{"id":9260,"date":"2021-03-09T23:20:28","date_gmt":"2021-03-09T23:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/media-archive.blackartinamerica.com\/?p=9260"},"modified":"2021-03-10T20:29:30","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T20:29:30","slug":"resurrecting-york-the-enslaved-african-who-traveled-with-lewis-clark-mysteriously-returns-to-the-pacific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earthexhibitions.org\/media-archive\/?p=9260","title":{"rendered":"Resurrecting York: The Enslaved African who Traveled with Lewis & Clark Mysteriously Returns to the Pacific"},"content":{"rendered":"

Resurrecting York<\/b><\/h1>\n

The Enslaved African who Traveled with Lewis & Clark<\/span> Mysteriously Returns<\/span> to the Pacific<\/span><\/p>\n

by D. Amari Jackson<\/b><\/pre>\n
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Mark Graves\/The Oregonian<\/p><\/div>\n
The land was new, at least, to them. Despite their 1803 purchase of the Louisiana Territory from the French\u2014some 828,000 square miles of land spanning the Mississippi River in the East to the Rocky Mountains in the West, the Gulf of Mexico in the South to the Canadian border in the North\u2014they were nonetheless outsiders crossing a beautiful yet precarious region full of a native people who could not fathom <\/span>owning<\/span><\/i> a piece of nature, something the Creator bestowed so freely. Led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and directly instructed by President Thomas Jefferson, the government-sponsored expedition was aimed at extending<\/span> the American fur trade while exploring the unmapped regions of a new territory Jefferson hoped to expand all the way to the mighty Pacific. Among the entourage of 45 was an enslaved African named York who played a pivotal role in advancing the two-year<\/span> Corps of Discovery expedition to the Pacific Rim, navigating rough terrain and waterways, handling firearms, killing game, and<\/span> negotiating with natives for food and safe passage. Despite his important contributions to the successful expedition, and the substantial acreage and monetary rewards gained by its white participants, York was refused his freedom by his owner, Clark, upon their return to the latter\u2019s Kentucky plantation. To add insult to injury, in petitioning Congress for their rewards, Clark never mentioned York or his valuable role in the historic mission.<\/span><\/p>\n
However, two weeks ago, in an extraordinary turn of events, York returned to the Pacific Rim once more in the form of a cast bronze sculpted head erected by an anonymous artist in the dead of night at Portland\u2019s Mount Tabor Park. The mysteriously rendered bust appeared atop an empty granite pedestal that formerly housed<\/span> a statue of prominent 19<\/span>th<\/span> century conservative and newspaper editor, Harvey Scott. The sizable statue of Scott, a vocal opponent of women\u2019s suffrage, was toppled last year amidst national protests supporting the Movement for Black Lives.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201cI want to stay anonymous to keep the conversation about the subject,\u201d the artist told Artnet News, at the time of the discovery. Given there are no known images of York produced during his lifetime, the artist, who only identified as a \u201cwhite male,\u201d pulled from the research of Charles Neal whose efforts led to the <\/span>statue of York by sculptor Alison Saar<\/span><\/b><\/a> that has graced Portland\u2019s Lewis and Clark University for over a decade. The new Mount Tabor Park bust, insists the mysterious artist, \u201cpays homage to York at a time when we all need to remember the important role that African Americans have played in our history and reflect on the tragedy of slavery\u2014a tragedy that continues to echo.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
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Alison Saar, “York: Terra Incognita.” photo: Lewis & Clark College (YouTube)<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s just a really beautiful, simple image,\u201d says Saar, of the mysterious bust. The renowned Los Angeles-based sculptor and mixed media artist read in the newspaper that the anonymous artist was<\/span> \u201cnot Black, but I’m not one of those people who assumes that only Black people can make art about Black people. So, if it\u2019s beautiful and it comes from a good place, then I welcome any representation we can get out there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
Unfortunately, such representations have been hampered by the limited information on York, most coming from the writings of Clark, the man who owned him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
So who was York? And what we do know about the life of the enslaved African increasingly regarded the first Black man to cross North America and reach the Pacific?<\/span><\/p>\n
It was far from being an honor since we do know that York had no choice in the matter. Born on a southern plantation to<\/span> two enslaved laborers owned by Clark\u2019s father, York and Clark played together as boys. But when<\/span> the boys came of age, playtime was over as the relationship became one of master-servant with Clark ultimately inheriting York as part of his father\u2019s estate.<\/span><\/p>\n
Upon the 1803<\/span> Louisiana Purchase, Lewis invited his former army associate, Clark,<\/span> to join his expedition across the newly acquired territory, and the two assembled what became<\/span> the Corps of Discovery by recruiting military men that had demonstrated bravery in battle. In addition to over two dozen young soldiers, they recruited<\/span> a French-Indian interpreter and numerous French oarsmen and navigators more familiar with the territory than they. Given his strong six-foot, 200-pound frame, Clark lobbied to bring York along, a decision of which the latter\u2014reportedly married not long before\u2014had no say.<\/span><\/p>\n
However, others did. In May 1804, as Clark\u2019s contingency left Camp River Dubois near St. Louis to join Lewis in St. Charles, Missouri, several soldiers questioned Clark\u2019s decision to bring an enslaved African on the mission. A month into the journey, it was apparent that some had acted upon their hatred toward York as Clark\u2019s June 20th journal entry casually juxtaposed the natural beauty of his surroundings with the abuse of the man he owned:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\u201c<\/span>Set out after a heavy Shower of rain and proceeded on the Same Course of last night\u2026 passed a large butifull Prarie on the S. S. (southside) opposit a large Island, Calld Saukee Prarie, a gentle breese from the S. W. (southwest),\u201d <\/span><\/i>penned Clark.<\/span> \u201cSome butiful high lands on the L. S. (left side)\u00a0 \u00a0 passed Som verry Swift water to day, I saw Pelicans to day on a Sand bar, my servant York nearly loseing an eye by a man throwing Sand into it<\/span><\/i>\u2026\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
If the abusive environment of the Corps wasn\u2019t bad enough for York, the actual environment, though beautiful, brought its share of challenges as well. Navigating the Missouri River was both arduous and precarious given the strong current, extreme heat, and relentless insects. As the expedition<\/span> reached present-day Sioux City, Iowa, one of its members,<\/span> a<\/span> Sergeant Charles Floyd, died of what was believed to have been a<\/span> burst appendix. That December, just prior to the onset of winter, York was among a 15-member party sent on a dangerous buffalo hunt near present-day Washburn, North Dakota to replenish the expedition\u2019s dwindling food supply. \u201c<\/span>Several men returned a little frost bit<\/span><\/i>,\u201d wrote Clark in his journal, noting York among the victims. \u201c<\/span>Servents feet also frosted<\/span><\/i>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
The Corps of Discovery report revealed that interactions with native populations were generally good during the expedition. Councils were held with native groups; peace medals were gifted to the most important chiefs of the regions they traversed. These good relations were significantly attributed to, according to Clark, the fascination of the natives with York, \u201cawestruck\u201d by the first Black man many of them had ever seen. One account, captured in Thomas P. Slaughter\u2019s <\/span>Exploring Lewis and Clark,<\/span><\/i> depicts Idaho\u2019s Nez Perce natives surrounding York and attempting to \u201crub the black off with coarse sand\u201d until blood oozed from the chosen spot. Exploiting the situation and his servant, Clark, in his journal, reported how he told the fascinated natives<\/span> \u201c<\/span>that before I cought him he was wild & lived upon people<\/span><\/i>\u201d and that, for York, \u201c<\/span>young children was verry good eating<\/span><\/i>\u2026\u201d<\/span> Clark further encouraged the Nez Perce they encountered to closely examine York while ordering the enslaved African to dance like a buffoon or put on like a monster. The impact of these encounters was indelible as Slaughter would write about how the Nez Perce, as late as the 1960s, maintained an oral history where they remembered \u201cthe Raven\u2019s Son for his color and the mystery he embodied\u201d; and how members of the tribe wanted to slaughter the white contingency near the Bitterroot Mountains but feared retaliation from \u201cthe black man.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
York\u2019s value to the expedition didn\u2019t stop there. The enslaved African was pivotal in securing food from the Nez Perce for starving expedition members and even cared for sick natives as well as white explorers. Along with his negotiation skills and hunting prowess, he built shelters; paddled canoes; identified species of animals and insects; cared for sick expedition members; nursed them with the herbs he identified<\/span>; <\/span>and<\/span> did so while suffering from sickness, fatigue, and frostbite.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
In November 1805,<\/span> a year and a half after<\/span> departing Camp River Dubois near St. Louis, the presidentially commissioned Corps of Discovery reached the Pacific Ocean upon<\/span> floating down the Columbia River. There, they settled in for the winter, erecting Fort Clatsop on the south side of the river near present-day Astoria, Oregon, roughly 100 miles from Portland. During their stay, the expedition further explored the region,<\/span> recording information on its inhabitants, climate, wildlife, and<\/span> topography.<\/span><\/p>\n
Four months in, upon the onset of spring, the expedition began their return trip and arrived, in September 1806, back in St. Louis. They had traveled over 8000 miles in less than 2 1\/2 years and lost only one explorer. The historic expedition was regarded an overwhelming success given its substantial scope and accomplishments; its production of new knowledge regarding what would become the American West; its associated abundance of scientific information on native populations, climate, topography, and species of plants, wildlife, and insects; and its political significance in terms of buoying American imperial claims of dominion in North America.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
As for York and the native populations he\u2019d interacted with along the way, the expedition was anything but a success. The latter, over the following years, would be subject to mass genocide and forced removal from the lands their ancestors had nurtured and worshipped by the brutal westward expansion of the American nation. The former\u2014despite pleas to Clark, the generous rewards bestowed on other expedition members, and his pivotal contributions to the most historic expedition in American history\u2014would be denied his freedom and enslaved once more.<\/span><\/p>\n
Saar was well aware of this tragic inequity and its larger implications when sculpting her 2010 tribute to York at Portland\u2019s<\/span> Lewis and Clark College. \u201cThe<\/span> trouble with a lot of monuments is that history tries to rewrite itself and whitewash its erroneous past,\u201d offers Saar. \u201cSo, what I really wanted this piece to be about was how York was mistreated, how he was a slave when he started the exhibition, and how he was still a slave after the expedition. You look at the history books now and they are all singing his praises and how valuable he was on a number of levels.\u201d But few, she points out, really talk about the harsh \u201creality of how he\u2019s treated during the expedition.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
After the expedition, his treatment worsened. Reportedly \u201csulking\u201d from the denial of his freedom, York was accused of \u201cmisconduct\u201d after an incident with Clark,<\/span> removed from his position as body servant, and hired out to a ruthless Louisville, Kentucky plantation owner named Young. Some sources have reported that York\u2019s wife was in the Louisville area, as a justification for Clark\u2019s actions; others claimed she had been sold off before he arrived at Young\u2019s farm. Though information would grow increasingly sketchy, Clark later told writer<\/span> Washington Irving that he eventually freed York, who then opened a business as a wagon operator. The explorer claimed his former servant failed in business, regretted his freedom, and died from cholera on his way back to St. Louis. Yet, other reports, including that of trapper Zenas Leonard who traveled to the Rocky Mountains in 1832, mention an elderly black man living among the Crow natives in Wyoming who spoke of originally journeying to the area with Lewis and Clark.<\/span><\/p>\n
In her own search for balance and truth, Saar conducted substantial research on the enslaved frontiersman before creating the college monument, including a close study of the journals of Lewis and Clark. She used the back of her sculpted figure to cite both the positive and negative things said about him regarding his role in the expedition, the latter including what \u201cthey wrote about him being insolent.\u201d Further, explains Saar, \u201cI wanted to show him with scars on his back\u201d given \u201cone of the things they said was that he needed a good <\/span>trouncing<\/span><\/i>, and to show that this was not an egalitarian relationship.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
Saar\u2019s scars run deep with <\/span>multiple symbolic meanings<\/span><\/b><\/a> alongside the apparent physical violence to York, including<\/span> how they, and the expedition itself, represented \u201cthe stealing of the land of the indigenous people as well.\u201d Unfortunately, York \u201cgot dragged along on an expedition to basically invade other people\u2019s lands and make that western expansion possible at the cost of indigenous people,\u201d stresses Saar. It was an historic event \u201cI don\u2019t really approve of. I say that as a person living in California,\u201d she acknowledges, noting the expedition \u201cmade my existence here and now in California a possibility.\u201d Still, it \u201cwas just a shame\u201d how they treated someone \u201cso vital to their survival.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
Regarding the mysterious new bust of York in Portland\u2019s Mount Tabor Park, and the sensational way it was rendered, Saar focuses on the bigger picture. \u201cI think what\u2019s good about these type of things is, it gets people curious as to what the truth is,\u201d she says, further characterizing the sculpture as straight forward and \u201cnot overly didactic.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
As a result of such effective simplicity, adds Saar, \u201cpeople will go and do some research, and hopefully they will delve deep enough to learn the full truth of what York\u2019s experience really was.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
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