Event honors Lewis and Clark

BISMARCK, N.D. – An event to honor Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s push to the Pacific began here Friday with an embrace of the tribes that sheltered the explorers and protests from American Indians who say the expedition helped destroy their cultures.

The 10-day “Circle of Cultures” gathering is the first of two national “signature” events planned in North Dakota to mark Lewis and Clark’s history-making journey across the American West.

The Corps of Discovery spent the winter of 1804-05 with Mandan Indians in what is now North Dakota. That leg of their journey marked the expedition’s first foray into a largely unfamiliar landscape.

“Every trail they walked, every corner they turned was something new,” Gov. John Hoeven said during the opening ceremony at the University of Mary south of Bismarck.

But the explorers’ journey also heralded a wave of settlement that destroyed centuries of Indian culture, protesters said.

More than 30 activists accompanied by a drum circle and traditional singers stood in biting wind and light rain outside the opening ceremony on Friday.

The protesters, using a public address amplifier, called on a group of re-enactors to abandon their effort to retrace Lewis and Clark’s route to the Pacific Ocean.

“To us, it’s a slap in the face,” said Vic Camp, a college student from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

“We do not need Lewis and Clark to travel through here again and remind us of what happened,” he said.

Members of the Discovery Expedition of St. Charles, Mo., encountered the protesters on their trip through South Dakota last month. Camp said the protest group plans to follow the re-enactors “until they get out of our treaty territory.”

Richard Prestholdt of Bridgewater, N.J., said he and other re-enactors respect the protesters’ point of view. The group has worked with Indian tribes all along the trail, and flies tribal flags on their replica keelboat when they pass through Indian Country, he said.

“Obviously, this expedition was the beginning of the decline of the American Indian people,” Prestholdt said. “Hopefully, one thing we will get out of it is some new dialogue.”

Indian culture is a major focus of the North Dakota event, which features artists and performers, presentations by historians and a computer-generated re-creation of the On-A-Slant Village at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park.