The chin rest, which prevents the player’s chin from dampening the resonance of the violin’s body, was invented in the 1820s. We don’t know whether the artist, George Heriot, knew anything about music or musical instruments, nor how accurately he recorded visual details, but his depiction of these two violinists corresponds with ample written evidence about performances of dance music around the turn of the nineteenth century. Back in June 1805 Clark had remarked that Cruzatte played the instrument “extreemly well.” Unfortunately, nothing else the captain could have said would tell us as much about the sound of his playing as the picture above. “He is an attentive industerous man,” Clark continued, “and one whome we both have placed the greatest Confidence in dureing the whole rout.”Īll of the Corps were duly appreciative of Cruzatte’s talent as a fiddle player, with which he embellished their rare hours of leisure as well as their diplomatic relations with many Indian tribes-until very late in the trip (see The Last Dance.). “This Crusat is near Sighted and has the use of but one eye,” Clark explained on 12 August 1806-a few days after the unfortunate Creole had accidentally shot Captain Lewis in the buttocks. Louis, and was also fluent in sign-language, the lingua franca of the Western frontier. The son of a French father and an Omaha Indian mother, he had worked on the Lower Missouri River as a trader for the house of Chouteau in St. Charles, Missouri, on as a boatman, or pilot. Very little is known of Pierre Cruzatte, who enlisted at St. To call a violinist a fiddler was considered uncomplimentary, although some “gentlemen amateurs,” such as Jefferson, were at least somewhat acquainted with the popular idioms. Violinists like Thomas Jefferson played, by note, the latest published works by famous composers, as well as those of the old masters. George Gibson, who specialized as a hunter and sign-language interpreter, played the fiddle too, on at least one occasion-at the party and dance the Wallulas held for the Corps on 19 October 1805.įiddlers like Pierre Cruzatte played popular dance tunes-most of them of unknown origin-by ear, and probably had comparatively limited repertoires. The principal catalyst for their musical diversions was undoubtedly Private Pierre Cruzatte, whose official duty was as a boatman, but who also played the fiddle. These, along with the numerous percussion instruments that might have been improvised from the company’s kit of blacksmith tools, combined to make a spirited accompaniment to the men’s singing and dancing.
The company’s baggage contained a supply of jews harps, ostensibly as gifts to young Indian men.
They took with them, reported Sergeant John Ordway, “a fiddle & a Tambereen & a Sounden horn.
So, at about nine in the morning on 1 January 1805, fifteen of them set off for the nearby Mandan village. The idea of celebrating a new round of seasons in the dead of winter must have excited great wonder among the Indians in the vicinity of Fort Mandan, but some of the men of the Corps of Discovery were delighted with the opportunity to share their Southern-style New Year’s festivities. The journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition contain references to some thirty occasions when the men turned to song and dance for their own recreation, or to entertain and impress the Indian people they met.
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