I read this book for the first time about ten years ago. On re-reading it, I experienced the same general mood I remembered from the first time around: sadness.
When the men in the Corps of Discovery returned to St. Louis after their two-and-a-half year journey to the Pacific Northwest, they were amply rewarded, with money and land, by a gushing Congress. All of them but one, that is. York, William Clark's slave, had traveled with all the rest of the men. He's mentioned occasionally in the journals written by some of the expedition's members (not the least of whom are Lewis and Clark). He pulled his weight in the physical toil of the journey; he appears to have been a good hunter; his blackness, a fascinating novelty to a few of the Indian tribes the Corps encountered, seems to have been a cultural ice-breaker on at least one occasion; and he was accepted as a bona fide member by the other Corpsmen, given that there are no negative comments made of him by any of the journal writers and that he was given a vote equal to any other Corps member's on two separate occasions. Yet, on the Corps' return to civilization, York became invisible again: a man with no last name, a slave, a piece of property. Chattel.
So it is with the invisibles of history, the people who our cultural blindspots just won't allow us to see. For too many years, blacks and Indians have been the invisibles in US history. It's as if they never existed. They vanish without leaving a ripple on the pond, and this is incredibly sad.
That's why In Search of York is such an important book, because in it Robert Betts tried to overcome cultural blindness by painstakingly searching out and documenting as much information about York as he could. Needless to say, what emerges is more of a silhouette than a portrait. There simply isn't a lot of available information about York. But in the process, Betts (as well as James Holmberg, who ends the book with an historical essay on York) accomplishes two noteworthy things.
First, his research underscores the strangely schizophrenic relations between masters and slaves in antebellum America. York became Clark's servant when both were still boys. They grew up together, felt affection for one another, and served together on an adventure that could've only made them closer. But afterwards, back in proper society, Clark immediately reverted to the role of master, complained mightily that York had become surly and uppity, even daring to ask for his freedom, and didn't hesitate at all to hire York out to hard taskmasters as a form of punishment. Clark eventually did free York, but only a decade after the expedition. The strangeness of the relationship between York and Clark is not unrepresentative of the love/hate attitude many masters felt for their slaves. But it's still startling.
The second noteworthy feature of this book is Betts' exploration of how York (and, by implication, many other black Americans) was made invisible by caricature. In the novels and "history" texts about the Lewis and Clark expedition published during the first half of the 20th century, York is usually depicted in ways that conform to the racist stereotypes of the day. He comes across as thick-witted but jolly--your typical happy negro servant. He's portrayed as a randy stud who sired half-breed children with every Indian tribe the Corps encountered. Understandable but equally false are the latter revisionist attempts to transform York into a hero who was one of the expedition's most valuable members. There's absolutely no evidence for any of these portraits of York, negative or positive, and the real York drowns in them.
Robert Betts and James Holmberg have done more in this sad but enlightening book than shed some light on a specific historical invisible. They've also brought the cultural blindspots that creates invisibles to our attention, and in doing so have hopefully helped all of us to open our eyes just a bit wider.
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