On the 28th Lewis was very much gratified by seeing an Indian with a round hat and sailor’s jacket, which had come up the river by traffic; and as he went on similar articles became common. They passed a number of different tribes who behaved in a friendly manner, and among others the Eneeshur, at the great falls, interested them by their cooking utensils, which were baskets so skilfully made of bark and grass as to serve as vessels for boiling their provisions. Some of the party were horrified, however, by “the chief, who directed his wife to hand him his medicine bag, from which he brought out fourteen fore-fingers, which he told us had once belonged to the same number of his enemies whom he had killed in fighting.”
On the 31st they came to the lower falls, where the river narrowed to one hundred and fifty yards and fell twenty feet in a distance of four hundred yards, while below was another exceedingly bad rapid. The upper rapid was so filled with rocks that Crusatte, the principal waterman, thought it impracticable, so a portage of four miles was made over the route followed by the Indians. “After their example, we carried our small canoe and all the baggage across the slippery rocks to the foot of the shoot. The four large canoes were then brought down by slipping them along poles placed from one rock to another, and in some places by using partially streams which escaped alongside of the river. We were not, however, able to bring them across without three of them receiving injuries which obliged us to stop at the end of the shoot to repair them.”
On November 2d, Lewis was intensely gratified by the first appearance of tide-water, and pushed on with the greatest eagerness until he reached Diamond Island, where “we met fifteen Indians ascending the river in two canoes; but the only information we could procure from them was that they had seen three vessels, which we presumed to be European, at the mouth of the Columbia.”
As he went on, small parties of Indians in canoes were seen and many small villages, principally of the Skilloots, who were friendly, well disposed, desirous of traffic, and visited so frequently as to be troublesome. One Indian, speaking a little English, said that he traded with a Mr. Haley. The weather had become foggy and rainy, but on November 7, 1805, while pushing down the river below a village of the Wahkiacums, the “fog cleared off and we enjoyed the delightful prospect of the ocean—that ocean, the object of all our labors, the reward of all our anxieties. This cheering view exhilarated the spirits of all the party, who were still more delighted on hearing the distant roar of the breakers, and went on with great cheerfulness.”
Lewis, not content with a sight of the ocean, went on, determined to winter on the coast. A severe storm forced him to land under a high rocky cliff, where the party had scarcely room to lie level or secure their baggage. It “blew almost a gale directly from the sea. The immense waves now broke over the place where we were encamped, and the large trees, some of them five or six feet thick, which had lodged at the point, were drifted over our camp, and the utmost vigilance of every man could scarcely save our canoes from being crushed to pieces. We remained in the water and drenched with rain during the rest of the day, our only food being some dried fish and some rain-water which we caught. Yet, though wet and cold and some of them sick from using salt water, the men are cheerful and full of anxiety to see more of the ocean.” Here they were confined six days, and the rain had lasted ten days, wetting their merchandise through, spoiling their store of dried fish, destroying and rotting their robes and leather dresses.
A series of gales and long-continued rain did not prevent Lewis and Clark from exploring the country for a suitable place for winter quarters. Lewis finally discovered a point of high land on the river Neutel, where a permanent encampment was established which was called Fort Clatsop. It was situated in a thick grove of lofty pines several miles from the sea and well above the highest tide.
The fort consisted of seven wooden huts, which were covered in by the 20th of November and later picketed, so as to afford ample security. The party subsisted principally on elk, of which they killed one hundred and thirty-one. Fish and berries were much used in the early spring. Salt was made in considerable quantities on the sea-shore, and some blubber was secured from a stranded whale, 105 feet in length. In general, the winter passed without serious results, except that the health of some of the men was impaired by the almost constant rains, there being but four days without rain in the first two months.
The conduct of the many Indian tribes with whom they had communication was almost always friendly, and in only one or two cases did even strange Indians from a distance show signs of hostility. The northwest coast had been visited so often that little could be added to the knowledge of their customs and mode of life. One comment of Lewis, is, however, worthy of reproduction. “We have not observed any liquor of an intoxicating quality used among these or any Indians west of the Rocky Mountains, the universal beverage being pure water. They sometimes almost intoxicate themselves by smoking tobacco, of which they are excessively fond, and the pleasure of which they prolong as much as possible by retaining vast quantities at a time, till after circulating through the lungs and stomach, it issues in volumes from the mouth and nostrils.”
It appears surprising that Lewis was ignorant of the discovery of the Columbia River by Captain Robert Gray, for he says that the name Point Adams was given by Vancouver. Further, he was ignorant of the fact that the trade at the mouth of the Columbia was conducted almost entirely by vessels from New England. From the English phrases of the Indian, he knew that the traders must be “either English or American,” and presumed “that they do not belong at any establishment at Nootka Sound.”
The original plan contemplated remaining at Fort Clatsop until April, when Lewis expected to renew his stock of merchandise from the traders who yearly visited the Columbia by ship. Constant rains, however, increased sickness among his men, while game failed to such an extent that they only lived from hand to mouth; and as merchandise lacked wherewith to buy food from the Indians, it became necessary to return. On departing, he left among the Indians a number of notices setting forth briefly the results of his expedition; one of these, through an American trader, reached Boston via China in February, 1807, about six months after Lewis’s own return.