The Making of the Great West, 1512-1883

by Samuel Adams Drake

No shipwrecked wanderer on an unknown sea ever looked with more eagerness on a rescuing sail than Lewis did upon this uncouth and squalid habitation in the wilderness. The Indians would not believe he had crossed the mountains on foot and without guides. At length, however, some of them agreed to go back with him, and these having found his story true, horses and guides were furnished for the white men's use.

Thus equipped, the party began the passage of the mountains, following the obscure windings of a trail known only to the Indians themselves. They found it a hard march. Sometimes it led them through a wild cañon strewed with stones for miles together. Sometimes the caravan would be painfully climbing some slippery height, or skirting the edge of a precipice where a single false step would have flung horse and rider headlong to the bottom of the ravine.

But these active little horses, which the Indians rode without saddle or bridle, unshod and ill-fed as they were, did their work to the admiration of the white men. Though they frequently slipped and fell with their burdens, they would quickly scramble to their feet again with the agility of mountain goats.

Almost a month was thus spent in getting through the mountains. Snow fell, and water froze among those rocky heights. On some days five miles would be the most they could advance. On others they could scarcely go forward at all. The plenty they had enjoyed in the plains gave way to scarcity or worse. Seldom could the hunters bring in any thing but a pheasant, a squirrel, or a hawk, to men famishing with hunger and worn down by a hard day's tramp. The daily food mostly consisted of berries and dried fish, of which every man got a mouthful, but none a full meal. When a horse gave out he was killed and eaten with avidity. The men grew sick and dispirited under incessant labor for which want of nourishing food rendered them every day more and more incapable. In short, every suffering which cold, hunger, and fatigue could bring, was borne by these explorers.

Ragged, half-starved, and foot-sore, but upheld by the courage of their leaders, the explorers came out on the other side of the mountains less like conquerors than fugitives.

Their guides led them on, past many streams, till they came to one on which they were told they might safely embark. It was the Kooskooskee. This was about four hundred miles from the place where they had left their boats on the other side of the mountains. They had struck one of the southern affluents of the Columbia.

Here the party built canoes in which they began to descend the river, leaving their horses with the Nez Percés Indians[4] to keep against their return. In three days this stream led into a larger one to which they gave the name of Lewis River. In seven, they reached the junction of a larger branch coming from the north, which they named the Clarke. They were now fairly afloat upon the great river itself. Down this they paddled till they came to the point where the Columbia in a series of mad leaps breaks through the lofty Cascade chain.[5] These too were safely passed.

It was now late in October. All along the explorers had found camps pitched on the borders of the rivers, for the Indians of this region lived wholly on salmon, like the tribes Mackenzie had fallen in with on Frazer River. Wherever the river was broken by rapids a noted fishing-place would be found, so the travellers were now in a land of plenty; but the farther they fell down, the more squalid the Indians became, and of meaner looks and stature. Had these people shown themselves unfriendly, Lewis and Clarke might never have reached the ocean, for the valley was everywhere very populous.