Lewis and Clark / Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

by William R. Lighton

They found difficulty in getting credit for the news they bore that the government of the United States was to be thereafter in fact as well as in name the controlling agency in administering the affairs of the territory and in regulating trade. To make the Indian mind ready to receive this lesson, it was first necessary to correct the evils bred by the earlier short-sighted rule of the Spanish, and to uproot a strong predisposition in favor of the British traders. The Hudson Bay Company had been in existence since 1670, and the Northwest Company since 1787; and they were not inclined to surrender their control of trade without a struggle.

Aside from this task, the two youthful men-of-all-work were continually engaged in gathering material for a report upon the ethnology of the Upper Missouri and the plains. They have left to us a remarkably acute and accurate monograph upon the subject, which shows that they were even then alive to most of the questions likely to arise in the process of reducing the land to order. The data thus collected were entered at length in the journals; and a fair copy of these was made, for transmittal to Washington in the spring. There were maps to be drawn, too; and a mass of interesting objects was gathered to illustrate the natural history of the route. This material had to be cleaned, prepared, assorted and catalogued, and packed for shipment, to accompany the report and illuminate its story, so that Mr. Jefferson might have a full understanding of what had been accomplished during the first year. The five months spent at Fort Mandan did not drag. The best part of the winter's work lay in the attitude which was taken in dealing with the Indians. In every particular of behavior, the strictest integrity was observed. An Indian is as ready as any one to recognize genuineness. Before springtime, the Mandans and Minnetarees knew that they had found friends.

In March the men began boat-building, preparatory to resuming their journey. The batteau was too cumbrous for use toward the head waters of the Missouri, and it was to be sent back to St. Louis. To take its place, canoes were fashioned from green cottonwood planks. Cottonwood lumber is full of whims and caprices,—bending, twisting, cracking like brown paper, so as to be wholly unfit for ordinary carpentry; but there was no other material available. Six canoes were made to hang together somehow; and in these ramshackle structures, together with the two periogues, the party covered more than a thousand miles of the roughest water of the Missouri. Annoyance was to be expected. The boats were continually splitting, opening at the seams, filling, and swamping, so that much time was lost in stopping to make repairs and to dry the water-soaked cargoes. This was merely an inconvenience, not an obstacle.

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CHAPTER VI

TO THE FALLS OF THE MISSOURI

On the afternoon of April 7, 1805, winter quarters were abandoned. Of the original forty-five men two had been lost; but three recruits had been gained,—Chaboneau, his squaw Sacajawea, and their infant son, born in February. From Fort Mandan fourteen of the men returned to St. Louis in the barge, carrying documents, collections, and trophies, while thirty-two went onward, to be separated from their kind for almost eighteen months. On this day Captain Lewis wrote in his journal:—

"This little fleet altho' not quite so rispectable as those of Columbus or Capt. Cook, were still viewed by us with as much pleasure as those deservedly famed adventurers ever beheld theirs; and I dare say with quite as much anxiety for their safety and preservation. We were now about to penetrate a country at least two thousand miles in width, on which the foot of civilized man had never trodden; the good or evil it had in store for us was for experiment yet to determine, and these little vessells contained every article by which we were to expect to subsist or defend ourselves. However as the state of mind in which we are, generally gives the coloring to events, when the imagination is suffered to wander into futurity, the picture which now presented itself to me was a most pleasing one, entertaining as I do the most confident hope of succeeding in a voyage which had formed a darling project of mine for the last ten years, I could but esteem this moment of our departure as among the most happy of my life."

April 26th they came to the mouth of the Yellowstone River, which enters the Missouri 1888 miles above St. Louis. They had had no adventure of moment; neither was there cause for immediate anxiety, save as they observed signs of the Assiniboins. From the tribes with whom they had talked at winter quarters, they had heard stirring tales of this cut-throat band, which had inspired the wish to pass unobserved through their country. This desire was fulfilled. There was no meeting with the Assiniboins.

Of all the wild creatures of the Western wilderness, the one which could least be spared from the literature of adventure is the grizzly bear. Lewis and Clark were the first white men to give an account of this beast. Many of the Indian lodge-tales to which they had listened rang with the fame of the grizzly, as a background for the greater fame of the narrators. As a matter of course, fact and figment were inextricably blended in these tales; but, while they did not show the animal as it was, they could not exaggerate its untamable courage, its ferocity, or its rugged power of endurance. On April 29th, Captain Lewis, with a party of hunters, proved the truth of all that had been told him upon these points, and more; and upon many occasions thereafter, while the party was making its way from the Yellowstone country to the mountains, there were encounters from which the men escaped by mere good fortune. The most critical adventures with the Indians were but child's play in comparison. Despite their boasting, the Indians would seldom venture to provoke a fight with a grizzly, except in the most favorable circumstances, and when strength of numbers inspired them with bravado. Reckless and headlong as wild elephants, nothing would daunt the grizzlies, once they had set about fighting; and so hardy were they as often to escape, apparently unharmed, though their vital parts were riddled with lead.