How the Mule Deer Was Discovered and Named

The mule deer species dates back just 10,000 years to the last Ice Age, but did you know modern Americans knew nothing of it until relatively recently?

It’s true. The first description of the mule deer was written by Capt. Merriweather Lewis on May 10, 1805, about eight months after the “new” deer species was discovered by Lewis & Clark scout George Drouillard.

Drouillard was a civilian interpreter, scout, hunter, and cartographer, hired for Lewis and Clark’s Voyage of Discovery to explore the territory of the Louisiana Purchase in 1804. He first spotted this strange-looking deer while hiking the cliffs of what is now Nebraska’s Niobrara River region (allegedly in/or near Niobrara County).

In May of 1805, Merriweather wrote about the deer after John Colter bagged one of these “curious kinds of deer” for camp meat. After noticing the deer’s immense size (compared to a whitetail), Merriweather wrote an 800-wrod description in his diary.

“The ear and the tail of this animal when compared with those of the common deer, so well comported with those of the mule when compared with the horse, that we have by way of distinction adapted the appellation of the mule deer which I think much more appropriate,” he wrote.

George Drouillard was born into the Shawnee nation in Ontario in 1775.

He grew up speaking Shawnee, French, and English. He also was proficient at the sign language common among Native American peoples of different languages. He was killed in 1810 while trapping beavers in Montana. He was found beheaded, with his remains scattered about in a ritualistic manner. It is believed he was killed after encountering hostilities from hostilities from the Blackfeet and Gros Ventre peoples.

An artist’s rendering of Drouillard (pointing) while guiding Lewis and Clark. He was the first non-native to come across a mule deer in the New Land.

 

 

 

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