Dreams of El Dorado

by H. W. Brands

  4

  TO THE PACIFIC

  THE CORPS GOT AWAY FROM FORT MANDAN IN EARLY April. Lewis swelled with pride as they embarked into the unknown. To this point they had covered territory white men before them had seen; from here west, they would traverse territory unknown to all but the natives. He grandly but understandably likened himself to other great explorers. “Our vessels consisted of six small canoes and two large pirogues,” he wrote in his journal. “This little fleet although not quite so respectable as those of Columbus or Capt. Cook were still viewed by us with as much pleasure as those deservedly famed adventurers ever beheld theirs; and I dare say with quite as much anxiety for their safety and preservation. We were now about to penetrate a country at least two thousand miles in width, on which the foot of civilized man had never trodden; the good or evil it had in store for us was for experiment yet to determine, and these little vessels contained every article by which we were to expect to subsist or defend ourselves.” Lewis understood that peril and testing lay ahead. Yet he was thrilled. “Entertaining as I do, the most confident hope of succeeding in a voyage which had formed a darling project of mine for the last ten years, I could but esteem this moment of our departure as among the most happy of my life.”

  Their immediate goal was the Rocky Mountains, the western boundary of Louisiana and the gateway to Oregon. Virginians Jefferson and Lewis, envisioning mountains like the Alleghenies, supposed that but a modest distance separated the headwaters of the Missouri from the tributaries of the Columbia. The corps would ascend the Missouri until the canoes could go no farther; then they would carry the boats and their cargoes across the ridge, place them into a westering stream, and proceed rapidly to the Pacific.

  But the Rockies proved frustratingly elusive. The Missouri had completed its upstream westward bend, giving the Americans the satisfaction of knowing they were finally headed straight toward the mountains, yet week after week the landscape through which they toiled remained wide and almost level. They saw buffalo by the many thousands, and elk and antelope in lesser numbers. They found plenty of beaver, whose fur—the object of the trade Jefferson sought to wrest from the British and Canadians—Lewis pronounced to be of the finest quality. They doubted the stories the Indians told of terrible grizzly bears, until some of the party encountered the beasts and almost didn’t live to relate the meetings.

  During the winter with the Mandans, Lewis had inquired about the rivers that entered the Missouri; one, the Yellowstone, was described to him in terms that caused him to think of it as central to American policy for the entire region. “We are informed that there is a sufficiency of timber near the mouth of this river for the purpose of erecting a fortification, and the necessary buildings,” Lewis wrote, for Jefferson’s eyes. “In point of position, we have no hesitation in declaring our belief of its being one of the most eligible and necessary that can be chosen on the Missouri, as well in a governmental point of view as that of affording to our citizens the benefit of a most lucrative fur trade. This establishment might be made to hold in check the views of the British North West Company on the fur-trade of the upper part of the Missouri.” Lewis had heard that the North West Company was aiming to establish a trading post in the region, and he warned about the consequences. “If this powerful and ambitious company are suffered uninterruptedly to prosecute their trade with the nations inhabiting the upper portion of the Missouri, and thus acquire an influence with those people, it is not difficult to conceive the obstructions which they might hereafter, through the medium of that influence, oppose to the will of our government or the navigation of the Missouri.”

  Consequently, Lewis was delighted on reaching the Yellowstone and discovering that it matched his vision. “This morning I walked through the point formed by the junction of the rivers,” he wrote in the journal entry for April 27. “The woodland extends about a mile, when the rivers approach each other within less than half a mile; here a beautiful level low plain commences and extends up both rivers for many miles, widening as the rivers recede from each other, and extending back half a mile to a plain about 12 feet higher than itself.” He located a promising spot for the fort he projected. “On the Missouri about 2½ miles from the entrance of the Yellowstone river, and between this high and low plain, a small lake is situated about 200 yards wide extending along the edge of the high plain parallel with the Missouri about one mile. On the point of the high plain at the lower extremity of this lake I think would be the most eligible site for an establishment.”

  The good news made him more eager than ever to reach the Rockies. But still the great dividing range continued to elude him. Physics and geography decreed that it must exist; a height of land of one sort or another separated Atlantic-bound waters from those destined for the Pacific. White traders and travelers had glimpsed the range from a distance, with its unforested peaks giving rise to the name Stony or Rocky Mountains. Yet for maddening months it refused to reveal itself to Lewis and Clark.

  Finally the moment came. At the end of May, while Clark and the men in the boats struggled wearily against the Missouri’s current, Lewis sought a vantage above the stream. “On arriving to the summit of one of the highest points in the neighbourhood I thought myself well repaid for any labour, as from this point I beheld the Rocky Mountains for the first time,” he wrote in the journal. He could see only the highest peaks, but there was no mistaking their identity. “These points of the Rocky Mountains were covered with snow and the sun shone on it in such manner as to give me the most plain and satisfactory view.”

  Lewis was torn by conflicting emotions. “While I viewed these mountains I felt a secret pleasure in finding myself so near the head of the heretofore conceived boundless Missouri; but when I reflected on the difficulties which this snowy barrier would most probably throw in my way to the Pacific, and the sufferings and hardships of myself and party in them, it in some measure counterbalanced the joy I had felt in the first moments in which I gazed on them.” He determined to focus on the positive. “As I have always held it a crime to anticipate evils, I will believe it a good comfortable road until I am compelled to believe differently.”

  COMPULSION CAME SOON. LEWIS STILL IMAGINED AN EASY portage from the headwaters of the Missouri to those of the Columbia, even after hearing from the Indians downstream about a great falls of the Missouri. He knew the Great Falls of the Ohio, a river of comparable size to the Missouri, and knew that the Ohio falls were really but rapids, which disappeared when the Ohio was in flood and otherwise dictated a portage of mere hundreds of yards.

  Lewis discovered that the falls of the Missouri were something quite different. He and one of the men had set out ahead of the boats on the morning of June 13, cutting across a neck of land. “I had proceeded on this course about two miles with Goodrich at some distance behind me when my ears were saluted with the agreeable sound of a fall of water, and advancing a little further I saw the spray arise above the plain like a column of smoke,” he wrote. The sound grew louder as they approached the top of a ridge, from which he saw the falls. “I hurried down the hill which was about 200 feet high and difficult of access, to gaze on this sublimely grand spectacle. I took my position on the top of some rocks about 20 feet high opposite the center of the falls. This chain of rocks appear once to have formed a part of those over which the waters tumbled, but in the course of time has been separated from it to the distance of 150 yards lying parallel to it and forming an abutment against which the water after falling over the precipice beats with great fury.” The smooth sheet of water at the top of the falls became a howling maelstrom at the bottom. “The irregular and somewhat projecting rock below receives the water in its passage down and breaks it into a perfect white foam which assumes a thousand forms in a moment.… The water after descending strikes against the abutment before mentioned or that on which I stand and seems to reverberate, and being met by the more impetuous current they roll and swell into half-formed billows of great height which rise and again
disappear in an instant.”

  Lewis now realized that these falls posed a challenge of a different order than the falls of the Ohio; what he did not realize was that he was looking at but one of five leaps the Missouri made from the mountains to the plains. Surmounting the series of falls eventually consumed a month of the most arduous work the corps had done on the journey so far. Long before the boats and the last of the cargo had cleared the final rise, the men’s feet were bloody and torn from the rocks and cactus they had trod over in worn-out moccasins.

  With the Rockies still towering in the distance, the portage thoroughly disabused Lewis of the notion of a convenient water route across the continent. His own corps would soon have to abandon the boats for horses, if horses could be found; future travelers would have to make similar accommodations. Though Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t realize it for many months, on this June morning in 1805 the president’s vision of an easy route to the Pacific wafted away on the mists Lewis saw rising from the falls of the Missouri.

  LEWIS HAD BEEN TOLD THE SHOSHONES WERE A HORSE PEOPLE who frequented the territory between the falls and the Rockies; now that he knew their horses were essential, the search for them grew intense. But the Shoshones could not be found. Sacagawea started to recognize landmarks from her youth, before she had been stolen by the Hidatsas, so Lewis and the others knew they were in the right place. “The Indian woman recognized the point of a high plain to our right, which she informed us was not very distant from the summer retreat of her nation on a river beyond the mountains which runs to the west,” Lewis wrote in the journal for August 8. “This hill she says her nation calls the Beaver’s Head from a conceived resemblance of its figure to the head of that animal. She assures us that we shall either find her people on this river or on the river immediately west of its source, which from its present size cannot be very distant.”

  Lewis took a few men and went ahead of the main party, determined to find the Shoshones and their horses. On August 13 they made contact, first with some women and then with a mounted war party. The warriors were distrustful, never having seen white men, but Lewis conspicuously put down his rifle and advanced alone. He had given some modest gifts to the women, who told the warriors of his largesse. Their leaders considered the matter for a moment, then decided that the white men could be friends—or at least suppliers of weapons and other useful items. “Both parties now advanced and we were all caressed and besmeared with their grease and paint till I was heartily tired of the national hug,” Lewis remarked.

  When the rest of the corps joined Lewis, a most remarkable thing happened. Sacagawea discovered that the leader of this Shoshone band was her long-lost brother, Cameahwait—or, rather, she was his long-lost sister. She ran to him and threw her arms around him, weeping tears of joy. He responded with the reserve becoming a chief, but the warmth of the reunion convinced Lewis and Clark that the Shoshones would be friends indeed.

  Yet they were also canny traders. From their ample herds they supplied the Americans more than two dozen horses, but the price in trade goods of the horses rose as the Shoshones discovered how desperately the explorers needed the animals. Lewis grumbled, yet paid the price, judging the horses absolutely essential to the success of the mission.

  HE DIDN’T KNOW HOW RIGHT HE WAS. AT THE BEGINNING OF September the corps tackled the Bitterroot Mountains, a wild stretch of the Rockies avoided even by the locals. Lewis enlisted a Shoshone guide, but the trail he traced was steep, rugged, and in places treacherous for man and beast. It grew so faint that the guide lost the trail and they had to backtrack. Game animals shunned the region as much as the Indians did; soon the men were marching on short rations. Early snows—it was only September—chilled the men; rain soaked them when the snow abated. Dysentery spread among the corps, weakening and discouraging the men further. Lewis began wondering if they would have to give up and try an entirely different route, but by this time he didn’t know if they had the strength to get out of the mountains by the way they had come. He decided to press forward.

  Out of food, they began killing the horses to eat them. The men staggered on, counting the horses and estimating the number of days these new rations might last. “I have been wet and as cold in every part as I ever was in my life,” Clark wrote on one grueling day in mid-September. “Indeed I was at one time fearful my feet would freeze in the thin moccasins which I wore.”

  At length they broke out of the mountains and emerged into a level, park-like patch. In the distance they saw a village of Indians the guide identified as Nez Perce. This was most welcome, as the Nez Perce were a people of the western slope of the mountains. The Indians offered the starving wanderers dried salmon, which they ate greedily. They soon regretted doing so, for after weeks of hunger, the rich flesh of the salmon wreaked havoc on their bowels, leaving them groaning in agony.

  But as their distress diminished, they realized for the first time that their goal was within reach. The journey had been uphill and upstream the entire way from St. Louis; gravity had been their constant foe. From this point forward, the route was downhill and downstream; gravity was their friend. They made canoes out of pine trees and on October 7 set off down the swift-flowing Clearwater River.

  Three days carried them to the Snake River; another week brought them to the Columbia. The miles flew past: three days more yielded sight of the Cascade Mountains. “I ascended a high cliff about 200 feet above the water, from the top of which is a level plain extending up the river and off for a great extent,” Clark wrote on October 19. “At this place the country becomes low on each side of the river, and affords a prospect of the river and country below for great extent both to the right and left. From this place I discovered a high mountain of immense height covered with snow. This must be one of the mountains laid down by Vancouver, as seen from the mouth of the Columbia River. From the course which it bears, which is west, I take it to be Mt. St. Helens.” Clark was almost right: the mountain was Mount Adams, the nearer and taller neighbor of Mount St. Helens. Both had been named by the British naval commander George Vancouver, who had seen them from the lower Columbia a decade earlier. But either way, Clark and the others realized that they were within two sightlines of the ocean. At their present pace of travel, the Pacific was just days away.

  Yet they couldn’t keep it up. Lewis had reckoned, even before reaching the Continental Divide, that the Columbia and its tributaries must be swifter and more turbulent than the Missouri. From the elevation of the divide to sea level took the Missouri and then the Mississippi four thousand miles to accomplish; the Columbia achieved the same descent in a quarter of that distance. The current in the Clearwater and Snake was thrillingly rapid in some places, frighteningly so elsewhere, but the expedition passed the rough spots without serious incident.

  The cataracts of the Columbia were a different beast. During the eons in which the Cascade Mountains had been rising, driven upward by the crumpling pressure of tectonic plates, the Columbia had been carving a channel through them. The Columbia Gorge remained a work in progress, with the heavy labor commencing at Celilo Falls. “The country on both sides of the river here is high, and the bluffs rocky,” Patrick Gass wrote. “For three miles down, the river is so confined by rocks (being not more than 70 yards wide) that it cannot discharge the water as fast as it comes over the falls, until what is deficient in breadth is made up in depth. About the great pitch the appearance of the place is terrifying, with vast rocks, and the river below the pitch, foaming through different channels.” The expedition portaged around the falls, carrying cargo and canoes past the cataract and reloading at the base.

  They had company in making the passage—more company than they wanted. The falls and rapids of the Columbia were the epicenter of the salmon fishery of the region, drawing Indians from far and near to trade for the dried fish. The Americans arrived after the height of the spawn, but the rotting carcasses and the general debris of the seasonal market gave an indication of the extent of the commerce. Hu
ndreds of Indians remained on the banks of the river, observing with curiosity and humor the labors of the white men in getting their boats and goods past the falls. Some helped, and helped themselves to whatever the Americans didn’t guard zealously. “The natives are very troublesome about our camp,” Charles Ordway remarked in his journal.

  Salmon fishing at Celilo Falls. This photograph is from the twentieth century, but the Indians’ practice of catching salmon as they struggled past the choke point on the Columbia River hadn’t changed for a thousand years.

  Lewis dealt even more carefully with the Columbia Indians than he had with the tribes on the Missouri. He was acutely aware that ever since crossing the Rockies he and the corps had been in an international no-man’s-land, where British traders had as much right to operate as Americans. That they had indeed been operating in the region was evident from the manufactured goods the Indians along the river possessed: copper bracelets, iron kettles, a blue sailor’s jacket. In time the United States might win title to the lands along the Columbia and then be able to impose its will on the natives of the region, but for now, persuasion, rather than coercion, was required. Lewis gave presents to the chiefs and swallowed his annoyance at the spate of petty thefts.

  Below Celilo Falls were the Dalles, a narrow chute into which the wide stream was violently constricted, and the Cascades, a long stretch of rapids. In some places the Americans lowered the canoes by ropes through the furious waters; in others they took their lives in their hands and went through in the boats. Men and cargo were frequently soaked; days were spent drying both.