The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark

  VI

  _SERGEANT ORDWAY WRITES A LETTER_

  The winter of 1802-3 had been uncommonly severe. Unknown to GeorgeShannon, that winter his father hunting in the dense woods of Ohiolost his way in a snow-storm and was frozen to death. Unaware of thetragedy at home, unaware also of his own inherited facility forgetting lost, the boy set out up the winding staircase of the wildMissouri.

  An older brother, John, nineteen years of age, became the stay of thatwidowed mother with her seven small children, the least a baby, WilsonShannon, twice the future Governor of Ohio and once the Governor ofKansas.

  With a pad on his knee every soldier boy wrote home from the camp onRiver Dubois opposite the mouth of the Missouri. Down through theyears Sergeant Ordway's letter has come to us.

  "CAMP RIVER DUBOIS, April the 8th, 1804.

  "HONOURED PARENTS,--I now embrace this opportunity of writeing to you once more to let you know where I am and where I am going. I am well thank God and in high Spirits. I am now on an expedition to the westward, with Capt. Lewis and Capt. Clark, who are appointed by the President of the United States to go on an Expedition through the interior parts of North America. We are to ascend the Missouri River with a boat as far as it is navigable and then to go by land to the western ocean, if nothing prevents. This party consists of twenty-five picked men of the armey and country likewise and I am so happy as to be one of them picked from the armey and I and all the party are if we live to return to receive our discharge whenever we return again to the United States if we choose it. This place is on the Mississippi River opposite to the mouth of the Missouri River and we are to start in ten days up the Missouri River, this has been our winterquarters. We expect to be gone 18 months or two years, we are to receive a great reward for this expedition when we return. I am to receive 15 dollars a month and at least 400 ackers of first rate land and if we make great discoveries as we expect the United States has promised to make us great rewards, more than we are promised, for fear of accidents I wish to inform you that [personal matters].

  I have received no letters since Betseys yet but will write next winter if I have a chance.

  "Yours, etc., "JOHN ORDWAY, _Segt._

  "TO STEPHEN ORDWAY, Dumbarton, N.H."