, which were certain to astonish the audience. With the gunstock reservoir pumped up in advance to avoid betraying any evidence that the weapon’s power was man-made^[11]According to present-day experts on the Girardoni air gun, it could have required between 1,000 and 2,000 strokes of the pump to fill the reservoir to full capacity. Starting with an empty reservoir, … Continue reading with no ramming of the ball into the barrel, no primer in the pan, no flash, no bang,^[12]The paraphrased version of Joseph Whitehouse‘s journal entry for 7 August 1805 has the private saying that Lewis “fired off his air gun several times in order that the Man who we suppose … Continue reading no smoke; several bullets placed in a target without pause for reloading. Freeze for a few seconds to let the shock and awe sink in. Smile and bow, and smile again. Nod and salute the audience. Cast off, and sail away toward the sunset. It was pure theatre. A real barn-burner.

Lakota Sioux

Lewis could not always leave the magic to chance, however. On 30 August 1804, the last and best day of the long, unforgettable standoff between the Corps of Discovery and the Lakota Sioux, he had to underscore the significance of the demonstration. Private Whitehouse recorded the scene. The Indians enthusiastically received the captains’ gifts, then danced, and were rewarded with beads.

They put all the presents that they got, together, and divided them among their whole party equally. . . . The Indians after the goods were divided, was very merry; they play’d on the jews harps^[13]“Jews harps” were popular childrens’ toys in the United States at the time, and the captains evidently anticipated they would make nice gifts for Indian boys, too, for they included … Continue reading & danced for us for Beads that we gave them. . . . After they had finished dancing Captain Lewis took his Air Gun and shot her off, and by the Interpreter, told them that there was medicine in her, and that she could do very great execution. They all stood amazed at this curiosity; Captain Lewis discharged the Air Gun several times, and the Indians ran hastily to see the holes that the Balls had made which was discharged from it. at finding the Balls had entered the Tree, they shouted a loud at the sight and the Execution that was done surprized them exceedingly.

Arikara

At one o’clock in the afternoon of 10 October 1804 several Arikara chiefs assembled in the shade of an awning the captains had set up on shore near the the barge (called the ‘boat’ or ‘barge’ but never the ‘keelboat’), “and under the American Flag.” The captains “made” three chiefs, gave them gifts of clothes and flags, delivered the harangue they had perfected for the Otos and Sioux, and climaxed the ceremony by firing the air gun, which duly astonished their Indian hosts.

Lemhi Shoshones

On the warm sunny day when the captains held their first full meeting with the Lemhi Shoshones, 17 August 1805, the stage was set on “a fine terf of greenswoard” in the shade of a canopy built of willow wands and a canvas sail. This was perhaps the most genuinely joyous occasion during the whole expedition, with every man in the Corps relieved and elated at having safely reached another objective; with Sacagawea and her beloved brother, Cameahwait, reunited; with, as Lewis put it, “a flattering prospect” of being able to bargain for horses, and soon proceed on. They made chiefs, distributed a liberality of gifts to all, and fed the hungry Shoshones their very first taste of corn, with which “they were much pleased.” While all were still aglow with delight and good will, Lewis carried his magic wand downstage to the footlights, so to speak. His well-rehearsed air gun demonstration

was so perfectly incomprehensible that they immediately denominated it the great medicine. the idea which the indians mean to convey by this appellation is something that eminates from or acts immediately by the influence or power of the great sperit; or that in which the power of god is manifest by it’s incomprehensible power of action.

How could the young chief and his minions resist the appeal of such brilliant legerdemain? How could they hesitate to share their meager viands, their modest shelters, and the few decent horses they had left after the recent Blackfeet raid? Who was really in charge here? Which chief would the great spirit favor?

Prepared for Combat

The power of Lewis’s Medicine Gun not only to inspire but also to intimidate proved helpful when, on 3 April 1806, some citizens along the banks of the Columbia near today’s Portland, Oregon, crowded the Americans too close. Clark told the story:

in my absence and Soon after I left camp Several Canoes of men and women and Children came to the camp. And at one time there was about 37 of those people in Camp Capt Lewis fired his Air gun which astonished them in Such a manner that they were orderly and kept at a proper distance during the time they Continued with him.

The last time the air gun made the journals was Monday, 11 August 1806, the day Cruzatte mistook the buckskin-clad Lewis for an elk and shot him in the buttocks.^[14]Sometime after the expedition returned to St. Louis, Clark wrote a list of the contents of two boxes Lewis shipped to Washington with Lieutenant George Peter. Box No. 2 contained, among other items, … Continue reading Immediately suspecting a hostile Indian attack, Lewis hobbled back to the white perogue and, he wrote, “prepared my self with a pistol my rifle and airgun being determined as a retreat was impracticable to sell my life as deerly as possible.” At last, he was prepared to use the weapon for the main purpose it may originally have been designed to serve not merely for show, nor for hunting, but for man-to-man combat. It was a false alarm, of course. Lewis documented the incident in detail, conceding at last, “I do not beleive that the fellow did it intentionally.”