York was an enslaved African American whose courage and skill helped the Lewis and Clark Expedition discover the vast lands of the Louisiana Territory and reach the Pacific Coast. He hunted, built shelters, navigated rivers, and won the admiration of Native American tribes. Yet while his fellow explorers were rewarded with pay and land, York received nothing. Despite his service and bravery, he was denied freedom and forced back into slavery.
York was born in Virginia in the early 1770’s. The child of Old York and Rosie, his siblings included Juba, Nancy, Daphney, and Scipio. The entire family had been born into slavery. As his parents had been forced to serve John Clark III, so had their son been forced to do the same to his son, William Clark. As a boy, York was Clark’s playmate, and as they grew older, he became Clark’s personal servant.
In 1785, the Clark family moved to Mulberry Hill, a Kentucky plantation near Louisville. William Clark inherited his father’s property and served in wars on the Western frontier, while York remained enslaved, working the fields. During his time in Kentucky, York met and fell in love with an enslaved woman, a relationship that would shape his personal life even as his master’s career led to a dramatic change in his own life.
In the early 1800s, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned an expedition to explore the newly acquired lands from the Louisiana Purchase. The Corps of Discovery, led by Meriwether Lewis with William Clark as co-captain, was tasked with mapping the West and documenting its people, plants, and animals. Clark made sure that York accompanied him.
York didn’t have a choice. As an enslaved man, he was bound to obey Clark’s orders and had no say in whether he would join the dangerous expedition. Before the expedition set out in May 1804, York married the woman he loved in Louisville, knowing the journey could separate them forever.
As a slave and the only black man on the expedition, York faced a tough challenge on the journey. He was responsible not only for Clark’s personal tasks but also for the back-breaking labour expected of every slave. Just one month in, he suffered an injury when a companion jokingly threw sand in his eye, nearly blinding him. Though he was not treated as a full human being, York continued to give his all, gradually earning the respect of the Corps of Discovery.
York’s skills were invaluable to the expedition. He was an exceptional hunter, often bringing down buffalo and deer to feed the company. He performed every duty without complaint, whether it was guard duty, setting up camp, portaging canoes, or scavenging for food, even while suffering from exhaustion or frostbite. He also tended to the sick, including Charles Floyd, the only member of the Corps to die during the expedition.
York also played a surprising diplomatic role. His dark skin fascinated the Native American tribes they encountered, many had never seen a Black man before. Some saw him as a powerful being or “Great Medicine.” His presence helped build trust between the explorers and Indigenous communities, who were curious rather than hostile. In one journal entry, Clark described how York amused a crowd by pretending he had once been a wild beast captured and tamed by his master, a strange performance, but one that broke barriers and earned laughter instead of fear.
When the Corps finally reached the Pacific in November 1805, York stood among the first Americans to set foot there. He even participated in one of the earliest recorded votes in American history to include both a Black man and a woman, when the team decided where to camp for the winter, York’s opinion carried equal weight. His courage, labor, and endurance had helped make the journey a success.
By 1806, the two-year expedition had come to an end. The results were thoroughly positive for the United States, as the Corps of Discovery had accomplished their goal of charting the formerly unknown western part of the country. When the members of the Corps of Discovery returned back east, they were hailed as heroes by the American public. Every member of the expedition was rewarded with double pay and land for their service.
York, however, received nothing. He had risked his life for a country that still saw him as property. His hope for freedom was crushed when Clark, the man he had loyally served, rejected his repeated pleas to live as a free man with his wife, whom he had not seen in over two years. York had believed that his “immense services,” as he called them, would earn him the liberty he longed for. Instead, Clark grew increasingly angry, whipping, jailing, and even hiring him out to harsh masters as punishment for his “insolence” in asking to stay near his wife in Louisville.
Clark later claimed, years after the fact, that he had eventually freed York and even set him up with a wagon business. But historians have found no legal record of manumission. The only known account of York’s supposed freedom came from writer Washington Irving, who visited Clark in 1832. Clark told Irving that York had failed at freedom, became destitute, and died of cholera on his way back to St. Louis, supposedly regretting his liberty and longing to return to slavery. But this story, likely self-serving, reflected pro-slavery ideology of the time, designed to suggest that Black people could not live successfully without white control.
Whether or not Clark’s story was true, York’s final years were tragic. Some accounts suggest he worked as a wagoner, transporting goods between Kentucky and Tennessee. Others claim he eventually joined the Crow Nation in the West, where he lived freely, spoke their language, and even rose to the status of a respected leader. But if Clark’s tale is to be believed, York never made it that far, dying from cholera somewhere in Tennessee, a free man only in death.
In his lifetime York’s achievements were never acknowledged. He was not even permitted the freedom to live out his life with his wife. However, two centuries after his death, his contribution to American history has finally been acknowledged. The York Islands of Montana are named after him, and a statue of his likeness stands in Louisville, Kentucky, and in 2001 President Clinton posthumously granted him the honorary rank of Sergeant in the U.S. Army.
Sources:
In search of York : the slave who went to the Pacific with Lewis and Clark : Betts, Robert B : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/item/lc.jrn.1804-06-20
Narrative of the adventures of Zenas Leonard : Leonard, Zenas, 1809-1857 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
