Lewis ran into the river, thinking that if he could get to waist-deep water the bear would be obliged to swim. Lewis hoped he could then defend himself with his espontoon.
He got to the waist-deep water, turned on the bear, “and presented the point of my espontoon.”
The bear took one look and “sudonly wheeled about as if frightened, declined the combat on such unequal ground, and retreated with quite as great precipiation as he had just pursued me.”
Lewis learned a lesson: as soon as “I returned to the shore I charged my gun, which I had still retained in my hand throughout this curious adventure. . . . My gun reloaded I felt confidence once more in my strength . . . determined never again to suffer my peice to be longer empty than the time she necessarily required to charge her.”
He got to, examined, and described Medicine River. By the time he was finished, it was 6:30 p.m. About three hours of daylight left, and twelve miles to hike back to camp.
He started down the level bottom of Medicine River. Just short of its junction with the Missouri, he spotted what he at first thought was a wolf; on getting to within sixty yards of it, he decided it was catlike. (It was probably a wolverine.) Lewis used his espontoon as a rest, took careful aim, and fired at it; the animal disappered into its burrow. On examination, the tracks indicated the animal was some kind of tiger cat. Lewis saw no blood; apparently he had missed, which mortified him and bothered him not a little, since he absolutely depended on that rifle for his life (which was why he had had it with him, unloaded, in the river as the bear advanced on him; if he went down, it would be with his rifle in hand), and he was sure he had taken careful aim and that his rifle shot true.
He had not taken three hundred more steps when three buffalo bulls, feeding with a herd about half a mile away, separated from the others and ran full-speed at Lewis. He thought to give them some amusement at least and changed his direction to meet them head-on. At one hundred yards, they stopped, took a good look at Lewis, turned, and retreated as fast as they had come on.
“It now seemed to me that all the beasts of the neighbourhood had made a league to distroy me, or that some fortune was disposed to amuse herself at my expence,” he wrote.
He returned to the carcass of the buffalo he had shot in the morning, where he had thought he might camp, but decided to go all the way to base camp at the foot of the first falls: he “did not think it prudent to remain all night at this place which really from the succession of curious adventures wore the impression on my mind of inchantment.”
At times, walking over the plains as full darkness came on, he thought it was all a dream. But then he would step on a prickly pear.
In the morning, June 15, he spent hours writing in his journal (his entry covering his June 14 adventures is some twenty-four hundred words long; at twenty words a minute of stream-of-consciousness writing, with no pause for reflection, it would have taken him two hours minimum). Then “I amused myself in fishing, and sleeping away the fortiegues of yesterday.”
The curious adventures that marked the week he discovered there were five great falls, not one, were not finished. When Lewis awoke from his nap, “I found a large rattlesnake coiled on the leaning trunk of a tree under the shade of which I had been lying at the distance of about ten feet from him.” He killed the snake—he does not bother to tell how—and examined it (176 scuta on the abdomen and 17 on the tail).
Private Field returned, to report that Clark and the main party had stopped at the foot of a rapid about five miles below. Clark thought he had gone about as far upstream as possible, and that the portage should therefore begin from that place. Lewis needed to examine the ground. He had already decided there were too many ravines on the north bank, and that, because the river bent toward the southwest, a portage on the south side would be shorter.
Where and how he did not know. Or how long it would take. But it was obviously going to be a much greater task than he had anticipated, and far more time-consuming.
In a week, the days would start getting shorter. And always in the back of his mind, even as he wrestled with his immediate problems, were those tremendous mountains looming to the west, standing between him and his goal—mountains that he could only just see, but which he already realized were much greater, higher, deeper than anything he had seen in the Blue Ridge, or anywhere else. For a man who could never expect to travel more than twenty-five miles in one day, he was in a tremendous hurry.
He was eager to vault his energy over those mountains before winter set in, but he had to deal with the reality of a more-than-sixteen-mile portage over rough terrain, do it patiently, and use the time in as positive a way as possible.
* * *
I. The explanation was simple, although it did not occur to Lewis or Clark, probably because their orientation was so completely centered on the river. When the Hidatsas raided to the west, they went on horseback. They could easily cut the big bends in the Missouri by riding overland. Up on the plains, they saved not only miles but the very rough country of the breaks and White Cliffs. Following that route, they would strike the Missouri again at or south of Fort Benton, and thus never see the river coming in from the northwest that so puzzled Lewis.
II. Sacagawea was of no help. She had not been on this part of the river.
III. A modern floater’s guide to Montana states that the gravel roads in the area of the river are like “impassable grease” after a rain. Moulton, in his note to the June 7, 1805, entry, calls this clay a “gumbo,” and writes, “Only a small amount of moisture is needed to make it extremely slippery.”
IV. The branding iron bore the legend “U.S. Capt. M. Lewis.” It is now in the Oregon Historical Society Museum, one of the few surviving authenticated articles associated with the expedition. It was found near Hood River, Oregon, in 1892, 1893, or 1894. See Moulton’s note to the entry of June 10, 1805.
V. Had the expedition gone up Marias River, at about one hundred miles it would have reached a fork, the junction of the Two Medicine and the Cut Bank Rivers. Had the party taken the left-hand fork, it would have arrived at Glacier National Park in the vicinity of present East Glacier. It would have gone over the Contintenal Divide at Marias Pass—the route that the Northern Pacific Railroad later used, and still uses today. That would have put the expedition in the Columbia River drainage—down the Middle Fork of the Flathead River to the Flathead, then south until eventually making a junction with the Clark’s Fork, running north to the Columbia. As the crow flies, this would have been the shortest route, but it would have taken the party through an incredible jumble of mountains and whitewater, without horses. At the least, the odds would have been against the men and their captains.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Great Portage
June 16–July 14, 1805
On Sunday morning, June 16, Lewis set out from his camp at the base of the first falls to rejoin Clark and the party at their camp, some six miles downstream. At 2:00 p.m., the captains were reunited. They had much to talk about—their experiences over the past few days, what they had seen, the meat supply, and most of all which side of the river to use to make the portage of the falls, and where to start the portage.
But before they could get into these immediate, pressing problems, Clark informed Lewis that there was an even more urgent matter. Sacagawea was ill, and had been for almost a week. Clark had tried bleeding her, which hadn’t worked, and applying to her pelvic region a poultice of Peruvian bark and laudanum, also without success. He turned the patient over to Lewis, glad to be rid of the responsibility. In his journal, Clark wrote, “The Indian woman verry bad, & will take no medisin what ever, untill her husband finding her out of her Senses, easyly provailed on her to take medison, if She dies it will be the fault of her husband as I am now convinced.” (He did not explain why he blamed Charbonneau.)
Lewis’s initial, cursory examination showed that Sacagawea was extremely ill, much reduced by her indisposition, with a high fever, a scarcely percep
tible pulse, irregular breathing, and alarming twitching of the fingers and arms. “This gave me some concern,” Lewis wrote, for Sacagawea and her baby boy, of course, but even more “from the consideration of her being our only dependence for a friendly negociation with the Snake Indians on whom we depend for horses to assist us in our portage from the Missouri to the columbia River.”
Lewis gave Sacagawea a fuller examination and concluded that “her disorder originated principally from an obstruction of the mensis in consequence of taking could.”I Apparently he wasn’t far off in his diagnosis. His therapy was “two dozes of barks and opium,” which soon produced an improvement in her pulse. She was thirsty. Lewis recalled a sulphur spring on the opposite (northwest) bank of the river; he sent a man over to bring him some. He figured it contained iron as well as sulphur and would be just what she needed. He was probably right; such symptoms as the twitching of the fingers and arms could have been due to loss of minerals resulting from Clark’s bleeding her. For sure, his repeated bleeding had dehydrated her and stimulated her thirst.1 She drank eagerly of the sulphur water, which was all the liquid Lewis would allow her to have. He continued the application of poultices to her pelvic region.
That evening, he was delighted with her progress. Her pulse had become regular, and much fuller; a gentle perspiration had come on; the twitching had in a great measure abated, “and she feels herself much freer from pain.” Chuinard praises Lewis for his methods: “His recording of the patient’s complaints, his physical examination of her, the medication employed, and his genuine concern about her probably would not be exceeded by any physician of his time.”2
•
While Lewis was doing his doctoring, Clark took a party to a clump of cottonwoods about a mile below the entrance of a small creek (today’s Belt Creek) to establish a base camp for the portage. This was the only place within miles in which there was enough wood for fuel. Lewis joined him in the afternoon. Clark had sent two men to examine the ground on the south side. Lewis told him that the portage was going to be at least sixteen miles long, a staggering piece of information. The captains decided they would have to leave the white pirogue at the base camp, and depend on Lewis’s iron-frame boat for the upriver journey beyond the Great Falls. To further lighten the load, they also decided to make another cache of items they did not absolutely need.
At dusk, the two scouts came in “and made a very unfavourable report. They informed us that the creek just above us and two deep ravenes still higher up cut the plain between the river and mountain in such a manner, that in their opinions a portage for the canoes on this side was impracticable.”
Another staggering piece of information. Lewis took it in stride. “Good or bad we must make the portage,” he wrote with characteristic matter-of-fact realism. Besides, from what little he had seen with his own eyes, from the north bank, “I am still convinced . . . that a good portage may be had on this side.”
The next morning, June 17, his conviction grew. Examination revealed that the small canoes could make it up the creek—which the captains named Portage Creek—almost two miles, from which point there was a gradual ascent to the top of the high plain. There the portage would begin. Clark set off with a small party to look over the route.
Lewis spotted a single cottonwood tree of some twenty-two inches in diameter just below the entrance of the creek, the only tree of such size within twenty miles. He put six men to work cutting it down and then sawing it crosswise to make wheels. He directed that the hardwood mast of the white pirogue be cut to make axles. The much softer cottonwood would serve for tongues, couplings, and bodies of the two wagons—or “trucks,” as Lewis called them—which would transport the canoes and baggage.
•
Lewis’s patient was much improved. She was free of pain, clear of fever, with a regular pulse and a healthy appetite. He continued the medication—sulphur water and poultices—and allowed her to eat broiled buffalo (“well seasoned with pepper and salt”) and a soup of the same meat. With vast relief, he wrote in his journal that evening, “I think therefore that there is every rational hope of her recovery,” an indication of how fearful he had been that she wouldn’t make it.
He had other things to worry about, among them the covering for the iron-frame boat. He wanted elk skins, because he believed that they were more durable and stronger than buffalo skins and that they would not shrink so much in drying. But though there was an abundance of buffalo and deer around this part of the Missouri, elk were scarce. On the morning of June 19, he sent Drouillard and two of the enlisted men, Privates Reubin Field and George Shannon, to the north side of the Missouri with orders to proceed to the entrance of Medicine River and kill elk for their skins.
The wagons were ready; the baggage was sorted and prepared for the portage. The party was waiting only for Clark to return from his scouting mission. Lewis had a rare afternoon of genuine leisure; to amuse himself, he went fishing. The men mended their moccasins.
The Indian woman had been better in the morning. She had walked out onto the plains and gathered a considerable quantity of the white apples. She ate them raw—without telling Lewis—together with some dried fish.
Her fever returned. She felt awful. Lewis was furious: “I rebuked Sharbono severely for suffering her to indulge herself with such food he being privy to it and having been previously told what she must only eat. I now gave her broken dozes of diluted nitre [saltpeter, used as a diuretic and diaphoretic, for fevers and gonorrhea]3 untill it produced pespiration and at 10 P.M. 30 drops of laudanum which gave her a tolerable nights rest.”
In the morning, she was “quite free from pain and fever and appears to be in a fair way for recovery, she has been walking about and fishing.” His prognosis was correct; within a couple of days, she was well.
Lewis sent the men out hunting. He wanted to lay by as large a store of dried meat as possible, so that when the portage began he wouldn’t have to detach men to hunt. That evening, Clark came into camp to report that the portage route was seventeen and three-quarters miles long.
The captains talked. They decided that Clark would oversee the portage while Lewis would go to the termination point, a group of islands that Clark had named White Bear Islands from the presence of so many grizzlies, where Lewis would oversee the preparation of his iron-frame boat. He would take the first load over the route, in a canoe carried on a wagon; the load would include the iron frame and the necessary tools. Sergeant Gass and Privates Joseph Field and John Shields would accompany him.
Clark told Lewis that there were no pines, only cottonwoods, in the area of the White Bear Islands. That gave Lewis something more to worry about: without pine pitch to pay the seams of the leather covering of his iron frame, he faced “a deficiency that I really know not how to surmount unless it be by means of tallow and pounded charcoal which mixture has answered a very good purpose on our wooden canoes.”
•
The portage began shortly after sunrise on June 22. All the enlisted men, save two left behind to guard the baggage, joined the captains in moving the canoe over the plains. They had a multitude of problems, beginning with prickly pears and including numerous breakdowns. The axles broke. The tongues broke. Lewis renewed them with sweet-willow branches “and hope that they will answer better.” Despite the difficulties, after dark they made it to the termination point. Along the way, Lewis discovered and described one of the best-loved birds of the Great Plains, the western meadowlark.
Over the next twelve days, Lewis stayed at the White Bear Islands camp, supervising the construction of the iron-frame boat (called “The Experiment” by the enlisted men), while Clark supervised the portage. The latter was the most difficult undertaking the expedition had yet experienced.
Let Clark describe it: “The men has to haul with all their Strength wate & art, maney times every man all catching the grass & knobes & Stones with their hands to give them more force in drawing on the Canoes & Loads, and notwithstanding the Cool
ness of the air in high presperation and every halt [the men] are asleep in a moment, maney limping from the Soreness of their feet Some become fant for a fiew moments, but no man Complains all go Chearfully on—to State the fatigues of this party would take up more of the journal than other notes which I find Scercely time to Set down.”
They were assaulted by hail as big as apples, by “musquetoes,” by hot sun and cold rain. The winds could be awesome. On June 25, Lewis noted that “the men informed me that they hoisted a sail in the canoe and the wind had driven her along on the truck wheels. this is really sailing on dry land.”
To free up a man to help prepare elk skins for the boat covering, Lewis assigned himself the duty of cook. He collected the wood and water and in the biggest iron kettle boiled enough dried buffalo meat to feed thirty men, then made it into a suet dumpling by way of a treat for all the diners.
There were vast herds of buffalo in the neighborhood; Clark estimated he could see ten thousand in one view. The bulls kept Seaman up all night, barking at them. Grizzlies were also numerous, and, unlike the buffalo, they were dangerous; Lewis forbade any man to go alone on any errand that required passing through brush, and ordered all hands to sleep with their rifles close at hand. The bears came close around camp at night, Lewis wrote on June 28, “but have never yet ventured to attack us and our dog gives us timely notice of their visits, he keeps constantly padroling all night.”
The bears often showed themselves at midday, which infuriated Lewis and his men. But “we are so much engaged that we could not spare the time to hunt them.” Still, Lewis made a vow: “We will make a frolick of it” when the time came. He intended personally to direct an all-out attack on the enemy.
By June 30, the iron frame was put together and the skins—twenty-eight elk and four buffalo—had been prepared. In the morning, the sewing together of the skins over the frame would begin. Meanwhile, the portage was within two days of completion. Soon the expedition would be rolling up the river again.