by Paul Schrag
In continuing their journey the Corps of Discovery sent their keelboat back down the Missouri River with a few men and items that had been gathered and sorted for President Jefferson. These included an updated report of the expedition, soil samples, minerals, plants, rudimentary tools and items gathered from the natives, live birds, and a prairie dog, which had never been heard of in the East. Considering the travelers ate some two hundred prairie dogs during the expedition, one wonders if President Jefferson prepared a meal with this one as well.
The rest of the expedition, including Sacagawea, her husband, and their newborn baby, Jean Baptiste, continued their way west up the river in the smaller pirogues. Waterfalls and fierce rapids were progressively making the river impassable. As they made their way into present-day Montana the captains encountered an abundance of wildlife, including buffalo, bighorn sheep, wolves, and a new threat to their survival. The Mandan had warned Lewis and Clark of a creature of such size and strength that it would take many warriors to bring it down. This terrifying new enemy was the grizzly bear.
The expedition would learn to avoid and respect these feared beasts. Lewis was even chased within inches of his life after shooting one. Luckily the bleeding bear gave up the chase after Lewis jumped into a river. Of the grizzly bear Lewis writes, “This bear being so hard to die rather intimidates us all; I must confess that I do not like the gentlemen and had rather fight two Indians than one bear; there is no other chance to conquer them by a single shot but by shooting them through the brains. . . . The fleece and skin were as much as two men could possibly carry.”1
During the corps’ travels, Sacagawea became an important intermediary between the adventurers and the native tribes they encountered. Her presence soothed many of these tribal members, as it was known that warring tribes generally didn’t travel with women. Sacagawea translated between various tribes with the help of her husband, the French Canadian trapper Charbonneau, who would relay messages to Rene Jessaume or Frances Labiche. Jessaume and Labiche, in turn, would translate messages into English for the party leaders. Sacagawea also helped forage for edible and medicinal plants, roots, and berries. At one point during the journey Sacagawea saved important supplies and Lewis’s journals from washing overboard as the expedition negotiated a storm on the Missouri River.
On August 13, 1805, Lewis and several companions saw a group of two Shoshone women and a male scout. Lewis greeted them and gave the women gifts he had brought with him. The group was brought to a Shoshone village under the leadership of a man named Cameahwait, whom Sacagawea recognized as her own brother. This improbable event proved to be extremely fortunate for Lewis and Clark. They of course included Sacagawea in all their dealings with the Shoshone leader.
On August 17 the tight group of negotiators sealed a pact of mutual friendship and support, and Chief Cameahwait agreed to sell the Corps of Discovery all the horses that they needed for the rest of the journey. Although Sacagawea had been reunited with her family, she chose to continue with the expedition. In September 1805, when the Corps of Discovery encountered the Salish tribe, the latter feared for their lives at the hands of white warriors, and it was Sacagawea’s presence that calmed their worries, proving again how indispensable she was in establishing relations with the natives. The Salish agreed to sell supplies and horses for the expedition and welcomed the Americans and their Shoshone guide into their community. What we know today of Sacagawea’s involvement in the expedition comes from the personal diaries of Lewis and Clark. The helpful girl comes alive through the eyes of these two American men. And though the mission to open up the West had fallen upon them, Sacagawea’s immeasurable contribution cannot be dismissed.
In early August 1805, Lewis and three other members of the Corps of Discovery headed toward Beaverhead Rock in search of inhabitants. They reached Lemhi Pass, a two-mile stretch across the Montana-Idaho border, on August 12, 1805. Lemhi Pass bridges the gap between the ranges of the Rockies. The crossing of this pass—the Continental Divide—became one of the most important achievements of Lewis and Clark’s expedition. They were the first Americans to venture by land into a territory being disputed by other countries.
By finding and mapping a land route to the Pacific Ocean, Lewis and Clark were fulfilling the key priority of the mission and bringing the Pacific Northwest into the history of the United States. In his journal that day Lewis wrote:
the road took us to the most distant fountain of the waters of the Mighty Missouri in surch of which we have spent so many toilsome days and wristless nights. thus far I had accomplished one of those great objects on which my mind has been unalterably fixed for many years, judge then of the pleasure I felt in all[a]ying my thirst with this pure and ice-cold water here I halted a few minutes and rested myself. two miles below McNeal had exultingly stood with a foot on each side of this rivulet and thanked his god that he had lived to bestride the mighty & heretofore deemed endless Missouri. after refreshing ourselves we proceeded on to the top of the dividing ridge from which I discovered immence ranges of high mountains still to the West of us with their tops partially covered with snow. . . . here I first tasted the water of the great Columbia river.2
It is hard to imagine what went through Lewis’s mind while he stood looking at the Rocky Mountains to the east, with range upon range of rugged mountains and peaks fading in the west. This view told Lewis that it would be a long time before he and the Corps of Discovery reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean. For the next two hundred miles the expedition struggled with rain, snow, and near starvation as they made their way into the Bitterroot Mountains. There they suffered frostbite, hunger, and dehydration. Lewis and Clark seemed to lose some of the enthusiasm that had carried them thus far, as evidenced by one of Clark’s journal entries: “I have been wet and as cold in every part as I ever was in my life, indeed I was at one time fearfull my feet would freeze in the thin Mockirsons which I wore.”3
The next day Lewis made the following grim entry: “I directed the horses to be gotten up early being determined to force my march as much as the abilities of our horses would permit. this morning we finished the remainder of our last coult. we dined & suped on a skant proportion of portable soupe . . .”4
Atop the 7,000-foot-tall ridge they found no water. Their meal consisted of a soup made from melted snow and the leftovers of a young colt. After traveling for more than a month through dangerous high mountains and heavily forested hills, with little rest along the way, the expedition finally came out of the Bitterroot Mountains.
On September 20, 1805, the Corps of Discovery encountered the natives that came to be known as the Nez Percé. The French name Nez Percé, which means “pierced nose,” is a name mistakenly ascribed to the tribe by a Corps of Discovery interpreter who confused them with the Chinook Tribe, whose members did display piercing and shared fishing and trading sites with the Nez Percé tribe. Today the most common self-designation used by the Nez Percé tribe is Niimiipu.
The first contact was between what must have appeared as an odd-looking stranger with white skin and red hair, William Clark, and three scared native boys. The Nez Percé had never seen a white man before, and they graciously welcomed the exhausted Corps of Discovery to their camp at Weippe Prairie.
The great Chief Joseph spoke highly of the strange folk that arrived from the mountains, saying:
The first white men of your people who came to our country were named Lewis and Clark. They brought many things that our people had never seen. They talked straight and our people gave them a great feast as proof that their hearts were friendly. They made presents to our chiefs and our people made presents to them. We had a great many horses of which we gave them what they needed, and they gave us guns and tobacco in return. All the Nez Percé made friends with Lewis and Clark and agreed to let them pass through their country and never to make war on white men. This promise the Nez Percé have never broken.5
These noble words weighed true until the discovery of gold on the chi
ef’s land.
Lewis and Clark were intrigued with the Nez Percé for many reasons, not the least of which were their beautiful and unusual horses, the Appaloosa, a highly refined breed. It was exclusive to their tribe, even though neighboring tribes coveted it. When Lewis saw the Appaloosa, he compared them to some of the more elegant horses of Europe.
The Nez Percé had mastered the art of breeding—unknown to other tribes—such as mating the best stallion with the best mare and practicing castration of lesser stallions. (All the other tribes caught wild horses or stole them from each other.) It is generally believed that horses were brought to the New World by the Spanish around 1780 and that the plains Native Americans acquired them soon after that. Yet even if the Spanish breeds had been rushed to the Pacific Northwest as soon as they came off the Spanish galleons, the time span from 1780 would have been insufficient to achieve the specific genetic developments present when Lewis and Clark first saw the horses in September 1805.
Thus it is that we must question how a native tribe in the northwest corner of a land divided by almost insurmountable physical boundaries could possess such a defined breed. The few schoolbooks that actually mention the subject suggest that the Appaloosa is a mixture of Asian and Spanish breeds and that the Northwest natives obtained these Spanish breeds from the tribes of the South. However, most books omit to mention where the Asian breeds may have come from, leaving it to be assumed Asian horses also crossed the Bering Strait.
Further investigation leads us to believe the Appaloosa bred by the Nez Percé were Chinese, and there was evidence at the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition to substantiate this claim. In addition there exists strong proof that the Pacific Northwest had contact with Chinese civilizations by water, and not only by the trickle suggested across the Bering land bridge. Over the years this evidence has been coyly yet ruthlessly covered, altered, or outright destroyed.
The Appaloosa appears in pictographs of ancient Asian and Chinese art. The Nez Percé horses were known for their speed, endurance, and surefootedness. The Appaloosa in particular were short legged and stocky, with large heads and thick necks. Their spotted rumps are their defining characteristic. In the second century BCE, Chinese emperor Wu Ti imported Arabian horses into China to improve their mediocre native stock. Among this new influx were the spotted horses. Evidence of spotted horses has been common in China for the past two thousand years as documented in surviving art.
After they had been fed and were sufficiently rested, the Corps of Discovery were ready to resume their journey. The generous Nez Percé people gave them supplies and information about river routes to the Pacific Ocean. The explorers left their horses in the trust of the Nez Percé until their return.
It is interesting to note that in this beautiful valley where the Nez Percé lived freely, there is a mound so large it looks like a hill. According to local legend this mound is supposed to contain deep within it the heart of a great monster killed during the beginning of the world. There is no mention of this hill or its intriguing mythology in any of the journals of the men from the expedition despite very clear instructions from President Jefferson for soil samples and the like. Did Lewis and Clark see the mound? How is it possible they could have missed it?
Within a few days after leaving the Nez Percé, Lewis and Clark reached the Clearwater River, a tributary of the Snake River, which led to the Columbia. The two rivers converge in the general area near Kennewick, Washington. On October 16, 1805, when they reached the Narrows of the Columbia, Lewis saw the water “boiling and whirling in every direction” over jagged rocks. They flung their canoes safely through the obstacles and found themselves on the waters of the Columbia, rushing toward the Pacific Ocean.
The expedition was traversing a particularly awe-inspiring territory, rich in anthropological treasures, when Clark wrote in his journal:
in those narrows the water was agitated in a most Shocking manner boils Swell and whorl pools, we passed with great risque It being impossible to make a portage of the Canoes, about 2 miles lower passed a verry bad place between 2 rocks one large and in the middle of the river here our Canoes took in some water, I put all the men who Could not Swim on Shore; and sent a fiew articles Such as guns & papers, and landed at a village of 20 houses on the Stard. Side in a Deep bason where the river apprd. to be blocked up with emence rocks.6
It is important to mention here the intriguing area that surrounded the Corps of Discovery during these last maneuvers that would bring them within view of the Pacific. The region described by Lewis and Clark no longer resembles the landscape described in Clark’s journal. The area had long been a gathering place for people from the Warm Springs, Yakama, Umatilla, Nez Percé, and other tribes. Some, like the Wishram, Cloud, and Lishkam tribes, lived there permanently and fished with nets and spears between The Dalles and Celilo Falls.
Other natives visited seasonally to practice their religion and take the opportunity to trade and socialize. Others came to harvest spawning salmon. The number of Native American villages in the area was greater than any other Lewis and Clark had encountered in their journey. Because they were abundant, salmon was the currency that supported the tribal economy. Today salmon have been reduced to a meager number that represents less than 1 percent of the numbers observed by early explorers. For centuries this area near the river was a sort of campground, or communal gathering center, where religious ceremonies, including burials, took place. Annual ceremonies that brought together thousands would logically make this place the largest burial ground of natives in the area. Indeed it was.
Lewis and Clark arrived in the area of Horsethief Butte on October 24, 1805. Because of the rough weather and harsh terrain they didn’t do much exploring.
Later some of the oldest pictographs in North America were found in this area. Discoveries included sacred petroglyphs—drawings chipped or ground into rock—that depict tribal legends, hunting scenes, what appear to be alien beings, and mystical imagery. This is evidence of the extreme age of the gatherings that took place in the area. Celilo Falls now only exists in the imagination; it has been reduced to a lake. Sitting behind The Dalles Dam since 1957, this reservoir eliminated important fishing grounds for many native tribes. For more than ten thousand years Native Americans lived and fished in the Celilo Falls area. But today their ghosts remain silent and show no proof of the proud, ancient heritage that once existed in the area.
The seeming erasure of history has much to do with the fact that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers owns this part of the Columbia River. In 1957 the corps specifically chose the area of Celilo Falls to build a dam, where hundreds of historical petroglyphs and perhaps more artifacts that would provide proof of an ancient, technological civilization were to be found. Rising waters caused by the dam flooded the Celilo area, including the falls, burying forever the ancient petroglyphs, along with the ancient history of the Columbia Basin. Only forty-three of the ancient rock symbols were chosen to be moved to a new location.
You can visit these remaining glyphs at Washington’s Columbia Hills State Park, about an hour and a half away from their original location. According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, this is “the best place to see native petroglyphs in the Northwest”—unless one has gills, in which case one can see the hundreds that are under water.
By early November the Corps of Discovery had overcome the Cascades, and the last mountain obstacle was behind them. They were now moving through tidewater by the White Salmon River junction, which they called Canoe Creek because of a cluster of canoes seen at the river’s mouth when they drifted by. There isn’t much noted about this area, which is intriguing. Did they stop? Were they more impressed by the view of Mount Hood to the south?
Lewis, Clark, and the men of the Corps of Discovery were the first white Americans to see Mount Hood. White Salmon River runs through what was once a giant lava tube that collapsed on itself. The vegetation on the area’s riverbank is a strange mix of oak trees, cottonwoods, and p
onderosas, with Douglas fir, maidenhair ferns, western red cedar, and Pacific yew, vastly different from the desertlike terrain they had just passed through days before. One can only imagine the awe with which the explorers must have viewed this uncharted territory. Without a clear notion of how, or if, they would return home, Lewis and Clark, the young Sacagawea, and the Corps of Discovery risked mountains, falls, and rapids that today would intimidate the most skilled sportsmen. Rather than die, as the native spectators along the shore expected them to, they lived to tell a tale that continues to enthrall.
On November 7, 1805, Clark famously wrote in his journal: “Ocian in view! O, the joy!” when he incorrectly thought he was within a short distance from the great Pacific. And then on the morning of November 8, 1805, Clark wrote that the entire party changed clothes. A custom of that time was for travelers to stop at the end of a long journey and ready themselves by putting on their best clothes for arrival. This indicates that Lewis and Clark were expecting November 8 to be the day they would stand on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. With only twenty miles to go, the weather changed dramatically, and they were forced to hang on for dear life. They were hit by rolling breakers so big they had to turn around. This brave group that had pushed ahead against all odds was now facing a river entrance that in later years would be known as the Graveyard of Ships.
After two other attempts that day they were forced to camp on a little beach. During the night they experienced thunderstorms, wind, hail, rocks falling from the cliffs above them, and huge logs tossed to the shore by the pounding surf. They abandoned most of their supplies, buried their canoes, and found shelter in a wooded area around the point. When the weather finally changed days later, and they were able to leave their refuge behind, Clark referred to the place as “this dismal nitch.”