Today’s anniversary has Missouri meanings, for August 1 is the birthdate of William Clark, born in 1770 in Virginia. The Clarks were small planters of modest means but took care to educate their ten children to read and write—but not to spell. His older brothers served in the American army (or Virginia militia) during the Revolutionary War, and William—beginning his daily journal, which he kept all his life—joined up in 1789. After participating in raids against Indian settlements and missions of exploration, he resigned his commission in 1796, but then was recruited by Meriwether Lewis to be the military commander of what we know, today, as the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-1806. He proved more than competent at that, and his journals show him to have been well read and genuinely interested in the flora, fauna, and geology he described and sketched. It’s a tribute to these interests that three western species (an evening primrose, a trout, and a nutcracker) are named after him. A frontiersman of southern origin, William Clark inevitably bequeaths to us a hodgepodge heritage: a child of the Enlightenment with a positive curiosity about nature; a supporter of Indian assimilation who respected Indian cultures but, in the crunch, implemented Indian removal; a slaveowner known to be cruel to his slaves who nevertheless (circa 1816) freed York, his slave on the famous Corps of Discovery.
The Memorial Arch to the Lewis-Clark expedition dominates the St Louis skyline.