The Columbia River: Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery, Its Commerce

by William Denison Lyman

Eliot Glacier, Mt. Hood.
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.

Their journey was now ended. They had demonstrated the possibility of crossing the continent and of linking together the waters of the Missouri and the Columbia.

The winter of 1805-06 was spent in log buildings at a point named by the explorers, Fort Clatsop, situated on the Lewis and Clark River at the south side of the Columbia a few miles from the present site of Astoria. The location of this fort has been identified in modern times, as has also the location of the salt cairn, upon what is now known as the Seaside Beach, commemorated by an inscription.

One of the interesting little human touches in the narrative of Captain Lewis describes the casting of a whale upon Clatsop Beach and the journey of the party to see the great marine curiosity, as well as to secure some of its fat and blubber. The Indian woman, Sacajawea, was to be left behind to keep camp while they were all at the beach, but she put up the earnest plea that inasmuch as she had never seen any such curiosity as the “big fish,” and as she had journeyed all those weary miles from the country of the Mandans, it seemed hard that she should be denied the privilege of satisfying her eyes with a view of the whale. Lewis remarks that the request of the poor woman seemed so reasonable that they at once fixed up camp in such manner that it could be left, and took her with them, to her intense satisfaction.

After four months spent in the fogs and mists of the coast, and without seeing any of the ships which the Indians said were accustomed to come in considerable numbers during the spring and summer, the party turned their faces homeward on the 23d of March, 1806. The commander posted upon the fort a notice which read as follows:

The object of this last is that through the medium of some civilised person who may see the same, it may be made known to the world that the party consisting of the persons whose names are hereunto annexed and who were sent out by the Government of the United States to explore the interior of the continent of North America, did penetrate the same by way of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers, to the discharge of the latter into the Pacific Ocean, at which they arrived on the 14th day of November, 1805, and departed on their return to the United States by the same route by which they had come.

They also gave to the chiefs of the Clatsops and Chinooks certificates, to which they attached great importance and which were afterwards exhibited to other explorers, setting forth the just and hospitable treatment which these Indians had accorded the party.

The return from Fort Clatsop to the Missouri was in the main a pleasant and successful journey without extraordinary event, except the fact that upon their return they discovered the Willamette River, which, strange to say, had eluded their observation on their journey down the River in November. The journal contains the somewhat quaint statement that the chief cultivable region which they discovered in Oregon was Wapatoo Island, now known as Sauvie’s Island, at the mouth of the Willamette. They express the conviction that that fertile tract of country and the region adjoining might sometime support a population of fifty thousand people. They seem to regard this as an extraordinary prophecy of prosperity. Inasmuch as there are already over four times that number of people in the city of Portland, it would seem that Lewis and Clark were hardly “boomers” in the modern sense of the word.

One interesting thing in connection with the Lewis and Clark expedition receives special emphasis from them in the account of their return journey, and that is, the faithfulness, honesty, and devotion of the Indians when entrusted with any charge, as the care of horses or canoes. This character of the Indians was so marked that one can hardly avoid the conclusion that the subsequent troubles with the Indians were due very largely to abuse by the whites.

No better summary can be given of the scope of this historic journey than that by Captain Lewis himself in his journal. He says: