Stocky men and women of the Clatsop tribe had been coming to the site of the fort during its construction, bringing roots and berries, baskets and mats, and the skins of panthers and sea otters, but were such tight bargainers that the soldiers bought very little, and the Indians usually left disgruntled. They were a mild-mannered people with pleasant faces, some of the women and girls very pretty, saucy and bawdy. They covered their heads and upper bodies with cone-shaped hats and mantles so tightly woven that they shed rain, but went basically naked from the waist down. Captain Lewis remarked that he could do a venereal diagnosis of a whole party just by glancing around, and they all seemed to be infected. Soon the soldiers’ venereal symptoms were back, and the calomel came back out of the medicine chest. These coastal Indians apparently had been ravaged by diseases off the trading ships; they told of being a very numerous nation within the lifetime of their fathers and mothers, but they were just a few hundred now. The captains were little inclined to be bothered by Indian visitors now, but had to maintain friendly relations for practical reasons, and were obliged to learn what the President would want to know of them. Captain Lewis was counting on Indians to bring news of any ship that might come too, so he had to feign more cordiality than he felt.
The dampness and the warmth made the preservation of meat very difficult. Even with a smokehouse constantly tended, much of the meat spoiled. A great deal more was ruined before it even got to the smokehouse, because terrain and weather combined to make its transportation slow and difficult. Wherever Drouillard and his hunters slew elk, some circumstance made it difficult to bring in. If it was near the Columbia, the violent waters often made it impossible to fetch the meat in canoes. If it was up in the hills to the south, dense undergrowth was the problem. And if it was in the quaking bogs down toward the coast, men carrying any load of meat would sink so far they couldn’t wade to solid ground. This terrain, and the inability to see the sun, bewildered almost everybody, and hunting parties frequently got lost and spent long nights squatting in total darkness, soaked to the skin, unable to build fires. And so, much of the meat that Drouillard and his hunters tracked, chased, killed, and butchered was wasted, or had to be eaten in degrees of spoilage.
A few days ago Captain Clark had taken Drouillard and several soldiers about fifteen miles down through the mountains and out to a windy, sandy beach piled with driftwood, a perfect place for a saltmaking camp. They had blazed a trail between that place and the fort to keep the men from getting lost between the two places. It was a beautiful but forbidding coast, a sight Drouillard knew he would never forget. There, the dark gray ocean thundered and sprayed against gigantic dark pinnacles and towers of rock that stood separated from the grim, high cliffs above the beach, cliffs jutting miles and miles southward, each point of rock and headland and mountain fainter than the one before it, dimmed by fog and spume, until the farthest vanished in mist. A party of salt-boilers had already been picked to go down with kettles after Christmas and start making salt: Bratton, Gibson, Willard, and Weiser, with Joe Field as their overseer and hunter. The captains wanted salt badly, and the men craved it.
They were out of salt. Out of liquor. Out of meal and flour. Almost out of tobacco. And they were four or five thousand miles from their homes and families, and most of them had been sick or pained in one way or another for so long that they couldn’t remember real comfort.
Wednesday 25th Decr. 1805
rainy & wet. disagreeable weather. we all moved in to our new Fort, which our officers name Fort Clotsop after the name of the Clotsop nation of Indians who live nearest to us, the party Saluted our officers by each man firing a gun at day break. they divided out the last of their tobacco among the men that used and the rest they gave each a Silk hankerchief, as a Christmas gift, to keep us in remembrence of it as we have no ardent Spirits … we have nothing to eat but poore Elk meat and no Salt to Season that with but Still keep in good Spirits as we expect this to be the last winter that we will have to pass in this way.
Sergeant John Ordway, Journals
The soldiers and captains gave what poor gifts they had. The most surprising exchange was from Sacagawea to Captain Clark, a beautiful shoulder mantle made of two dozen weasel tails. Her brother, Cameahwait, had put it on her shoulders last summer as she set out westward from their homeland with these soldiers. Apparently she harbored a true but unexpressed affection or admiration for Clark. No one had thought of giving her anything.
No one had given Drouillard anything either. Apparently, their Christmas was just for Christians, not Indians. So his gift to himself was the completion of a necklace of grizzly bear claws he had been drilling and stringing in his spare time. He had no warrior feather, but he had earned bear claws.
Two wide, split boards had been planed smooth to make writing surfaces for the captains, and they went into heavy use. Any time Drouillard entered their smoky room for anything, he found them bent over their writing boards, hats and boots on against the dankness, scratching away with pencils and quills. The daily life in the fort was so monotonous—sending out hunting parties, receiving Indian visitors, treating the colds, influenza, venereal complaints, and the sprains and strains of the soldiers—that the journal entries were cursory. The captains’ tireless writings on everything else were information on the three local tribes and their headmen, names of some ship captains the Indians traded with and when they might be expected to come, information and measurements of plants and animals, descriptions of geography, weather, and edibles, the dress and handicrafts of the local Indians—it was as if Captain Lewis had nothing on his mind but Thomas Jefferson’s curiosity, and killing time until they could leave this wet, moldy place and start home in the spring. Writing killed time better than anything. And, in the event that some American ship might show up in the Columbia, as much information as possible would be ready to send home.
At his table, Captain Clark concentrated on assembling his hundreds of sketches, compass headings, distances, and map scribblings taken from Indian interviews, and connecting them to make a vast map of everything from Fort Mandan to the Pacific. The concentration in their dim little room was so strong one could almost feel the pressure of it. And all the time, rain roared or pattered on the roof of riven wood shakes.
Drouillard stayed out as much as possible with his hunters, ranging farther and farther with every passing week to find the diminishing elk. Being out away from the fort, he could avoid the torments of the fleas and the gloomy complaints of the bored troops. They lived for their smoking and chewing tobacco, and for those days when they got some of the bawdy Indian girls into their quarters. The wife of one of the chiefs seemed to be a sort of madam who escorted groups of saucy, bare-bottomed girls to the fort so often that she was a special object of Captain Lewis’s disdain. Much of Lewis’s discontent he took out on the Indians: harping on the eternal threat of treachery and thievery, making rules about when they could and could not be in the fort, and what offenses should justify their ejection. A strict regimen of guard duty was scheduled, and a roofed booth to keep a sentry out of the rain was built on the picket wall of the fort.
Drouillard’s relentless search for game had turned up some good beaver habitat, so he started taking traps out with him. The pelts he brought in were in excellent condition, and now and then he got an otter, whose fur the captains especially coveted. And whenever he caught a beaver, there was of course a tasty, fat variation to the monotonous diet of lean, half-spoiled elk.
When the first quarts of white sea salt were brought into the fort from the coastal brine works, it helped make the elk diet a little more palatable. But in this dank climate, the men craved fat even more than salt, and it happened that the soldiers who brought the salt also brought a little whale blubber. A few miles below the salt works, a whale had beached and died, and the Clatsop villagers nearby were cutting and rendering its meat and fat. The captains at once determined to take a large party down and get some before it was gone. One of the selected men
being Charbonneau, his wife suddenly stood up with fire in her eyes and stated in swift, strong sign language that she wanted to go too. She declared that she had traveled a long, hard way with these soldiers to see the great waters, and had not yet been permitted to see the ocean. And now there was a great fish such as she would never have another chance to see, and she knew no reason why she should not get to go. She stood with her chin up and eyes glittering and waited for an answer.
Drouillard translated every part of her demand with pleasure, inspired, seeing the quiet little Indian woman assert herself again. Clark gazed at her. Then he nodded. “Drouillard, tell her she can go with us if she’s sure she can keep up, carryin’ that baby and all. Going to be a long trek.”
They returned four days later with three hundred pounds of blubber and a few quarts of whale oil. It had been a grueling trip through creeks and marshes, on stony seashore, and an exhausting climb up the steep side of a mountain well over a thousand feet high. Bird Woman with her baby on her back had kept up without any complaint. All that was left of the whale was bones by the time they got there, and Captain Clark had bargained hard to get the Indians to sell any blubber or oil at all. But the soldiers were delighted to have both fat and salt for their diet, and the trek was considered to have been worth all its effort. Bird Woman was content. She had seen the bones of a fish that was forty paces long, and wherever she might live hereafter, she would be able to tell of it to people, and see their disbelief. And she told Drouillard that no one would believe the size of the ocean she had seen either.
It seemed that the sight of the ocean had fulfilled any desires or expectations she had nurtured on this long and grueling journey. The whitemen, of course, had never even considered whether she had any desires or expectations. Now some of them were beginning to see her in that new light—Captain Clark, in particular. Drouillard saw the officer studying her by firelight now and then, as if considering what her world within might be.
No ships yet. No word of ships. The officers worked week after week on their writing and planning. They were killing time. They had until May to get back up the Columbia and the Snake and the Kooskooskee to the Nez Perce country where Twisted Hair was keeping their horses, the horses they would need to recross the mountains to the Missouri. Because of snow in the mountains, they could not expect to cross them before May. They estimated that if they left here in late March or early April, they would have time to ascend to the mountains by then. Here they had their fort for shelter until spring, and could subsist without expending the remains of their trade goods too soon on the way up. They didn’t like it here; it was like being in a flea-infested jail of their own making. But they would live here, and make all their preparations for the journey home to the United States.
Sunday the 12th January 1806
This morning Sent out Drewyer and one man to hunt, they returned in the evening Drewyer having killed 7 Elk; I scercely know how we Should Subsist, if it was not for the exertions of this excellent hunter; maney others also exert themselves, but not being acquainted with the best method of finding and killing the elk, and no other wild animals is to be found in the quarter, they are unsucksessfull in their exertions.
William Clark, Journals
Chapter 21
Fort Clatsop
March 17, 1806
Drouillard steered the canoe to the bank of the Netul where the corps kept its little fleet of canoes on shore, and the other canoe followed. It was deep dusk. It had taken hours to bring the canoes along the Columbia shore from the Kathlamet town because of the rough water, then up the Netul to the fort. He had a severe pain in his left side and was glad the trip was over. It was raining and blowing as usual. The soldiers with him climbed out of the vessels and pulled them onto the shore. With them were two Kathlamet headmen wearing cone-shaped hats and capes woven so tightly of cedar and bear grass that they shed rain perfectly. The canoes were leaking through cracks, and the rain and bashing waves had poured even more water in them. Constant travel in canoes half full of water apparently was the reason these river peoples wore nothing below the waist and went barefoot.
Drouillard and his party had been trying to buy a few canoes from the Clatsop and Kathlamet villages so they would have enough for the return trip up the Columbia, and it had been a frustrating effort. Canoes were among these tribes’ most useful and valued possessions, and they would not sell them cheaply. The Clatsops had kept their price for one out of reach. Drouillard finally had obtained one from the Kathlamets, paying in tobacco and Captain Lewis’s fanciest army coat. The corps was almost out of trade goods, and even the soldiers had given most of their valuables away to the local girls who came selling carnal pleasures.
Drouillard, with the soldiers and the two Kathlamets, went up the muddy path to the fort, smelling chimney smoke, latrines, and rotten elk meat. He clenched his teeth against the pain in his side. He hadn’t figured out what it was, but did not want the captains to see that he was sick, because they would probably want to bleed him or fill him with four or five kinds of their evil little pills.
Unfortunately, Lewis saw him wince at a stab of pain, and in no time he was lying on a bunk with blood dripping from a slit arm vein into a bowl. It made him think of the woman far up the river who had slashed her arms. Lewis was saying, “Too many sick. This is no time for it, just when we’re trying to get ready to leave this place.”
“Well, mine’s not cock pox, Cap’n. Whatever this is, I didn’t bring it on myself.”
“I’ll say that for you,” Lewis said, then looked at him thoughtfully. Drouillard was just very careful. He was one of the few men who had visited and socialized in the Clatsop towns, and not for romance. He often stopped to visit with such chiefs as Coboway and Warhalot and Shanoma while ranging in their vicinity, and smoked and ate and hand-talked with them, trying to soothe their ruffled feelings, to make them feel that their new white neighbors weren’t really hostile and arrogant, as they seemed, but just whitemen soldiers, unlike the traders, who were the only other whitemen these people knew. He tried to tell them that these whitemen lived by codes they had learned on the far side of the land and that they didn’t understand Clatsop ways, any better than Clatsops could understand theirs. When Drouillard was in their towns he made it clear that he himself was an Indian from a tribe a year’s travel eastward, and being an Indian he did not have goods to trade for women’s favors. A few times, out of plain Clatsop hospitality, he had been offered bed companions. A couple of times he had accepted, but only after discreetly determining that there was no risk of disease. In those households he was always cheerfully welcomed. And he already was a legend among the tribesmen as a hunter. Back in January some Clatsops had seen him shoot several elk at a distance they could scarcely believe even when they witnessed it with their own eyes. The captains had been very pleased with that incident; they thought that just in case the Clatsops had ever considered attacking the soldiers, their opinion of American marksmanship and superior rifles likely would discourage them. Drouillard doubted that the Indians had ever considered it. They were a happy, congenial people who were competitive only in trade. Their greatest joy seemed to be in getting a real bargain.
Lewis stopped the bleeding with pressure and told Drouillard to lie quiet and hold a cloth over the slit. He said, “We still need another canoe. The Clatsops won’t give one up at a price we can afford. I hate to do it, but I guess we’ll just have to take one. I’ll send a party out tomorrow to get one.”
“Wouldn’t do that, Cap’n. These people don’t care a lot for us, but one thing they can’t say is that we steal.”
“They steal from us. I think that elk meat they took from your cache last month, that’s justification enough.”
“That’s been smoothed over. Coboway apologized and gave us three dogs, remember?”
“Hardly compensation for six elk,” Lewis retorted. “You said so yourself.”
“Cap’n, I took it too personal at the time. I’m on good
terms with him now.” He didn’t mention that he had counted the Clatsop girls as personal compensation.
“It’s not that I want to do this,” Lewis said. “But we have to have another canoe. They’ll never know. They’ll think it drifted, like that one of ours.”
Drouillard sighed in anger and annoyance. Lewis would do what he wanted to. It would be easy. The tribes didn’t guard their canoes because they all had a code against stealing each other’s vessels. It was just the opposite of the horse-stealing games of the plains tribes. Here the honor was in not stealing each other’s essential transportation. It took weeks to make a canoe, whereas horses reproduced themselves and the tribes had hundreds of them. Drouillard admired the respectful understandings these coastal tribes had among themselves, by which they kept peace.
It seemed strange to him that the captains had no such admiration. For all their talk about peace among the tribes, they seemed to have nothing but disdain and suspicion for these peaceful peoples. They hardly ever let Indians stay after dark in the fort, even if they had come too far to travel home. At Fort Mandan they had let more warlike chiefs stay overnight and had afforded them attention and hospitality. All winter Drouillard had tried to imagine why they so disliked these coastal peoples, beyond their appearance.
Sometimes it seemed to Drouillard that the real reason these whitemen scorned the natives here was because these people were not particularly impressed by the whitemen. The officers had been accustomed to being a novelty and the center of attention and awe across much of the continent, with their white skins and their instruments and manufactured goods, with their great black man, with their amazing message from their new Great Father. Here, none of that amounted to much. These coastal people had traded for at least ten years with whitemen on big ships, ships carrying more and better goods than these whitemen had. They had seen plenty of black men on the ships. They apparently had heard fiddles and horns and Jew’s harps before, and Cruzatte was so little in demand that he had all but stopped playing. He excused himself by saying the rain and dampness would ruin the instrument and the strings had no tone in this humidity.