Day ClassCurrent moon phase Friday, 21-Nov-2008 12:06:24 CST
The Manitou Bluffs on the Missouri River
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Missouri Folklore Society Journal, Volumes 18-19 (1996-1997) 1-2, pages 1-12 [reprinted with revisions, from Boone's Lick Heritage 5.1 (March 1997) 4-8.]. Author: James Denny.
In the earliest days of the exploration and settlement of the Missouri River valley, adventurers, trappers, and settlers used the river as the principal highway into the western regions. Soon after entering the fertile and rolling vistas of the Boonslick Country, these travelers toiled up-stream through a corridor of high, majestic bluffs that once enjoyed a fabled reputation. Those towering limestone cliffs that flank the Missouri River from a few miles below present-day Marion to Rocheport were once some of the best-known landmarks along the lower section of the river. Not only were the bluffs a spectacular sight, but they were also covered with mysterious Native American paintings. For this reason, they captured the attention of every early voyager who ventured up and down the river (including Meriwether Lewis and William Clark). These travelers all knew this section, with allowances for spelling variances, as the Manitou Bluffs Region.
The term Manitou was applied to human-like figures that were included with other images -- often with what appeared to be antlers emerging from their heads -- in rock paintings, or pictographs, that unknown Native American artists placed on prominent projecting rocks or on the faces of bluffs. Richard S. Brownlee, late director of the State Historical Society of Missouri, observed that these paintings, especially "the Big Moniteau Bluff pictographs," were, historically speaking, the most famous Native American pictographs in Missouri (p. 50).
These Manitou Bluffs, covered as they were with mysterious and undecipherable symbols and images, excited the imaginations of the American, French, and other European travelers who first encountered them. Some of these observers even speculated that the pictograph groups, especially those containing Manitous, were pictorial representations of spiritual concepts held sacred by the unknown Native American artists who inched their way along narrow rock ledges high above the ground to execute their paintings. The observers suspected that the rock paintings marked these cliffs as places particularly favored by a higher spiritual being (or Manitou) and, therefore, invested with sacred powers. Two pictograph sets, those at Big and Little Moniteau Creeks, were observed and reproduced in the journals of Lewis and Clark and were subsequently observed by other travelers who came up the Missouri River in the early decades of the 19th century. Lewis and Clark passed through the Manitou Bluffs Region in early June 1804. On June 5th, William Clark noted in his journal of the expedition:
Passed a projecting Rock on which was painted a figure and a Creek at 2 ms. above Called Little Manitou Creek from the Painted rock. (Fig. 1)
In his field notes, Clark stated that the projecting rock itself was called the Manitou, and he referred to the actual manitou image as a "Deavel," or Devil. Sergeant John Ordway employed the same imagery, although his description does not mention a projecting rock: "We passed a high clifts of Rocks on which was painted the Pickture of the Devil ..." (Moulton, pp. 277-80, citing Quaife, pp. 83-84).
Two days later, the explorers encountered a second Manitou rock painting (Fig. 2). That morning the expedition had gotten off to an early start and decided to halt for breakfast at the mouth of a "large Creek ... Called big Monetou" [Moniteau today, near Rocheport; see Fig. 3]. Clark recorded in his journal:
a short distance above the mouth of this Creek, is Several Courious Paintings and Carveing in the projecting rock of limestone inlade with white red and blue flint, of a verry good quality, the indians have taken of this flint great quantities. We landed and found it a Den of rattle Snakes, we had not landed 3 minutes before three verry large Snakes weer observed on the Cirvices of the rocks and Killed. (pp. 283-85)
Clark made small sketches of these Manitous and other pictograph images in his hournal. As far as we know, Clark was the only explorer to attempt to record what the images actually looked like; later observers provided only prose descriptions.
When H. M. Brackenridge came up the river in April 1811, he noted on the 13th, "Passed the Manitoo Rocks..." (p. 46). Just two weeks earlier, John Bradbury had passed the same stretch and had this to say:
The north bank of the river now assumes a most interesting appearance: it consists of a range of rocks, nearly perpendicular, from 150 to 300 feet high; they are composed of a very white limestone, and their summits are covered to the edge with cedar. The length of this range is about six miles, and at the upper end they assume a semi-circular form.
These are called the Manitou Rocks, a name given to them by the Indians, who often apply this term Manitou to uncommon or singular productions of nature, which they highly venerate. On or near these Manitous, they chiefly deposit their offerings to the Great Spirit or Father of Life. This has caused some to believe that these Manitous are the objects that they worship; but this opinion is erroneous. The Indians believe that the Great Spirit either inhabits, or frequently visits, these manifestations of his power; and that offerings deposited there, will sooner attract his notice, and gain his auspices, than in any other place .... On these rocks several rude figures have been drawn by the Indians with red paint: they are chiefly in imitation of buffaloe, deer, etc. One of these, according with their idea of the Great Spirit, is not unlike our common representation of the devil. (pp. 50-51)
In 1819, Major Stephen Long led an expedition up the river on one of the first steamboats to ply the Missouri, the Western Engineer. We learn from the expedition's chronicler, Edwin James, that the Manitou Bluffs region was subdivided into the Little Manitou and Big Manitou sections. The names suggest something about the course and appearance of the Missouri River at that time. Below and above Marion in present-day Cole County, the river must have cut close to the bluffs and forced the Little Moniteau Creek to enter the Missouri a couple of miles farther up-stream than its present entrance into the river at Marion (see Fig. 3). This long line of bluffs with its defining Manitou rock painting (the one noted by Clark on June 5, 1804, Fig. 1) was evidently by 1819 known as the Little Manitou Rocks or, as James referred to them, the "Little Manito" Rocks.
After passing the Little Manito rocks, the expedition steamed up the river for several more miles before catching sight of the next dramatic line of bluffs to come into view, this time on the Boone County side of the river:
The rocks advance boldly to the brink of the river, exhibiting a perpendicular front, variegated with several colours arranged in broad stripes. Here is a fine spring of water gushing out at the base of the precipice; over it are several rude paintings executed by the Indians. These cliffs are called the Big Manito rocks, and appear to have been objects of peculiar veneration with the aborigines, and have accordingly received the name of their Great Spirit. (p. 147)
These are not the second group of Manitou images recorded by Clark, but a different set down-stream from Big Moniteau Creek. As far as we know, James s description of this particular set of pictographs may be the first to appear in early traveler accounts. By the time of the Long expedition, the river may have shifted its course toward the base of the bluff, bringing the paintings into view for river travelers, or the images may have been covered with vines or other vegetation in earlier years. There is also the very real possibility that Lewis and Clark saw the spring but not the pictographs. Sergeant Ordway recorded in his journal that the expedition "passed high clifts anf a fine large Spring which Run from under the clifts of Rocks" (Quaife, p. 83). This description of the spring is nearly the same as that of James; Ordway states that the Big Manitou (or the "Big Devel" Creek as he refers to it) is two miles farther on although it is actually twice that distance. He either died not see the pictographs or did not bother to note them -- assuming this is the same spring that James noted -- i.e. Torbett Spring -- although no other present-day spring in this stretch of the river matches Ordway's description. Another intriguing possibility is that the pictographs wer not actually painted until after the Lewis and Clark Expedition had already passed that point.
John Gale, who came up the river in 1818, also may have left a description of Torbett Spring. He stated that above the mouth of the Big Manitou Creek
is a cavern entering a lime Stone Rock of a vast height, small at its Mouth, but Spacious within continuing one mile. From it issues a Stream of Clear Water, called by the neighboring inhabitants, Cold Spring ... The adjacent rocks have on them several uncouth paintings, held in great reverence by the Indians. (Nichols, pp. 15-16)
In Springs of Missouri, Jerry Vineyard and Gerald L. Feder (pp. 197-98) describe Torbett Spring and Cave, which they ca11 Lewis and Clark Spring and Cave. This cave may be explored for nearly one mile. Beyond the entrance, it is not vast, however. It is possible to walk the first few hundred feet, but wading, walking in a crouched position, and crawling are necessary beyond that point. The next hollow to the north contains Rocheport Cave, sometimes known as Boone Cave. Gale may have been referring to this cave, but the mouth is spacious and the stream that flows thourgh it can range from a trickle in dry weather to a flood after a rainstorm. This cave is more than three miles down-river from Big Manitou Rock and the mouth of Big Moniteau Creek, not above it, as Gale stated. Because of the ambiguities surrounding Gale's description, James' account must be considered the first definitive description of these Torbett Spring images (Figs. 4 and 5). Just four years after Long passed by the Manitou Bluffs, an aristocratic German scientist, Paul Wilhelm, Duke of Wurttemberg, became the next explorer to leave a record of his impressions of the mysterious rock paintings on the Manitou Bluffs. By June 7, 1823, Duke Paul's up-river journey had brought him to the vicinity of the Little Manitou pictographs. During that day he and his crew had been delayed by a heavy rainstorm that forced them to lay up for most of the day. By late afternoon, however, he got the chance to do some investigation. The description he left of the Little Manitou rock is similar to Clark's:
At four o'clock we rowed around the Little Manitou, a rock of more than one hundred feet in height and fifty feet in width whose smooth steep walls were decorated with Indian paintings and pictures of idols." (p. 245)
As in one of Clark's descriptions, the rock itself was called the Manitou. It obviously extended out beyond the bluffs into the river. Clark termed it a projecting rock, while it is unclear whether Duke Paul was describing a free-standing or a projecting rock. On June 10, 1823, he mentioned passing an island he called the Ile du Grand Manitou; traveling on, he saw high bluff's sloping abruptly into the water that he termed La Cote du Grand Manitou.
Early the next day Duke Paul arrived at the mouth of the "Big Manitou" and noted:
Here the Indians occasionally bring sacrifices to an evil being whom they fear, and an outline of the idol in symbolic form seems to assume the shape of an animal. Judging from the effect which the weather has had on the coloring material, it clearly pointed to a remote time, a time when this mass of stone served the aborigines for the performance of their mystic worship. It even seemed to me as if the painting had been frequently renewed, and the paint on several other better preserved drawings was especially fresh and bright. With considerable skill and proportion, they quite clearly represent battles and hunting expeditions of the aborigines. (pp. 253-54)
Earlier in his river journey, Duke Paul had observed pictographs on the walls of the cliff called Caverne a Montbrun in Callaway County [see Bertoff on Missouri's "caverns"] and had this to say:
Since the dyestuff, red ochre, does not risis [resist] the weather well, I concluded that the band of Indians must have camped here lately. (p. 227)
In 1805 Zebulon Pike noted in his journal on July 16 that
A man by the name of Ramsay reported to the Indians [chiefs of the Osage and Pawnees] that 500 Sacs, Ioways, and Reynards [Foxes], were at the mouth of Big Maniton [Manitou]. (Jackson, p. 291)
The Duke's two comments cited here, along with Pike's, suggest that some of the pictographs may have been painted by Native Americans who were living or hunting in the area of the painted bluffs in the early 1800s.
In 1814, William Clark, then Territorial Governor, relocated a band of Sac and Fox Indians, who traveled from their homes on the Mississippi in 155 canoes, to the mouth of the Little Manitou Creek; here he provided an agent and a trading post (Foley, pp. 228-29). During the eighteen years that separated Lewis and Clark and Duke Paul, hundreds if not thousands, of Native Americans were active in the Manitou Bluffs area. There would have been ample opportunity for some Sac or Fox Indian not only to have refreshed the pictographs at the bluff on Big Manitou Creek, but also to have painted new pictographs on the high ledge above Torbett Spring. The first reference to the Big Manitou Creek dates to 1752, when it is noted as the "R. au Diable" by D'Anville (Coues 1: 15, fn.). This reference would suggest that the pictographs existed in some form at that time. Their existence during the time of Duke Paul, however, may have been more the result of continuous maintenance and creation on the part of resident Native Americans up to the conclusion of the War of 1812. O
As late as the 1830s the Manitou images were still mentioned in Missouri River travel accounts. A second royal German, Maximilian, Prince of Wied, journeyed up the river in 1833. He observed the appearance of the Manito rocks as
two isolated blocks, about fifty feet high, which have been mentioned by many travelers .... We see here on the rocky walls red spots, strokes and figures, remaining from the times when the Indians dwelt here ... Near [Rocheport] there are again many red figures on the rocky walls, among others that of a man with uplifted arms; not thirty years have elapsed since this whole country was in the possession of the Indians. (p. 243)
In 1839 the English traveler Charles Augustus Murray made his Missouri River journey. He recounted:
We passed also some fine precipitous rocks on which are numerous specimens of Indian painting. These consist chiefly of representations of strange figures, buffaloes, and other animals. They were originally red, but time and the weather have so worn out the colour, that they were not distinguishable from the part of the river where we passed, so that I was obliged to take the word of the passengers and other persons well acquainted with the neighborhood; moreover, I believe they are the same as those mentioned in the travels of Lewis and Clarke, by the name of the Great Manitou Rocks, having been formerly sacred to the Great Spirit among the tribes who inhabited this district. (p. 173)
By Murray's time, the Manitou images were obviously starting to fade; the memory of the famous Manitou Bluffs was fading too. The pictograph group that Edwin James first described continued, however, to remain a local landmark in Boone County. Switzer's History of Boone County, published in 1882, provided a detailed description of the "pictured rocks" at Torbett Spring but made no mention of Manitous or the Manitou Rocks. By this time, river transportation was in decline; travelers were more likely to cross the river in trains than journey up and down it on steamboats. The "pictured rocks" were now reached overland from the nearby Torbett residence, through a field and down a steep ravine to the bluffs at the river's edge a hundred yards distant from the spring.
All along the face of the cliff, under the overhanging ledge or shelf, are the remarkable representations. At the height of nearly fifty feet above the spring is the largest visible group. (Switzler, p. 977)
The account then goes on to describe groups of geometrical forms and human-like figures. Nearby, at different places on the bluff faces, were other figures. Most of the figures were placed some five feet above a high ledge, the ledge that the artist obviously stood upon to apply the red pigment used to make the depictions. Other figures, however, were fifteen feet above the ledge and could not have been executed without some sort of climbing device. Evidently, the aboriginal practice of locating pictographs high up on sheer bluff faces in nigh inaccessible locations was hardly unusual. Duke Paul, who was a careful observer of Native American rock painting, noted that the precarious location of such pictographs as those at Torbett Spring was a typical occurrence:
It seems that it is a common practice among the Indians of America to engrave symbolic figures on the bluffs along the rivers. Such portrayals of men, animals, and idols were, where I had the opportunity of observing them, at a very much elevated location on the most precipitous bluffs near the edge of the water ... (p. 227)
Another visit was made in 1882 to the Torbett Spring pictograph site by Charles Teubner. He secured Mr. Torbett's permission to make the detailed scaled drawings of the three remaining pictograph groups in the Torbett Spring vicinity. These are the only known renderings of these oft-observed landmarks (Figs. 4 and 5).
Future generations are lucky that Teubner made his drawings when he did, for a devastating chapter in the Manitou Bluffs saga was about to take place in the form of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (Katy) Railroad, which began in 1892 to construct its St. Louis branch along the north side of the river. Construction crews showed no mercy for the aboriginal landmarks that had so fascinated early adventurers. As much as a hundred tons of bluff rock could be brought down with a single charge of powerful explosives. If any trace of the pictographs at Big Moniteau Creek were still visible when the railroad blasted its tunnel through the bluff at Rocheport, none has been seen since. A decade later, the Missouri Pacific built its line on the south side of the river and in the process may have destroyed all or a portion of the Little Manitou Rock. There have been no observations of the Little Manitou pictograph since Duke Paul wrote about seeing it in 1823. Not only did the railroads sound the death knell for the golden era of river transportation but they probably also literally destroyed some of the most mysterious human traces of a vanished age -- the strange symbols that had excited the imagination of many river wanders who are themselves now part of a lost and romantic era.
The Big and Little Manitou Rocks were among the few bluffs along the lower Missouri River to which the early explorers actually affixed names. The only other named bluff that immediately comes to mind is Tavern Rock in Franklin County (see Berthoff). At the base of Tavern Bluff was a natural sand-stone cave that afforded shelter to early river travelers -- red and white. Its walls were covered with both aboriginal pictographs and the graffiti of later French and American adventurers. Clearly, the time is ripe to rediscover the nearly forgotten Missouri River place name Manitou Bluffs. There are some recent developments that can aid this effort. One of the most important is the establishment of the Katy Trail State Park after the M-K-T Railway ceased operation in 1986 and the State of Missouri assumed ownership of the old railroad right of way. This hiking and biking corridor has opened the formerly inaccessible Big Manitou Bluffs section, south of Rocheport, to thousands of visitors; for six miles this spectacular pathway etches its way between the towering Manitou bluffs and the river. Although there is no interpretive sign to mark the spot, the trail passes directly beneath the Torbett Spring pictographs. From the trail a person can easily see one of the pictographic symbols (image 3, Fig. 5) and clearly make out the red-colored markings of other more faded images. Examination through powerful field glasses reveals that images 5 and 6 (Fig. 5) are still faintly visible. Another piece of good news is that the National Park Service has informed this writer by letter that it is going to include a notation on the Manitou Bluffs section in its next version of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail map. More recently, the Missouri Board on Geographic Names has taken up the consideration of the "Little Manitou Bluffs" and "Big Manitou Bluffs" as official names for these two geographic features (see Fig. 3). The first hearing in a long process was held on May 21, 1998. Other hearings at both the state and national levels lie ahead, but the possibility does exist that these long-forgotten place names will find their way back onto maps. We can be hopeful that additional promotion of the picturesque Manitou Bluffs can be linked with the ongoing efforts to create improved public perception of the Boonslick Region; the Manitou Bluffs are certainly one more excellent reason to visit and enjoy our remarkable and historic segment of the lower Missouri River valley.
References
Berthoff, Rowland. "In a Tavern, in a Cnverne: Explicating Missouri Names," Names 41.1 (1993) 29-43.
Brackenridge, Henry Marie. Journal of a Voyage up the River Missouri. Baltimore: Coale and Maxwell, 1816. Rpt. in Thwaites, vol. 6.
Bradbury, John. Travels in the Interior of America, 1809-1811. Rpt. in Thwaites, vol. 5.
Brownlee, Richard S. "The Big Moniteau Bluff Pictographs in Boone County, Missouri." Missouri Archaeologist 18 (1956) 49-56.
Coues, Elliott, ed. History of the Expedition under the Command of Lewis and Clark (New York: Dover Publications, 1964)
Foley, William E. The Genesis of Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989).
Jackson, Donald, ed. The Journals of Zebulon Montgomery Pike (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966).
James, Edwin. Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains performed in the Years 1819, 1820 ... Under the Command of Maj. S. H. Long. London: 1823. Rpt in Thwaites, vols. 14-17.
Maximilian, Prince of Wied. Travels in the Interior of North America, 1832- 1834. Rpt. in Thwaites, vols. 22-25.
Moulton, Gary E., Ed. The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. 1l vols. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983-1997.
Murray, Charles Augustus. Travels in North America During the years 1834, 1835 & 1836. New York: Harper R Brothers, 1839.
Nichols, Roger L., ed. The Missouri Expedition, 1818-1820:The Journal of Surgeon John Gale, With Related Documents (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Quaife, Milo M., ed. The Journals of Captain Meriwether Lewis and Sergeant John Ordway (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1916).
Switzler, William F. History of Boone County. St. Louis: Western Historical Company, 1882.
Thwaites, Reuben Gold. Early Western Travels. 32 vols. Cleveland: A. H. Clark Co., 1904-1907.
Vineyard, Jerry and Gerald L. Feder. Springs of Missouri (Jefferson City: Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Division of Geology and Land Survey, in cooperation with the United States Geological Survey and the Missouri Department of Conservation, 1982).
Wurttemburg, Duke Paul Wilhel. Travels in North America, 1922-1824. Translated by W. Robert Nitske. Edited by Savoi Lottinville. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973.
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