My Genealogy Hound

GEN. WILLIAM CLARKE, youngest brother of George Rogers Clarke, and of Mrs. Maj. Croghan, was an ensign in the army at the early age of eighteen years. Promoted to be a captain, he was in 1804 selected by President Jefferson, in conjunction with Capt. Meriwether Lewis, to explore the great west from the Mississippi to the mouth of Columbia river. The particulars of this famous expedition are familiar to every intelligent reader in the world. The vast continent which for ages had slept in the darkness of obscurity was, like a book, unsealed and opened to light and progress by Lewis and Clarke and their little band of hunters and trappers. The country they explored is thus described by the great American poet:

“Far in the West there lies a desert land,
Where the mountains lift through perpetual snows
Their lofty and luminous summits.

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Westward the Oregon flows, and the Walleway and the Oayhee,
Eastward with devious course, among the
Wind River Mountains,
Through the Sweet Water Valley,
precipitate leaps the Nebraska.

* * * * * * * *

Spreading between these streams are the wondrous beautiful prairies;
Over them wander the wolves and herds of riderless horses,
Fires that blast and blight, and winds that are weary with travel;
Over them wander the scattered tribes of Ishmael’s children,
Staining the desert with blood; above their terrible war-trails
Circles and sails aloft, on pinions majestic, the vulture,
Like the implacable soul of a chieftain slaughtered in battle.”

William Clarke was appointed governor of Missouri in 1812. He was promoted to be a brigadier-general in 1817. In 1822 he was appointed Indian agent by President Monroe. He died in 1838, after having served his country over fifty years, leaving a name that is an honor to the American army.