Later in the day of August 20, the boats landed at a bluff, and Lewis decided to analyze some of the minerals he found there. “By examonation this Bluff Contained Alum, Copperas, Cobalt, Pyrites; a Alum Rock Soft & Sand Stone. Capt. Lewis in proveing the quality of those minerals was Near poisoning himself by the fumes & tast of the Cobalt . . . Copperas & alum is verry pisen,” wrote Clark.
They were where the Missouri begins to form the southeastern border of present-day South Dakota, and on August 23, 1804, Field killed a buffalo. Millions of the animals roamed the Great Plains, and until the expedition reached the Rocky Mountains, buffalo would make up a large part of its daily fare. Elk was regularly on the menu, and catfish were big and easy to catch. Gass noted in his journal that nine of the catfish caught one day would together have weighed some 300 pounds.
By August 25, the party was nearing the country of the Yankton Sioux, one of the tribes of the Sioux nation. Following Dorion’s advice, they set the prairie grass afire as a signal to call the Indians to a council. At the junction of the James River and the Missouri, they met three natives, who told them a Sioux village was nearby. Dorion and two others went to make arrangements for a meeting and were entertained by the villagers with a dinner of dog meat, which they found delicious. Five chiefs and some seventy men and boys accompanied them to the boats, and a council was set for the next day.
The Sioux demanded high payments from traders going up the Missouri. Even while the expedition was being planned, Lewis and Clark had feared that the Sioux would not permit them to pass through their territory. They were relying on their interpreter’s ability and the impression their party made during the talks.
The meeting took place on August 30, under an oak tree. The American flag, with its fifteen stars and fifteen stripes, flew nearby. Lewis’s usual speech was interpreted by Dorion: The Sioux were now subject to a new government and a new Great Father who would send traders to provide them all they needed. In the meantime, Lewis said, he expected the Indians to remain at peace with their neighbors. There were gifts: for the leading chief a flag, a medal, some wampum, and a richly laced army uniform; and for the lesser chiefs, tobacco, medals, and clothing.
The next day, the chiefs “arranged themselves in a row with elligent pipes of peace all pointing to our Seets.” Although they were friendly, they complained about their poverty and how skimpy the captains’ gifts had been the day before. They wanted more gunpowder and bullets and “a little Milk of the Great Father” - the native term for whiskey.
The captains put them off with promises, and Dorion offered to stay behind to try to arrange a truce between the various Sioux tribes and their neighbors. After equipping him with gifts to aid in this difficult task, Lewis and Clark continued their journey. Thankful they had had no trouble with the Yankton Sioux, they still faced the warlike Teton Sioux farther upriver.
The Corps of Discovery had no way of knowing they had narrowly avoided another threat. The Spanish army, informed that the expedition was encroaching on territory claimed by Spain, had sent four detachments of soldiers, mercenaries, and Indians from Sante Fe to intercept them. The objective was to imprison the entire Corps. But by the time the Spaniards reached the Pawnee settlement on the Platte River, they discovered the expedition had moved on days before.
On September 5, the party saw its first pronghorn antelope, an animal new to American science. Two days later, they encountered another new creature when they discovered an area covered with many holes home to small rodents. Lewis wrote, “I have called [it] the barking squirrel. . . . It’s form is that of the squirrel . . . [but] they bark at you as you approach them, their note being much that of little toy dogs; their yelps are in quick succession and at each they [give] a motion to their tails upwards. . . . It is much more quick active and fleet than it’s form would indicate.”
As they proceeded, trees along the river grew scarce, but the animals were plentiful. Lewis spent one day ashore to “view the interior of the country” and was overcome by the “immence herds of Buffaloe, deer Elk and Antelopes. . . .” They shot a pelican. Grouse were abundant; porcupines were common. In mid-September, they killed one of the bushy-tailed, howling animals they had been calling gray foxes, which were actually coyotes. The expedition had reached the Great Plains, which Lewis described as “a beautifull bowling-green in find order . . . rich [and] pleasing.”
On September 21, the expedition had a narrow escape. Clark’s account makes light of his presence of mind, which saved them: “At half past one o’clock this morning the Sand bar on which we Camped began to under mind and give way which allarmed the Serjeant on Guard, the motion of the boat awakened me; I got up & by the light of the moon observed that the Sand had given away both above and below our Camp & was falling in fast. I ordered all hands on as quick as possible & pushed off . . .” Within a few minutes of setting sail, Clark wrote, the bank gave way, and by the time they made it to the opposite shore, their camp had washed away.
Two days later, they met the Teton Sioux. Three boys swam out and told the men that two large parties of Teton were camped upriver where the next river entered the Missouri. The captains gave the boys tobacco to take to their chiefs, with the message that they would meet the chiefs the next day.
They did not reach the Sioux the following day. John Colter came in from hunting to report that Indians had stolen his horse, one of the precious two without which the expedition could not hunt effectively. Shortly after, five Sioux were seen on shore, and the expedition stopped a safe distance from the bank. The captains told the Indians the horse had been sent by the president, for their chief and that they “would not Speek to them untill the horse was returned . . . again.”
The next day, they anchored to prepare for a formal meeting. The three Teton Sioux chiefs arrived from their nearby camp accompanied by some sixty warriors. The white men were on their guard as they paraded to welcome them. Now the captains felt Dorion’s absence; they knew so little Sioux that Lewis shortened his usual speech. The gift giving that followed was more successful, but when the chiefs were invited aboard the keelboat to be shown the air gun and “such Curiossities,” trouble began. “We gave them 1/4 a glass of whiskey which they appeared to be verry fond of, Sucked the bottle after it was out & Soon began to be troublesom,” Clark wrote. One of the chiefs assumed drunkenness “as a Cloake for his rascally intentions.”
Clark and five men took the chiefs ashore in a pirogue, but as soon as they landed, three warriors seized the cable so the boat could not return. The second chief, Clark wrote, was insolent, demanding more gifts and blocking him from returning to the keelboat. His gestures “were of Such a personal nature, I felt My self Compeled to Draw my Sword (and Made a Signal to the boat to prepare for action).”
It was a tense moment. Lewis had his men under arms while the keelboat’s swivel guns kept the Indians covered. Clark was already on shore, surrounded by warriors, but managed to send the pirogue back for help. Twelve men rowed ashore to join him. The Sioux had never met this kind of resistance before, and the chief, Black Buffalo, told his men to back off.
Captain Clark did not want to make enemies. He offered to shake hands with Black Buffalo and the second chief, named The Partisan, but both refused. When Clark climbed on board the pirogue, however, Black Buffalo and the third chief followed, with two warriors, and the captain brought all four aboard the keelboat. The party anchored about a mile away, off an island they sourly named “bad humered Island.”
The four Indians remained with them for the night. In the morning, the chiefs, who seemed friendlier, asked the captains to let their women and children see the boats. Eager to win their friendship, Lewis and Clark took the boats close to the shore, and the people of the village crowded to the river’s edge to see them. The captains also agreed to attend a dance that night.
That evening, first Clark and then Lewis were met by ten men, placed on a richly painted buffalo robe, and carried to a round council house covered with
hides. The Indians smoked the peace pipe with their guests and ceremonially offered them 400 pounds of buffalo meat. They ate pemmican, a root called the ground potato, and dog meat. Clark enjoyed the pemmican and ground potato, but he avoided the dog meat. This was one of the few topics he and Lewis disagreed upon. Lewis, along with his fellow expedition members, considered dog meat delicious.
There is nothing that suggests the men ever considered eating Lewis’s dog, Seaman, who had become a valued member of the expedition. When an admiring Indian offered to trade three beaver skins for the dog, Lewis scoffed, writing in his journal: “Of course, there was no bargain.” Seaman brought the explorers food – stalking and catching small animals and helping the hunters track game. The dog also kept patrol over their camps.
After dinner, the dancing began to the music of skin drums and rattles made of antelope hoofs tied to long sticks. Lewis and Clark returned to the boat after midnight, accompanied by four chiefs who stayed as self-invited guests.
The next evening, Lewis and Clark attended another dance, and when they returned, The Partisan and a native went with them. The pirogue taking them from shore to the anchored keelboat was being handled by an inexperienced man, and coming alongside the boat, he brought the pirogue against the anchor cable and snapped it. The keelboat started to drift away, and Clark was forced to order in a loud voice: “all hands up & at their ores.” The order, and the bustle of men rushing to their stations, alarmed The Partisan, who shouted to his camp that the Omahas were attacking. In about ten minutes, Clark wrote, the bank was lined with armed warriors, with Chief Black Buffalo at their head.
Despite the shouting about the Omahas, the captains suspected that the Sioux were afraid the expedition was trying to leave and had raised a false alarm to stop it. That guess was confirmed by Cruzatte, who spoke the Omaha language. There were a number of Omaha captives taken by the Sioux on a recent raid in the village, and they had warned Cruzatte that the Sioux planned to stop the expedition if they could.
With its anchor lost, the keelboat was exposed to possible attacks, and Lewis and Clark spent a sleepless night. In the morning, a group of Indians boarded the boat, and the captains had difficulty getting them to go ashore. When everyone but Black Buffalo had gone and the crew was ready to cast off, there was fresh trouble: Several warriors were sitting on the mooring rope. The exasperated commanders prepared to shoot, but Clark managed to touch the pride of Black Buffalo by implying that he had no control over his men. Whereupon “. . . he jurked the rope from them and handed it to the bows-man [and] we then Set out under a Breeze from the S.E.”
In fact, Black Buffalo, was inclined to be friendly, although he did not dare show it openly in front of The Partisan, who hated whites and was behind all the trouble. Black Buffalo remained with the party as they proceeded upriver, probably to prevent any further mishaps. Several Teton Sioux on the banks invited them to come ashore, but Lewis and Clark refused, sending them tobacco and good advice instead. On the second day, the keelboat hit a log and heeled over so far she almost capsized. This was too much for Black Buffalo, who insisted on being put ashore. In any case, he said, the expedition was past Teton Sioux territory and would have no more trouble.
Once they left Teton Sioux country, Lewis and Clark continued up the Missouri. The channels between the sand bars were becoming shallower each day, but the captains lightened the keelboat by transferring some of their stores to the pirogues. The men still had to strain with ropes and poles to get the heavy boat through the shoals - and the weather was becoming colder.
On October 8, the party reached an Arikara village, which was occupied by the Sioux, and met two French traders who could serve as interpreters. The Arikaras were not tepee-dwelling nomads like the Sioux; they lived in houses with roofs made of willow branches covered with a layer of mud. Each village was surrounded by a rough picketed fence, and inside its protective wall, the Arikaras cultivated beans, squash, pumpkins, and tobacco. The Indians supplemented their diet by occasionally hunting buffalo.
For two days, Lewis and Clark met with the Indians, discussing the new government. The Arikaras, unlike the Tetons, seemed friendly, but once they discovered Clark’s slave, York, they became more interested in him than anything else. They had never seen an African. York, who had a penchant for acting, awed the Indians with feats of strength and told them he had been a wild animal “and lived upon people” until Clark had caught him and tamed him. His master felt he overdid it somewhat: “Those Indians wer much astonished at my Servent, they never Saw a black man before, all flocked around him & examind him from top to toe, he Carried on the joke and made himself more turribal than we wished him to doe.”
On October 11 and 12, the captains visited the other two Arikara villages – only three remained of ten bands that flourished before the ravages of smallpox and the Sioux. Then the expedition pushed off again - Lewis was eager to reach the Mandan Indians before the winter cold set in. To their satisfaction, their talk about peace had already borne fruit: An Arikara chief traveled with them as an ambassador of goodwill to the Mandans, with whom the Arikaras were then at war.
On October 14, they stopped on a sand bar for unpleasant duty. The day before, Private John Newman had been court-martialed for insubordination and was given seventy-five lashes. Lewis also separated Newman from the Army and sentenced him to be sent back downriver with the returning party in the spring. It was a difficult decision. Newman begged to be allowed to remain with the expedition, and he worked especially hard during the winter to earn forgiveness. But Lewis felt he must remain firm and dispatched both Newman and Private Moses Reed, the deserter, to St. Louis the next year.
The weather grew colder. Several men came down with rheumatism. Clark was immobilized by violent neck spasms until Lewis “applied a hot Stone [wrapped] in flannel, which gave me some temporey ease.”
On October 24, a few flakes of snow floated down in the morning, and that day they met their first Mandans, a hunting party led by one of the principal chiefs. Sixty-six years earlier, the French explorer La Vérendrye, the first European to visit them, found the Mandans living in nine villages sixty miles down the river - near where Bismarck, North Dakota, now stands. But smallpox had wiped out most of them, and marauding Sioux tribes had driven the survivors farther up the Missouri.
On October 27, the expedition reached the two remaining Mandan villages. Nearby, there were three villages of Minnetaree Indians, a tribe the French called Gros Ventres, meaning “Big Bellies.” Like the Arikaras, both the Mandans and Minnetarees lived in round, earth-covered lodges and were farming peoples. From living close to Canada, they had grown accustomed to trading with Europeans.
For their winter camp, the captains chose a wooded place three miles downriver from the Mandan’s lower village. On November 3, the men began building cabins for their fort. The next day, Clark noted in his journal that “a Mr. Chaubonie, interpreter for the Gross Ventre nation Came to See us . . . this man wished to hire as an interpiter.” The expedition would see much more of this man, Toussaint Charbonneau.
Part native and part European, Charbonneau was born in Boucherville, a fur-trading community near present-day Montreal, Quebec. He had worked as a fur trapper for Great Britain’s North West Company – service that likely ended dishonorably in 1795. A Scottish politician named John MacDonell, who joined the North West Company on expeditions, recorded an incident on May 30, 1795, in which Charbonneau “was stabbed . . . in the act of committing a Rape upon her Daughter by an old Saultier (Salteaux, a tribe settled around Lake Superior in Canada) woman with a Canoe Awl – a fate he highly deserved for his brutality.”
Lewis and Clark were impressed that Charbonneau could speak French and Sioux. He had been living with the Minnetarees for about five years and spoke their difficult language well. But the captains were even more intrigued by Charbonneau’s two young wives. They were Shoshone girls who had been captured by a Minnetaree war party in the foothills of the Rockies.
/> Lewis and Clark knew they would need the help of the Shoshone tribes at the headwaters of the Missouri River, and Charbonneau’s wives could act as interpreters and diplomats. Charbonneau told the captains that the Shoshone had a large herd of horses, which they would need to cross the western mountains. A week after Lewis and Clark met Charbonneau, he and his wives joined the expedition.
After two weeks laboring in the cottonwood groves, the party moved into the completed cabins on November 20. Two rows of four cabins - each fourteen feet square - were built at right angles to form two sides of a triangle, and a palisade of posts joined the open base, with two storerooms filling in its apex. This structure, named Fort Mandan, flew the American flag that winter of 1804-05 as the westernmost military outpost of the United States. Lewis and Clark determined that they had traveled 1,600 miles since leaving the Mississippi.
It was a busy winter. A surprising amount of traffic passed through and around the Mandan villages. Pawnee and Cheyenne Indians visited from the south; Arikaras arrived from downriver; Assiniboins came from the north.
The weather was colder than anyone in the party had ever experienced. In mid-December, the thermometer plunged to forty-five degrees below zero. The next day was thirty-two degrees below zero at sunrise; Clark noted: “Sent out 7 men to hunt for the Buffalow they found the weather too cold & returned.”
At Christmas, the men had a celebration, but the Indians, as Sergeant Ordway detailed in his diary, were excluded: “We fired the Swivels at day break & each man fired one round, our officers Gave the party a drink of Taffe [rum], we had the Best to eat that could be had, & continued firing dancing & frolicking dureing the whole day. The Savages did not Trouble us as we had requested them not to come as it was a great medician day with us.”
New Year’s Day was a different story. Lewis and Clark permitted sixteen men to visit the nearest Mandan village in the morning, carrying “a fiddle & a Tambereen & a Sounden horn.” Clark walked to the village later, noting that the Indians were “much pleased at the Danceing of our men.” The captain ordered his servant, York, to dance, “which amused the Croud Verry much, and Somewhat astonished them, that So large a man should be active &c.”
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