“No More Known of Him”

In 1893, the historian Elliott Coues published a roster of the men of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Under the heading for the privates, one entry read: “William Bratton, Bratten, Brattin. No more known of him.”^1,8

The three spellings came from the journals themselves. The captains wrote his name whichever way it came out that day. In the 1904 edition of the original journals, his name appears as “Bratton,” “Bratten” and “Brattin,” sometimes in the same week.^2,3,5

The “no more known” part was corrected in 1904. A daughter of Bratton’s wrote to the Northern Pacific Railway’s passenger department after it published a booklet on the expedition. That started a correspondence with the writer Olin D. Wheeler, who put what the family knew into his book The Trail of Lewis and Clark.⁸

The trail ends in Waynetown. A state historical marker at the Old Pioneer Cemetery, on the east edge of town, says Bratton “is buried in this cemetery.”¹

One of the Kentucky men

According to the family’s account given to Wheeler, Bratton was born in 1778 in Augusta County, Virginia, “of Irish parents.” He “was bound out at an early age to a gunsmith, with whom he remained until he attained his majority.”⁸

The expedition’s final pay records list him as “William Bratton private,” with his service beginning “20th of October 1803.”⁷ The state marker says he joined the Corps of Discovery near Clarksville, Indiana, in 1803 with the rank of private.¹ The Indiana Historical Bureau’s notes for that marker quote a 1970 roster that counts him among the “Nine young men from Kentucky.”¹

He was put in Sgt. John Ordway’s squad. An 1804 detachment order lists “Serg’ John Ordway Privates William Bratton John Colter Moses B. Reed” and others in the same mess.²

The vote

In August 1804, Sgt. Charles Floyd died, the only member of the expedition who did not survive it.⁸ The captains let the men choose his replacement. William Clark’s entry for Aug. 22, 1804, records that he “ordered a Vote for a Serjeant to chuse one of three which may be the highest number.” Patrick Gass won. “P. Gass had 19 votes,” Clark wrote, and the next two names on his tally were Bratton and George Gibson.²

Wheeler, writing a century later, made the point plainly: Bratton “was one of the three men voted for as his successor by the members of the expedition, Gass being the successful candidate.”⁸

The captains trusted him with hard jobs early. On Aug. 7, 1804, Clark “dispatched George Drewyer, R. Fields, W™ Bratten & WT Labieche back after the Deserter reed.” The order was blunt: “if he did not give up Peaceibly to put him to Death.”² Joseph Whitehouse’s journal names the same four men, including “Bratton,” as “Sent after M’. Read that Deserted.”⁷

On Aug. 25, 1804, Bratton was among the men Clark picked to walk out to see a mound near the mouth of the White Stone River that, Clark wrote, the nations of the region viewed “with Such turror.”² In October he sat on the court-martial of John Newman, whose detail list includes “Wm Bratten.”²

The bear

On May 11, 1805, on the upper Missouri, Bratton met a bear. Meriwether Lewis wrote it down in that day’s journal entry.³

Bratton had a sore hand. Lewis had already noted on May 10 that “Boils and imposthumes” were “very common with the party” and that “Bratton is now unable to work with one on his hand.”³ So Lewis had let him walk on shore.³

“About 5. P.M. my attention was struck by one of the Party runing at a distance towards us and making signs and hollowing as if in distress,” Lewis wrote. He ordered the boats to shore and waited. “I now found that it was Bratton the man with the soar hand whom I had permitted to walk on shore, he arrived so much out of breath that it was several minutes before he could tell what had happened.”³

Bratton told him that in the woods, a mile and a half below, “he had shot a brown bear which immediately turned on him and pursued him a considerable distance but he had wounded it so badly that it could not overtake him.”³

Lewis took seven men and followed the blood trail about a mile “through very thick brush of ros- bushes and the large leafed willow.” They found the bear hidden in the brush and shot it “through the skull with two balls.”³

When they dressed it, they found that Bratton “had shot him through the center of the lungs.” The bear had still chased him “near half a mile,” gone back more than twice that far, and dug itself a bed in the earth, and “was perfectly alive when we found him.”³

Lewis drew a conclusion from it that has been quoted ever since. “These bear being so hard to die reather intimedates us all,” he wrote. “I must confess that I do not like the gentlemen and had reather fight two Indians than one bear.”³

The captains’ later tables of the Missouri’s tributaries list a “Brown Bear defeated Creek” and, just above it, “Brattens River.”⁹

Tar, axes and a finger

That summer at the Great Falls, Lewis “directed Bratton to assist in making the tar” for a boat the party was putting together.³ On another day Lewis listed “Shields and Bratton seting their tar-kiln” while the rest of the men put the boat together.³

Bratton’s hand gave out again. Lewis wrote that Clark sent him to fetch axes because “this man has been unable to work for several days in consequence of a whitlow on one of his fingers ; a complaint which has been very common among the men.”³ Clark’s own entry for July 11, 1805, says he sent “W Bratton (who cannot work he haveing a turner riseing on his finger)” to bring two axes from the canoes.³

To the ocean

In November 1805, near the mouth of the Columbia, Clark wrote that “3 men Gibson Bratten & Willard attempted to go arou[n]d the point below in our Indian Canoe.” The waves drove them back, “tossing them about at will.”⁴

A few days later Clark offered every man who “wished to see more of the Ocean” a chance to go with him. Bratton’s name is on the list of volunteers. Everyone else, Clark wrote, was “well contented with what part of the Ocean & its curiosities which could be seen from the vicinity of our Camp.”⁴ On Nov. 18, 1805, Clark set out “to the Ocian by land” with a party whose roll includes “W. Brattin.”⁴

The salt makers

The expedition’s job description for Bratton is written on his state marker: “hunter, blacksmith, saltmaker.”¹ The last of those started on Dec. 28, 1805, at Fort Clatsop. Clark directed “Jos. Fields, Bratton, Gibson to proceed to the Ocean at some conveneint place form a Camp and Commence makeing Salt with 5 of the largest Kittles.”⁴

They did it on the beach, boiling sea water. On Jan. 5, 1806, Lewis reported that “J. Fields, Bratton and Gibson (the Salt Makers)” had “erected a comfortable camp,” killed an elk and several deer, and “found that they could obtain from 3 quarts to a gallon a day.” They sent a gallon to the fort. “We found it excellent, fine, strong, & white,” Lewis wrote. It was “a great treat to myself and most of the party, having not had any since the 20th Ult.”⁴

On Jan. 7, Clark reached the salt camp on his way to see a beached whale, hired a young Clatsop man as a guide, “left Serg! gass and one man of my party Werner to make Salt & permited Bratten to accompany me.”⁴

Four months sick

Then Bratton got sick, and the journals track it almost every day.⁵

On Feb. 10, 1806, Alexander Willard came in from the salt works and reported “that Bratton was very unwell.”⁵ On Feb. 15, Lewis wrote that Bratton had come back to the fort and “appears much reduced with his late indisposition.”⁵ The next day Lewis wrote that he “complains of a pain in the lower part of the back when he moves.”⁵

The captains tried what they had. They gave him “barks.” They gave him “6 of Scotts pills which did not work him.”⁵ On March 7, Lewis wrote, “Bratton is much wo[r]se today, he complains of a violent pain in the small of his back and is unable in consequence to set up.” They gave him one of their flannel shirts, wrapped his back in flannel and rubbed it with a liniment Lewis made of “sperits of wine, camphor, castile soap and a little laudinum.”⁵

It helped for a day. It did not last. Lewis called it “something of the rheumatism.”⁵ By March 21, with the party about to start home, he wrote: “Bratton is now so much reduced that I am somewhat uneasy with rispect to his recovery ; the pain of which he complains most seems to be seated in the small of his back and remains obstinate.”⁵

Bratton started home too weak to work. On April 10, 1806, Clark took the men to get the canoes above a rapid. Lewis wrote that Clark took “all the party except Bratton who is yet so weak he is unable to work.”⁵ On April 20, Lewis loaded seven horses with baggage, and “the eighth Bratton was compelled to ride as he was yet unable to walk.”⁵

The sweat hole

By late May the expedition was camped among the Chopunnish on the upper Kooskooske River, waiting for the snow in the mountains to melt. Bratton had regained his weight, but not his legs.⁶

On May 24, 1806, Lewis wrote that Bratton “eats heartily digests his food well, and has recovered his flesh almost perfectly yet is so weak in the loins that he is scarcely able to walk, nor can he set upwrigbt but with the greatest pain.” The captains had “tried every remidy which our engenuity could devise,” Lewis wrote, “without effect.”⁶

John Shields, another Kentuckian, “observed that he had seen men in a similar situation restored by violent sweats.” Lewis recorded what came next: “Bratton requested that he might be sweated in the manner proposed by Sheilds to which we consented.”^6,8

Shields dug a round hole three feet across and four feet deep and built a big fire in it. When the fire was pulled out, a seat went in, with a board for Bratton’s feet. Willow hoops were bent over the hole and covered with blankets. Bratton sat inside, naked, sprinkling water on the hot sides of the hole to make “as much steam or vapor as he could possibly bear.”⁶

After about 20 minutes they pulled him out and “suddonly plunged” him “in cold water twise,” then put him back in the hole for three quarters of an hour more. The whole time he drank “a strong tea of horse mint.”⁶

“This experiment was made yesterday,” Lewis wrote. “Bratton feels himself much better and is walking about today and says he is nearly free from pain.”⁶ Clark’s entry the same day says “bratten is walking about to day and is much better than he has been.”⁶

On June 8, 1806, Lewis closed the case. “Bratton has so far recovered that we cannot well consider him an invalid any longer,” he wrote. “He has had a tedious illness which he boar with much fortitude and firmness.”⁶

Wheeler, reading the same journals in 1904, counted it up. “His illness extended over a period of about four months, the first mention of it being February 10, 1806, and the last, June 5, 1806, but no permanent ill effects seem to have resulted.”⁸ Bratton, Wheeler wrote, “stands out prominently as the only man who was seriously ill for a long time.” He added that this “experience he seems not to have related to his family.”⁸

Down the Yellowstone

On the way home the captains split up. Bratton went with Clark down the Yellowstone River. At the Three Forks of the Missouri, Clark listed his party, and “William Bratton” is on it.⁶ On July 18, 1806, Clark named a stream for him. His course notes record “the enterance of a large Creek on the Star? Side which I call Brattens Ck.”⁶

At the end of the Yellowstone leg, Clark wrote the names of the men in the two small canoes he had lashed together for 636 miles of the river. “William Bratten” is the third name.⁶

“The manly firmness”

The expedition reached St. Louis in September 1806. On Oct. 10, Lewis signed Bratton’s discharge. Wheeler printed a photograph of it in 1904. Reuben Gold Thwaites copied its text into the appendix of the original journals the next year.^7,8

It discharged “William Bratton, private in a corps distined for the discovery of the interior of the continent of North America.” Then Lewis added something that was not required.⁷

“As a tribute justly due the merits of the said Will? Bratton,” Lewis wrote, “I with cheerfullness declare that the ample support which he gave me under every difficulty, the manly firmness which he evinced on every necessary occation, and the fortitude with which he boar the fatugues and painfull sufferings incident to that long Voyage, entitles him to my highest confidence and sincere thanks.”⁷ It “eminently recommends him,” Lewis went on, “to the consideration and rispect of his fellow Citizens.”⁷

A receipt in the same records lists “William Bratton” among the men whose land warrants Lewis promised to deliver, granted under an act of Congress “making compensation for Messieurs Lewis & Clarke and their companions.”⁷

After the expedition

What the family told Wheeler fills in the next 35 years. “After his return from the Lewis and Clark exploration he lived for a time in Kentucky, and he was near New Madrid, Mo., at the time of the great earthquake in 1811,” Wheeler wrote.⁸

The family said he served in the War of 1812 “under Gen. Wm. Henry Harrison,” that he “was in the battle of Tippecanoe, saw Tecumseh after he was slain,” and that he “was one of those surrendered by General Winchester at Frenchtown,” in Michigan, in 1813.⁸ Hoosier First has not found a military record to confirm those details, and reports them as the family’s account.

He worked as a miller, the family said, then farmed. He married in 1819 and lived near Bowling Green, Kentucky, then near Terre Haute, and then “the neighborhood of Waynetown, Ind.” He “was the father of eight sons and two daughters,” Wheeler wrote.⁸

The state marker adds that he settled on a farm in Wayne Township in 1822 and “held various county and township offices, including Justice of the Peace.” The Indiana Historical Bureau’s notes cite the county’s original land entry book and the Montgomery County commissioners’ records for 1824.¹

He died in 1841.^1,8

No portrait

“No portrait of Bratton is extant,” Wheeler wrote in 1904.⁸ Hoosier First did not find one either, so this story runs without a picture of him.

What he left in place of a face is the stone. Wheeler wrote that “his connection with Lewis and Clark’s expedition is recounted on his monument.” Wheeler also noted a detail of the carving: “The initial ‘E.’ there shown in his name was added by him in his later life.”⁸ Thwaites, editing the journals, gave the same pointer in a footnote: “a monument over his grave at Waynetown, Ind., records his share” in the expedition.²

Wheeler ended his chapter on Bratton by answering Coues. “It will at once be admitted that Bratton gave a full quota of service to his country,” he wrote, “and future historians will not find it necessary now to place after Bratton’s name the words, ‘No more known of him.’”⁸

In 2002, the Indiana Historical Bureau and a group of local sponsors put up a state marker at the cemetery.¹ Its first line says what Wheeler’s letters established: “Bratton (1778-1841) is buried in this cemetery.”¹

How he died

William Bratton died in 1841, and was buried at Waynetown in Montgomery County.^1,8 Neither the Historical Bureau nor Olin D. Wheeler, who corresponded with his family for his 1904 history, gives a month, a day or a cause.^1,8 Hoosier First found no other record of how he died. The records do not say.