Plains Folk: Lewis and Clark and Burke and Wills, III
By JIM HOY
© Plains Folk
This week concludes the saga of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, famous American explorers, and their Australian counterparts, Robert O'Hara Burke and John Wills.
Burke and Wills set out on 21 Aug. 1860, but moved much too slowly to suit Burke, who was impatient to beat John McDouall Stuart, sponsored by the South Australian government, as the first white man to cross the continent.
After reaching Menindie in New South Wales, Burke split his party and headed to Coopers Creek, arriving there with eight men just as summer was coming on. When the rest of the party failed to arrive within six weeks, Burke, Wills, Charles Gray, and John King set off for the Gulf of Carpenteria on 16 Dec. 1860, taking with them a horse, a half dozen camels, and three months' worth of food.
Unlike Lewis and Clark, they did not reach the ocean itself, but in February 1861, they did reach the marshy bogs where the tide brought in salt water. At that point they turned back toward Coopers Creek, but whereas there had been rain and plenty of forage for the animals on the way north and the temperature never got above 90 degrees F, on the return trip food was scarce for both animals and men, and the temperature soared to 140 degrees F, melting the lead in Wills' pencil as he tried to write in his journal.
Gray died April 17, just four days before they reached Coopers Creek, and the weakened men required a full day to bury him.
The tragic irony of the expedition was that the men at the Coopers Creek camp, after waiting a full month longer than they had been told to, had reluctantly left the very morning of April 21, the very day that Burke, Wills, and King arrived back.
There they found a tree marked "DIG," where they unearthed a box with a message, then reburied it without indicating that they had dug it up, as any experienced bushman would have done. Had they done so, they might have been saved by a search party that came out a few weeks later.
Too weak to follow, Burke, Wills, and King attempted to go to a sheep station at the appropriately named Mount Hopeless, but were forced by hunger and the death of the remaining camels to return to Coopers Creek.
There, in June, Wills died of starvation, followed by Burke on the first of July. King, aided by the Aborigines that Burke distrusted and had deliberately driven away, survived and was rescued on 15 Sept. 1861.
Although both expeditions were successful in reaching their geographic goals, neither found a hoped-for secondary goal. Australians thought the middle of the country might contain a great freshwater lake surrounded by fertile lands. Instead they found a great desert. Lewis and Clark also thought there might be a huge lake in the center from which great rivers flowed in every direction to the sea — symmetrical geography, the theory was called. Instead they proved there was no fabled Northwest Passage.
Lewis' later life was short and unhappy. Appointed governor of Louisiana Territory, he was not a skilled politician. On his way to Washington in 1809, to try to undo the damage his political enemies had inflicted, he died at an inn in Tennessee of two gunshot wounds. Most historians believe it was suicide, although popular belief holds his death a murder. He never married and left no descendants. He was only 35 years old.
Clark, on the other hand, appointed Indian superintendent for the new territory, lived to age 69, married twice, was widowed once, and had five children. He is credited with persuading the Sioux and other potential British allies to support the United States in the War of 1812.
The Lewis and Clark expedition succeeded because it was better planned, more realistically equipped, sought the support of native peoples along the way, and was better led.
The B&W expedition, on the other hand, was put together much more quickly and actively rejected native help instead of seeking it.
Both pairs of explorers, however, have become mythic, national heroes. At first blush it might seem strange that the leaders of a failed expedition should receive such acclaim downunder, but then why should two of the most celebrated battles in American history — the Alamo and Custer's Last Stand — have been defeats?
Perhaps the similarity is that, whatever the details or the success of such ventures, we feel a need to celebrate the bravery of those who try, who give, to quote one of President Jefferson's successors, the "last full measure of devotion" in the face of indomitable odds.
