Indian Agent: William Clark, 1770-1838

William Clark wore many hats on the frontier, explorer, military officer, trader, Indian agent, planter and businessman.  Like many people who lived in close proximity with Native Americans, his attitude toward them and dealings with them were conflicted many times over.  Clark, 1770-1838, is best known as one of the co-leaders of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-1806.  That expedition and all that it accomplished are out of the scope of this blog and beyond encapsulating in a single post.  The point here is to look at Clark's dealings with Native peoples post-expedition, when his position as Indian Agent ad Missouri governor made him responsible for implementing United States policy toward them.

Clark was born in Ladysmith, Virginia to a large plantation family on the edge of the Virginia frontier.  Though he was too young to fight in the American Revolution, he was a remote witness to it.  His older half-brother was George Rogers Clark, renowned in his own time as an Indian fighter and scourge of the Redcoats and Natives on the frontier.  George and four other Clark sons fought in the War.  After the War, the Clark family moved first to Pennsylvania and later to Kentucky.  William first saw service at the age of 19 during the Northwest Indian War (1785-1795) as a member of a Kentucky militia.  There, he began lifelong habits of journaling and keeping his eyes open to the people, places and things he encountered.  This, and his older brother George's lessons on wilderness survival would stand William in good stead later in life.  William enlisted in the Regular Army in 1792 and saw service under General Mad Anthony Wayne.  He was present at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794,

Family connections and personal ability commended him to President Thomas Jefferson when the President was seeking leaders for an expedition to examine the Louisiana Purchase territory.  During the two years that the Expedition spent in the field, Clark would have plenty of opportunity to meet, study and become familiar with various Native tribes.  Like other men of the Corps of Discovery, when he returned from the Expedition, Clark's priority was to marry, establish a family and find a place to live.  He married Julia Hancock in 1808 and the couple settled in St. Louis, Missouri.  Situated on the Mississippi River, St. Louis had been a trading hub under the French, Spanish and now the United States.  As it had been for the Expedition, St. Louis was a staging area for many immigrants moving west, and for traders and trappers bringing furs in to trade for goods and supplies.  Natives also came to St. Louis, both to trade and for various treaty parleys.

Beginning in 1808, Jefferson made both William Clark and Meriwether Lewis Indian Agents, reasoning that their experience in the wilderness made them uniquely qualified to work with Native leaders.  In 1809, Lewis was also made Governor of Louisiana Territory, which for a time made Lewis his superior.  Rather than being jealous, the two men continued to work together, Clark often stepping in when Lewis, who had a great deal of personal life issues, couldn't discharge his duties.  The main job of an Indian Agent was to persuade Natives to cede land to accommodate the increasing number of Settlers heading west.  Like William Henry Harrison in Indiana, William Clark would sign a number of treaties with Natives.  While he gained a reputation among the Natives as being fair, there was no doubt which side Clark was on.  While he was willing to treat Natives as sovereign people and worked to keep trespassers off Native lands, he was equally quick to launch punitive raids against Natives who sided with Britain or made war on American settlers. 

Clark had a keen interest in Indian culture, preserving mementos from the various tribes with whom he worked, arranging for portraits or sketches to be made of them and reports about their ways of life.  George Catlin was one portraitist whom Clark patronized for many portraits and sketches of Natives.  During the War of 1812, he led several campaigns against Natives who fought for the British against the Americans.  In 1813, during the War, Clark became Governor of Missouri Territory.  He returned to being an Indian Agent in 1820, when he was voted out of office in his first gubernatorial race in the new state of Missouri.  By 1832, under the Jackson Administration, it was part of his duties to oversee the removal of Natives in his jurisdiction.  During the Black Hawk War, Clark wasn't afraid to use the word exterminate in framing orders for dealing with Black Hawk's warriors.  Rather than any personal animus against Natives, Clark seemed to believe that, by removing them from their Native land, he was protecting them from White interference.  By the time Clark died in St. Louis in 1838, millions of acres of Native land was under U.S, ownership and many of the peoples who formerly lived on it were miles away, in Indian Territory.