Every Oregonian knows the names of the leaders of the famed Corps of Discovery that brought United States settlers to the Pacific Northwest in 1805. Many also know Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s Shoshone guide, Sacagawea. But until recently, few had heard of an important member of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, mentioned 135 times in Lewis’s diary, and called a “hero of the expedition” by writer Washington Irving, based on interviews with Clark. 

Known only as York, he was an enslaved African American born in Virginia and bequeathed to Clark — along with some of his father’s other property — as his personal servant. When the expedition passed through Oregon and reached its goal, he became the first African American known to reach the Pacific Ocean. And that’s as much as most Oregonians knew about York, if they knew anything at all.

That changed in 2021, when a bust of York mysteriously appeared in Southeast Portland’s Mt. Tabor Park — and then was vandalized. (Read Prudence Roberts’s ArtsWatch story.) The incident inspired many Oregonians who hitherto knew York only as a name — if that — to learn more about his life. 

One of them was Portland musician and educator Aaron Nigel Smith, who also serves as Education and Community Programs Manager at Beaverton’s Patricia Reser Center for the Arts. 

“I realized I wasn’t familiar with York’s story,” Smith remembers. Like Lewis, Clark, and York himself, he embarked on his own voyage of discovery. “I went on a journey to learn more about him. After I stopped beating myself up for not knowing more about him, I said, let me use my medium of art to amplify this story.”

This weekend, Smith’s folk opera, York the Explorer, sets York’s story to music. These three premiere performances at the Reser Center, though, may be only the opening chapter of a longer tale.

Hidden History

The resourceful Smith brought plenty of artistic and organizational assets to the table, as noted in our recent story on the Reser Center’s Musical Playground series, which Smith runs. He’s been an award-winning teaching artist (with Young Audiences, The Right Brain Initiative and Arts for Learning) and performer in the Portland area for the past 15 years, with a raft of reggae recordings to his credit, including a Grammy Award-nominated children’s album. In 2002, he founded FUNdamentals of Music & Movement, a fun approach to music classes for preschool children,” which grew into a national program, according to his website. With his wife Diedre, Smith formed the non-profit 1 World Chorus to promote peace and empower youth internationally through the arts, which his website says has reached more than 10,000 youth in Portland, Los Angeles, New York, Kenya and Jamaica.  Although he’s best known as a reggae artist now, Smith has a strong background and training in classical vocal performance from the prestigious arts institutions Interlochen Arts Academy, Manhattan School of Music, and University of Southern California.

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Smith’s quest for information about York quickly smacked into a serious obstacle — and a major reason he’s so little known: York, like so many Americans from outside the ruling classes then and now, never got the chance to tell his own story. We don’t even know what he looked like.

“The only accounts we have are through the impressions and lens of other people’s journals and letters,” Smith explains. “There are differing opinions on his significance, ranging from him being lazy or unintelligent to those that say he contributed as much as or more than the other men on the journey.”

Smith says there’s general agreement that York “was allowed to go out of camp and hunt, to be a caregiver for injured members, to bear arms,” and much more. Nevertheless, York was denied both financial compensation for his contributions, and the freedom he’d been promised for participating. 

“I can only imagine that he got as close as he could to freedom, and then once the expedition ended, the other men were rewarded with land and accolades, and he had to go back to enslavement,” Smith says. “Some say that 10 years later, he was finally freed and given horses and money to create his own business. Others say he was embraced by the Crow tribe and became a chief.”

As he pondered how to tell York’s story, Smith found that he wasn’t alone. “I was in conversation with several people in the community, and realized that there were several other York centered projects under way,” he says, including a play by the great Portland actor Vin Shambry, a presentation by Oregon Black Pioneers and an effort by a newly formed York Collective (now including Smith) “to imagine what a York Black urban village might look like.” 

Smith approached OBP executive director Zachary Stocks. “We’ve got a convergence of events and celebrations of York,” Smith said. To avoid competition among the projects, they eventually decided to create a festival to honor York and coordinate publicity, scheduling and presentations. The result was this year’s York Fest, presented by OBP, and this weekend’s performances of York the Explorer are its culminating events. 

Bringing York’s Story to the Stage

Smith continued his research by putting himself in places York had gone. “I started to take little outings and trips,” he recalls, “out in the middle of the woods, or sitting by a river in Central Oregon, or retreats at Mt. Hood or the coast near Astoria where the expedition ended.”

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Even with all the knowledge gaps, Smith gradually realized that what was known about York’s life and significance merited telling — and on the grandest artistic canvas. At first he considered writing a song cycle “that spoke to York’s journey and significance and events in his life,” Smith remembers. “After I surrounded myself with a creative team, the idea started to evolve. I started out as a classical singer, including opera, oratorio, and choral music. What if I went back in time to my classical roots and tried to evolve this story into a full opera?”

But not a conventional opera. “I knew I didn’t want to use traditional symphonic orchestration” to tell this old American story, Smith says. He chose folk instruments like banjo, fiddle, guitar, along with opera singers with extensive credentials and serious vocal chops. That sounds similar to what the magnificent singer and songwriter Rhiannon Giddens did with her Pulitzer Prize winning opera Omar. “I love the work Rhiannon’s doing,” Smith says. “She actually performed at the Reser recently, and that was inspiring to me and reinforced the idea of creating a folk opera.” It turned out that York star bass-baritone Cedric Berry, who’s performed with major orchestras and opera companies around the world, also worked with Giddens on Omar.

For help with the storytelling, Smith enlisted legendary Portland poet, writer and “artivist” Dr. S. Renee Mitchell “to help me imagine what a libretto could look like.” She wrote a series of poems and essays that Smith then had to figure out how to transmute into song form. He wound up writing the opera’s book and music himself, with additional music by Benjamin Hunter and Opera Theater Oregon’s Justin Ralls.

As he worked, “I can only explain that some sort of spiritual mystical feeling overcame me,” Smith recalls. “I felt the presence of York looking towards me, saying ‘Tell my story and tell it well.’ That presence has been with me throughout and only increased. There were moments in the studio when I’m composing and tears are flowing and the connection feels so authentic and real. It’s a tremendous opportunity to give voice to him, and he was denied that.” 

The story starts, as did Smith’s inspiration, in Mt. Tabor Park, where a group of Portlanders realizes that York’s bust has been vandalized, prompting them to ask who he was, and what was his significance to our national story. Smith plays a fictional griot mystic character, Trenchtown, who takes the others on a magical theatrical journey back to York’s time with the Corps of Discovery, where they — and the audience — learn about his adventures and remaining mysteries as the story jumps back and forth in time.

The “minimalistic” set uses projections to evoke the park, Astoria, the Missouri River, the Bitterroot Mountains and the other settings. Directed by nationally renowned stage director Jerry Dixon and featuring a 19-member cast, the two-act opera uses standard forms like arias and sung recitative-like dialogue, and a range of percussion-propelled musical styles performed by an onstage band and drum corps, conducted and directed by the esteemed Portland composer and choir director Judy A. Rose.

Smith enthusiastically calls York a collaborative project, and he’s grateful for “the whole village that’s come together to rally around this project.” That includes not just the other artists involved (see the program online), but also the Reser Center itself, whose early support including providing the performance venue helped bring in an impressive roster of other supporters, including the Oregon Community Foundation, 1803 Fund and other charitable organizations, Oregon arts angel Ronnie Lacroute, various Portland musical institutions, and many others listed in the program. The support gives 650 school children opportunity to see show for free including busing to and from the Reser. “It’s been a journey of two years of writing and collaboration,” Smith says.

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Lasting Legacy

This version of York’s story won’t end with these initial productions. “I have a ten year plan!” Smith declares. He’s had a film crew documenting the project’s two-year genesis, and plans to release a documentary film, an album of the music, a version of the opera for young audiences, like the “junior” versions of Into the Woods and many other musicals. 

He’s also working with a foundation to create a museum exhibition that will allow audiences to experience video and audio from the project, read literature about York, and access other resources. Smith is also working on a gamified program that provides scholarships for students to participate in interactively learning more about York. The final dream is a feature film, created by the director of the documentary. It’s an ambitious vision, but Smith has demonstrated the ability to dream big and make those dreams real. 

Smith believes York’s story deserves such long-overdue attention — not just for its historical value, but also for its continuing significance for today and tomorrow. “His story is a message of hope and perseverance,” Smith says. “He didn’t give up on himself and on the dream of freedom. He’s an example of an American hero — not just a Black or enslaved hero, but an example for all of us. In this time of division when we’re so set in our corners, he’s an example of someone who transcends all that. I hope people will take away a message of hope that will make them ultimately more connected and informed and activated as a community. I hope everyone who attends will feel a call to action, to not give up on themselves, their family, or their community — and to be the light we’re all meant to be.”

The Reser presents York the Explorer at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 24, and 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 25 at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts. Tickets. While you’re there, check out the Reser art gallery’s excellent exhibits (closing Nov. 7) ReEnvisioned: Contemporary Portraits of our Black Ancestors, by Portland artist Jeremy Okai Davis, which includes a pair of powerful portraits of York, and Black Matter, which includes work by an octet of Black Oregon artists.