The Captain's Dog: My Journey With the Lewis and Clark Tribe

by Roland Smith

  Drouillard tried again. Finally one of the braves said he would guide us, but he seemed to agree more out of politeness than desire.

  September 11, 1805

  No meat taken today. The Nez Percé who agreed yesterday to guide us over the mountains was gone this morning and has not returned, so we are still relying on Old Toby to take us across....

  I WAS NOT SURPRISED the brave had a change of heart. After his friends left he sat around camp looking forlorn and confused. I saw him get up in the middle of the night, load his horse, and leave, making no more noise than a mouse walking on damp moss. I let out a couple of barks when he left, but the men were too cold to crawl out from beneath their blankets and look.

  The next day the most difficult part of our journey began. The hillsides were covered with downed trees, snow, and slick ice. I was as cold as I had ever been in my life. The frigid air burned my eyes, the ice froze on my muzzle, and the snow balled up between my toes, making each step a painful ordeal. As cold and miserable as I was, it was nothing compared to what the men endured. Swathed in blankets and furs, they plodded ahead in hungry silence, knowing if they stopped moving the cold would consume them. On the narrower ledges the men had to get off and lead their terrified mounts across, but the horses still slipped and fell, sometimes all the way to the bottom of the hill. Wearily, the men followed the horses down, picking up spilled gear on the way, catching and repacking the animals, then starting back up again from where they had started. The delays caused the party to string out along the trail for miles. Some of the men didn't arrive in camp until well after dark, when they found the men who had gotten there earlier fast asleep.

  September 13, 1805

  A few of our horses strayed this morning, causing further delays. Four grouse and one poor deer for dinner. Camped at a hot springs....

  I STAYED IN FRONT of the fray with Old Toby—out of range of the men's foul tempers, which were not improved by their empty bellies. We were the first to arrive at the hot springs, which were something I had never seen before. At first I mistook the steam rising in the cold air for smoke and thought the pools were on fire. I barked in alarm. Old Toby smiled at my apprehension, then took his clothes off, and to my surprise sat down in one of the pools with a satisfied sigh.

  While he bathed I dug around the old campfires and found some bones to chew. When I had harvested everything I could find I joined Old Toby in the pool, and that's when the first men stumbled into camp and found us. They were too tired to take their clothes off and partake of the soothing water, but a few of them managed the strength to shed their moccasins and soak their swollen feet.

  September 14, 1805

  Rain, hail. Horses and men very fatigued. Killed a colt to eat.

  September 15, 1805

  Old Toby got us lost.

  September 16, 1805

  Eight inches of snow on the ground, making it very difficult to follow the trail. There is no water up here so at night we boil snow over the fires. Killed our second colt....

  OLD TOBY ONLY made that one mistake in all our time in the mountains. He hadn't been over the mountains in ten years, and he got a little confused by the fallen trees and snow on the ground.

  He didn't discover his mistake until we had gone four miles, and compensated for it by leading us up an incredibly steep, tree-strewn hillside to the top of a high ridge, with the men grumbling all the way.

  "Looks different now," was his only comment when Captain Lewis asked him why he had led us astray.

  The next afternoon I joined Captain Clark and Colter as they forged ahead of the main party to find a good campsite and start the fires. As they brushed against the trees on the narrow trail, small icy avalanches tumbled onto their heads and down the necks of their shirts. By the time we found a likely site both men were nearly frozen. It was a wonder they could get the fires started with their numb hands.

  "We have to get off this mountain," Captain Clark said through chattering teeth.

  A few hours later the men began to straggle in, looking as grim and haggard as I had ever seen them. They squatted around the fires in wooden silence, watching steam rise from each other's buckskins.

  Captain Clark killed the second colt and started the red flesh roasting.

  The next day and night were much the same. The men grew weaker with every passing hour. The horses' legs trembled from lack of food, from strain, and from terror at the dizzying heights along the narrow slippery trails. Several fell, smashing the fragile loads as they tumbled down the steep embankments. The men killed the last colt.

  "We can't continue like this," Captain Clark said. "We'll never make it to the other side."

  Captain Lewis looked around the camp at the men and nodded. "What do you suggest?"

  "I don't like to split up, but I think one of us should go ahead with our best hunters. Try to reach the west side, where there must be more game, or at least Indians we can buy food from."

  Captain Lewis nodded wearily. "I'll stay back."

  "We'll travel light. I'll try to get food back up to you as soon as I can."

  The Captain looked at the men again. "You had better, old friend, or we won't need it."

  September 18, 1805

  Captain Clark has gone ahead. No food. Our spirits very low.

  I KNEW THAT IF I didn't get some food soon I wouldn't have the strength to get through the mountains. I joined Captain Clark and the hunters. We made a forced march of more than thirty miles, up and down the difficult terrain. At the end of that terrible day we were rewarded with a view far below us of an immense green plateau.

  "We should reach it by tomorrow," Captain Clark predicted.

  Early the following morning we proceeded on. Reubin Fields caught a horse in a glade and brought it to Captain Clark.

  "Shoot it," Captain Clark ordered. "We'll eat some and leave the rest for Captain Lewis and the others."

  The next day we reached the plain and came upon three young Nez Percé boys playing with toy bows. As soon as they saw us they ran like antelope and hid themselves, but I found the frightened boys easily in the tall grass.

  Captain Clark gave them some trinkets, which helped soothe their nerves. They led us to their village with their shoulders thrown back and their bony chests stuck out, like the proud warriors they would one day become.

  The camp was filled with women, children, and old men. They explained through hand-talk that their men were away on a raiding party, but they expected them back soon.

  Captain Clark asked for food and we were given baskets of camas root—a bulblike plant the men found delicious. I was famished but could not make myself eat the plant. I started sniffing around for something else to fill my belly.

  A couple of Indian dogs followed me as I rambled through the village, but they kept their distance because I was considerably bigger than they were, despite having lost some of my bulk crossing the mountains.

  The Nez Percé lodges were made of poles overlaid with bark mats. Outside the lodges were piles of camas and other roots, and I reckoned we were in a temporary camp set up to gather these roots in the nearby meadows.

  "You," someone called in French, "big dog..."

  I was surprised to hear this language. The Nez Percé who greeted us had said we were the first white men they had laid eyes on.

  "Over here..."

  The words came from a very old woman sitting on a log outside a lodge. I walked over to her.

  "I have heard of you, big dog," she said.

  I was pondering how this could be when a teenage boy stepped out of her lodge into the bright sun rubbing his eyes. He looked a bit different with clothes on, but there was no mistaking him—it was the same boy Colter and I had discovered up on the mountain. When the boy saw me, he started jumping up and down, screaming and pointing at me. His wild gesticulating frightened me, and I was on the verge of running off, but he beat me to it, disappearing behind the lodge as fast as he had on the day we first saw him.

 
The old woman started laughing. When she stopped she said, "The others said my grandson couldn't have seen a big black dog during his quest for his wyakin. They said he must have seen a wolf, but you look more like a bear to me. I will call you Yahka—Black Bear.

  "By showing yourself here, you have made my grandson very happy. For that you deserve some salmon. Come with me, Yahka."

  I had not heard the word salmon before, but I hoped it meant food. The word wyakin was also new. I learned later it meant "spirit guide." When the Nez Percé reach a certain age they go to a sacred place to fast and pray until they are visited by an animal spirit who will guide them throughout their lives.

  I followed the old woman over to a long scaffold made of sticks. Hanging on the sticks were dozens of colossal fish, split in two lengthwise, drying in the sun. She threw one down on the ground in front of me.

  "Eat."

  I was not fond of fish, but my hunger drove me to try the orange flesh. To my relief it had a different taste than the fish I had eaten previously, but was a far cry from buffalo, deer, and elk flesh.

  "You had better get used to salmon," she said. "It is all you will be eating for a long time."

  I did get used to it. But my taste for it was not shared by our tribe, which was a shame, as there was enough of this fish drying on the scaffolds in this one camp to feed them for several months.

  Halfway through my salmon the boy returned with an old man and a group of boys, pointing at me and shouting excitedly as he approached. The old man grinned as he watched me eat, then said something to the boy.

  From that day on they called the boy Mountain Dog. He and I were to become very good friends.

  September 20, 1805

  Today we found the remains of a horse Captain Clark left us. It was very agreeable....

  "More agreeable than what we had, I reckon," Colter says.

  Drouillard shakes his head. "It's a wonder none of us died from that root."

  THE MEN HAD GOTTEN very sick from eating too much camas. The following morning some of them had so much pain in their bellies they could not stand up. Captain Clark sent those who could walk out hunting, except for Reubin Fields. He was sent back toward the mountains to find Captain Lewis with a load of dried salmon and camas root the Nez Percé provided.

  "Make sure you tell them to go easy on that root," Captain Clark said.

  "Yes, sir," Reubin said.

  While the men were out hunting Captain Clark rambled over to another camp along the river where it was said their chief, a man named Twisted Hair, was fishing.

  I did not go with Captain Clark, nor did I join Reubin or the men hunting. Instead I stayed in camp with Mountain Dog, following him around as he proudly showed me off to his friends. I had never been around a young boy and found it very much to my liking. He and his friends were filled with enormous energy and a boundless sense of fun. They were constantly laughing, racing their horses, and playing jokes on one another. It brought to mind the fun we'd had before we started up the Missouri.

  Mountain Dog lived with three other boys his age in a lodge not far from his grandmother, whose name I learned was Watkuweis, which meant "returned from a faraway country." That night I learned how she had gotten this name.

  Mountain Dog and his friends were gathered around Watkuweis's fire exchanging stories. When they had exhausted their supply, one of the boys asked Watkuweis to tell her story.

  "But you know my story," she said.

  "Please."

  Watkuweis looked deep into the fire and began....

  "When I was a young girl I traveled east of the mountains with my family to hunt the buffalo. We had been there for some time gathering and preparing the meat and the skins, and we were ready to come home. But on the day we were to leave, the Blackfeet fell upon us. They killed everyone in my family and took me with them.

  "I lived as a slave in their village for a long and terrible time. The Blackfeet are as cruel as every story you have heard about them. The only thing that kept me alive was the thought that I would one day escape and return here.

  "After a time the man who owned me took me north for many days. We arrived at a huge lodge made of trees stacked together, higher than one can climb. The lodge was called a fort. The men who lived inside had white skin, and hair on their faces and chests, like the men who have come to visit us here. They trapped and traded for furs, and their ways were very different from ours.

  "The Blackfeet who owned me traded me to a white man for a musket. At first I was very frightened, but the white man who bought me was a good man. He treated me well. We lived together for many years and I bore him a son, but still I dreamed of returning home.

  "When our son was still small, I was told by a white woman living at the fort that the men were going back to their home across the big water. 'They are never coming back,' she said. And they are taking you with them.'

  "Of all the bad things that had happened to me, this would have been the most terrible, because it would have meant I could never see my home again. The white woman helped me to escape. She gave me a hatchet and some food. One night as the men slept I put my son in a cradleboard and left the fort.

  "I went east toward the mountains. Suns and storms beat me down. Wild animals chased me. Streams and rivers barred my way. I was constantly afraid the Blackfeet would find me. But I continued on.

  "Whenever I was too afraid to take another step, my wyakin—a great wolf—encouraged me to continue and told me which way to go.

  "I made a raft to cross a big river. As I crossed, a bear attacked me but I killed him with my hatchet.

  "My baby began to weaken because we had no food. I found a pile of old bones that still had some meat on them. I cooked this meat and fed some to my baby, but the meat was bad. My baby died. I dug a shallow grave with my hands and buried him.

  "When I finally reached the mountains my strength left me. I lay there for many days waiting for death, but instead a group of Nee-mee-poo hunters found me and took me across the mountains to my home."

  September 22, 1805

  Private R. Fields found us today and brought camas root and salmon. These mountains will soon be behind us....

  Colter stands and stretches. "We're getting toward the end, but I've had about enough for tonight."

  "What do you mean, we're toward the end?" Drouillard asks in surprise.

  "The end of the red book. The Captain doesn't make another entry until January 1, 1806, when we were at Fort Clatsop."

  Drouillard takes the book and flips through the few remaining pages. "Guess we can finish it up tomorrow, then." He explains this to Watkuweis.

  Mountain Dog puts the red book into the pouch, and he and Watkuweis walk back to their tepee.

  Colter rolls his blanket out next to the fire. "They got most of them buffalo hides cleaned up this afternoon. I suspect they'll be moving on soon. You think Twisted Hair will be back tomorrow?"

  "Or the next day," Drouillard says. "Funny the Captain didn't write much after we got over them mountains."

  "He wasn't the same after that."

  The evening is warm and clear and windy. I feel restless and ramble out onto the prairie, where the yellow moon is so bright the buffalo cast shadows on the ground. I think about Captain Lewis and the men during that final year. Colter is right, the Captain was not the same after crossing the mountains—but neither were the other men, and neither was I.

  I find a sheltered place among some rocks and lie down. A great deal happened during the months the Captain chose not to write in the red book. I close my eyes and remember....

  WHEN CAPTAIN LEWIS and the other men arrived at the camas camp they looked more dead than alive—cheeks sunken, buckskins filthy and torn, moccasins shredded—and they barely had the strength to pull the packs off their thin horses.

  The Captain lay down outside a lodge, clutched his knees, and began to moan. He wasn't alone.

  "I told them to take it easy on that camas and fish," Reubin said.
"But they were so hungry they couldn't help themselves."

  Bird Woman, Pomp, and Old Toby were not afflicted. In fact when Bird Woman saw me she smiled broadly, scratched my ears, then reached into her pouch and gave me a dead mouse.

  The Nez Percé gathered around as the men unloaded the horses. They were astonished at the collection of goods, but what impressed them most were the rifles.

  That night the Nez Percé men met at the lodge next door to Watkuweis's. They talked for hours about our tribe and our goods.

  "If we had those rifles we could protect ourselves from our enemies."

  "We could kill deer and elk in the winter when the salmon is gone."

  "Did you see the metal tomahawk for cutting trees? With that we could build shelters and cut wood for our fires in no time at all."

  Watkuweis sat outside her lodge pounding camas root on a flat stone, listening to their conversation.

  "The white men are very sick," one of the men said.

  "Even their chiefs are weakened," another added.

  "It would be easy to have these things for ourselves."

  Watkuweis got up and walked over to them.

  "I hear your talk," she said. "The white men were very good to me even though I was a stranger to them."

  "We are just talking, Watkuweis. There is no harm in talk."

  "Bad talk leads to bad actions. You talk like the Blackfeet."

  The men stared at the fire, chastened.

  "These men have done nothing to you," she said. "Do them no harm!"

  And they didn't. Instead they were very kind to our tribe. We moved our camp to the Clearwater River. Captain Clark had the men who felt well enough cut trees for dugout canoes. The Nez Percé showed them an easier way to hollow out the logs by using hot coals from the fire. Chief Twisted Hair said he would care for our horses and saddles while we were gone in exchange for two rifles. He helped us brand the horses so we would know which ones were ours when we returned. Every day people from different villages came to camp with food to sell. In the evenings Captain Clark treated the Nez Percé ills in exchange for horses and other items.