Robert B. Betts. In Search of York: the Slave Who Went to the Pacific with Lewis and Clark

African American Review, Spring, 2004 by Wilma King

Robert B. Betts. In Search of York: The Slave Who Went to the Pacific with Lewis and Clark. Rev. ed. with a new epilogue by James J. Holmberg. Boulder: UP of Colorado and The Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, 2000. 216 pp. $29.95.

At the outset, In Search of York promises to "rescue" York, an enslaved body servant belonging to William Clark from historical obscurity and mistreatment. The author, Robert B. Betts, asserts that York faithfully performed his share of the duties related to the 1804-1806 Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery across the uncharted North American landscape. That alone, rationalizes the author, was sufficient to have won recognition for him; however, York's black skin rendered him a "remarkable phenomenon" to Native Americans who had never seen a person of African descent and made it possible for the mission's safe passage through territory belonging to the potentially hostile Shoshonis.

In searching for the "real" York, the author laments the fact that stereotypical myths about the first known black to see the Pacific Ocean overshadow reality as recorded in the journals of William Clark and Meriwether Lewis. Unfortunately, attempts to debunk myths often direct more attention to subjects or reinforce notions that ought to be scrapped or handled with great aplomb. Betts deplores descriptions of York that are "warped by prejudice," yet he does not steer completely away from offensive remarks of his own when evaluating others. Note, for example, this passage: "[York] has been variously portrayed as a giant of superb physique and stamina; a buffoon who contributed nothing more than comic relief to the expedition; a man whose blackness so appealed to the Indian women that he left a trail of kinkey-haired children across the West." The author excuses the prejudicial treatment of York by his contemporaries, historians, and novelists as a result of "narrow thinking of earlier times rather than deliberate malice." Readers are likely to ask what influenced Betts to accept speculations that York was somewhat irresponsible or to label Native American women "squaws" and their people "primitive" or "savage."

Once past the offensive language, readers will find that the fifteen-chapter study, organized in five parts, contains a useful historiographical overview and links the black explorer to broader historical debates. It is also clear that Betts engaged in a prodigious amount of research to portray York as an historical figure who contributed to the success of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Finally, the book contains a multiplicity of wonderful illustrations and beautiful paintings that offer more details about the times in which York lived and worked.

Since the initial publication of In Search of York in 1985, sources not available to Betts have been discovered and are open to scholars at The Filson Club Historical Society in Louisville, Kentucky. James J. Holmberg utilizes these manuscripts, especially the letters written by William Clark to his brother, to craft a new epilogue and answer questions about the strained "master-servant" relationship between York and Clark long after the expedition ended. The correspondence does much to put unfounded speculations about York as a lazy businessman to rest. As a result, the black explorer, whom Clark freed after 1811, emerges as an individual less interested in a paternalistic association with Clark than in establishing himself as a family man and permanent head of his own household. Ironically, it was the Lewis and Clark expedition that gave York a serious opportunity to share and share alike in demands and responsibilities of men, white and black.

Wilma King

University of Missouri, Columbia