Lewis and Clark

by Ralph K. Andrist

  They opened the caches at the mouth of the Marias River and discovered their contents in fair condition, although the red pirogue had decayed too much to be repaired. Freeing the horses, Lewis and his men set out down the Missouri in the rain, eager to leave the danger behind and rejoin their comrades at the mouth of the Yellowstone.

  On August 7, they arrived at the Yellowstone River, expecting to meet Clark’s party, but the only sign of the captain was a note saying that the party had moved downriver because hunting was poor, and the mosquitoes were bad.

  Four days later, still behind Clark, Lewis and Cruzatte went ashore, where Lewis killed an elk. But the captain himself was injured during the hunt. “We reloaded our guns and took different routs through the thick willows in pursuit of the Elk,” Lewis wrote. “I was in the act of firing on the Elk a second time when a ball struck my left thye about an inch below my hip joint, missing the bone it passed through the left thye and cut the thickness of the bullet across the hinder part of the right thye; the stroke was very severe.”

  “Damn you, you have shot me,” Lewis cried out, guessing that Cruzatte had mistaken him for an elk in the dense brush, since the captain wore elk skins and the waterman was blind in one eye and nearsighted in the other. But when Cruzatte did not answer, the alarming thought occurred that an Indian had shot him. Shouting to Cruzatte to go back to the boats, Lewis retreated as fast as his painful wound would permit, calling to the men to arm themselves. His pain so intense that he could not lead the men back to rescue Cruzatte, he directed them to go on, stumbled back to the boats, and with his pistol, rifle, and air gun, prepared “to sell my life as deerly as possible.”

  It did not come to that. In twenty minutes, the men returned with Cruzatte, having seen no sign of Indians. And although the waterman denied hearing Lewis call to him, it was plain to all that he had shot his captain by mistake and was too embarrassed to admit it.

  Fortunately for Lewis, the bullet missed bone and artery, but the captain was in excruciating pain.

  The following day, two fur traders from Illinois told them Clark had passed by only the day before. Lewis and his men hurried on expectantly.

  After the two parties separated at Traveler’s Rest on July 3, Clark and twenty men, Sacagawea, the baby, and fifty horses started up the Bitterroot River. But instead of taking the previous year’s route across Lemhi Pass, they found an easier and more direct trail farther north and crossed the Continental Divide at what was later named Gibbon’s Pass.

  On July 8, they reached the forks of the Jefferson, where they had sunk their canoes and cached supplies the previous August. The cache contained tobacco, and the men, who had been without any for at least six months, Clark wrote, “become so impatient to be chewing it that they scercely gave themselves time to take their saddles off . . . before they were off to the deposit.” The tobacco and the rest of the cached goods were safe, and although one canoe had a hole in it, it was reparable.

  It took two days to get the canoes ready, but once they were afloat, the trip downriver was a fast one. They arrived at the Three Forks in only three days. At that point, Sergeant Ordway and nine men paddled five canoes and most of the baggage downriver to meet Lewis’s men and portage around the rapids while Clark, with ten men, Sacagawea, and the baby set out overland toward the Yellowstone River.

  This was familiar country to Sacagawea. The Shoshones regularly hunted in the area, and she had been there many times when she was a child. Without hesitation, she directed Clark along a fork of the Gallatin River, then over a pass later named Bozeman Pass in a dividing ridge. “The indian woman, who has been of great service to me as a pilot through this country, recommends a gap in the mountains more south, which I shall cross,” Clark noted. On the other side, they followed a small stream downhill, and some ten miles farther on, the stream joined the deep and broad Yellowstone River.

  The only hardship on the fifty-mile journey was suffered by their horses, whose hoofs were worn to the quick by the stony ground. Clark solved this problem by having “Mockersons made of green [untanned] Buffalow Skin and put on their feet which seams to releve them very much.”

  They followed the river downstream for four days, seeking timber large enough to make canoes. The two largest cottonwoods they found would make canoes about twenty-eight feet long and barely two feet wide - a tight squeeze for Clark’s party and its baggage. But Clark had no other choice and hoped to give his dugouts extra strength by lashing two together. Work began on July 20. That night, roving Indians stole twenty-four of their fifty horses.

  By July 23, the canoes were completed. Most of the party embarked the next morning. Sergeant Pryor, Shannon, and Windsor took the remaining horses overland to the Mandan villages to barter for trading goods that might persuade the Sioux chiefs to visit Washington - the captains were still hoping to end the Sioux threat to existing and potential river traffic on the Missouri.

  With the current behind it, the double canoe covered the miles swiftly, and before evening, the party overtook Pryor. The sergeant was having troubles. Whenever they came near a herd of buffalo, the horses, trained by the Indians to hunt, would break loose and surround the animals. Pryor needed a man to ride ahead and scare away the buffalo before the horses came up. Hugh Hall, who could not swim, volunteered for the job, and the two groups went their separate ways.

  On July 25, Clark’s canoe party stopped to examine a rock tower rising 200 feet above the flat plains. Clark, who enjoyed leaving his name on trees as a record of his visit, seized the opportunity to carve “Wm. Clark July 25 1806” on the rock face, already decorated with Indian drawings. He christened the tower “Pomp” after Sacagawea’s baby. To this day, it is known as Pompey’s Pillar, and Clark’s signature can still be seen. Clark also named a nearby creek Baptiste, after the boy’s real name.

  Two days later, the Rocky Mountains, which had been continuously in view since May 1, finally vanished in the distance behind them. Clark noted the tremendous quantity of buffalo, which were then in mating season and bellowed incessantly. Elk herds rested near the river, barely twenty paces away, and they saw several beavers, which would soon bring many trappers in search of pelts.

  By the time they reached the junction of the Yellowstone and the Missouri on August 3, the mosquitoes were so thick that the men could neither hunt nor work. At night, with only their worn blankets for protection, the men could scarcely endure the pain. The next afternoon, after leaving a note for Lewis, they went downriver a few miles to camp on a sand bar, but even there got no relief. The baby’s face was puffed and swollen from the stings, and sleep was almost impossible. They continued slowly down the river, blessing every gust of wind that kept the mosquitoes off.

  On August 8, they were surprised to see Sergeant Pryor and his three men floating down the river toward them in two bullboats - round, basin-shaped craft like those used by the Mandans. With them came the sad news that the Indians had stolen the rest of the horses. Left afoot on the plains, the men had hiked to the river at Pompey’s Pillar and made their odd craft by killing a couple of buffalo and stretching their hides over frameworks of saplings.

  Three days later, the party met Joseph Dickson and Forest Hancock, the two fur trappers Lewis would see the following day, and learned that the peace the captains had arranged between the Mandans and Hidatsa Minnetarees and the Arikaras had not lasted long, and the two sides were at war once more.

  At 1:00 p.m. on August 12, Clark’s party was overtaken by Lewis’s boats. Finding Lewis in the pirogue, they were alarmed to discover that he had been injured. Clark dressed his wound and confirmed that, though painful, it was not dangerous. Lewis, who had kept up his journal while immobilized, made one last entry and thankfully abandoned his duties to Clark. While they were camping and exchanging news, Dickson and Hancock caught up with them; the trappers wanted to revisit the Mandans.

  It took only two more days to reach the Minnetaree and Mandan villages, where the explorers received a joyful rece
ption. Clark pleaded with some of the chiefs to accompany the party to Washington, but the Indians resisted, insisting that they would never make it through the Sioux alive. At last, however, Clark convinced a Mandan chief named Sheheke, or Big White, to make the trip.

  Clark scolded the Minnetaree and Mandan chiefs for breaking the peace with the Arikara. They agreed to try again and asked him to tell the Arikaras that they could come and visit without fear.

  Private John Colter now came to the captains and asked to be discharged from the service. Dickson and Hancock had invited him to join their trapping venture up the Missouri, and Colter, who had seen the big sky and the wide land, had no desire to return to civilization. The captains agreed to discharge him, provided that no one else wanted the same privilege. No one did. “We gave Jo Colter Some Small articles which we did not want and some powder & lead. the party also gave him several articles which will be usefull to him on his expedition,” wrote Clark.

  Charbonneau was also paid off, since there would be no further interpreting duties for him or for Sacagawea. Clark, who had grown quite fond of little Pomp, offered to take Charbonneau’s son, “a butifull promising child who is 19 months old to which they both himself & wife wer willing provided the child had been weened. they observed that in one year the boy would be sufficiently old to leave his mother & he would then take him to me if I would be so freindly as to raise the child for him in such a manner as I thought proper, to which I agreed &c.”

  On August 17, they started on their way again, and four days later, arrived at the first Arikara village. After renewing friendships, Clark brought up the matter of the broken peace agreement, and the Arikaras met with Big White, the Mandan chief, and agreed to peace again.

  As August drew to an end, Clark noted that “my worthy friend Capt. Lewis is recovering fast,” although he later tried to walk too soon and had a brief relapse. On August 30, a number of Teton Sioux hailed them from shore, but Clark lectured them on their bad conduct two years before and refused to have anything to do with them. On September 4, they stopped to visit Floyd’s grave and found that Indians had buried a chief’s son with Floyd to share his journey to another world. Distressed, they reburied their comrade more securely.

  But news from home was perhaps just as valuable to these men, who had been disconnected from family and civilization for so many months. They learned happily that their great benefactor, Thomas Jefferson, had won re-election. While they had been gone, the United States had waged, and won, a war against Tripoli – one of four Barbary States in North Africa – over the piracy of American merchant ships. There were more disturbing developments: Two Indians, they learned, had been found guilty of murder in St. Louis and hanged, and two prominent American politicians, Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, had fought a duel that left Hamilton dead.

  The party was most disturbed to hear that it had been given up as lost or dead by most of the people back east. One trader, noted John Ordway, “informed us that the people in general” in the United States “were concerned about us, as they had heard we were all killed. Then again, they heard that the Spanyards had us in the mines [of Mexico].” After a similar conversation, Clark was encouraged that while the expedition had been “almost forgotten” by most, “the President of the U. States had yet hopes of us.”

  In fact, Jefferson had already sent two more parties to explore other parts of the Louisiana Territory. Zebulon Pike, an American brigadier general, led an expedition south and west into Colorado, where it was stalled and thrown off track by a mountain later named Pike’s Peak. Another expedition – led by astronomer Thomas Freeman and botanist Peter Custis – had started up the Red River near Natchez, Mississippi, in April. Both parties were eventually intercepted by Spanish troops.

  As the Lewis and Clark Expedition raced downstream, with the current behind them, Clark noted their mileage in his journal, and the word “only” began to appear even before figures of sixty or seventy miles a day.

  On September 20, the party raised a happy shout at seeing cows on the bank. Shortly afterward, they spotted La Charrette, the last settlement they had seen on their way upriver and now the first on their return. They stopped overnight as the guests of two young traders.

  The next day, they reached St. Charles, and “the party rejoiced at the Sight . . . plyed thear ores with great dexterity,” Clark wrote. Saluting their friends with three rounds from their muzzle-loaders, the men were met by excited townspeople. After the Mandan chief Sheheke had been outfitted with some clothes from “the publick store,” their boats left the Missouri and were swept down the Mississippi the short distance to St. Louis.

  On September 23, 1806, the whole town turned out to welcome the “Robinson Crusoes - dressed entirely in buckskins,” as one newspaper account described them. “About 12 oClock we arrived in Site of St. Louis,” Private John Ordway recorded. “Fired three Rounds as we approached . . . and landed oppocit the center of the Town. The people gathered on the Shore and Huzzared three cheers. We unloaded the canoes and carried the baggage all up to a Store house in Town. Drew out the canoes, then the party all considerable much rejoiced that we have the Expedition Completed. And now we look for boarding in Town and wait for our Settlement, and then we entend to return to our native homes to See our parents once more, as we have been So long from them.”

  Two years and four months after it had begun, the journey was over. Lewis wrote a note to detain the United States mails at Cahokia for his first thrilling dispatch to Jefferson. “[Mr. President], It is with pleasure that I announce to you the safe arrival of myself and party . . .,” Lewis wrote on September 23. “In obedience to your orders we have penitrated the Continent of North America to the Pacific Ocean.”

  Three days later, Clark made the final entry in his journal: “a fine morning. we commenced wrighting &c.”

  Lewis’s report to Jefferson went into great detail about the journey’s hardships. But the captain did not dwell on the disappointment over failing to find a continuous waterway to the Pacific Ocean. Instead, they had discovered, “the passage by land of 340 miles from the Missouri (over the Continental Divide) is the most formidable part of the tract proposed across the Continent; of this distance 200 miles is along a good road, and 140 over tremendious mountains which for 60 [miles] are covered with eternal snows.” Still, Lewis struck a positive tone, noting the abundance of horses which could be purchased from Indians which “reduces the expences of transportation over this portage to a mere trifle.”

  Lewis reported to the president on the potential of the route for “a most lucrative trade” in furs. He predicted that, with even very limited government aid, “in the course of ten or twelve years a tour across the Continent by the rout mentioned will be undertaken by individuals with as little concern as a voyage across the Atlantic is at present.”

  The president’s choice to lead this expedition made sure to praise Clark, “that esteemable man” for his “exertions and services rendered.” To Jefferson, Lewis noted “if . . . any credit be due for the success of that arduous enterprize in which we have been mutually engaged, he is equally with myself entitled to your consideration and that of our common country.” Of all they did accomplish, Lewis noted, the good health of the men in the party “is not, I assure you, to me one of the least pleasing considerations of the Voyage.”

  Jefferson responded “with unspeakable joy” to Lewis’s letter, acknowledging that he had begun to fear the worst.

  “The unknown scenes in which you were engaged & the length of time without hearing of you had begun to be felt awfully,” the president wrote. “I salute you with sincere affection.”

  News of the expedition’s return – and more rumors about the trials they had endured - spread quickly. Newspapers reported tales of Indians overrunning the Continent west of the Rocky Mountains; one carried the claim that even the poorest among the tribes owned as many as 300 horses. Other reports described the “wonders” that filled the expedition’s crates:
the eighty-pound horns of the Rocky Mountain sheep, “several skins of Sea Otter . . . the native sheep of America . . . [and] the Mule deer.”

  The people clamored for details, and Jefferson pressured Lewis to publish his journals. “Never did a similar event excite more joy through the United States,” Jefferson wrote. “The humblest of citizens had taken a lively interest in the issue of the journey, and looked forward with impatience for the information it would furnish.”

  At St. Louis, the tough, disciplined group of young men who made this achievement possible broke up. Once Lewis paid off his men, he and Clark journeyed together as far as Louisville, Kentucky, where Clark stopped to visit relatives. Lewis continued his triumphant journey east, arriving in Washington just after Christmas.

  On January 10, 1807, Lewis attended a gala at the White House for the “King and Queen of the Mandans” - that is, Sheheke and his wife. Four days later, Lewis was the guest of honor at a Washington banquet. Clark, who was supposed to have shared in the honors, was then in Virginia, wooing a young lady named Julia Hancock, who had been in his thoughts throughout the expedition. Clark called her “Judy,” mistaking that for her given name. On the expedition west, he had named the Judith River, in present-day Montana, for her.

  As well as voting double pay for each member of the party, Congress proposed to give 320 acres of land to each enlisted man, 1,000 acres to Clark, and 1,600 to Lewis. Lewis, however, refused the offer. He had promised Clark before they left that their rewards would be equal, and at his urging, Congress awarded each captain 1,600 acres. There would be other rewards: A statue of Lewis was commissioned and given a place of honor in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, and poems were written about the explorers’ heroism.