Ep. 07: Jefferson’s "Other" Lewis & Clark

Summary

Podcast Summary: The American West - Ep. 07: Jefferson’s "Other" Lewis & Clark

Host: MeatEater (Steve Rinella)
Guest: Dan Flores
Release Date: July 29, 2025
Duration: Approximately 62 minutes

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Introduction

In Episode 07 of The American West, titled "Jefferson’s 'Other' Lewis & Clark," host Steve Rinella welcomes historian Dan Flores to uncover a lesser-known chapter of American exploration. While the Lewis and Clark Expedition is a staple in American history, Flores sheds light on a concurrent but obscure expedition commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson—often referred to as Jefferson’s "Other Lewis & Clark."

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The Grand Expedition: An Overlooked Venture

Timestamp: [00:23] - [20:44]

Dan Flores begins by setting the historical context post-Louisiana Purchase. While Meriwether Lewis and William Clark embarked westward to explore the newly acquired territory, Jefferson initiated a second major expedition aimed at the southwestern part of the Louisiana Purchase, targeting the Red River.

• Jefferson’s Vision: Influenced by naturalists like Alexander von Humboldt, Jefferson was fascinated by the Southwest's potential for scientific discovery. He envisioned the Red River Expedition as a counterpart to Lewis and Clark’s mission, hoping to uncover the region’s natural history wonders, including the existence of camels and elephants in America.

• Leadership and Preparation: Jefferson appointed Thomas Freeman, an engineer and surveyor, and Dr. Peter Custis, a medical student and naturalist, to lead the expedition. The mission, dubbed the Grand Expedition, received double the funding of Lewis and Clark’s journey, highlighting its significance.

• Challenges in Planning: Despite meticulous planning, the expedition faced geographical misconceptions. Jefferson mistakenly identified the Red River as the true southern boundary, leading to strategic errors in route selection. Intelligence from Spanish informants indicated that the Red River did not lead to Santa Fe, undermining the expedition’s objectives.

Notable Quote:
Dan Flores explains Jefferson’s aim: “As the president had given Meriwether Lewis the following Objects... the western half of North America then was the country.” [11:30]

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Departure and Early Struggles

Timestamp: [20:44] - [38:03]

The expedition, bolstered by military support led by Captain Richard Sparks, set sail up the Red River in May 1806 with 50 men, including French and Native American guides.

• Encountering the Great Raft: One of the first major obstacles was the "Great Raft," a massive log jam comprising over 100 miles of cottonwood and juniper logs. This natural barrier severely impeded navigation, forcing the party to navigate through treacherous swamplands.

• Diplomatic Efforts: Upon interacting with the Caddo Confederacy, Freeman attempted to secure their support by presenting U.S. flags. Custis documented Caddoan customs, comparing their archery skills to those described in Homer’s Iliad.

• Spanish Military Intervention: As the expedition progressed, Spanish authorities, alarmed by American incursions, dispatched two cavalry units to intercept. Despite being outnumbered, Freeman adhered to Jefferson’s directive to avoid conflict, choosing to retreat rather than engage.

Notable Quote:
Dan Flores reflects on the decision to retreat: “Freeman, with Jefferson's instructions in hand...he made the mature decision the confrontation called for.” [35:15]

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Confrontation and Retreat

Timestamp: [38:03] - [62:26]

As the expedition neared the Red River’s upper stretches, Spanish forces positioned themselves defensively. On July 30, 1806, faced with a superior enemy, Freeman chose to turn back, marking the expedition as a strategic withdrawal.

• Scientific Contributions: Despite not reaching the Rockies, Custis cataloged numerous species—22 mammals, 36 birds, 17 reptiles, fishes, and amphibians, along with 58 trees and 130 flowering plants. These findings were later integrated into American scientific knowledge.

• Government and Public Reaction: The expedition was swiftly overshadowed by the success of Lewis and Clark. Jefferson downplayed the retreat, focusing public attention on the triumphant return of his other explorers. Some historians critique the expedition as a miscalculation that endangered lives without achieving its goals.

• Long-Term Impact: Flores posits that even if the Spanish had intercepted Lewis and Clark, the broader trajectory of American westward expansion would likely have remained unchanged. Nevertheless, the scientific legacy and narrative richness of the Freeman and Custis Expedition remain invaluable.

Notable Quote:
Flores muses on historical significance: “What we would lose... is that incredible description of the early American west that those guys did.” [49:12]

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Rediscovery and Modern Significance

Timestamp: [42:00] - [62:26]

The expedition's obscurity persisted until recently when Dan Flores rediscovered original journals redacted by Nicholas King, an official tasked with consolidating the expedition’s reports. King’s alterations had previously muddled scientific data and personal accounts, undermining the expedition’s historical standing.

• Academic Revelation: Flores’ research, culminating in his book Horizontal Yellow: The Freeman and Custis Expedition, uncovers the authentic contributions of both leaders. By restoring Custis’ scientific nomenclature and attributing observations correctly, Flores revives the expedition’s rightful place in history.

• Legacy and Reflection: The episode concludes with reflections on the nature of exploration and historical memory. Flores emphasizes the shared human drive to explore and document the unknown, lamenting the lost potential and recognition of Freeman and Custis.

• Future Directions: The podcast hints at upcoming episodes that will delve deeper into related figures and subsequent explorations, maintaining the narrative's continuity and engagement.

Notable Quote:
Reflecting on historical narratives: “What we would have lost without Lewis and Clark... is our awestruck reaction towards new worlds.” [60:34]

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Conclusion

Episode 07 of The American West skillfully uncovers the untold story of Jefferson’s second major expedition. Through meticulous research and engaging storytelling, Dan Flores brings to life the ambitions, challenges, and legacy of Thomas Freeman and Peter Custis. This exploration not only enriches our understanding of American expansion but also honors the often-overlooked contributors to the nation's pioneering history.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

1. Dan Flores on Jefferson’s Vision:
   “As the president had given Meriwether Lewis the following Objects... the western half of North America then was the country.” [11:30]

2. Reflection on Retreat Decision:
   “Freeman, with Jefferson's instructions in hand...he made the mature decision the confrontation called for.” [35:15]

3. On Historical Significance:
   “What we would lose... is that incredible description of the early American west that those guys did.” [49:12]

4. Reflection on Exploration:
   “What we would have lost without Lewis and Clark... is our awestruck reaction towards new worlds.” [60:34]

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Final Thoughts

This episode serves as a compelling reminder of the intricate and often overlooked facets of American history. By bringing to light the endeavors of Freeman and Custis, The American West not only fills a historical gap but also celebrates the enduring spirit of exploration that continues to define the American relationship with the vast western landscapes.

Transcript

[Steve Rinella]

Oh oh oh.

[Dan Flores]

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[Steve Rinella]

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[Dan Flores]

When Thomas Jefferson acquired the 800 million acre Louisiana purchase, he launched a second major exploring expedition into the west, one with an entirely different outcome than Lewis and Clark's, an outcome that shines a new light on what Lewis and Clark's journey really meant for America. I'm Dan Flores and this is the American west, brought to you by Velvet Buck. Still in barrel, Velvet Buck arrives this summer just in time for the season that calls us home. A portion of every bottle supports backcountry hunters and anglers to protect public lands, waters and wildlife. Enjoy responsibly. Jefferson's other Lewis and Clark On a gray Tuesday in November of the year 1805, with a chill wind scattering autumn leaves into the puddles of Washington's muddy streets, White House staff admitted a caller for a private dinner with the President of the United States that November evening. Thomas Freeman must have felt his future was made. Thomas Jefferson was about to offer him a plum appointment. The leadership of one of his prized explorations into the Louisiana Purchase, one of the most fascinating parts of the globe for scientific study. With Meriwether Lewis and his party already on the shores of the Pacific, Jefferson was turning to Freeman, a civilian astronomer who'd emigrated from Ireland to lead an exploring party into southwestern America. Jefferson called this new probe the Grand Expedition, and he was aiming it at the Red river of the south, which natural history titan Alexander von Humboldt had assured the president would take American explorers into vast deserts and the southerly ranges of the shining Mountains. Along with Humboldt, Jefferson had canvassed a number of scientists who'd been gathering information about the Southwest, and he was fascinated. The young United States had geopolitical reasons for exploring Louisiana, but at heart, Jefferson was a naturalist who dug fossils and and written his own book about Virginia. His informants about the Southwest told him wonderful stories about volcanoes and tigers and herds of wild horses among innumerable buffalo and wolves. He knew that camels, what he called the llama or paca of Peru, still existed in similar country in South America. And since there was already evidence of elephants in America by then, Charles Wilson Peale had laboriously, if badly, reassembled the skeleton of one for his museum in Philadelphia. Elephants might still be in the west, too. Meriwether Lewis had shipped enough reports and specimens back from the Missouri river that science was already buzzing about animals and birds never seen in the eastern states. And Jefferson's hope was that America's most famous naturalist, William Bartram, would accompany Freeman into the Southwest. Bartram was in his late 60s, though, so instead promoted Alexander Wilson, soon to be America's first great bird painter. As Freeman's naturalist, Jefferson instead chose a young Virginian whose family he knew well. Thus did a University of Pennsylvania medical student named Peter Custis become the first scientist trained in an American university of to win a posting as a naturalist to the west. Congress had come up with twice the funding for this expedition as it had for Lewis and Clark. So when his private dinner with the President concluded, Thomas Friedman stepped into the Washington night holding seven pages of exploring instructions written in Jefferson's clear handwriting. He knew, he wrote a friend, the hazards of travel in the neighborhood of Santa Fe. A great many difficulties and some personal danger will attend the expedition, but I will stick or go through. The more danger, the more honor. Jefferson's instructions, which Freeman must have scanned repeatedly, still exist in the Library of Congress. They include intriguing directions that also appeared in the exploring instructions. The president had given Meriwether Lewis the following Objects in the country adjacent to the rivers along which you will pass will be worthy of notice the animals of the country generally, and especially those not known in the Maritime States, and the remains and accounts of any which may be deemed extinct. The western half of North America then was the country. And the 1800s was the century that ultimately answered many fundamental questions about America's destiny. With the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson's administration had affected a continental future for the U.S. like a stone rolling down a mountain, the U.S. in the 1800s would claim and buy and seize much more of the continent. Eventually everything from southwestern deserts to Alaskan tundra. What had been and could have remained Native America or French, British or or Mexican territory over the next 60 years would become part of the U.S. thus did the west become ours. There was that intriguing final line in Jefferson's natural history instructions too, about one of the grand scientific questions of the age. Was extinction real? Were camels and elephants still out there? Or had they somehow found, for some unknown reason vanished from America? Could living creatures really entirely disappear on a planet Christianity had long believed was designed as perfection by a Creator? How could species God had placed on earth vanish, leaving us with only their enigmatic bones and skeletons? These questions and many others were why Jefferson aimed a second major exploring expedition at the West. It's a foregone conclusion that everyone listening to this has long known about Lewis and Clark, America's most famous explorers. I would wager that the chances are almost non existent though that you've ever heard of Thomas Freeman or Dr. Peter Custis or known about an 1806American probe into the west that was known as the Grand Expedition. Yet two centuries and two decades ago, a party of superbly equipped American explorers was working its way up the Red river of Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma, painstakingly mapping the country, holding councils with all the local tribes and making collections of plants, wildlife and geology. Both President Jefferson and the party's leaders thought of this as the southwestern counterpart to the Lewis and Clark party, which in that same summer was was returning from a successful exploration across darkest North America to the Pacific. By Intent Freeman, an engineer, surveyor and cartographer, and Custis, a student of Benjamin Smith Barton in America's best university at the time, should today be as famous as any historical figures who aren't presidents or generals. Jefferson had picked them to lead a scientific reconnaissance across the Great Plains to the Rockies. As far as legendary Santa Fe, we ought to have heard about them in junior high school social studies. The way we hear about Neil Armstrong's one giant leap for mankind on the moon. What then went so wrong with Jefferson's second expedition to the west that it's now invisible in American history? In a master plan Jefferson had set down in 1803, America's third president had outlined four major expeditions he hoped to send into the new Louisiana Purchase. In a prescient prediction of the future destiny of the U.S. jefferson believed an expedition into the southern parts of the Purchase aimed at what we today call the Southwest was almost as critical as having Lewis and Clark search for the Northwest Passage. Fundamentally, American exploring parties in the west were would establish a national presence on North American geography that Jefferson hoped both European powers and native people would acknowledge. And as with his questions about extinction, Western exploration represented the Jefferson administration's official support of cutting edge science. What was out there? What new wonders existed on this last continent that humans had found on Earth? But Lewis and Clark would leave those questions unanswered for an enormous stretch of the Louisiana Purchase. So in an exchange of letters with Meriwether Lewis in 1803, Jefferson had told Lewis that the object of your mission is single the direct water communication from sea to sea. I will also send a party up the Red river to its head, then cross over to the head of the Arkansas and and come down that this will be attempted distinctly from your mission. So once Lewis and Clark were underway in 1804, Jefferson devoted the time he had for exploration to two years of detailed planning and a budget of $5,000 from Congress to send his next grand expedition into the heart of the. The problems for this second expedition began though with the choice of rivers. Jefferson told a friend that he regarded the Red river of the south as next to the Missouri, the most interesting water of the Mississippi. But unfortunately he was smitten by the Red, in part because he misunderstood it. Soon after his purchase of the Louisiana Territory, the Jefferson had made known his belief that its proper southern boundary was actually the Rio Grande River. That startling claim meant that the upstart United States believed it now possessed not merely the French colonies in Louisiana and Missouri, but also Texas and New Mexico, where Spain had settlements that dated back to the early 1600s. Spain's diplomat of the US responded that the was absurd reasoning. But Jefferson had alarmed Spain, which was already struggling to hold on to its American colonies. The Spanish monarchy was highly suspicious of America's claim that as a democratic republic it represented the future for North America. Jefferson's claims unnecessarily riled Spain and unfortunately, his attempts to regroup and turn the Red river into where he was able to document far more French activity than on the Rio Grande into a compromise boundary failed to appease the Spanish government. But in the world of the Southwest and its geography, how feasible was an exploration up the Red river and then down the Arkansas anyway? The essential first question of this pairing was where would the Red river lead American explorers? Jefferson assumed that major rivers had in mountain ranges and that given its lower course and size, the Red must have its origins somewhere in the southern ranges of the Shining Mountains near the tantalizing destination of Santa Fe. That assumption appeared to be corroborated by recent maps, particularly a brand new one drawn by the famous Prussian naturalist himself, Alexander von Humboldt, and based on his map work in Mexico City's archives. Humboldt knew that lower Louisiana was bisected north and south by a river the French called Rivaire Rouge that flowed from the west. And he knew that from the high Rockies near Santa Fe, a reddish river flowed eastward. Surely the river the Spaniards saw and a thousand miles later Frenchman saw, was the same one the Americans were now calling the Red. So that's how Humboldt drew it. Just as Lewis and Clark were to open an economic route up the Missouri to the northwest, the Red appeared poised to do the same with a proto Santa Fe Trail trade route between Louisiana and New Mexico, if in fact the Southern Rockies was where the Red river headed. Jefferson issued a call to the American scientific community for more information about the Southwest. And he got it. A New York naturalist named Samuel Mitchell told the President the Red was supposed to be navigable for 1,000 miles above the last French town on it century old Natchitoches, and that it penetrated a country of immense prairies with alligators, buffalo, tigers, wolves and innumerable herds of wild horses. The Scottish expatriate scientist Sir William Dunbar wrote of the Red's long course and its sources in what he called salt mountains. Dunbar dangled wonderful stories of wonderful productions, including possibly unicorns on the southern prairie and in the wake of a recent mastodon skeleton excavation in Kentucky, giant water serpents too, he thought might be in the Southwest. Dunbar also reported vague stories of masses of metal venerated by the Indians and assumed to be silver ore. And more of those in the next episode. From his Indian agent in Nachorish, Dr. John Sibley, Jefferson learned one other critical bit of information. As the gateway to New Mexico, the Upper Red was controlled by the horticultural Pawnees, actually the Wichitas as we know them today. Under their forceful leader Oaxacai, and a buffalo hunting people, Sibley referred to as the Aetans, who we now know as the Comanches. These Indians, who had fond memories of the days when Spanish and French traders had competed for their friendship, were openly expressing interest in the Americans. That was music to Jefferson's ears. While the natural history particulars the President was hearing were vaguely real, the geography, unfortunately, was not. There were those who knew the truth about the Red. Even this early in the 1780s and 1790s, the Spanish government had dispatched French and Spanish explorers to link the towns of St. Louis, Natchitoches and San Antonio with distant Santa Fe. Some of them traveled the Red river, and they knew it did not lead them to Santa Fe. But what had caught the attention of Spanish officials was a claim by one of them, Pierre Vial in 1793 that it was possible to journey from St. Louis to Santa Fe in little more than three weeks. The revolutionary Americans were that close. That was far too close. Among Jefferson's informants, there was one who gave the President accurate information about his choice of a river. A scheming and controversial general named James Wilkinson presented the president with a 22 page letter about the Southwest designed to excite the presidential eye, as Wilkinson put it. Among the various details about the natural history of this wonderful country, there was actually an accurate description of the upper Red river. One almost certainly based on the travels of a young American horse trader named Philip Nolan, a man worthy of a fuller treatment in a later episode of this podcast. Above the Wichita villages, the Red river fort, the right hand fort, flowed through a mountain ridge to the west. But the left hand fort was which was the longer spilled off an open plain, Wilkinson said, so extensive as to require the Indians four days in crossing it. Beyond that high plain there was a river running south, and beyond that very high mountains disappearing into northern distances. Had the Americans understood this description, which accurately portrayed the headwaters of the Red river in great canyons eroded into the Llano Estacado or the Staked plain, with the Pecos river flowing south. Beyond that, and with the Rockies and Santa Fe still many days to the northwest, they would have understood that the Arkansas river, not the Red, was the correct route to the Rockies. The Arkansas would also have had the added benefit that the Missouri did for Lewis and Clark. It would have gotten American experience farther away from Spanish forces sent out to stop the Americans from examining the West. The truth was that Jefferson's insistence on the Red for his second big Western expedition was ill start. And the result was that Freeman's and Custis chances at becoming American heroes like Lewis and Clark were about to evaporate. The letter of exploring instructions Jefferson had given him in November of 1804 included a line, also in the Lewis and Clark letter, that would prove far more significant in the Southwest. If at any time a superior force, authorized or not authorized by a nation, should be arrayed against your further passage and inflexibly determined to arrest it, you must decline its further pursuit and return. So Freeman, it turned out, would neither stick nor go through. In fact, he was about to bounce right out of American history.

[Steve Rinella]

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[Dan Flores]

With both Spain and native peoples like the Osages making threatening noises about Americans penetrating the Southwest, Jefferson personally selected Captain Richard Sparks, familiar to him via Lewis as one of the best woodsmen, bushfighters and hunters in the army, to head a military contingent to accompany the two scientific leaders. Now, in the spring of 1806, all was haste in procuring French and native guides and laying in supplies so that the grand expedition's specially designed barges could take them upriver as far as the Wichita villages whence they planned to explore westward by horseback. Freeman directed the purchase of a camera obscura to produce topographic images, a high quality chronometer for fixing longitudes and a portable barometer for taking elevations, along with an acrochromatic telescope to help fix latitudes by observing the eclipses of Jupiter's moons. Custis brought his shotgun plant presses and various traps and preservation equipment, plus a library of natural history reference volumes. By mid April of 1806, the bulk of the exploring party had assembled in Natchez, Mississippi where they conducted a last round of outfitting. Sparks selected two non commissioned officers and 17 privates for their general good health and robust temperaments. As with Lewis and Clark, there was an African American member of the expedition who may have arrived with Peter Custis. Unlike York, we don't know his name. This party entered the mouth of the red river on May 1, anticipating a year long probe taking them some 1300 river miles into the western interior. But despite their high spirits, they couldn't miss the warning signs on the Spanish border. As Custis would confide in his journal, this expedition seems to have thrown their whole country into commotion. Because the Red river was not nearly so distant from Spanish power as the Missouri, Madrid got active in a hurry. It quickly dispatched not one but two bodies of troops to intercept Fremont and Custis. One, with 200 cavalry commanded by Captain Francisco Viana, left Nacogdoches in East Texas to confront the Americans on the lower river. The other, which is Zebulun pike, who mistakenly thought he was its target, described as the most important expedition ever sent out from the province of New Mexico was the insurance policy. Commanded by Lt. Facundo Melgares, it left Santa Fe bound for the Red in early June of 1806. With that time in the summer of 1806 merely waited out the geopolitical rendezvous. When Jefferson's explorers arrived in Natchitoches, the last American outpost on the Red, and heard of the ominous Spanish troop movements, the two questions they must have been asking themselves were how far are we going to get? And will I live through this? Nonetheless, this was the President's own mission. Now brought up to 50 men with French and two Indian guides and a total of seven craft, making it the largest American exploring party of the age. Freeman's stick or go through aphorism was about to be tested. Confronting only nature, the aphorism worked. In the course of their five month exploration, the party would confront many remarkable phenomena of the Red River's natural ecology. One of those was the great raft. A thousand year old log jam that entirely blocked the river for more than 100 miles. To get their boats around this massive obstacle, they had to detour through a swampland that likely rivaled today's Okefenokee swamp. For naturalist Custis, the great swamp was a botanical treasure. For everyone else, it was pure misery. 14 days of incessant fatigue, toil and danger, doubt and uncertainty, as Freeman put it. Beyond the raft, Freeman got a first opportunity to try out his diplomatic skills on the Indians, whose country they now entered, an ancient but reduced population of mound builders, the Caddo confederacy. For two weeks, the Americans treated with Dehehuit, hereditary chief of the caddos, to whom Freeman presented US flags and solicited caddo endorsement of the exploration. Custis, meanwhile, observed and wrote of Caddoan customs and skills. Their talents with the bow, he said, put him in mind of stories from the Iliad, and he posted a 26 specimen botanical collection downriver. For Custis, the beautiful Red river valley seemed the paradise of America, as he called it. The naturalist Eden Jefferson had promised the image of Freeman and Custis, ill starred as they were, that I savor is them. Proceeding upriver in July of 1818, busily studying the river valley, made aware by the Caddos that a Spanish force four times their number was shadowing them in the undulating hills to the west. Guided by the Caddo's cut finger and grand dosages, the party engaged in a series of minor adventures, at one point ascending a small mountain prominent in the Caddo creation myth and consuming a bottle of whiskey with their go guides. By 22 July, they had rounded the great band of the red near present Texarkana and were heading due West. On July 27, the Caddos told them that they had reached the former location of Bernard de la Harpe's early 18th century trading post that had been the most westerly French settlement on the red river, beyond which Spain now insisted that the southwest belonged to their mother monarchy. There was another alarming development, too. After ascending the river for two weeks without a thunderstorm, the water in the red was dropping fast. Still two to three weeks from the Wichita villages and whatever horses they could purchase with their flags and gifts, the explorers were having to drag their barges, their hulls grinding, on channel gravel, up the river. As for the movements of the Spanish troops sent to oppose them, the they were direct and purposeful. After angrily cutting down the American flag he found flying in Dahehua's Caddo village, captain Viana had marched his force north to the Red, taking a position on a bluff that's been known ever since as Spanish bluff, near the present boundary between Oklahoma and Arkansas, Sending a post to his superiors, saying that he knew the irremediable damage that would result to this province if the union is accomplished of the expedition of the United States with the faceless Wichita indians and the comanches, Viana wrote that he would confront the Americans above the old french post as this territory is ours. Lacking a successful exploration, Freeman very well might have ensured his name in American history had he opted for armed conflict. But there was no violent encounter. When the Americans rounded a bend in the river and faced a Spanish force four times their size arrayed across it. Vienna politely but firmly refused to allow the Americans to pass. And Freeman, with Jefferson's instructions in hand, if at any time a superior force, authorized or not authorized by a nation, should be arrayed against your further passage and inflexibly determined to arrest it, you must decline its further pursuit. In return, he made the mature decision the confrontation called for. The date was July 30, 1806. They had ascended the Red River 615 miles to the edge of the blackland prairies and the great plains, but still only halfway to the great mystery of the red sources. So Freeman agreed to turn back rather than proceeding on as Lewis and Clark often began their journal entries. The grand expedition turned around in a young country like the US Anxious about its reputation and longing for heroes to celebrate. Thomas Freeman and Peter Custis and their mates, on a presidentially authorized attempt to explore the west, returned to a country that quickly turned away and forgot them, For a total expenditure at last of $8,700. Jefferson had launched an expedition that another power had forced to retreat. Peter custis. Natural history work on the red was highly intriguing. He had cataloged 22 mammals, 36 birds, 17 reptiles, fishes and amphibians, 58 trees, and 130 flowering plants, 26 of which he collected for the academy of natural sciences of Philadelphia. But the meager geographic results meant that everyone involved understood. Having failed to penetrate the great plains and reach the Rockies in Santa Fe, the expedition was a failure. There was just no other way to spin it. The president's public reaction was clear enough. He preferred to concentrate on the triumphant return of Lewis and Clark and to say as little as possible about his second expedition. There are historians, in fact, who have called this expedition a headstrong decision that put in danger the lives of Americans pursuing an impossible goal. And it does appear that Jefferson's own stubbornness embarrassed him. There was also an undercut of public suspicion. At least one prominent newspaper would editorialize that the ferment with Spain in 1806 was not caused by Aaron Burr's plot to invade the Southwest, as newspapers favorable to Jefferson's administration tried to spin it, but by Jefferson's secret expeditions, secret orders, and secret plans of exploration. The fate of Freeman and Custis does beg another question. What if the Spaniards who sent out two different expeditions to find Lewis and Clark had also succeeded and blocked them? I suspect the Freeman and Custis expedition provides us with an answer. What happened to their expedition seems to argue that America's destiny in the west didn't truly rest on successful Jeffersonian exploration. Despite their failures, US Traders carrying American goods and even US Flags still traveled among the Indians of the Southwest in the years following. And more of this in the next episode. By 18:19, the Red river to the hundredth parallel did finally become the boundary between Spain and the US And Mexico did revolt successfully against Spain to create its own Democratic Republic in 1821. American expansionist policies in the three decades after Jefferson still brought Texas, New Mexico, and the far Southwest into the American orbit. Had Spain similarly intercepted Lewis and Clark? The analogy provided by Freeman and Custis argues that even without their expedition, the history of the Northwest likely would have turned out just about the same as it did in the big picture. Other currents of 19th century history were more powerful than Jeffersonian explorers. So remove Lewis and Clark from the American story, just as the Spanish force removed Freeman and Custis, and probably not much would have changed geopolitically. But I should emphasize geopolitically, a successful Lewis and Clark expedition was a truly important historical event for America. What we would have lost without Lewis and Clark in our history, then and now, is our awestruck reaction towards new worlds. Lewis and Clark gave us a carefully recorded ultimate camping trip in a dream world that lay at the end of 60,000 years of human trekking out of Africa and around the Earth. Behind us lay our footprints. In the American west of 1804-1806, we got one last glimpse through Lewis and Clark of what the whole Earth had been in the deep past. As our robot rovers trundle across Mars and send us photographs that are analogs of their maps of america from only 200 years ago, we see exploration as a specific American legacy. But that legacy is common to humanity everywhere. Any human who doesn't live to see our footprints on Mars is going to experience the kind of regret I feel that Freeman and Custis didn't get to emulate Lewis and Clark and explore the West. A regret that intrigued me into once writing in a book I called Horizontal Yellow, a little novella the river that flowed from nowhere that imagines Freeman and Custis continuing up the Red river into a southwest bridge beyond all of Thomas Jefferson's fantasies.

[Steve Rinella]

Hey, it's Steve Rella here and I'm going to tell you about fishingbooker.com the world's largest online marketplace for fishing trips. Now this is cool because I travel around a lot sometimes with my family. We're always looking for cool fishing opportunities when we're going to new spots. We'll check this out. FishingBooker.com is as easy to use as your favorite lure in a stocked pond. Fishing Booker connects you with top rated guides who know where the fish are biting. So if you're planning a trip, you take all the hassle out of it. No guesswork, no stress. Just show up and fish. Do they have verified reviews? Yes. Easy booking? Yes. Loyalty discounts? Yes. They've got those too. And it doesn't matter what kind of fishing you're into. Trophy bass in Texas, salmon in Alaska, Tarpon on the flats in Florida. Fishing Booker works in, get this, over 100 countries. Whether you're a seasoned angler or just getting your feet wet, this is the way to go. So stop scrolling through random fishing forums and start catching memories with fishingbooker.com your next big catch is waiting for you. That's fishing booker.com fishing trips made Easy when you're in the backcountry, don't forget your own backcountry. Keep it pristine and confidently clean by bringing along wet extra large dude wipes. I'm glad to be doing dude wipe ads because I buy dude wipes. Anyways. I've been a long time dude wipe. I'm a dude wipe dude all the time. Just like your truck gets muddy out in the wild soaking your butt. You never clean your vehicle with dry paper towels, so why would you clean your butt with dry toilet paper? Wetter cleans better so ditch the itch and switch from TP to wet extra large dude wipes. Love them. Like going on a 10 day moose hunt, I just bring a pack along. Not only that, so they're extra large. Okay, if you're a little baby, you get little baby wipes. If you're a man, you get extra large dude wipes. And when you're out in nature it's going to inevitably call. So make sure you bring along wet dude wipes and three adventure sizes like day hike single wipes, 18 pack weekend wipers or you know for long trips you got a 48 count pack. And it's not just that, like when you're out camping, just sleeping in a sleeping bag, let's say you're gone for 10 days, whatever. I use them just to clean up at night, like, you know, scrub the old pit, scrub your arms if it's all dusty. Just kind of get your neck and everything cleaned up. I love having them with me. Dude Wipes. It is the best clean. Pants down. They're available at Amazon. That's where I usually order mine from. It's on Amazon, but you get them at Walmart, nationwide. Fantastic product. Proud to be doing ads for these boys. At Dude Wipes, we're thinking about connection to the land, to the history, to a legacy we can build. That yearning for your own piece of wild country, that yearning runs deep. And in 2025, making that a reality is more important than ever. Whether you're a lifelong hunter or just starting out. If you dream of owning land to explore, to build memories, to leave something real for those who come after, then there's one place to start. Land.com. it is the leading online network connecting buyers and sellers of rural properties. I can tell you in my life I've bought a couple small, little weird little spots. And dude, the smartest moves I ever made. Find the right agent who understands your needs. Explore diverse listings from timber tracks to ranches, and access the tools to make smart decisions. Don't let that vision of your own land stay a dream. Take action now. Head to land.com. find your connection to the wild, your piece of history, your legacy. Land.com. the place to find your open space. How did you. How did you first become aware of the Grand Expedition? Until I encountered it with you.

[Dan Flores]

Yeah. Never heard of it.

[Steve Rinella]

Never heard of it.

[Dan Flores]

Yeah. Yeah. And I don't think most people have ever heard of it. I encountered it for a very simple reason. I was getting a master's degree at Northwestern State in Louisiana and there was an archivist there named Katherine Bridges and she was inquiring of me, so what are you interested in? What do you want to do, you know, maybe write a master's thesis about. And I said, well, you know what I'm interested in? I mean, I'm interested in Lewis and Clark and the fur trade and, you know, all this kind of classic early western stuff. And she looked at me for a second and she said, so I'm going to tell you something I'm pretty sure you don't know.

[Steve Rinella]

Stephen Randall are on it.

[Dan Flores]

Steven and Randall lead this expedition.

[Randall]

One day there will be born.

[Dan Flores]

Yeah. So she said, I'm going to tell you something I bet you don't know, Thomas Jefferson sent a second expedition out two years after Lewis and Clark, and he sent it right up the Red River. And Red river flows right through Natchitoches, right through town.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, really?

[Dan Flores]

Yes. Yeah. And. And I grew up with antibody.

[Steve Rinella]

Where you were at that moment?

[Dan Flores]

Where I was that moment, eight miles from there.

[Randall]

I was curious whether you gotten on this because it was a local story. A local story?

[Steve Rinella]

You hadn't even heard of it.

[Dan Flores]

No, I hadn't heard of it, nor had anybody else. And I will say that now back in northwestern Louisiana, you know, I mean, there are all kinds of people who call me up and email me and text me with these detailed questions, sort of like people do for Lewis and Clark about this expedition, because once people learned about it back there, suddenly they were just all over it.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, yeah.

[Randall]

Do you think they saw this rock? Do you think they camped under this big tree?

[Dan Flores]

Well, I mean, an archaeologist found a button from one of the jackets at one of their camps about 25 years ago, and that was national news. My publication of the book was not national news, but the button from the camp was national news. But anyway, I. I said, so, you know. You gotta be kidding. She said, no, there's a. There was an expedition. It went right through here. It didn't ultimately. I said, well, so how far did they get? She said, well, they didn't get very far. They got about 650, 700 miles up the Red river and they got turned around by a Spanish army. So that's why hardly anybody knows about it, because the United States was a young country. It was looking for heroes to celebrate. Didn't want to really celebrate, you know, some group that chickens. Yeah. European country has sort of whisked back home. So I said, well, is there any account of it? She said, yeah, we've got a microfilm of it. And so what she showed me was a microfilm of the official government report of this expedition in 1807, the year after the expedition took place. And that official government report was written by somebody else. I finally discovered when I was doing the book, a guy named Nicholas King was hired by the administration to redact their original journals into a single account. And this guy, Nicholas King, he not only redacted the journals into a single account, so you couldn't tell, for example, whether it was Freeman talking or it was Custis talking, he converted it into third person rather than in the first person of their journals. And the final thing he did is I started looking closely at It. I was gonna. I mean, there's this. All this rich natural history in this expedition, and I start trying to figure out, so what. What was this tree? Shit, I can't find anything that looks like it's named that. And what I began to realize. And finally, when I found the original in the letters of the War Department, where the original accounts, journals and all were stored, and I found the originals, I realized that this guy Nicholas King, evidently, he couldn't read Peter Custis's handwriting, and so he just destroyed all the Latin binomials of all the plants and.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, really?

[Dan Flores]

And stuff. And so one of the things that happened as a result of that is that Custis kind of emerges from it with the American scientific community going, what in the hell? This guy, he's from the University of Pennsylvania. He studied under Benjamin Smith Barton, and he doesn't know any of the scientific names of the plants and animals. And in fact, it was the guy who. Who redacted it. So what I did ultimately, when I wrote the book was I found the original accounts, and that's what I ended up. You know, I mean, it's a big thing with the Lewis and Clark journals that you publish the original journals of the account. So once I found Freeman and Custis his stuff, I was able to put together a story of it where the proper stuff was attributed to each one of them and all the scientific nomenclature was correct. And. And so it turned it suddenly into 200 years later, 200 frigging years later, into a really worthwhile scientific expedition that just got cut off before they really could quite get out to the Great Plains and start seeing all that stuff that Lewis and Clark saw, all those new animals, they stopped just short of that by about two days. Now.

[Randall]

One of the things you see in especially popular history is there's a tend towards these hypotheticals of, like, what if Patton had sent the tanks this way or that way, or what if so. And so, you know, never wrote this book. And then there's sort of this hypothetical.

[Steve Rinella]

I think, that's occurring in your mind.

[Randall]

Oh, no. I think this is. I think there's all kinds of, like, TV shows.

[Dan Flores]

I feel like this is counterfactual. It's called.

[Randall]

Yeah, counterfactual.

[Dan Flores]

Yeah.

[Randall]

Like, there are all these questions of, like, counterfactuals in history. And in this case, you highlight that what if Lewis and Clark never made it to the Pacific? You have sort of the actual counterfactual here that suggests that probably things would have unfolded very similarly to the way in which they did with the success of the Lewis and Clark expedition. And so I think that's one of the really interesting aspects of this story. You often, I think when I read about the Lewis and Clark expedition, you read about sort of all the natural science that they bring. Brought back, and you read about sort of the Lewis and Clark as ethnographers and Lewis and Clark in terms of adding to our knowledge of this place. But you here are able to answer a question of what is the actual significance in terms of territorial expansion.

[Dan Flores]

Yeah. And I think, you know, at least if the Freeman and Custis expedition is indicative, if the Spaniards and they tried, by the way, they sent two expeditions up to the Missouri river to try to find Lewis and Clark, but they. It's just too big a country. They couldn't find them. That if they had managed to stop them and turn them around and had Lewis and I've had, you know, I mean, there are a lot of. Meriwether Lewis is an American hero. He would have never stopped for a bunch of Spaniards. He would have just. He would have plowed right on through.

[Steve Rinella]

Shot his way through there.

[Dan Flores]

Yeah, he would have. He would have never stopped. But had they been stopped, I think judging by the Freedman of Custis expedition, things probably would have unfolded in the Northwest pretty much as they did anyway. But, you know, as I was trying to point out, what we would lose, though, is that incredible description of the early American west that those guys did and that, you know, nobody wants to sacrifice that. To me, that's the real contribution that those guys made. I don't think they, you know, they didn't find the Northwest Passage for sure. I mean, they tried to cross the Bitterroot Mountains and think that was going to lead them to the Northwest Passage, you know, and it didn't. Didn't do it at all. I mean, there's not even a Northwest Passage kind of highway across the Bitterroot Mountains these days. So they didn't find that they kind of actually failed in their ultimate goal of finding a Northwest Passage. But. And they didn't really. You know, their presence on the Pacific coast was important for that winter of 1805, but. 1805, 1806. But, you know, Astoria's fort was probably more important, and even that fort got taken away by the Brits in the War of 1812. But it's. It's those journals and all that description of the landscape and the animals and the ethnographic stuff on the native people, you know, however flawed sometimes it might have been. Jesus, man, that stuff. Nobody. I certainly don't want to ever lose that Lewis and Clark account.

[Steve Rinella]

I want to hear more about the big raft, the great raft. A thousand year old log jam.

[Dan Flores]

Yeah, the great raft is really interesting.

[Steve Rinella]

It's. I presume it's not there anymore.

[Dan Flores]

It's not there anymore, but it took the invention of nitroglycerin in the 1870s to remove it.

[Steve Rinella]

How many miles long was it?

[Dan Flores]

Well, when it was finally removed, it was 140 miles long.

[Steve Rinella]

I just want people to picture what we're talking about. Like if you've, if you've seen just like picture you're on a creek and you know, at the end of spring runoff or whatever, and there's a bunch of logs piled up like toothpicks or matchsticks all jumbled up, you know, and there's usually like a beer cooler and a bottle and someone's daughter dog toy floating there because it can't get by. But then the next year it floods.

[Dan Flores]

And washes it out.

[Steve Rinella]

Washes it out and it's, you know, but you see them pop up and go away. But the fact that one of those lasted a thousand years and accumulated over a hundred miles of logs and yeah, not only that totally obstructed any kind of navigation.

[Dan Flores]

Completely construct obstructed navigation. And not only that, it was climbing the river. It started out, we think a thousand years ago down at the mouth of the red river. And when Freeman and Custis encountered it, they were like about 250 miles up the river. So it had receded for 250 miles up river as the bottom end had rotted off and had been swept away by floods. But every time there was a big freshet out on the plains, the upper end stacked up again. And so it was just climbing the red river like a snake. And by the time of that must.

[Steve Rinella]

Have frustrated many a cat fisherman. For a lot of structure though, it.

[Dan Flores]

Frustrated, you know, so on the Missouri once we had steamboats. I mean you could go up the Missouri and you could, you know, you could haul back bison ropes, heavy stuff from the plains. But on the red river you could not navigate that thing until the 1870s.

[Steve Rinella]

And they blasted it out of there.

[Dan Flores]

They blasted it out. A guy named captain Henry Shreve from the u. S. Army corps of engineers used nitroglycerin. It took him about 10 years to blast.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, that's what I was gonna ask. So he didn't find like some magical pinch point? No, he just, he just kept doing it.

[Dan Flores]

Just kept blowing it up. I mean, I've got photographs of it in, in that, that book. I mean, it's kind of unbelievable. And people said you could be walking out on the ground what you thought was just the ground, and you cock your ear and damn, there's water running under my feet. And they would realize, shit, we're standing on the great raft and underneath us the Red river is flowing.

[Steve Rinella]

But it's timber coming out of where.

[Dan Flores]

Ultimately it's coming from, primarily the cottonwoods upstream on the Red River.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay, so it's cottonwood logs.

[Dan Flores]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Some of my mind I was picturing.

[Dan Flores]

Yeah. Some of them were junipers.

[Steve Rinella]

Picturing like, like a coniferous tree of some sort or whatever. I got you.

[Dan Flores]

Yeah, there were, there were. There was a big expanse of junipers on the middle Red. Not Rocky Mountain junipers, but there were Virginia junipers, and they were really tall, really big people. Compared.

[Steve Rinella]

It was mostly cottonwoods tipping into the river.

[Dan Flores]

It was mostly cottonwoods. And of course, cottonwoods. That's why it would rot away, is because, you know, they're soft and kind of easily damaged by water.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dan Flores]

And so, yeah, this thing was just climbing the river.

[Randall]

Were there, are there oral traditions that. I mean, it seems like this sort of thing that's just so grand and strange and I wonder like, if there, if we have any sort of sense of how native people in that area described it.

[Dan Flores]

Well, I don't have a good native account, but I can tell you this. And in 2006, the 200th anniversary of this expedition, LSU Shreveport put on a three day symposium celebrating the Freeman and Custis expedition. And so they had me back there to do a keynote and do various other things. And while I was there, there was a group of Caddo Indian guys and they came up to me and they said, so you know where Chicane is, don't you? And I said, yeah, I do. And Chicane, I mentioned in the podcast that Freeman and Custis climbed this little small mountain in southwestern Arkansas with their two guys and drank a bottle of whiskey in order to converse with the Great Spirit. And these Caddos who were removed from Louisiana by Treaty in 1835, and they were relocated to western Oklahoma around Lawton, Oklahoma. They had had kind of oral traditions of this mountain that was supposed to be part of their, their origin story. And. But they didn't know where it was. And somebody told them. I don't know if he told them at that, that conference or they already knew about it when they came, but they came to me and said, so you Know where Chicago is? And I said, yeah, because I'd gone up and found it and climbed the mountain and you know, I didn't drink a whole bottle of whiskey, but I drank some whiskey up on top of it and I said, yeah. And they said, well, can you show us where it is? I said, well, absolutely. Yeah, I can take you there. So I took these four cattle guys. One of them was really pretty old. He was in his 80s probably.

[Steve Rinella]

Wow.

[Dan Flores]

Yeah. And went up to this mountain that was there as part of their creation myth story.

[Steve Rinella]

That must have been cool.

[Dan Flores]

That was very cool.

[Steve Rinella]

Who owned the hill?

[Dan Flores]

I don't know who on the hill there were. There was nobody really living very close to it. And so sort of like the way you and I did.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, a black water draw.

[Dan Flores]

Black water draw.

[Steve Rinella]

We had a self tour. Self guided tour.

[Dan Flores]

And I did a self guided tour up on top of that mountain. Yeah, just climbed up there and yeah. So these guys. And since then, and this happened within the last year, I've had another guy who tells me he's a Caddo historian and he's wanting me to show him where it is and take him out there. Of course, I don't ever really. My parents are gone. I've got aunts and uncles and things back in Louisiana. But what's up?

[Steve Rinella]

Son of a pen.

[Dan Flores]

Yeah. So, yeah, I actually sent him a. You know, I took a photograph of a USGS 7.5 quad and sent it to him and showed him the road that went by, a little dirt road, two track that went by and circled it and said, this is where it is, it's right here.

[Steve Rinella]

So the expedition, had they not been turned around, what, what name brand features would they have, like, what things that people today are aware of. Might they have been like, holy cow, look at that. Like, what would they run into?

[Dan Flores]

Well, they would have. They would have been out on the equivalent of the Mandan Lakota country farther south. I mean, Lewis and Clark, of course, get up to the Mandan villages and they've already passed some Lakota bands and then they go from the Mandan villages to the Rockies and they don't really see anybody, but they would. Freedman Augustus would have been amongst a similar group of people farther south, but in this case it was Pawnees.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[Dan Flores]

A group we call the Wichitas now. And they had. It's the same group, by the way, that Coronado, when he was going to Quivera, was trying to find. And when Coronado went to try to find them, they were living up on the Arkansas river, but they had moved down to the Red River, I don't know, 50 or 60 years before Freedman Augustus. And so that's where they were going. And they were gonna, they were gonna leave their craft there, those seven boats they had, and they were going to purchase horses from the Wichita and head up the river. And as I said, when I was trying to describe how that river works, you would reach a point maybe 100 miles beyond the Wichita villages where it would fork, kind of like a Three Forks thing, except depending on which way you went, the right hand one would go through the Wichita Mountains in the Quartz Mountains of southwestern Oklahoma. And it really wouldn't go much farther than that. It wouldn't get you, for example, to the Front Range of the Rockies. The left fork though, and this is the one that everybody thought that's the one that's going to go to Santa Fe. That fork would actually take you to the canyons of the eastern escarpment of the Anno Estacado. And so. And the primary one is Palo Duro Canyon.

[Steve Rinella]

They would have been in Comanche country.

[Dan Flores]

Yeah, they would have been in Comanche.

[Steve Rinella]

Country with the Comanche of demolished them, you know.

[Dan Flores]

I don't think so. No, no, I don't think so.

[Steve Rinella]

I mean, at that time it wouldn't have been hostile.

[Dan Flores]

Yeah. The next episode I'm gonna do is about a guy, a traitor named Anthony Glass, who two years after Freeman and Custis are turned around, the Jefferson Administration, Indian agent and activist John Sibley. They give this guy the responsibility of go on out and make the diplomatic arrangements with the Wichitas and the Comanches, take American flags out, give them American flags, tell them they're now, you know, part of the great father in Washington's tribes and we're going to start trading with them and all that. And that guy, he was among the Wichitas and the Comanches for about 10 months and he didn't ever really experience any kind of danger. And what it was, I think is if you were a traitor, if you had trade goods and they were, they were a okay with you. And Glass, of course, took trade goods out with him. So I don't think the Comanches would have screwed around with them. They didn't screw around with the long expedition 15 years later, they just let them go through. They didn't really have any reason yet, I think, to be hostile. And who they became, who the Comanches became hostile towards by the 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, was the Texans. And they distinguished between Texans and Americans.

[Steve Rinella]

So do I. Yeah.

[Dan Flores]

Well.

[Steve Rinella]

I look forward to that episode coming up. Man, that's gonna be great.

[Dan Flores]

Yeah, it'll be fun because there's a. It's got a little O. Henry twist to it.

[Steve Rinella]

Thank.

[Dan Flores]

You.

[Steve Rinella]

You ever feel that deep pull to the land to know it, to build something that lasts, that itch for your own wild country? Well, it ain't just a daydream. In 2025, it matters more than ever whether you're a lifelong hunter or just starting out, dreaming of land to explore, to leave something real. Or there is a trailhead where you can start. It's called land.com, the biggest online network for rural property. Find the right agent and explore everything from timber tracks to ranches. Get the tools you need to buy that dream generational property. Stop dreaming about it and head to land.com. it's your place to find your open space when you're in the back country. Don't forget your own back country. Keep it pristine and confidently clean by bringing along wet extra large Dude Wipes. Just like your truck gets muddy out in the wild, soaking your butt, you'd never clean your vehicle with dry paper towels, so why would you clean your butt with dry toilet paper? Wetter cleans better. So ditch the itch and switch from TP to wet extra large Dude Wipes. Dude Wipes. It is the best clean. Pants down. They're available at Amazon. That's where I usually order mine from, but you can get them at Walmart nationwide. Fantastic product. Proud to be doing ads for these boys at Dude Wipes. This episode is brought to you in part by Little Camper. And this is apropos because I recently uncovered out in the woods camping some guy's old stash of rusted green £1 disposable propane canisters, which annoyed me no end. Well, hear this. Zero Waste camping is possible. You got to find the right gear that's durable, sustainable, and won't actually end up in a landfill once it's worn out. That's why Little Camper makes it easy to choose Zero Waste propane for your next camping trip. Pick the exchangeable zero waste 1 pound propane cylinder. Find a retailer at Little Camper. That's with a K.com me eater little camper what fuels you get.