York: Crossing the Continent Without a Choice

Every member of the Corps of Discovery was documented. Their names appear in the journals, in the official reports, in the congressional debates over land grants and pay that followed the expedition's return. There were thirty-three people in the permanent party that crossed the continent.

York was one of them. He was also the only member who had not chosen to be.

York was an enslaved man owned by William Clark. He had grown up with Clark and had been his property since childhood. When Clark was selected to co-lead the expedition, York went with him. He had no legal standing to refuse. He had no vote in expedition decisions. He cooked, hunted, interpreted, lifted, and crossed rivers like every other man on the journey, and his contributions are recorded throughout the journals in Clark's own hand.

The nations the expedition encountered sometimes regarded York with profound interest. His physical size and the fact that his skin did not wash white in water made him, in some accounts, an object of ceremony and spiritual attention. One journal entry describes a Mandan leader who tried to rub the color from York's skin and was astonished when he could not.

When the expedition returned in eighteen oh six, Congress voted land grants and double pay for the permanent party. Every free man received both. York received neither. He was enslaved property; legally, Clark had already been compensated through the ownership itself.

Clark refused to free York for years after the return. What York eventually received, and when, is not established with certainty in the public record. Some accounts say Clark freed him around eighteen fifteen. Others say he died of cholera in the early eighteen twenties, still in servitude or newly freed and unable to sustain himself. The record does not resolve it. York's name is now on the Fort Clatsop visitor center.