Only One Lost

Exploration of new worlds is a journey that always has the potential to end in loss of life, and even disaster. The Corps of Discovery, also known as the Lewis and Clark expedition, was no different. The expedition was proceeding as planned, except for the fact that Sergeant Charles Floyd was feeling ill. The expedition left Saint Louis the previous May, enroute up the Missouri River with a party of 35 men, called the Corps of Discovery. Floyd was a native of Kentucky who had enlisted in the US military a few years earlier. When he heard that there was a call for volunteers to join the ambitious expedition across the continent to the Pacific, Floyd was one of the first men to apply. Floyd was the perfect choice for the program. He was young, vigorous, and better educated than most of the soldiers. The two co-captains not only selected him to join the mission, but they also promoted him to sergeant.

Unfortunately, Floyd’s perfect attributes could not keep him from becoming ill. As a result, his part in the great voyage of the Corps of Discovery was short-lived. In their journal, Lewis and Clark reported in July that Floyd “has been very sick for several days. Then it appeared that he was getting better…for a time anyway. On August 15, he was “seized with a complaint somewhat like a violent chorlick [colic]… [and] he was sick all night.” The two captains were very concerned, and did what they could for Floyd, but they were far from what little medical help might have been available in 1804. Nevertheless, Floyd continued to grow weaker.

By August 19, 1804, Floyd’s illness was growing very severe during, and Clark sat up with the suffering man almost the entire night. Unfortunately, other than being with Floyd at the end, there was nothing that could be done. Floyd died in the early afternoon of August 19th, reportedly “with a good deal of composure.” The members of the expedition buried Floyd’s body on a high bluff overlooking a river that flowed into the Missouri. At the site, they placed a red-cedar post with his name, title, and date of death over the grave. Lewis read the funeral service, and the two captains concluded the ceremony by naming the nearby stream Floyds River and the hill Floyds Bluff in honor of their young comrade.

Lewis and Clark always regretted that they possessed such limited wilderness medical skills, because they were unable to cure the young soldier. Still, even if Floyd had been in Philadelphia, it is unlikely that the best doctors of the day would have been able to save him. From the journal telling of the symptoms, it is likely that Floyd was suffering from acute appendicitis. His condition grew worse and worse, and when his appendix ruptured, he died quickly of peritonitis. Without modern antibiotic, and without the knowledge we have today of proper surgical procedures, there was simply no hope. Amazingly, Floyd’s was the only death the Corps of Discovery suffered in more than two years of dangerous wilderness travel. On their return journey from the Pacific in 1806, after a successful expedition, Lewis and Clark stopped at Sergeant Floyd’s grave to pay their respects.