In the Footsteps of Lewis and Clark

by Wallace G. Lewis

  Meriwether Lewis’s “iron boat” was launched on July 9. However, lacking the proper pitch to caulk the seams, the elk and buffalo hides that covered the frame were unable to keep out water. Without the boat, it was necessary to fashion new dugout canoes from cottonwood trunks before proceeding. Finally, on July 15, the Corps of Discovery resumed its journey to the headwaters of the Missouri River, leaving the open country around the falls and entering a canyon in which the Missouri River cut its way through the western end of the Big Belt Mountains. Today, Interstate 15 follows the canyon as far as Wolf Creek and then parallels the river a few miles to the west. Through the Gates of the Mountains north of Helena, Montana’s capital, the main group continued by water under Lewis’s guidance. On July 19 Lewis noted that the river was now between 100 and 150 yards wide and deepening, and the current was increasing in velocity. That evening the eight dugouts entered a stretch pressed on both sides by cliffs, which Lewis estimated to be about 1,200 feet high: “[E]very object here,” he wrote, “wears a dark and gloomy aspect. The tow[er]ing and projecting rocks in many places seem ready to tumble on us.” Lewis dubbed the nearly six-mile passage beneath these forbidding cliffs, which today lie between Holter and Hauser dams, the “Gates of the Rocky Mountains.” [IV, 402–403, 405n4]

  Fig 2.4 Gates of the Mountains on the Missouri River, north of Helena, Montana. Meriwether Lewis noted “a dark and gloomy aspect” to the narrow six-mile stretch of canyon as he passed through it on July 19, 1805. Much of the effect today has been eliminated by water backing up from Holter Dam. Photo by Donnie Sexton. Courtesy, Travel Montana.

  It was William Clark’s turn to scout ahead with an overland party. South of Townsend and Canyon Ferry Reservoir, which now inundates this portion of the river, Clark and his party reached the area where the Gallatin River, coming from the east, helps form the main stem of the Missouri and the very sinuous Madison and Jefferson rivers join together a few miles north of Interstate 90 and the town of Three Forks. Clark’s men also checked out part of the canyon through which the Jefferson River entered the valley and passed close to the site of Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park before returning to join the main party, whose river journey had proceeded along U.S. Highway 287 to Toston, Montana, and then through another canyon to the Three Forks of the Missouri.

  Fig 2.5 A view of the Three Forks (headwaters) of the Missouri River, looking south. DeCamp was the photographer who accompanied Olin D. Wheeler on his search for Lewis and Clark campsites through the Lolo country. Photo by R. E. DeCamp, Courtesy, Montana Historical Society Research Center, Helena.

  Today, Interstate 90 climbs out of the valley about fifteen miles west of the town of Three Forks before dropping down to the Jefferson River Valley, at the foot of which is the town of Whitehall. U.S. 87 and Montana Highway 2, however, remain on the water grade of the Jefferson River canyon and on the expedition’s original route. From near Whitehall, the group continued in a southwesterly direction to Twin Bridges, Montana, close to where the Beaverhead, Ruby, and Big Hole rivers come together to form the Jefferson. (Lewis and Clark named the latter two the “Philanthropy” and “Wisdom” rivers, respectively.) A dozen miles south of Twin Bridges they came upon Beaverhead Rock, which—as noted earlier—Sacagawea recognized, thereby assuring them that they were on the right track. They were moving up one of several valleys in southwestern Montana that run generally north from the Continental Divide. Yet the Divide was also directly west because the crest of the Bitterroot Mountain range, along which the Divide runs for some distance, turns dramatically to the northwest. From the Great Falls, the elevation had risen 2,000 feet by the time the explorers reached Beaverhead Rock. The streams were becoming narrower and shallower, and the two captains were convinced that they would soon arrive at the point where the Missouri River’s main tributary rose on the Divide itself. Still, there had been no sign of the Shoshone Indians, Sacagawea’s people, from whom they desperately hoped to obtain horses on which to cross the last range of the Rockies.

  On August 9 Lewis, accompanied by four men—including the hunter Drouillard—walked on ahead of the main party, which was toiling up the Beaverhead River south of Dillon, Montana, to locate a band of the Shoshone. Lewis named the two imposing rocks that marked the entrance to the Beaverhead River canyon just south of Dillon “Rattlesnake Cliffs.” The route through the canyon is now followed by I-15. At the juncture where the Red Rock River joined with Horse Prairie Creek to form the Beaverhead, the men turned west through the broad Horse Prairie Valley, where they spotted Indians who quickly retreated into the mountains. Lewis and his men followed, climbing to the summit of Gibbons Pass on the Continental Divide. It was not actually the “most distant” tributary of the Missouri River but tiny Trail Creek, which leads almost to the summit, that gave the men an opportunity to finally “straddle” the mighty Missouri. From the largely bare crest of the Divide, they gazed westward into Idaho.

  The Missouri segment of the outward journey had ended, but any expectations that the expedition would be able to easily slip down the Pacific slope to the Columbia River on tributaries were quickly dashed. In his entry for August 12, 1805, Lewis reported that he had “discovered immence ranges of high mountains still to the West of us with their tops partially covered with snow.” [V, 74] There would be no easy portage to the Columbia. It became even more urgent to obtain an adequate supply of mounts. Lewis and his men soon encountered a Shoshone band and returned with them to the forks of the Beaverhead, where Clark and the main party arrived to set up Camp Fortunate. After the captains had parleyed with the Shoshone and their chief, Cameahwait (Sacagawea’s brother), the entire group crossed over Lemhi Pass.

  Fig 2.6 Gibbons Pass, where Clark’s party crossed the Continental Divide into the Big Hole Valley of Montana en route to Camp Fortunate and the Yellowstone River in late summer 1806. The (undated) photograph was taken not far from Lost Trail Pass, which the expedition had taken on the outward journey, just before meeting with Flathead (Salish) Indians. Photographer unidentified. Courtesy, Montana Historical Society Research Center, Helena.

  The Shoshone had been among the first Indians in the region that is now Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming to obtain horses from the Spanish Southwest in the mid-eighteenth century. This gave them a major advantage in hunting buffalo and in warfare, and for decades Shoshone bands dominated the plains region north and south of the upper Missouri River. But their power was eventually countered by tribes that possessed firearms. In particular, the Piegan, Blood, and Gros Ventres bands of the Blackfoot Confederacy, which possessed both guns and horses, were effective in pushing back the Shoshone. By the time Lewis and Clark arrived on the Northern Plains, the Lemhi Shoshone band had been forced into the Bitterroot and Beaverhead mountains of eastern Idaho and western Montana. Without guns, they faced great risk in venturing onto the plains to hunt buffalo. Like the Flathead (Salish) Indians to the north, they had to avoid Blackfoot war and hunting parties and return to the protection of the mountains as quickly as possible. Cameahwait’s band, languishing from hunger when the Corps of Discovery arrived, had been about to leave on a hit-and-run attempt to obtain buffalo meat for their village. It is not surprising, then, that Lewis and Clark represented a great opportunity to them. If the Americans would supply the Shoshone with guns and ammunition, Cameahwait’s people would have a chance to equalize power in buffalo country.

  Now on the Pacific side of the Continental Divide, the expedition had to linger for more than two weeks at the Lemhi Shoshone camp near present-day Salmon, Idaho, to bargain for horses. Clark took a small party to see if the westward-flowing Salmon River would provide a water path to the Columbia, but the canyon walls proved to be steep and treacherous and the rapids far too dangerous to attempt to navigate.

  At the beginning of September, members of the Corps of Discovery were forced to move north and re-cross the Bitterroot crest, although they remained on the west side of the Divide. Working their way through heavy timber, they descended f
rom Lost Trail Pass to Ross’s Hole in Montana, where they picked up additional horses from a band of Flathead Indians and struck the Bitterroot River (which they dubbed “Clark’s River”). With them was a Shoshone called Old Toby, who would guide them westward over the mountains further north by way of the Lolo Trail, a pathway used by Nez Perce and other tribes to cross from the plateau country of Oregon and Washington into the buffalo-hunting regions east of the Rockies. The jumping-off point for the Lolo Trail was at a place Lewis and Clark named Traveler’s Rest, down the Bitterroot River past Darby, Hamilton, and Stevensville, Montana. At Traveler’s Rest, near the confluence of the Bitterroot River and Lolo Creek (present-day Lolo, Montana), they stopped on September 9, 1805, to prepare to cross a mountain range whose peaks already showed signs of heavy snowfall.

  After leaving Traveler’s Rest, the explorers began to move west through the narrow valley of Lolo Creek. On September 12, William Clark, with an advance party, encountered hot springs in the vicinity of very large boulders and stony outcroppings. From there to the head of Lolo Creek the trail was often steep or choked with beaver dams or deadfall, but near the summit the terrain opened up as they followed Glade Creek to Packer Meadows, near the point where U.S. Highway 12 crosses Lolo Pass. From this point they could see the higher mountains “Covered with snow.” [V, 203] Their Shoshone guide failed to pick up the Lolo Trail right away, and the expedition followed a path down to Colt-killed Creek (so named because they dined there on a colt after reaching the fork of the Lochsa River). On September 15 the narrowness of the river passage forced them to climb out of the canyon on a steep switchback trail. After several mishaps with horses losing their footing, including one that rolled forty yards down the slope and smashed Clark’s writing desk against a tree, the party reached the top of Wendover Ridge and followed it to the main Lolo Trail. From there Clark wrote, “I could observe high ruged mountains in every direction as far as I could See.” [V, 207] They melted snow for drinking water. Game was virtually nonexistent. This set the stage for the Lolo crossing of the mountains in what is now Idaho and the group’s descent to the Weippe Prairie, which took another ten days and nearly resulted in starvation.

  From the summit of Lolo Pass, the trail proceeds along high mountain ridges—occasionally above the timberline—and past numerous peaks. The men ate horsemeat and powdered soup to survive, nearing starvation before emerging from the mountains onto a broad, rolling plain and practically falling into the laps of Nez Perce Indians camped near the present-day towns of Weippe and Pierce, Idaho. This is rolling prairie, bordered by timbered mountains and cut by chasms formed by the Clearwater River and its forks. Covered at that time by grass meadow broken by patches of pine trees, the Weippe Prairie and the similar Camas Prairie south and west of the Clearwater canyons are now largely planted to grain.

  The Nez Perce, called “Chopunnish” by Lewis and Clark, inhabited villages along the Clearwater, Salmon, and other tributaries of the Snake River and in the Wallawa Valley of northeastern Oregon. Their food-gathering and hunting area included the Blue Mountains to the west, the Bitterroot Range to the east, and the rolling prairie plateaus in between. They seasonally harvested a variety of berries, roots, and the bulbs of the camas flower to process and preserve, and they also fished for salmon. Similar to the Shoshone, the Nez Perce occasionally ventured eastward to the plains to hunt buffalo, although they also lacked the armaments necessary to protect them from the Blackfeet, Crows, and Hidatsas. Well-worn trails through the Bitterroots, including those taken by the expedition, attested to numerous such journeys. The depleted members of the Corps of Discovery could have done little to prevent the Nez Perce party they encountered on the Weippe Prairie from taking their weapons and ammunition. Tribal tradition maintained that an elderly woman (Watkuweis), who had been well treated by whites after they retrieved her from being a slave of the Blackfeet, begged the warriors to spare the men of the expedition. But Chief Twisted Hair and other Nez Perce leaders also likely hoped for a future steady supply of weapons from U.S. traders.17

  After recovering from their ordeal, the members of the expedition dropped down into the canyon of the Clearwater River near Orofino, Idaho, and built five canoes, leaving their horses in the care of the Nez Perce and Chief Twisted Hair. On October 7 the expedition set out on water for the first time since leaving Camp Fortunate. From the mouth of the North Fork of the Clearwater, the group proceeded west to the Snake River at the sites of Lewiston, Idaho, and Clarkston, Washington. The Snake River took them through a segment of the route now flooded by slack water from the Lower Granite and Little Goose dams. Although one canoe struck rocks and was lost, the party made it to the confluence of the Snake and Columbia rivers, at a point just east of the Tri-Cities in Washington, without serious incident. In this vicinity the expedition encountered the villages of the Walula (Walla Walla), Yakima, and Umatilla Indians. Bands of these plateau tribes were harvesting sea-run salmon—their main food supply—and drying the fish in large stacks. The meetings were amicable, particularly with the Walulas, whose Chief Yellepit enthusiastically welcomed the explorers.18

  After hooking southeast in a bend at this point, the Columbia River turns generally westward between the Horse Heaven Hills to the north and the Blue Mountains to the south. Black basalt bluffs rise above both banks of the river, and before irrigation the region was dominated by dry grasslands, juniper, and sagebrush. But just west of The Dalles, Oregon, the Columbia narrows and deepens as it cuts a spectacular gorge through the Cascade Mountains. Above the soaring cliffs the mountains are green with fir and other coniferous trees. From the crest of the Cascades to the Pacific Coast the heavy rainfall has produced thick forests replete with the huge Sitka spruce and Douglas fir trees Lewis marked with astonishment in his journal entries. Today, Interstate 84 follows the south bank of the Columbia from near Hermiston, Oregon, to Portland. Washington State Highway 14 parallels the route on the north bank. Working its way down the Columbia River in late October, the Corps of Discovery was forced to negotiate dangerous rapids at several points, particularly in approaching The Dalles. Celilo Falls near Wishram, Washington, and the Short and Long narrows, which comprised The Dalles, could only be passed by portaging and guiding the dugout canoes with ropes from the bank.

  Fig 2.7 Clearwater River west of Orofino, Idaho, near the spot where the expedition built new dugout canoes for the journey to and down the Columbia River, for which it departed on October 7, 1805. Photo by Peg Owens. Courtesy, Idaho Department of Commerce.

  Fig 2.8 Columbia River east of the gorge. Photo by Jeffrey Phillip Curry. Courtesy, Jeffrey Phillip Curry.

  On October 23, assisted by Indians who fished for salmon from the rock islands, the expedition portaged around Celillo—long called the “Great Falls” of the Columbia—on the north side. Here the group found the great commercial marketplace of the Columbia, presided over by the Wishram Indians on the north bank and the Wasco on the south, where goods from the Pacific coastal region were traded for those from the inland plateau. Not far downstream lay the Short and Long narrows. A day after completing the Celilo portage, the party observed two stretches at which the river was suddenly confined by enormous rocks. The first, a quarter mile long, funneled the entire river through a 45-yard channel. The second, the Long Narrows, William Clark noted as 50 to 100 yards wide, swelling and boiling “with a most Tremendeous manner” over a distance of about three miles. [V, 329] The dugouts and most of the baggage had to be ridden through both of these chutes, as the portage path along the rock faces was narrow. The narrows were not the last river obstacles the group faced. On the first two days of November the party encountered a long series of rapids and chutes, the Cascades, which required similar time-consuming handling of canoes and portaging of supplies.19

  Past the present site of Hood River, Oregon, into the Columbia Gorge, the dry country gave way to timber and green undergrowth as the Corps of Discovery entered the coastal climatic zone. The explorers gazed with wonder
at landmarks that today are among the main attractions of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area: Beacon Rock, Rooster Rock, Phoca (Seal) Rock, and Multnomah Falls. At Vancouver, Washington, north of Portland, Oregon, the Columbia River turns to the north and then, near Longview, Washington, west once more to the Pacific. By November 7, near Pillar Rock, the expedition was close enough to the mouth of the Columbia to hear ocean breakers. In his journal Clark wrote, “Great joy in camp we are in View of the Ocian.” [VI, 33, 34n9] But what they were actually seeing was the wide Columbia estuary; there was still some distance to travel. At Chinook Point on the Washington side the expedition beached its canoes and sent exploratory parties out along the shore of Baker’s Bay (“Haley’s Bay”) to the hook-like peninsula dubbed “Cape Disappointment” and through the vicinity of Ilwaco and Long Beach.

  The company, whose members—including Sacagawea and York—voted on the issue, elected to spend the winter of 1805–1806 not in Baker’s Bay but instead across the estuary on the banks of the Netul (now Lewis and Clark) River, south of Astoria, Oregon. There they built Fort Clatsop and made forays to the ocean’s coast near Cannon Beach and Seaside to see a beached whale and to set up a salt works to produce salt from seawater. Bad weather, much of which was rain or fog, plagued them and made it difficult to preserve game. To acquire game, in fact, they had to range further and further from Fort Clatsop. Much of their food, including wappato roots and fatty “candle fish,” had to be obtained by trading with the local Clatsop Indian tribe. Other Chinookian-speaking peoples in the vicinity included the tribe Lewis and Clark called the Wahiakkums, north of the Columbia estuary, and the Tillamooks down the coast to the south of Fort Clatsop. But the members of the Corps of Discovery found trading with the Clatsops more congenial.