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BLACKSMITHS (You are here) Private John Shields ( one of the "Nine men from Kentucky") was a highly skilled blacksmith & gunsmith. Several journal entries from both Captains suggest that he was indeed a professional at his job. Captain Clark writes at Fort Mandan on February 6, 1805: " the blacksmiths take a considerable quantity of corn today in payment for their labour. the blacksmith's have proved a happy resource to us in our present situation as I believe it would have been difficult to have devised any other method to have procured corn from the natives. the Indians are extravegantly fond of sheet iron of which they form arrow-points and manufacter into instruments for scraping and dressing their buffaloe robes." Captain Lewis writes at the Marias River on June 10, 1805: "Shields renewed the main-spring of my air-gun we have been much indebted to the ingenuity of this man on many occasions; without having served any regular apprenticeship to any trade, he makes his own tools principally and works extreemly well in either wood or metal, and in this way has been extreemly servicable to us." Captain Lewis writes at Fort Clatsop on March 20, 1806: " The guns of Drewyer and Sergt. Pryor ( one of the "Nine men from Kentucky") were both out of order. the first was repared with a new lock, the old one having become unfit for uce; the second had the cock screw broken which was replaced by a duplicate which had been prepared for the lock at Harpers ferry where she was manufactured. but for the precaution taken in bringing on those extra locks, and parts of locks, in addition to the ingenuity of John Shields, most of our guns would at this moment have been untirely unfit for use; but fortunately for us I have it in my power here to record that they are all in good order." Privates Alexander Willard & William Bratton ( one of the "Nine men from Kentucky") also served as blacksmiths.
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