Pierre Cruzatte, a member of
the permanent party of the Lewis
and Clark expedition, was an expert
riverman recruited for his navigational
skills and his command of the French
and Omaha languages.
He also played the fiddle, and
his music had a direct impact on
the success of the expedition:
it served as a critical survival
tool, both as a form of entertainment
and recreation (in the truest sense
of re-creation) for the members
of the expedition; and as a way
of establishing trust and good
will with the Indian nations the
expedition encountered along the
trail. Besides what appears in
the journals of the expedition,
we know very little about Cruzatte.
Here is a summation of the information
contained in the journals:
Cruzatte, the son of a
French father and Omaha Indian
mother, was the expedition's
main boatman as well as its most
prominent musician. In the journals
of the expedition, Cruzatte's
last name appears spelled at
least twelve different ways,
and his first name appears both
as Pierre and Peter. The men
of the expedition sometimes referred
to him as "the
old Frenchman," so he may
have been older than most of the
party, though we cannot say for
certain because we don't know
when he was born, nor do we know
with certainty when he died--Clark
lists him as killed by 1825-28.
The men also called him "St.
Peter." Again, we do not
know why; but it was tradition
among the Voyageurs, the French
Canadian boatman, to bestow
a nickname describing the opposite
of a characteristic of a person.
Some sources describe Cruzatte
as being small and wiry (see
Cruzatte's entry in THE MEN OF
THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION
below), but no primary source
supports this assertion. It may
have been inferred from descriptions
of ideal boatmen. For example,
Thomas L. McKenney (in Grace
Lee Nute's THE VOYAGER, p. 14),
declares that "if
[a Voyageur] shall stop growing
at about five feet four inches,
and be gifted with a good voice,
and lungs that never tire, he
is considered as having been
born under a most favourable
star."
Cruzatte joined the expedition
as a boatman, ostensibly in
St. Charles, Missouri: the journals
give his enlistment date as
May 16, 1804, the beginning of
the expedition's stay in St.
Charles. Since Cruzatte did not
spend that first winter training
at Camp Dubois, his experience
must have warranted his inclusion
in the journey without the requisite
training. Enlisting as a private,
he was the expedition's most
experienced waterman. Whenever
a difficult aquatic problem arose,
all the men, including the captains,
deffered to Cruzatte. " Cruzatte who
had been an old Missouri navigator," writes
Captain Lewis at the mouth of
the Marias, "and who from
his integrity knowledge and skill
as a waterman had acquired the
confidence of every individual
of the party declared it as his
opinion that the N. fork was the
true genuine Missouri and could
be no other." When the expedition
had to find a way through the
Columbia River Narrows, Lewis "dispatched
Peter Crusat (our principal
waterman) back to follow the
river and examine the practibility
of the Canoes passing."
Cruzatte also worked as an interpreter,
most notably among Omaha prisoners
of the Teton Sioux, who, in
September of 1804, told Cruzatte
of their battle with the Teton
Sioux, the result of which were
the 65 scalps "hung
on small Poles, which the Women
held in their hand, when they
danced..." (Joseph Whitehouse,
September 27, 1804). Cruzatte
returned with word from the prisoners
that the expedition was "to
be Stoped" by the Teton Sioux,
according to Clark's journal entry.
Cruzatte's information, and the
resulting vigilence of the corps,
may have saved the expedition.
Cruzatte apparently did not fare
as well with the Sioux language: "We
had no good interpreter," wrote
Sergeant Ordway on September 9,
1804, "but the old frenchman
could make them understand tollarable
well."
As an experienced boatman, Cruzatte
was also familiar with creating
caches. When the Captains decided
to bury some of their supplies
at the mouth of the Marias,
Lewis writes, "on enquiry I found
that Cruzatte was well acquainted
with this business and therefore
left the management of it intirely
to him...." Cruzatte also
knew mushrooms. "Cruzatte
brought me several large morells," writes
Lewis on June 19, 1806, "which
I roasted and eat without salt
pepper or grease in this way I
had for the first time the true
taist of the morell which is truly
an insippid taistless food…."
Cruzatte played the fiddle "extreemly
well" according to Lewis
on June 25, 1805. Cruzatte's
music served not only as recreation
for the members of the expedition
but also as a critical diplomatic
tool: he played--and the men
danced and sang--for many of
the Indian nations which the
expedition met along the way.
The journals of the expedition
describe him playing numerous
times, and he probably played
many more times than the journalists
recorded.
Despite Cruzatte's poor eyesight,
he appears quite frequently
as a hunter in the journals and
was involved in two notable hunting
incidents. The first occurred
on October 20, 1804, when he
became the first member of the
expedition to shoot a grizzly
bear. "[H]e
wounded him," writes Captain
Lewis, "but being alarmed
at the formidable appearance of
the bear he left his tomahalk
and gun...." Shortly thereafter,
Cruzatte "shot a buffaloe
cow broke her thy, the cow pursued
him he concealed himself in a
small raviene," again according
to Lewis. It was not a good day
for Monsieur Cruzatte. The other
incident occurred on August 11,
1806, Cruzatte mistook Captain
Lewis for an elk and shot him. "[T]he
ball had passed through the fleshey
part of his left thy," according
to Clark, "below the hip
bone and cut the cheek of the
right buttock for 3 inches in
length and the debth of the ball," luckily
missing bone and artery. Cruzatte
intially denied responsibility,
prompting Captain Lewis to think
the expedition under an Indian
attack. Forensic evidence, however,
pointed at the old Frenchman.
Cruzatte "is an attentive
industerous man," writes
Captain Clark on the day after
the accident, "and one whome
we both have placed the greatest
Confidence in dureing the whole
rout...," but he is "near
Sighted and has the use of but
one eye...."
Clark's are the last positive
words about Cruzatte in the journals.
He disappears from history after
the expedition. The river that
the expedition named after him,
Crusat River, in what is now Washington
State, we now call the Wind River.
