CHUCK FADELY / MIAMI HERALD
	Along the trail, Blackfeet Nation near Browning, Mont.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Before plunging his keelboat into the Missouri River and heading for Indian country, Meriwether Lewis sent his mother a parting letter, telling her not to worry. "My rout(e) will be altogether through tribes of Indians who are perfectly friendly to the United States," he wrote.

And he was right. Lewis and William Clark had few unpleasant encounters with tribes as they searched for the Pacific, handing out bronze medals to the chiefs along the way as symbols of their new brotherhood.

Two centuries later, the friendship still inspires strong feelings in the descendants of those who aided the expedition. In the massive American migration that followed, Lewis and Clark's Indian friends lost their land like most everyone else.

But with few exceptions, Indian groups are choosing not to protest the Lewis and Clark bicentennial the way many did during Columbus' 500th anniversary in 1992. In fact, tribes along the expedition route have been actively planning the three-year national commemoration.

It is time, Indian organizers said, to tell the Lewis and Clark story from the other side.

"This wasn't some unsettled place before they got here," said Amy Mossett, a Mandan and Hidatsa Indian who leads the commemoration's group of 30 Indian advisers. "It was our home. We were farmers. We were traders. We had our own ceremonies."

During the next three years, the bicentennial's Circle of Tribal Advisors will add some new chapters to the old story Americans heard in school.

There will be descriptions of life along the Plains before Lewis and Clark got there and renamed all the rivers.

People will discuss what happened to groups like the Nez Perce, who were hustled off their native soil 50 years later, then lost much of their remaining land when gold was discovered there.

No doubt, though, they will discuss a famous "old" story, that of Sacagawea, the Shoshone woman who helped to guide the explorers while carrying a newborn son on her back. She was their passport through Shoshone-speaking tribes, and in the end, she was just as excited as they were to see the Pacific.

"This really was the great American road story," Ronda said.

The National Council of the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial sought Indian guidance from the beginning in hopes of bringing some of these stories to the signature events that will take place along the trail during the next three years.

"We realized we had an unparalleled opportunity to discuss issues that still confront native peoples," said council president Robert Archibald. "There isn't just one story here."

But digging up the past among the Indian groups wasn't easy. There was the initial reluctance to work with the federal government. And as more groups started joining, there were differences in opinion about how to treat the past.

"The people to my west are still healing," said Dark Rain Thom, a Shawnee Indian with the Remnant Band of Ohio and a longtime member of the Tribal Advisors.

"These are still people who are still hurting. Most of the people in the east have healed. We are still dismayed at what went on, but we're not consumed with anger."