On this day, most of Mittuta-Hanka’s people were across the river near the fort, watching the soldiers’ great efforts to pull the two boats and the ship up out of the ice. They had started almost a month ago to free the vessels but the weather had defeated them over and over. Every day the captains more urgently feared that the spring breakup of the winter ice might crush or wrench the hulls. Finally now, with their iron-blade pikes, the soldiers had freed them, and made a windlass to pull the ice-caked vessels ashore. From here in the Mandan cemetery Drouillard could see the keelboat, almost as long as Fort Mandan itself, imperceptibly moving up the far riverbank with the soldiers laboring around it through a crowd of Mandan onlookers, the figures tiny at a mile distant. Farther up the river, out of sight beyond Black Cat’s village, Sergeant Gass had been scouting for cottonwood trees big enough and straight enough to make as many as six dugout canoes for the river voyage on west to the Shining Mountains. The keelboat, too broad and deep-draughted to go much farther up, would instead be loaded with the tons of plant and animal and mineral specimens, the notes and records the captains had been writing, and with skins of beaver trapped on the way up. It would sail home under the command of Corporal Warfington, with a small crew of soldiers whose enlistments had run out, and with most of the voyageurs. Also with them would be the two disgraced men, Reed the deserter and Newman the mutineer. The pleas of Drouillard and several soldiers on behalf of Newman had failed. Captain Lewis refused to pardon and reenlist him. The destination of Warfington’s cargo—including the prairie dog still alive in its cage—was President Jefferson’s office. Warfington’s little crew expected to have to fight its way past the Sioux on the way back through their country. They had vowed not to be stopped.
Only the weather would dictate when the rest of the corps would leave its Mandan and Hidatsa neighbors and head west, but the stirring to move was evident everywhere. Charcoal mounds seethed, making forge fuel. Hammers were steadily ringing a mile away, clink, clink, clink, as blacksmiths made arrow points and war axes and repaired guns for the Indians, in exchange for bags and pots of corn. Captain Clark spent hours with interpreters and Indians, getting descriptions of the lands and the rivers ahead. Sometimes they would talk and he would draw. Sometimes they would draw river courses in the dirt and make sand heaps to show where mountains were, and he would sketch his maps from those. The Hidatsas were his best source for those western distances, because they hunted buffalo as far as the Shining Mountains, and sometimes even entered the mountains to steal horses and captives from the Shoshones. They told of a great river that would enter the Missouri from the southwest, which was known by French traders as the Roche Jaune, or Yellow Stone, which came from lands yet unhunted and full of fur-bearing animals. They told of other landmark rivers coming in from both sides, describing the distances between in terms of the numbers of sleeps, and said that at a distance which he interpreted to be perhaps four hundred miles there was a great Falling Water place, just this side of the mountains, where they would have to carry their canoes around. A hundred and fifty miles above the falls the Missouri would divide into three branches; that was the place where the Hidatsas had captured the Bird Woman four years ago. The branch coming in from the west would lead them up to the ridge of mountains that divided the east-flowing waters from those that flowed west. And from there it would be all downstream, the captains said, to the Sunset Ocean, which they called the Pacific. Drouillard had heard them talking about the route ahead so often that he could have repeated it all himself. He hoped it would be that simple. These captains, he knew by now, heard best what they wanted to hear.
One thing Drouillard heard that meant much to him was that there were many nations of Indians between the mountains and the sea who had never seen whitemen. Except for the Bird Woman’s memory of her Shoshone tongue from childhood, there would be no knowledge of any of those many languages out there, and talking with those nations would have to be by hand-signing. Sometimes he would look at Bird Woman, that girl with her half-breed baby, and he would think: You and I, the Indians among all these whitemen, are going to be important.
26th of February Thursday 1805
Mr. Gravelines two frenchmen & two Inds arrive from the Ricara Nation informing us of the peaceable dispositions of that nation towards the Mandans & Me ne ta res & their avowed intentions of pursueing our Councils & advice. Mr. Gravilin informs that the Tetons, with the Yanktons of the North intend to come to war in a Short time against the nations in this quarter, & will Kill everry white man they See—
Mr. Gravilin further informs that the Party which Robed us of the 2 horses laterly were all Sieoux 100 in number, they Called at the Ricaras on their return, the Ricares being displeased at their Conduct would not give them any thing to eate, that being the greatest insult they could peaceably offer them, and upbraded them.
William Clark, Journals
Now in charge of the canoe-making, Sergeant Gass was on another rampage against cottonwood. He raged to Captain Clark: “It’ll have to be caulked all over where it’s wind-riven, like here, see, and here. And that crack there’ll want t’ open up when she’s in the water and has weight amidships. I’ll need tin and tacks to cover cracks like that there son of a bitch. And see how that grain runs from here ’round here? Any heavy-footed bastard stomps down a leetle hard there, the whole goddamn bilge’ll bust!” He pointed in disgust at a half-finished dugout canoe.
The captain burst out laughing. “Lordy, Sarge! I thought all the smoke up here was from your wood fires, but maybe most of it’s from your language!”
Sergeant Gass’s axmen had felled four of the thickest cottonwoods and were hollowing them out with fire, ax, and adze. The muddy ground was covered with trampled, fibrous cottonwood bark, dirty wood chips, charred wood, and tobacco spit. The cottonwood was soft, Gass’s tools were sharp, the hewing was easy; the burning was only to temper and dry the sappy wood.
Despite Gass’s dissatisfaction, the canoes were, to Drouillard’s eyes, beautiful things. Throughout his youth and adulthood he had used dugout canoes, had watched Indian men make them, had admired that evolution of the Great Spirit’s creation, a tree, into man’s creation, a graceful vessel for crossing water.
For all his irreverence, Gass was producing four beautiful canoes in the time Indians could have produced one. It was the sharp steel tools that made canoe-making so efficient.
While Clark inspected the canoes, Drouillard hefted his long rifle in his left hand and examined its familiar form with eyes and fingers. This fine weapon was a whiteman creation, made with materials and skills his own people had never had before whitemen came. The Indians had always had flint and wood to make fire and bows and arrows, but the whitemen had brought the steel and the mysterious knowledge of gunpowder, a kind of fuel, so that now he, an Indian, could be a more efficient hunter than Indians without rifles. His whiteman rifle was like Gass’s steel tools. These were the new things of steel coming into an old land of flint, and everything would change.
“I’ve found two more big trees up on that island,” the captain was saying to the sergeant. “Even after what goes home by the keelboat, we’ll need six canoes and the pirogues to carry what we need. That means two more dugouts. Now I’ve got to go back to the fort and meet with Chief One Eye. He’s finally consented to go down and grace us with his presence. Drouillard will take you up and point out the two trees.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said. “We’ll need more provisions to work here longer.”
“Yes, you will. Drouillard’ll get you fresh meat right away. Anything else? Candles? Flour?”
“If Shields could spare a sharpening file, ours is about wornout.”
“All right. I’ll have one sent up. Bring the canoes down to the fort as soon as they’re ready. God and weather willing, we’ll be heading west before much longer!”
Every Indian man or woman Drouillard looked at was crying, and he had to clench his teeth to keep from sobbing himself. The fort stood ab
andoned, with its gate open and no flag on its flagpole, the first day in five months that there had been no flag on the pole, the first day in all that time there was no chimney smoke. Everything that could be moved had been taken out of the fort to be loaded on the keelboat or in the pirogues and canoes.
The snow had melted off the ground, and tiny flowers and shoots of green grass showed on the trampled slope, but the deserted fort looked more desolate in springtime than it ever had when roofed and banked in blowing snow. There was no ice on the river for the people to walk over to the fort. So the Mandan people who were here, watching the men load up the boats, had come over in their little round leather tub boats, and there were only a few dozen of them. Most of the population of Mittuta-Hanka were still on the other shore of the Missouri, and their voices were a piteous drone of weeping and farewells. The whole soldier town they had loved and cohabited with through the winter was leaving them. It was as if the Mandans had expected them to stay.
A young man and woman were coming toward Drouillard, making their way among soldiers who carried bundles and knapsacks down to the canoes. He recognized them after a moment of confusion. This was the last of the young wives who had taken him to bed the night of the buffalo-calling ceremony, and her husband who had given her to him. Their faces were terribly earnest, their eyes shining.
He stopped where he was and set his bedroll on the ground, and stood ready for he knew not what.
The man signed a greeting, I see you. Drouillard replied likewise.
The couple stood close in front of him, and the expressions on their faces were of the greatest tenderness. With his fist and then open palms the husband signed that his heart was too heavy to hold up. You go. Heart is heavy. The woman stood, not signing, but nodding in affirmation. Drouillard signed that he too was sad to go.
The man made the spiral before his brow that meant medicine, then pointed from Drouillard to the woman and to himself. He swooped his hands in the sign for Many, then with his forefingers crooked by his temples he said buffalo.
Drouillard smiled and nodded. It was true that just a few days after the buffalo-calling, a herd had come near the town and the hunters had killed many. With his right fist the man said, I kill, then held up his little finger, then the one next to it, then the middle one. Three. Then with both open hands he made the sign Thank you.
The young wife, whose beauty and ardor he had remembered in reveries many nights since, had nothing to say here. The hunting power had been a gift from him to this young man, and she had been only the passage for it. Still, her husband had brought her here for the thanking and the farewell.
Drouillard signed My heart and then Sunrise: I am glad. The man made two soft syllables, then stepped up and put his arms around him, pressed their cheeks together, and stepped back. The wife still stood back. It would not do for her to embrace him here.
But she did have something to say; she made the little finger-flick from her mouth. I, she signed. Then, frowning with thought, obviously not a practiced sign talker, she hesitated before making the sign work, then, baby. And with a shy smile, she looked down and touched her belly.
So she was in the work of making a baby. Her husband stood there beaming. He made the sign, Question. Then, Medicine. Then he pointed to himself and finally to Drouillard. And he laughed.
Drouillard nodded, then stooped and picked up his bedroll. He looked at their handsome faces. They were smiling at him with that same sweetness, but tears were standing in their eyes. He turned away, so as not to have to see those expressions anymore, and went down to the canoe, thinking, I don’t know either, Brother. But whether it’s yours or mine it seems to make you happy!
He slapped his neck. First mosquito of the season. Oh damn.
He watched the men carrying bundle after bundle of Mandan corn down to the boats, and saw the Mandan people going around trying to express themselves to the soldiers, and he wished the captains had tried somehow to thank these people for keeping their men alive and in good spirits through the cruelest of winters. And he hoped that somewhere in their long writings they had told their President that.
Fort Mandan April 7th 1805
Having on this day at 4 P.M. completed every arrangement necessary for our departure, we dismissed the barge and crew with orders to return without loss of time to S. Louis, We gave Richard Warfington, a discharged Corpl., the charge of the Barge and crew, and confided to his care likewise our dispatches to the government, letters to our private friends, and a number of articles to the President of the United States …
At the same moment that the Barge departed from Fort Mandan, we embarked with our party and proceeded up the river … Our party now consisted of the following Individuals, Sergts. John Ordway, Nathaniel Prior, & Patric Gass; Privates, William Bratton, John Colter, Reubin and Joseph Fields, John Shields, George Gibson, George Shannon, John Potts, John Collins, Joseph Whitehouse, Richard Windsor, Alexander Willard, Hugh Hall, Silas Goodrich, Robert Frazier, Peter Crouzatt, John Baptiest la Page, Francis Labiech, Hue McNeal, William Werner, Thomas P. Howard, Peter Wiser, and John B. Thompson. Interpreters, George Drewyer and Tauasant Charbono also a Black man by the name of York, servant to Capt. Clark, an Indian Woman wife to Charbono with a young child … Our vessels consisted of six small canoes, and two large perogues. 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; these little vessells contained every article by which we were to expect to subsist or defend ourselves … entertaing as I do, the most confident hope of succeading in a voyage which had formed a darling project of mine for the last ten years, I could but esteem this moment of my departure as among the most happy of my life.
Meriwether Lewis, Journals
Chapter 13
Mouth of the Yellowstone River
April 26, 1805
Nineteen days above Fort Mandan the expedition reached the juncture of the Missouri and the Yellow Stone, an unexpected garden of beauty and plenty. Here lay rich bottomlands five miles wide between steep, pale rock bluffs, grown up in more timber than they had seen for months: cottonwood, ash, and elm. And on a vast second bottom a few feet above the floodplain grew a profusion of gooseberry, chokecherry, currant, and honeysuckle bushes, mixed with open glades. They saw a pea vine sort of plant already in full yellow blossom, and expanses of bright green new grass. Here at last was relief from the violent, cold winds that had slowed their progress and some days kept them from launching the boats at all, winds so full of dust and fine sand that everybody had eaten and breathed it for days on end, sand that scoured and gritted up their eyes, already tortured by the glare of afternoon sun on water. This was a paradise of refreshing greenery and moisture and shade and shelter. And of course the most plentiful life swarming in this paradise was the mosquito.
Drouillard had never known that so much game could be found in one place. Immense herds of elk, buffalo, and pronghorns were everywhere, the timber was full of deer, and lately a kind of cliff-dwelling ram had been seen nimbly skipping from crag to crag on the steep bluffs. Buffalo in the bottomlands were so unaccustomed to man that they were as tame as cattle. One curious calf had attached itself to Joe Field and followed him four miles, right into the camp. Grown elk and antelope would come close and follow the men to see what they were. Grouse, rabbits, and porcupines were numerous, and in the watercourses the beaver had created dense populations. The captains were excitedly evaluating this place as the site of a fur-trading post and fort.
Most of the hoofed animals were still too lean and poor from the hard winter to be good eating, but some buffalo cows provided good marrow bones, and a buffalo calf was like fine veal. Beaver tail also provided some fat the men craved after their exertions in cold wind and river spray. Captain Lewis’s dog had chased a wild goat into the river, drowned it, and swum back to shore with it.
The day before, Captain Lewis, Sergeant Ordway,
Joe Field, and Drouillard had walked ahead to explore the juncture of the two rivers, and today when Captain Clark arrived with the boats and canoes, a camp was set up on a wooded point just below the Yellow Stone’s mouth. A delicious, fat supper was cooked, whiskey rations were issued, and greenwood was thrown on the fires to make enough smoke to drive off some of the mosquitoes. Then the musical instruments were unwrapped, and by dusk the fiddle was pacing the dancers around the fire.
Drouillard helped York and Bird Woman erect a tepee frame and pull its skin cover around it. While this was being done, Captain Clark held the baby’s cradleboard and made faces and lip sounds to entertain the infant, whose name was Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. Bird Woman’s husband cavorted around the fire with the soldiers, his yellow teeth bared in a grin that looked like a grimace through his black whiskers. He grew winded quickly, being twice the age of most of the men, but tried hard and cheerfully to compensate for the bad impression he had made on the captains a few weeks ago. He had threatened then to quit his interpreting job if he had to stand guard or serve in work details and had demanded the right to drop out of the voyage any time he might grow discontented with his treatment. So the captains had simply dismissed him, hoping he would come crawling back, and he had done so a few days later. The captains secretly had been very relieved to see him recant, because they knew they would need his wife to interpret with her Shoshone people in the mountains.