Who was the slave on the Lewis and Clark Expedition?

Ed Hamilton’s York statue on Riverfront Plaza in Louisville. (Raymond Boyd/Getty Images) York had done his job superbly. Whether the enslaved, 30-something black man wanted to participate in Lewis and Clark’s expedition to the Pacific Ocean is impossible to know — almost certainly, no one ever asked him.

Who was the black man on the Clark Expedition?

There is no clear record of what happened to York. Some accounts have him dead before 1830, but there are also stories of a Black man, said to be York, living among Indians in the early 1830s. When Meriwether Lewis listed the expedition participants, he wrote that York was, “A black man by the name of York, servant to Capt. Clark.”

What did York get from the Lewis and Clark Expedition?

Historian Robert Betts says that the freedom York had during the Lewis and Clark expedition made resuming enslavement unbearable. After the expedition returned to the United States, every other member received money and land for their services.

Who was freed by Lewis and Clark in 1832?

Historians have noted that there are no documents establishing that York had ever been freed. Clark, however, in a conversation with the writer Washington Irving in 1832, did claim to have freed York. There is no clear record of what happened to York.

Ed Hamilton’s York statue on Riverfront Plaza in Louisville. (Raymond Boyd/Getty Images) York had done his job superbly. Whether the enslaved, 30-something black man wanted to participate in Lewis and Clark’s expedition to the Pacific Ocean is impossible to know — almost certainly, no one ever asked him.

Historian Robert Betts says that the freedom York had during the Lewis and Clark expedition made resuming enslavement unbearable. After the expedition returned to the United States, every other member received money and land for their services.

There is no clear record of what happened to York. Some accounts have him dead before 1830, but there are also stories of a Black man, said to be York, living among Indians in the early 1830s. When Meriwether Lewis listed the expedition participants, he wrote that York was, “A black man by the name of York, servant to Capt. Clark.”

Who was still enslaved at the end of the expedition?

The incident of the vote has often been cited by admirers of Lewis and Clark, as well as some historians, as proof of the enlightened attitudes on the expedition. Yet when the expedition ended, York was still enslaved. A tradition developed that Clark had freed York at the end of the expedition, but that is not accurate.