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Floyd, aged about twenty years (possibly twenty-three), died near the site of
the present Sioux City, Iowa, May 14th, 1804, and was buried on the top of a neighboring
bluff. The site is now marked by a stately stone monument dedicated (May
30, 1901) to his memory by the Floyd Memorial Association. See Reports of the
association—First, 1897; Second, 1901.
The Floyds were prominent Kentucky pioneers. Colonel John Floyd, the head
of the family, was a friend and contemporary of Daniel Boone and George Rogers
Clark. But little is known of the young sergeant's personal history, save that his
father, also Charles, was a surveyor and a friend of Boone. Governor John Floyd,
of Virginia, father of John B. Floyd, Buchanan's secretary of war, was a first cousin
of the sergeant. Much prominence has been given to Sergeant Floyd, because he was
the only man to suffer death upon this expedition, because it is thought that he was
the first United States soldier to lose his life west of the Mississippi River, and because
his captains praised him as a faithful man—see entry by Clark, post, under date
August 20th, 1804. Floyd's Journal —which was discovered by the present writer
among hitherto-neglected papers of the late Dr. Lyman C. Draper, in February, 1893
—has of course greatly added to his reputation, and made of him a far more important
character in the annals of the expedition than he otherwise would have been.

See Appendix, for Frazier's prospectus.

Nothing appears to be known concerning the history of Joseph Whitehouse, save
that he was one of the nine young Kentuckians whom Clark recruited for the expedition.
The manuscript of his journal was purchased by Dodd, Mead & Co. from
Mrs. Gertrude Haley (widow of Captain John Haley), of San Francisco, from whom
it has been impossible for the present Editor to obtain any very definite information
concerning its career. According to Mrs. Haley's statements, obtained only after
a protracted correspondence with her, it would appear that Whitehouse, when upon
his death-bed (date unknown), gave the journal to his confessor, Canon de Vivaldi,
who subsequently (1860) went as a Roman Catholic missionary to Patagonia. Upon
leaving the United States, Vivaldi deposited the manuscript with the New York
Historical Society, in whose museum it rested until 1893. In that year, Vivaldi was
in Los Angeles, California. Captain and Mrs. Haley were stopping at the same
hotel. Mrs. Haley says that her husband advanced money to the missionary, and
was in return given an order on the New York Society for the journal, which the
historian, Hubert Bancroft, had told them was of great value. Haley obtained the
document in 1894, and it remained Mrs. Haley's property until sold to the present
publishers. The Editor's attention had been directed to the manuscript because of
its being offered to the Library of Congress. That institution declined to pay the
price asked for it, and Dodd, Mead & Co.'s successful negotiations followed. The
authenticity of the journal is self evident, and its historical value is considerable.
While for the most part in the writing of Whitehouse, many entries are in other hands
as will be noted in the publication of the document itself, in vol. vi of the present
work.