"Bear Medison Island"

In 1804, Bear Medicine Island stood in the Missouri River where the foot of Weston’s Main Street is today, and Clark recorded that the Indians called it Wau-car-ba War-con-da, or “Bear Medison.” On July 2, Lewis and Clark’s party camped above the island on the starboard, east side of the river after the keelboat’s mast had been broken by an overhanging tree on June 30 and replaced with a new cottonwood mast made the next day. During a four-hour stop at noon on July 2, the expedition put the mast in place, while Clark wrote that it had turned a beautiful red color and Sergeant Ordway noted the delay to raise a temporary mast because the wind was fair. Clark also recorded that the day was exceedingly hot, with wind from the southeast in the forepart of the day. Some years before the expedition passed through, an Indian village and a French trading post had stood across the river from the future site of Weston, and Clark wrote that he had heard from Mr. Mackey that the first village of the Kansa had been a little above the island, though no trace of it remained. The party appears to have been alert for Indians in the vicinity, and Clark’s field notes recalled that during the night a sentinel challenged either a man or a beast that ran off, leaving all prepared for action. Even so, this was the season when the Kansa were on the Plains hunting bison, and the expedition’s hunting party did not meet an Indian until July 28, north of present-day Omaha, Nebraska. On the return trip, in a September 14, 1806, journal entry, Clark explained that this stretch of the Missouri was a place the Kanzas frequented at that season to rob pirogues traveling upriver to nations farther above, and that because they were known to examine the boats and take what they wanted, the expedition expected a confrontation and was determined not to permit even the smallest insult.

Weston, Missouri · United States