Captain William Clark and Private Reuben Field

Reuben Field was born about 1772 in Culpeper County, Virginia, and grew up in Jefferson County, Kentucky, where his family moved about 1784. He and his younger brother Joseph were among the nine young men from Kentucky, joining in August 1803, and the captains soon counted Reuben one of the most valuable men in the party, a woodsman, hunter and scout. After the return he stayed near St. Louis and tried to re-enlist without success. He married Mary Myrtle in Indiana in 1808 and died in 1823 back in Jefferson County. Where he is buried is not known.

What the plaque says

Captain William Clark and Private Reuben Field On July 27, 1804, Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery left their "White Catfish" camp and proceeded up the Missouri River. After traveling some distance, Clark "took one man R. Field and walked on Shore with a View of examoning Som mounds" on the Nebraska side. He found the mounds "of Deffirent hight Shape & Size, Som Composed of Sand Some earth & sand... all of which covered about 200 acres." The mounds may have been the remains of earthlodges, which served as dwellings for Oto Indians who had formerly lived nearby, or they may have been natural. Most were located between what is now Farnam, Davenport, Eighth, and Eleventh streets of downtown Omaha. Clark and Field did not reach the evening campsite, near present day Eppley Airfield, until after dark. The next morning the expedition proceeded on. On August 3 Lewis and Clark met with Oto and Missouria Indians at a place the captains named "Council Bluff," near present day Fort Calhoun, Nebraska. It later became the site of Fort Atkinson. Mouth of the Platte Chapter, Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Inc. Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Durham Museum (Omaha Union Station) — 0.7 mi
  Omaha's 1931 Union Station, Gilbert Stanley Underwood's Art Deco depot for the Union Pacific, closed to trains in 1971 and kept as a city museum with its waiting room intact.
• Joslyn Art Museum — 1.2 mi
  Omaha's free art museum, a 1931 Art Deco memorial with two modern pavilions, and the keeper of Karl Bodmer's watercolors from the upper Missouri in 1833 and 1834.
• Malcolm X Birthsite — 3.0 mi
  The North Omaha lot where Malcolm Little was born in May 1925 and his family was driven out by the Klan, saved by Rowena Moore and now planned as a cultural center.
• Winter Quarters and the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery — 5.5 mi
  The Latter-day Saint camp of 1846 to 1848 on Omaha land in what is now Florence, where hundreds died the first winter, and the cemetery and trail center beside it.

More markers nearby

• Before Creighton — 0.9 mi
• Capitol Hill — 1.0 mi
• Creighton University — 1.2 mi
• Kountze Memorial Lutheran Church — 1.4 mi