9. It was not until the captains were back in the States that they learned Jack Ramsay was a deserter from a British trading vessel who had lived for years among the Clatsops. When his son was born, he forbade his squaw to flatten the child’s skull between boards after the local custom. He tattooed his name on his son’s arm, so that thereafter he was also called Jack Ramsay by those who could read. Bakeless, pp. 296–97.
CHAPTER 28 The Whale
1. The journal that Sergeant Pryor kept that winter was never found, nor the ones kept by Privates Frazier and Shannon, nor any of the many Indian vocabularies the captains, especially Lewis, so painfully compiled while at Fort Clatsop.
2. The traders had probably come from the southwest, since whalers and seal hunters usually sailed home by way of Hawaii and China. In China they sold sealskins and beaver fur. These merchants made three profits: first on the goods they exchanged with the Pacific Coast natives for furs; then on the furs they exchanged for Oriental wares, such as silks, china, and wallpaper, which they sold for cash on their return home. John Bakeless, Lewis and Clark, Partners in Discovery. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1947, p. 293.
3. Spuck is the name given to baby otter.
4. Captain Youens and the others did not come in their trading vessels that year. The following year none of these names could be identified by any mariner’s list, but then no complete record was ever kept of ships sailing around the Horn and up the Pacific Ocean between 1780 and 1820. Bakeless, p. 292.
CHAPTER 29 Ahn-cutty
1. Chief Comowool made Fort Clatsop his winter home during the remainder of his life, until 1825. Years passed, and the stockade fell and young trees grew up through the cabins, but the spring is still there, cool and clear.
A small clearing in the woods now marks the original site of Fort Clatsop. On the high bank of the river is a replica of the fort. Old Chief Comowool’s three daughters grew used to white men’s cabins, and they all married white men. Comowool’s grandson, Silas B. Smith, was educated in New Hampshire and became a member of the Oregon bar. John Bakeless, Lewis and Clark, Partners in Discovery. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1947, pp. 304–5.
2. The “Indian Commissions” were paper and perishable. Thus it is remarkable that one of these papers, presented on the return trip to Warchapa, a Teton Sioux, is in the Huntington Library, San Merino, California. It bears the name of the chief and signatures of Lewis as “Captain, First Infantry” and Clark as “Captain on an Expedition for North Western Discovery.”
3. A description of this paper which was nailed inside the Fort Clatsop officers’ quarters is found in Elliott Coues, ed., The History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Vol. III, 1965, p. 903.
Captain Samuel Hill, commander of the brig, Lydia, found a paper inside a leather shirt worn by a Clatsop. Captain Hill took the paper with him to Canton, where he let an American copy it and send the copy to Boston. The copy contained this message:
Captain Hill, while on the coast, met some Indian natives near the mouth of the Columbia river, who delivered to him a paper, of which I enclose you a copy. It had been committed to their charge by captains Clarke and Lewis, who had penetrated to the Pacific ocean. The original is a rough draft with a pen of their outward route, and that which they intended returning by. Just below the junction of Madison’s river, they found an immense fall of three hundred and sixty two feet perpendicular. This, I believe, exceeds in magnitude any other known. Fromthe natives Captain Hill learned that they were all in good health and spirites; had met many difficulties on their progress, from various tribes of Indians, but had found them about the sources of the Missouri very friendly, as were those on Columbia river and the coast. [Bakeless, pp. 292–93, 302; R. G. Ferris, pp. 202, 373; Coues, Vol. III, pp. 903–4.]
4. Somehow the expedition missed, by only a fortnight, the Lydia. This ship was anchored about ten miles up the Columbia River.
5. This flat, green prairie was the future site of Vancouver, Washington.
6. The Shahala village near which the expedition camped was next to the base of Mount Hood at the Sandy River.
7. The artillery fuse was a paper case filled with slow-burning material. It was often called a port fire-match.
8. They were on what is today the Willamette River, where the peaks of Mount Rainier, Hood, St. Helens, Adams, and Jefferson can be seen. The Yakima Indians call these mountains, “the five sisters who scold each other.”
9. Clark tried to measure the bottom of the river, but his instruments could not measure its great depth. Today, international trade ships glide along the deep estuary to the wharves of Portland, Oregon.
10. The Chinooks and other nearby coastal Indians had learned damned rascal, sun of a pitch, and some reputable English such as heave the lead, knife, file, musket, powder, and shot. They knew no other European language according to Lewis and Clark. They didn’t seem to know where traders came from, but they knew they sailed away to the southwest, where both whalers and traders of the day went by way of Hawaii and China. Bakeless, p. 293.
11. When a horse is hobbled his hind legs are tied or one fore and one hind leg are tied together with a short rope. The horse can graze but cannot move around far, so can be easily found.
In later years some men used bells on their horses so they could easily be found. This became dangerousbecause the Indians could steal the horse, ring the bell, and scalp the owner when he arrived.
CHAPTER 30 The Sick Papoose
1. “Imposthume” is an old word for any kind of abscess.
2. The Kooskooskee is the Clearwater River.
3. This sword is probably the same one found between two Walla Walla graves at Cathlamet, Oregon, in 1904, which had the name “Clark” engraved on the scabbard.
4. The Kogohue tribe was probably a part of the Comanche Nation by this time.
5. The villages in the south where horses were raided by the Comanches were Spanish or Mexican.
6. This village kept a breeding stallion enclosed by a high fence built of thick brush. Inside, the sire would have from twenty-five to forty mares per season. The Nez Percés knew that if horses run wild and breed as nature prompts, they will degenerate in size and shape. They knew that the inbred horses were heavy and slow. The Nez Percés bred Appaloosas, which were solid black or brown with a white patch over the hips. Sometimes the patch was interspersed with small round spots of the same color as the body. These crossbred horses were sleek and fast, with more stamina than the inbred variety. Clark noted that the Nez Percés liked horses of a basic solid color with white dots over the entire body, or all white with colored dots. The name of the Palouse River in Idaho and Washington State came from these Appaloosas of the early Nez Percés. R. G. Ferris, pp. 208–9; Mathieson, p. 16; personal communication with Charles Bennett, Phoenix, Ariz., Oct. 2, 1982.
7. Commearp Creek is called Lawyer’s Canyon Creek today.
CHAPTER 31 Retreat
1. Sergeant Charles Floyd was the only casualty of the expedition. He died on August 20, 1804, near the southern edge of what today is Sioux City, Iowa, probably from an infected appendix that was perforated or ruptured.
In 1980 Chuinard wrote “that appendicitis is not adiagnosis that would have entered the minds of either Lewis or Clark. Not long after the Expedition, appendicitis was recognized, but it was years after, that it was treated successfully.” Chuinard goes on to say that “Sergeant Floyd was the first American soldier to be buried west of the Mississippi River.” From E. G. Chuinard, Only One Man Died: The Medical Apsects of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Glendale, CA: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1980, pp. 238–39.
The men of the Lewis and Clark party placed a cedar cross over the grave. In 1811 Henry Brackenridge passed the grave and wrote in his journal, “The grave occupies a beautiful rising ground, now covered with grass and wild flowers. The pretty little river, which bears his name, is neatly fringed with willow and shrubbery…. No one has disturbed the cross; … even Indians who pass, vener
ate the place, and often leave a present as offering near it.” Thwaites, Vol. VI, 1816,1904, p. 85.
Sometime later a Sioux chief camping nearby the grave site lost a son and had him buried in the same grave with Floyd, because of a belief that the white men had a better hereafter. However, when Floyd’s body was moved in 1857 because the Missouri River had cut into the bank of Floyd’s Bluff some of the bones were already lost, so that the story of the young son of the Sioux chief cannot be verified. On August 20,1895, the few bones that had been found and placed in urns were reburied and a concrete slab marker was put over the grave. The Sioux City Museum has a plaster model of Floyd’s skull and a piece of his first coffin. Chuinard, pp. 240–42.
2. Garcia, pp. 132–33, tells how a young woman makes a whistling sound that is carried some distance by cupping her hands to her mouth. She uses this to call her lover. He somehow knows the special sound of her whistle and finds a way to meet her out in the night.
Lowie writes that the Plains Indians used a flutelike stick that was usually carved of wood, hollowed out, with as many as seven holes in it and a whistle type mouthpiece. The males used these flutelike whistles for courting. “A young Assiniboin … a hundred yards” away “could send messages to his girl while she was inside her tipi without her family’s catching on.” He couldwhistle such messages as “I am waiting for you,” “Meet me tomorrow,” “I’ll come again,” or “I am watched,” and “Remain.” From Indians of the Plains, by Robert H. Lowie, pp. 132–33. Natural History Press. Copyright 1954 by the American Museum of Natural History; Mathieson, p. 16; Bents Fort by David Lavender, pp. 174–75. Copyright 1954 by Doubleday and Co., Inc.
3. The camass or quamash was in bloom in the moist valleys. When the horses walked through a bed of these beautiful blue flowers their legs became yellow from the knee down from the thick pollen. The root or bulb is usually dug in early summer. It can be boiled as a potato, made into a thin, crisp bread or a thick biscuit, or eaten raw. It can be stored like potatoes and will keep all winter long in a cool place, if not frozen. Personal communication with Ann Samsell, Somethings Productions, Monmouth, Oregon, during fall 1981,175th Anniversary Lewis and Clark Expedition Re-enactment.
CHAPTER 32 Pompeys Pillar
1. This northeast slope of the Rockies that the explorers descended was in what is now the State of Montana, beyond Glade Creek.
2. Their old camp, Traveler’s Rest, was not far from today’s Missoula, Montana.
3. The first white settlers of Montana came into the Bitterroot Valley. From the Hellgate Pass of the Rockies, above the present site of Missoula, Montana, the bloodthirsty Blackfeet came again and again to attack those first settlers. Old trappers and fur traders said, “It is as safe to enter the gates of hell as to enter that Hellgate Pass.” John Bakeless, Lewis and Clark, Partners in Discovery. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1947, p. 332.
4. The pass from the Jefferson River across the Continental Divide is now known as Gibbon’s Pass. This pass leads down into the Big Hole Valley.
5. Willard Creek is where the first paying gold was to be discovered in Montana.
6. This small timbered area would be the future city limits of Bozeman, Montana.
7. At one time in the nineteenth century, the rivermoved far enough from its bed to lap against this tall, wide rock pillar. Almost every explorer passing this way paused at Pompey’s Tower. The ancient carvings are nearly gone through weathering. Clark carved his name about two-thirds of the way up the side. Today the signature of Clark is somewhat weathered, but it is clearly legible through the glass in the frame that protects it from vandalism and further weathering. Clark commented about the multitudes of mosquitoes in this place. Even today the area is plagued with hordes of mosquitoes.
CHAPTER 33 Big White
1. Joseph Dickson, or Dixon, and Forest Hancock were fur traders. The captains settled accounts with John Colter on August 16, 1806. He stayed in the wilderness for four more years, during which time he discovered the present Yellowstone National Park.
2. Big White and his family were among the first Indians to be received by the President of the United States. Henry M. Brackenridge, an early historian of the West, wrote that Big White rather inclined to corpulency and was a little talkative, which were regarded among the Indians as defects. From Persimmon Hill, by William Clark Kennerly, pp. 18–19. Copyright 1948 by the University of Oklahoma Press.
CHAPTER 34 Good-Byes
1. A year before the expedition left for the west coast, President Jefferson and Captain Lewis, who was the President’s private secretary, worked out a special cipher for coded correspondence, if that kind of communication became necessary. The key word was “artichokes.” There is no evidence that this was used, either in the letters sent back by the keelboat from Fort Mandan, nor in the journals that were brought back to St. Louis by the expedition. Jackson, Vol. I, pp. 9–10; Abrams, 1979, p. 16.
By the summer of 1806, no one in the United States thought that the explorers were still safe and alive, soon to be returning home. The Lewis and Clark Expedition had been given up for lost. There had been no word of them since Corporal Warfington and his men had returned from Fort Mandan in the keelboat nearly two years before.
2. The expedition would no longer need the swivel gun, so on Friday, August 16, 1806, with much ceremony, just before leaving to go downriver, Clark gave it to Kakoakis, the one-eyed chief. Clark told Kakoakis, “When you fire this gun remember the words of your greatfather” to keep peace among the Indians. “The gun was fired and the chief appeared to be much pleased and conveyed it immediately to his village.” From The Journals of Lewis and Clark, edited by Bernard DeVoto, pp. 456–57. Copyright 1953 by Houghton Mifflin Co.
CHAPTER 35 Saint Louis
1. The nearest relatives buried the bones of their deceased after the scaffolding, where the body first rested, decayed and fell to the ground. The skull was bleached white by weathering. It was carefully placed on a bed of wild sage, in the circumference of a circle of skulls on the prairie grass, about ten inches from other skulls on either side. All the skull faces looked inward or at one another. These circles of skulls, just outside the village, were religiously protected and kept in that exact position year after year. Each wife knew the skull of her husband, child, or other relative and visited it every day. She took food out to the prairie and placed it beside the skull, replaced the bed of sage, and talked to the skull. From George Catlin and the Old Frontier, by Harold McCracken, p. 99. Copyright 1959, Crown Publishers, Inc.
2. A. J. Forsyth, a Scottish clergyman, is given credit for discovering the percussion compound that explodes when struck a sharp blow. The compound is mainly potassium chlorate. The chief difference between ordinary powder and fulminate is the amount of percussion needed to produce an explosion and the rapidity of the explosion. Black gunpowder can be ignited by detonation between steel or metal faces, but the explosion is no more violent than if produced by burning splint. A fulminate exploded by percussion exerts a much greater force in less time.
There was always a danger of accidental dischargewhen loading the old muzzle loading gun. The ramming down of a charge carrying dampness gave irregular results. The ramrod broke often. The nipple became rusty and fouled by previous shots and caused misfires. After 1785 a roller bearing was fit to the steel-spring, which reduced friction so that the steel flew back faster and gave more sparks. At this time a swivel linked the mainspring to the tumbler to help reduce friction. Some were fitted with waterproof pans. These consisted of a raised rim over which the pan cover fit and a curved fence behind the pan to protect the shooter’s eye. The pan was punctured with a tiny drainhole.
Even before Forsyth was credited with inventing the percussion system of forearms ignition (but not the percussion cap) there were others at the end of the eighteenth century who had discovered the same principle. Forsyth began his experiments in the Tower of London in 1806. The early experimenters found that sparks would not set off the
fulminate in an open pan, that there had to be a lock that could confine the salt and direct its explosion through a touchhole. By 1805 there were successful locks being sold for use. Greener, pp. 111–12, 119–20, 228.
Forsyth patented his invention in 1807. It was called the “scent-bottle” lock because it had a magazine of fulminate shaped like a perfume bottle, which replaced the old priming pan. By an ingenious action a small amount of compound was detonated by a hammer. The validity of his patent application was disputed because so many others had already been using the same principle. From Encyclopedia of Firearms, edited by Harold L. Peterson. Copyright (c) by George Rainbird Ltd., 1964. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, E. P. Dutton, Inc., p. 138.
3. After using gunpowder the Indians learned to make a fire easily by putting a rag around the point of friction and sprinkling on gunpowder. Hoebel and Wallace say that sometimes the Indians would shoot a gun against a tree where a rag was stuck that had been generously sprinkled with gunpowder. The rag would light and could easily start a fire, especially in wet weather. From The Comanches, Lords of the South
Plains, by Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, p. 90. Copyright 1952 by the University of Oklahoma Press.
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