Of the many monsters thought to exist in the western wilderness, the bear is the one who plays out most vividly in The Journals of Lewis and Clark. While no great mammoth is found lurking on the plains, the bear is a very real symbol of the wildness of the West. The bear attains an aura of the unknown, as it lurks early in the narrative, seen only in glimpses, tracks, and native tales. Its unseen presence only adds to its monster-like qualities, shaping the perceptions of Lewis and Clark long before they encounter the bear themselves.

“[W]e saw also many tracks of the white bear of enormous size along the river shore and about the carcases of the Buffaloe, on which I presume they feed,” writes Lewis, revealing both the gigantism and the carnivorousness of the bear through mere traces. He goes on to say that they have not yet actually seen the animal “tho’ their tracks are so abundant and recent.” The white bear is preceding them, and they are following in its gigantic paw prints, almost as if the bear itself is leading them into deeper and deeper wilderness.

Because of their elusiveness, Lewis at first assumes they must not be the aggressive animals the Indians claim. While Indians report the death of men even in a hunting party of ten, Lewis is reluctant to allow for such a “formidable account of [its] strength and ferocity.” Lewis writes as if the habits of Indians in hunting the bear are curious and quite ridiculous. Instead, he draws his own conclusions: “[T]ho’ we continue to see many tracks of the bear we have seen but very few of them, and those are at a great distance generally runing from us; I the[re]fore presume that they are extreemly wary and shy.” Lewis bases his assumptions about bear behavior on his own experience giving greater weight to these observations than to the tales of Indians, as he continues “the Indian account of them dose not corrispond with our experience so far.”
Despite native reports of fatal bear hunting trips, Lewis and his men are “anxious to meet with some of these bear.” Lewis does not think their accounts very accurate or, more specifically, he sees the experience he will have with bears as necessarily different than that of the Indians. Lewis sees the Indians’ fear of the bear as a product of their primitivism; they lack the skill and technology to successfully kill such a wild beast. “[T]he savages attack this anamal with their bows and arrows and the indifferent guns with which the traders furnish them,” he writes, “with these they shoot with such uncertainty and at so short a distance, that (unless shot thro’ head or heart wound not mortal) they frequently miss their aim & fall a sacrefice to the bear.”

After killing his first grizzly bear, Lewis feels confident that he and his men have a technological advantage over wildlife: “the Indians may well fear this anamal equiped as they generally are with their bows and arrows or indifferent fuzees, but in the hands of skillful riflemen they are by no means as formidable or dangerous as they have been represented.” Although Lewis does make note of the bear’s weight and youth in his preceding scientific description of the bear, the fact that he killed a 300 pound specimen of a species that can weigh up to 1000 pounds does not register as a factor in his success and in the fundamental differences of his experience and those of the Indians. What’s more, after this one kill, Lewis assumes the voice of authority: “it is a much more furious and formidable anamal [than the black bear] and will frequently pursue the hunter when wounded. it is astonishing to see the wounds they will bear before they can be put to death.” This one experience gives Lewis confidence to write generally about the habits and behavior of all grizzlies. Or perhaps, his “frequently” is his way of meshing his own singular experience with the Indian accounts he had previously discounted.

In Lewis’ somewhat miraculous escape from a charging grizzly later in the narrative, he is in danger because his single shot gun is empty. In this encounter Lewis is left without his sacred technology, but he does not interpret this as a failure of the technology itself, or its inadequacy in the predatory wilderness. Instead of doubting his gun, he blames the encounter on his own inability to reload it, expressing dominance only after having done so. “[M]y gun reloaded I felt confidence once more in my strength,” writes Lewis as though he knows he is helpless without it.

In attempting to understand bear behavior after the above account, Lewis is dumbfounded, writing that the bear’s retreat remains “misterious and unaccountable.” It is not until he describes the very last bear encounter, when McNeal is tree-ed by a grizzly, that Lewis reveals faith in something other than weaponry. In stark contrast to his earlier perceptions of these animals, on the return trip, Lewis writes: “these bear are a most tremendous animal; it seems that the hand of providence has been most wonderfully in our favor with rispect to them, or some of us would long since have fallen a sacrifice to their farosity.” His language here mimics that of the Indians whose accounts he had previously regarded as superstitious and primitive.

In addition to the Indian and natural worlds discovered by the Corps, Lewis discovers some things about survival in the West. First, he finds that there are elements of this new wilderness that American technology can not yet conquer. Second, he learns that by and large it is nature, not native peoples that pose the greatest threat to life. Lewis brings East with him a third, more intriguing discovery concerning the usefulness of native knowledge in knowing the western lands. In short, what the Indians told him at the start, was true. Bears are indeed formidable creatures. The exchange of knowledge at the start of the journey was not one of a superstitious mythology as he assumed, but of a very real experience with the natural world. Lewis’ supposed scientific observations reveal much the same information as the tales of natives, lending credibility to their accounts. Though this may not have been articulated by Lewis, even after he seems to realize its veracity, it suggests that the West is not a place of science alone, but a realm where myth becomes reality—a land where savages know more than white men and monsters do exist.