It was also an excessively dangerous plan. The captains were taking chances they should have avoided. In the heart of the country that the war parties of Crows, Blackfeet, Hidatsas, and other tribes passed through regularly, the captains were dividing their platoon into five squads, so widely separated they were not in supporting distance of one another.
Lewis took the risk of dividing his command because he wanted the expedition to be as successful as possible, to bring back as much information as possible, to make every conceivable effort to broker peace among the tribes, to begin the process of creating the American trading empire. These were important objectives, but not important enough to justify having squads as small as three men, and none larger than ten, roving about independently.
The captains were underestimating the Indians. They had perhaps spent too long with the easily dominated Clatsops and Chinooks, too long with the always friendly Nez Percé. Although they knew more about the native peoples west of the Mississippi River than any man alive, they had no direct knowledge of the Blackfeet. They did know that all the other Indians feared the Blackfeet.
Lewis and Clark didn’t know enough to fear the Blackfeet, nor did the men. Since Lewis was leading his squad to the heart of Blackfoot country, his was the most dangerous mission. Nevertheless, when he called for volunteers on July 1, “many turned out, from whom I scelected Drewyer the two Feildses, Werner, Frazier and Sergt Gass.”
•
That afternoon, Lewis wrote a fifteen-hundred-word letter to Heney, to be carried to him by Sergeant Pryor. It represented his first step toward bringing about an American trade empire stretching from St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia.
Lewis had met Heney the previous winter and been impressed by him, despite his being an agent for the North West Company. Heney had told Lewis that, if there was anything he could do for the Americans, he was ready to do it. Apparently he talked as if he was ready to drop his North West Company connection and go to work for the Americans. Lewis must have thought so, for he made Heney an offer to do just that.
If Heney could convince the influential chiefs of the Sioux to visit their new father in Washington, and go along with them to serve as interpreter, Lewis would pay him a dollar a day, from the date of the receipt of the letter, plus expenses. Lewis further promised that Heney would be first in line for the post of U.S. agent to the Sioux, which paid seventy-five dollars per month plus six rations per day.
Lewis was straightforward about his motives: he wanted the Sioux to “have an ample view of our population and resourses, and on their return convince their nations of the futility of an attempt to oppose the will of our government.” Lewis provided Heney with arguments to convince the Sioux to make the journey, the chief being that the Sioux had no means of resisting the American plans for building posts and fortifications along the Missouri, and, in any case, “their acquiescence will be productive of greater advantages than their most sanguine hopes could lead them to expect from oppersition.”
Lewis stressed a central point for Heney to pass onto the Sioux: the United States “will not long suffer her citizens to be deprived of the free navigation of the Missouri by a few comparitively feeble bands of Savages.” But he should also tell the Sioux about the friendly views of the United States government toward them and the plan to establish trading posts in their neighborhood.
Through Heney, Lewis was trying to talk to the Sioux—and the British. He told Heney that the Corps of Discovery had gone to the Pacific Ocean by way of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers, and that he was about to explore the Marias. He obviously hoped that Heney would pass this information on to his superiors in the company, who would inform government officials in Montreal, who would thus learn of Lewis’s explorations and the potential American claim on the Oregon country, and possibly on southern Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
Lewis said he hoped to arrive at the Mandan villages about the beginning of September. Heney should meet him there, with a party not to exceed twelve persons, the largest that the expedition could accommodate.2
A good idea. If it worked, Sioux chiefs would go to Washington, they would be mightily impressed, they would come home and make peace, renounce their British loyalties, welcome American trading posts on the Missouri, and become full-fledged partners in the grand enterprise of building the American empire.
If it worked, and if Lewis found a Blackfoot band and spread the good news of the coming of the Americans and persuaded the Blackfeet to join the enterprise, within a couple of years the Americans would take over the fur trade from the Mississippi to the mouth of the Columbia.
That was a big dream, an empire builder’s dream. Lewis was thinking on a worldwide scale. He was proposing to set up and execute one of the biggest business takeover deals of the century, and add the northwestern empire to the United States in the bargain.
Sitting beside Lolo Creek, near the place where it flows into the Bitterroot River, in a wide, beautiful, extensive valley, at least a thousand miles from the nearest white outpost, in command of a platoon-sized force in a country teeming with war parties, utterly destitute of equipment (except for rifles and kettles and a few remaining knives—exactly the manufactured items the Indians most wanted), Meriwether Lewis got started on making his dream come true, in his letter to Heney.
•
What a many-faceted man was Lewis. On the day he put the final touches to the plan for separate explorations, informed the men of what he and Clark intended, picked the volunteers to accompany him, and wrote that long letter to Heney, he also found time to do a bird count and write a five-hundred-word essay on the prairie dog.
The next day, July 2, he spent much of his time in conversation with the Indians, using sign language, trying to get a better fix on the lay of the land ahead. In the evening, “the indians run their horses, and we had several foot races betwen the natives and our party with various success.” He concluded with a handsome tribute to the five young Indians who had guided him over the Lolo Trail and thus saved the expedition: “These are a race of hardy strong athletic active men.”
* * *
I. It is still there, reduced to about half its size since 1806, just west of Indian Grave Peak and just off Forest Service Road 500.
II. The site is accessible by foot or four-wheel-drive vehicle from Forest Road 500, which generally follows the Lolo Trail from near Lolo Pass to Weippe Prairie. The U.S. Forest Service has done an excellent job of locating and marking campsites.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The Marias Exploration
July 3–July 28, 1806
On the morning of July 3, Lewis wrote, “I took leave of my worthy friend and companion Capt. Clark and the party that accompanyed him.” As the captains and men shook hands and said their goodbyes, there must have been a question in every man’s mind—I wonder if I’ll ever see you again.
The proposed rendezvous at the Missouri-Yellowstone junction was a full five hundred miles east of Traveler’s Rest, as the crow flies. Clark’s proposed route would cover nearly a thousand miles, Lewis’s nearly eight hundred.
Both captains would be in country they had not seen before, facing they knew not what dangers from the weather, the terrain, and the natives. Except for their rifles, scientific instruments, and journals, the men were no better equipped than the Indians, and none of the five detachments of the Corps of Discovery would have enough firepower to drive off a determined attack from even a moderate-sized war party. But such confident travelers had the captains become that what they said to each other as they parted was, See you at the junction in five or six weeks.
Whether their confidence in themselves and their men had swelled past all reason, was theirs to discover. That Lewis felt at least a tinge of apprehension is clear from his comment on the parting: “I could not avoid feeling much concern on this occasion although I hoped this seperation was only momentary.”
Lewis, nine men, five Nez Percé guides, and seventeen horses set o
ut northward, down the Bitterroot River. At ten miles, they crossed the river by raft and continued their march eastward along today’s Clark Fork River to within a couple of miles of today’s Missoula, Montana.
At sunset, they made camp. Hunters brought in three deer, which Lewis split with the Indians. He tried to persuade them to stay with his party until they got over the Continental Divide and down to the falls of the Missouri, but they said he didn’t need them: the road was such a well-beaten track even a white man couldn’t miss the way. Besides, they were afraid of meeting with a Hidatsa raiding party.
•
Just before lying down on his elk skin, Lewis ordered the hunters to turn out early in the morning to kill some meat for the guides, “whom I was unwilling to leave without giving them a good supply of provisions after their having been so obliging as to conduct us through those tremendious mountains.”
They parted at noon the following day, July 4. Independence Day drew no comment from Lewis, no mention of the men firing their rifles. If anything, it was a sad day, the last contact with the Nez Percé, among whom the party had been living for two months.
The Nez Percé had seen the white soldiers hungry and fed them; seen them cold and provided fuel; seen them without horses and put them on mounts; seen them confused and provided good advice; seen them make fools of themselves trying to cross mountains ten feet deep in snow and not snickered; seen them lost and guided them. They had ridden together, eaten together, slept together, played together, and crossed the Lolo Trail together. Although they could communicate only with the sign language, they had an abundance of shared experiences that drew them together. They had managed to cross communication and cultural barriers to become genuine friends.
“These affectionate people our guides betrayed every emmotion of unfeigned regret at seperating from us,” Lewis wrote. The Nez Percé could not hide their anxiety about their new friends: “They said that they were confidint that the PahkeesI . . . would cut us off.”
•
As the Indians set off to the north, Lewis and his men headed east. They passed through present-day Missoula, up today’s Broadway Street across the river from the University of Montana. At five miles, they came to today’s Blackfoot River, called River of the Road to Buffalo by the Nez Percé, coming in from the east, and headed up it, through a heavily timbered country of high and rocky mountains. The next day, they made thirty-one miles.
The place they camped that night had been a Hidatsa war-party camp a couple of months earlier. On July 6, the Indian sign included fresh tracks along the trail. Lewis was concerned: “They have a large pasel of horses,” he commented. He expected to meet with either the Hidatsas or another hunting party at any time, so he and the men were “much on our guard both day and night.”
His luck held. There were no encounters with Indians, friendly or hostile. His trip up the Blackfoot River, through one of the most beautiful valleys in Montana, was happily uneventful. What caught Lewis’s eye was “much sign of beaver in this extensive bottom.”
On July 7, the party turned in a more northerly direction to follow the Nez Percé trail up today’s Alice Creek. There were many beaver dams, many deer. Reubin Field wounded a moose. “My dog much worried,” Lewis wrote, without giving any detail but apparently referring to the wounded moose. At about eleven miles, the creek was not much more than a trickle, coming from a spring on the side of a low, untimbered mountain. The trail wound up the north side of the creek, then switched back a couple of times before disappearing over the top of the pass.II
The party wound its way up the gentle slope. At the top, it reached “the dividing ridge betwen the waters of the Columbia and Missouri rivers.” To the east, Lewis could see Square Butte, near the falls of the Missouri, not far from where he stood. The Great Plains of North America stretched out in front of him, apparently without limit, under an infinity of bright-blue sky. He took a step—and he was back in U.S. territory.
The descent was easy, through hills and hollows. The men could talk only of buffalo, but none were encountered, although tantalizing signs were all about them. The next day, the party crossed the Dearborn River and closed on the Medicine (today’s Sun) River, where they camped.
On July 9, Joseph Field killed a fat buffalo. “We halted to dine,” Lewis wrote. Once they got some roasts going, it commenced to drizzle. That settled it. “I concluded to remain all day,” Lewis wrote, and added by way of explanation, “we feasted on the buffaloe.” He and the men were “much rejoiced at finding ourselves in the plains of the Missouri which abound with game.”
They surely did. On July 10, the hunters killed five deer, three elk, and a bear. They saw herds of buffalo farther down the river. The bellowing of the bulls through the night (it was mating season) kept them awake. It was “one continual roar,” so loud it frightened the horses. There were “vast assemblages of wolves,” herds of elk.
Lewis and his men had thought they knew how much they missed the Plains, but found out they had underestimated. Fresh roasted buffalo hump and tongue tasted even better than they had remembered.
Lewis was on his way home, with great discoveries made, and discoveries yet to be made. His stomach was full as it hadn’t been since he had left the buffalo country the previous July. He was in a fine, mellow mood, as he showed in the morning, when he began his journal with a charming tribute to the Great Plains of Montana: “The morning was fair and the plains looked beatifull. the grass much improved by the late rain. the air was pleasant and a vast assemblage of little birds which croud to the groves on the river sung most enchantingly.”
On the march that day, headed down the Sun River to the Missouri, the party went through “a level beautifull and extensive high plain covered with immence hirds of buffaloe. . . . I sincerely belief that there were not less than 10 thousand buffaloe within a circle of 2 miles.” The buffalo provided not only meat but also coverings for boats. Lewis had eleven of them shot and willow sticks collected to make bull boats, one in the Mandan fashion, the other “on a plan of our own,” (otherwise unexplained) for crossing the Missouri to the cache on the east bank.
In the morning, terrible news. The men sent to round up the horses returned to report that seven of the seventeen were missing. Lewis immediately suspected a hunting party had stolen them. He sent Drouillard to search for them, although what he thought Drouillard could do if he caught up with the thieves he did not say. In fact, the order was a mistake, both because of Drouillard’s obvious helplessness in the face of twenty or thirty mounted warriors, and because it deprived Lewis of his sole means of communication with other Indians, should they be encountered.
After Drouillard rode off, the horses swam across the river, the bull boats were paddled over, and camp was set up on the site they had occupied during the great portage of 1805. The cache was opened; high water during the spring runoff had gotten into it; Lewis’s plant specimens were all lost, but fortunately the papers and maps were okay.
The loss of the specimens was a terrible blow. They had been collected painstakingly, labeled, carefully dried (requiring daily attention) and preserved. Paul Russell Cutright writes, “Such losses were more than minor catastrophes, resulting as they did in the defeat of prime scientific objectives and the complete vitiation of weeks and months of dedicated effort and inquiry.”1
•
That night, Lewis found that he had forgotten something else about life on the Missouri River. “Musquetoes excessively troublesome,” he wrote, “insomuch that without the protection of my musquetoe bier I should have found it impossible to wright a moment.”
On July 14, Lewis had the men prepare the baggage for the upcoming portage. He sent his trunks containing his papers and journals to one of the islands, to be put on a scaffold in thick brush, and covered with skins. “I take this precaution,” he explained, “lest some indians may visit the men I leave here before the arrival of the main party and rob them.”
In the aftermath of losing near
ly half of his horses to a roving band of warriors, he was beginning to fear that perhaps he was dividing the Corps of Discovery in too many parts. But his fear was not so strong as to cause him to call off his exploration of the Marias, even though the loss of the horses meant he had to reduce the size of his party from six to three men. At least that would leave six men at the falls, perhaps enough for self-defense.
Drouillard didn’t come in that day, which worried Lewis. Nor did he return the following day. Lewis began to fear that a grizzly had killed him. He explained his reasoning: “I knew that if he met with a bear in the plains even he would attack him. and that if any accedent should happen to seperate him from his horse in that situation the chances in favour of his being killed would be as 9 to 10.”
At 1:00 p.m., July 15, Drouillard returned. He reported that he had searched for two days before discovering where the thieves had run the stolen horses over the Dearborn River. He pursued their tracks, but they had a two-day start, so he gave it up. He figured the strength of the party at fifteen lodges.
Lewis assumed it was a hunting party, looking for buffalo. He had seen that day how much roving it took to find the herds; there was not a buffalo in sight, where the previous day they covered the earth. Such huge herds had to keep moving to find grass, which meant that those who hunted them had to keep moving. Which meant that the Corps of Discovery had been exceedingly lucky the previous year to have avoided all contact with the natives until they got to the Shoshone village.
With Drouillard returned, Lewis was ready to set out in the morning for the Marias exploration. He had selected Drouillard and the Field brothers. He would take six horses, leaving two of the best and two of the worst with the party at the falls, to assist in the portage. He closed his journal, “The musquetoes continue to infest us in such manner that we can scarcely exist. . . . my dog even howls with the torture he experiences. . . . they are almost insupportable.”
Undaunted Courage Page 54