(frontier music) - [Matt] The first African-Americans in the Northern Plains were a family named Bonga and a man named York.

Though the prairies they ventured through were ostensibly free lands, they were brought to the frontier by fur traders and explorers as enslaved men and women.

Here, in the disputed waters and lands between Indigenous America and European empires, they navigated the uncharted borders of slavery and freedom.

(frontier music) - When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's Corps of Discovery returned to St. Louis from the Pacific Ocean September 23rd, 1806, they returned as national heroes.

The journey of exploration they had begun more than two years prior - and one of the crowning achievements of the young United States of America - had finally come to an end.

That evening, Lewis wrote in a letter to President Thomas Jefferson, "It is with pleasure that I announce to you the safe arrival of myself and party."

However, this triumphant return would've been bittersweet for at least one member of the party, the man known as York, who was once enslaved by William Clark.

York had made significant sacrifices for the journey.

He'd been forced to leave his wife in Kentucky and suffered serious injuries along the way, including frostbite from a bison hunt near Fort Mandan.

York had also made important contributions with the expedition's success with the minor privileges he enjoyed.

He carried firearms and provided a sizable portion of the party's food.

He even voted with the party to determine the location of a winter camp and he served as an effective diplomat with Indigenous people who had never seen a Black man before.

To York, the assurance of civilization in St. Louis, Missouri marked a return to the slavery he'd been accustomed to before the expedition, as William Clark had made no indication of freeing him and wouldn't do so for at least another five to 10 years.

I'm Troy Jackson II with Prairie Public.

Our narrator is Matt Olien, and this is "Black Histories of the Northern Plains."

(frontier music) - [Matt] Black history in the United States begins in Africa, with the institution of slavery.

Between the 16th and 19th century, more than 12 million African men, women, and children were captured and taken to ports in the Gulf of Guinea, where they were loaded onto European ships and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World.

The 11 million people who survived the journey were forced into a lifetime of labor, working primarily in the agricultural production of sugar, cotton, rice, and tobacco for European and then American markets.

Most were sent to plantations in South America and the Caribbean.

Roughly half a million were taken to North America.

As chattel slaves, these people and their descendants were deprived of their humanity and basic rights and treated as property that could be bought, sold, traded, and inherited.

(gentle music) Jean and Marie Bonga were two of these descendants, and likely the first in their families to gain freedom in the New World.

The Bongas were French-African, born into slavery in the middle of the 18th century and most likely taken from the French colony of Martinique through Montreal to the Straits of Mackinac.

By 1782, they were enslaved on the Great Lakes by Captain Daniel Robertson, the British Canadian commander of Fort Mackinac.

In 1787, the Bongas were freed.

They opened a tavern on Mackinac Island, where they married and raised four children and got themselves into the Great Lakes fur trade.

Sometime after Jean died in 1795, Marie and her three youngest children returned to Montreal.

Their oldest son Pierre moved west, further into the fur trade he had come to know.

He appears in the records of North West Company traders between 1795 and 1806 as a servant, interpreter, and fur trader.

He later worked for the American Fur Company.

In 1800, he traveled to the Red River Valley with one of the traders.

Journal records mention Pierre riding a corralled bison and delivering a sound beating to a competing fur trader who had threatened to kill him.

Pierre also found family and community, marrying into the pillager band of the Chippewa and raising several children.

In Pembina on March 12th, 1800, his wife Ogibwayquay gave birth to their daughter Blanche.

Local fur trader Alexander Henry recorded the occasion as 'the first new fruit in this fort, and a very black one.'

She is believed to be the first African-American born in North Dakota.

Her younger brother George, delivered the following year, is believed to be the first African-American born in Minnesota.

Pierre appears to have lived comfortably with Ogibwayquay and their family until his death near Fond du Lac in present-day Wisconsin around 1830.

Their children found wealth and prominence, too.

Sons George and Stephen worked as traders, guides, and voyagers with the American Fur Company.

Fluent in English, French, and Native languages, they also worked as interpreters during treaty negotiations between the US government and Ojibwe leaders.

Their signatures can be found on the 1837 Treaty of St. Peter's, the 1847 treaty with the pillager band of the Chippewa, and the 1867 treaty with the Chippewas of the Mississippi.

By the end of the 19th century, a sizable number of Bonga descendants, perhaps more than 100, lived in Minnesota around Leech Lake.

- While York occupies a far more prominent position in American history than the Bongas, his life after the Corps of Discovery is a mystery, if not a tragedy.

Living in St. Louis after their return, York's relationship with Clark soured.

It became clear he wouldn't be granted freedom.

In response, he was beaten and jailed.

If Clark's letters served as any indication, York was regularly threatened to be sold down the Mississippi River to a more violent slaveholder.

Legend claims that York eventually found his way to Wyoming and lived among the Crow or lived out his later years in the taverns of St. Louis.

Most historians believe York was eventually granted freedom and worked in freight, hauling goods.

In 1832, Clark admitted that he freed York, but claimed that York had attempted to return to his old master before dying of cholera.

Given the self-serving embellishment of William Clark's story, some historians believe York never got his freedom at all.

I'm Troy Jackson II for Prairie Public.

Thanks for watching.

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