Constable: Acknowledge good and bad with Lewis & Clark holiday

Government buildings and some schools were closed Monday in honor of our controversial holiday known as Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples Day, even as a few folks pushed for a Leif Erikson Day. But I spend the day wondering why we haven't honored actual American explorers Lewis and Clark. The Lewis and Clark expedition, with all its accomplishments and flaws, is about as American as it gets, according to multiple sources, including history.com, biography.com and government agencies such as the Department of the Interior, the National Park Service and the Library of Congress.

Like many Americans, Meriwether Lewis had a complicated upbringing. Born in Virginia in 1774 as one of three children, Lewis's life changed after his father died of pneumonia and his mother married a man with two children, who moved their blended family to Georgia. In his early teens, Lewis returned to Virginia at the request of his dead father's brother to receive a formal education from private tutors. He graduated in 1793 from what is now Washington and Lee University and joined the Virginia state militia.

Lewis was part of the military force that suppressed the Whiskey Rebellion, a group of farmers and distillers who didn't want to pay taxes on whiskey, and later became a captain in the U.S. Army, where he met Lt. William Clark, who has a similar back story. Clark was born in Virginia in 1770 but moved with his family to Kentucky at age 15. He joined the state militia, and then the U.S. Army.

When Thomas Jefferson was elected president, he tabbed Lewis to be his personal secretary. Clark returned home to manage his family's estate.

In 1803, Jefferson orchestrated the Louisiana Purchase, buying a 530 million-acre swath of land stretching northwest from New Orleans to North Dakota. He hired Lewis to explore it, and Lewis hired his old Army buddy Clark to be his co-commander.

The Lewis and Clark expedition did great things, while being involved in some awful business, which fits nicely into U.S. history. Clark brought along York, a person he owned through the slavery trade legal at that time. Also helping the white men succeed was Sacagawea, a member of the Lemhi Shoshone nation who had been kidnapped as a child and sold to her French husband, who impregnated the girl by age 16.

Today, York has statues in Kentucky and Oregon. Sacagawea has more statues than any other American woman, according to the National Park Service. As members of the expedition, they explored the territory from Wood River, Illinois, to the Oregon coast where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean. The 180-foot-tall Lewis and Clark Confluence Tower in Hartford, Illinois, gives a view of where the Missouri River converges with the Mississippi River.

The expedition merges the American can-do attitude and spirit of working together with the American flaw of taking advantage of minorities. When meeting members of 50 Indian tribes, Lewis and Clark handed out Jefferson Peace Coins, featuring Jefferson on one side, and hands shaking beneath a peace pipe and tomahawk with the words "Friendship" and "Peace" on the other. Then they told the Indians they were the "children" of their new father, who now owned the land where they had lived for generations. A few of those interactions did not go well. Lewis left one peace medal around the neck of a Piegan Indian who was killed beside the Two Medicine River in northwest Montana on July 17, 1806, to let tribesmen know who was responsible.

The Lewis and Clark expedition combined slavery, misogyny, violence, good intentions and a bold spirit of adventure to expand our horizons. Sounds like an American holiday to me.