One problem with scrutinizing history through a lens of modern political correctness is the failure to acknowledge contexts in which human attitudes are shaped. Stated more bluntly, people are a product of their times.

On the other hand, society’s refusal to confront and take responsibility for ignominious actions originating in our past – and still with us – can conversely be a script for tragedy.

Today, Ben Sherman has a bone to pick with American history. The focus of his animus just happens to be the growing, glowing aggrandizement of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark.

What bugs him – and many Indians – is how society patriotically celebrates the explorers’ exploits yet balks at seriously examining the consequences of what happened to Native Americans in their wake.

More to the point, Sherman wants us to remember that Clark’s crafting of U.S. Indian policy after he returned to St. Louis – and served as governor of the Missouri Territory and superintendent of Indian Affairs – laid the foundation for a plague of social problems, including debilitating poverty, alcoholism and civic alienation, that still besets First American citizens.

For the articulate, soft-spoken Sherman, the root of his contrarian view can be traced to the final days of September 1804. It involves part of the Lewis and Clark story that seldom gets told: a skirmish with Sioux warriors that nearly ended the famous expedition before it really began.

Functioning as gatekeepers for trade and access along the lower Missouri River, the Sioux wanted the Corps of Discovery to pay a toll for passage upstream. Lewis and Clark resisted. The Sioux insisted. Weapons were drawn. A tense standoff ensued.

Had a battle erupted, the Lewis and Clark party, even with guns, would doubtless have been annihilated.

Although the Indians backed down, it’s what Clark wrote indignantly in his journal that Sherman believes echoed later in his attitude toward Plains tribes.

Clark described Sherman’s Sioux ancestors as the “vilest miscreants of the savage race.” And it’s Clark’s exploitation of the very people he was charged to protect later as Indian Affairs superintendent that leaves him a checkered historical figure and makes his noble reputation a topic open for debate.

Sherman has a personal interest because he can trace his blood line to a Lakota warrior named Makes The Song who was roughly 18 years old when Lewis and Clark set out paddling.

“It is remotely possible that Makes The Song was involved in the encounter with Lewis and Clark,” Sherman says. “But the likelihood is that he was farther west where many of his people were. Makes The Song and the Lakota knew about the ‘wasichu’ [Anglo-Europeans], and most were happy to stay away from these unpleasant people.”

He adds that 73 years later the grandson of Makes The Song would lead the last defiant band of Lakota into Fort Robinson, surrendering their guns, horses and way of relating to the world. The name of Makes The Song’s grandson in the year 1877: Crazy Horse.

At the time, buffalo were almost wiped out, white traders were subduing Indians with alcohol, the 19th-century equivalent of crack; the Black Hills had been stolen; Sitting Bull had fled to Canada; most Indians were exiled to reservations; and the Sioux could not face another winter in a running fight with the U.S. Army.

Sherman says 42 treaties were forced upon tribes between 1815-1830 and each treaty was broken. The historical portrayal of Clark as a benevolent caretaker of Indians, he claims, is just not true.

“There continues to be a societal blind spot when it comes to Lewis and Clark and Native Americans,” Sherman says, calling attention to the recent book by historical anthropologist Anthony F.C. Wallace titled “Jefferson and the Indians.” Wallace argues that Thomas Jefferson’s Indian policy was tantamount to cultural genocide.

Quietly, away from the patriotic and commercial fanfare surrounding the approaching Lewis and Clark bicentennial, Indian country is less than enthusiastic, he says.

“The organizers of the bicentennial are telling Indians to participate because it’s an opportunity for each tribe to tell its story,” he says. “It’s a nice offer, but are they sincerely interested in hearing the real story of what happened to Indian people after Lewis and Clark came through?”

Until America comes to terms with its treatment of Indians, he adds, the promise associated with Lewis and Clark – of building a great nation devoted to liberty, prosperity, and respect for all – shall remain an elusive dream. Unfulfilled.

Todd Wilkinson is a writer in Bozeman.