Knife Handled by Lewis and Clark?

The knife is roughly hewn, bold dents and worn metal revealing old age and use. The handle is cracked and dark with time, the blade dull. But the appearance of this 200-year-old weapon belies its importance.

Hidden for years in the tiny archive room at Fort Clatsop National Memorial, the knife--a replica of which was recently on display--may have been forged by members of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery as a peace offering to Nez Perce tribes who helped save the explorers’ lives.

Erhard Gross, the local historian and craftsman who unearthed the artifact, claims it’s a symbol of once-peaceful relations between white people and the Idaho-area tribe.

Historians say Lewis and Clark owe much of their success to American Indian tribes they encountered on their three-year trip.

The Corps of Discovery knew little what to expect when they left St. Louis, Mo., in May 1804, charged with exploring and mapping the vast western United States.

Faced with rough winters, impenetrable mountain passes and starvation, they turned again and again to native tribes. In return for the help, the corps often gave away beads, weapons and other items.

At Fort Mandan in what’s now North Dakota, the Mandan tribe taught expedition members skills to survive a harsh northern winter.

An Indian woman, Sacagawea, acted as interpreter with her French husband and helped the Corps buy badly needed horses from her Shoshoni people.

And the Nez Perce Indians twice saved the expedition, said Don Striker, superintendent at Fort Clatsop.

In 1805, the crew crossed the rugged Bitteroot Mountains in what’s now Idaho and emerged cold, hungry and exhausted, according to Fort Clatsop documents. They encountered a Nez Perce tribe.

Warriors might have killed the white men and seized their arsenal, but instead a Nez Perce woman talked the village into taking pity on the explorers, according to historian Steven Ambrose.

The village agreed to trade food and other provisions with the Corps, and also promised to care for the group’s horses while the explorers wound toward the Pacific Ocean on the Clearwater, Snake and Columbia rivers. Nez Perce Indians also helped the explorers find their way back across the Bitteroots on their return trip.

The Corps gave at least two knives to the Nez Perce during the expedition, Gross said.

Presumably, the knives disappeared into tribal folklore.

Gross, a former college professor who lives in Astoria, started to research the appearance of the knives when he set out to create replicas to sell during the upcoming bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

In a book on historic knives and weapons, Gross found a crude sketch of what he was looking for.

The caption said the original knife was in the Fort Clatsop archives.

“I came to the conclusion at 4:15 and I was (at Fort Clatsop) at 4:30, asking permission to go into the archives,” he said. “I was so excited, I forgot the camera.”

The knife had been sitting unnoticed in the museum’s archive for years. It was purchased in 1961--for $20--from an Idaho museum. Records show the Sacajawea Museum in Spaulding, Idaho, had traced the knife’s ownership from the Nez Perce chief who had accepted it from Lewis and Clark.

The hand-forged knife had once been displayed in the memorial’s visitors’ center. “It was on display as a random artifact, not identified specifically,” Striker said.

Ken Karsmizki, an archeologist digging for evidence of the Corps’ winter fort at the memorial, had noticed the knife and asked permission to study it, he said. Officials removed the knife from display and placed it in the archives until it could be tested.

The testing was never done.

“We never have the people or the budget,” Striker said. “There it sat until (Gross) came in and said, ‘Do you know what you have?’ ”

There’s no physical proof that the knife did come from the Corps of Discovery, Striker said.

However, “it’s certainly within reason that they would have needed trade goods,” he said. “There’s a very, very solid record placing this knife in the hands of folks we know existed.”

Officials at the memorial conjectured that Lewis and Clark gave the knife to Chief Red Bear, who passed it to his son. The blade passed through the family until the 1930s, when the Idaho museum acquired it.

Exploring the knife’s history gives the memorial a chance to understand Indian roles in the exploration of the West, Striker said.

“It’s our goal to use this as leverage into a great world of untold stories,” he said.

Testing to determine the knife’s authenticity will continue, Striker said. “Whether we’re looking at this knife or looking for the archeological site (of the original Fort Clatsop) . . . we’re searching for the spirit of Lewis and Clark.”