At 1:30 p.m. on November 17, Lewis joined Clark at the camp on the sandy beach that the party would occupy for the next week (in present-day Fort Canby State Park, near McKenzie Head). It was a much-superior campsite, and the hunters could get out and bring in some meat.
On November 18, it was Clark’s turn to ramble. He set out with York and ten men on a reconnaissance to Cape Disappointment, where he found Lewis’s name carved in the tree. Together with the men, Clark followed Lewis’s example but greatly improved on it by adding to his name and the date the magnificent line: “By Land from the U. States in 1804 & 1805.”
On his return from his reconnaissance, Clark found Lewis with a group of Chinooks, including two chiefs. They all sat for a smoke. The captains handed medals and an American flag to the chiefs. Some trading was done.
One of the chiefs had on a robe made of sea-otter skins that Clark declared “more butifull than any fur I had ever Seen.” Lewis agreed. In his turn, each captain tried to strike a bargain for the robe, offering different articles.
No, said the chief. He pointed at Sacagawea’s belt of blue beads, the most highly prized beads of all. The captains looked at her, questioningly. She made it clear that if she had to turn over the belt she wanted something in return. One of the captains brought her a coat of blue cloth, and she handed over the belt. Clark’s journal fails to say who ended up with the fur coat, but it surely wasn’t Sacagawea.
The next day, an old Chinook woman appeared with six of her daughters and nieces in tow. She was selling their favors. Clark remarked, “Those people appear to view Sensuality as a Necessary evile. . . . The young females are fond of the attention of our men.”
At this, their westernmost campsite, the captains again felt the urge to mark their presence. Lewis used his branding iron to mark a tree; Clark and all the men carved their names into the surrounding trees.
Meanwhile, the word had gotten out among the Clatsops that the captains would pay almost any price for sea-otter furs. That night, a group came over the estuary with two robes to sell. The captains wanted them, but the price was too high. Clark was astonished when one owner turned down the offer of a watch, a handkerchief, a bunch of red beads, and a dollar in American coin. The Indians wanted blue beads, and the captains were all but out of them. Still, the captains found they liked the Clatsops much better than their relatives the Chinooks, mainly because the Clatsops were not thieves.
•
That became a factor in the decision that now had to be made: where to spend the winter. The obvious requirements were good water, plenty of game, and some shelter. They had three choices: to stay where they were, to cross to the south bank to see if there was a better site there, or to go back upstream to the falls.
The Clatsops informed them that elk were plentiful on the south side. The captains were certain that their supply of beads and trinkets was so inadequate, and the Chinooks’ prices were so high, that they could not get through the winter buying their food. They needed a continuing source of meat.
Lewis said that upriver the winter would be more severe, and this location would not really help them get started on the homeward voyage. They would have to wait for the snow to melt in the Bitterroots anyway, so there was plenty of time to go back up the Columbia-Snake in the spring. He wanted to get closer to the ocean, which was easier done on the south side, so that he could put men to making salt from the seawater. He and all the men craved salt.
Not Clark. He heartily disapproved, writing that he was indifferent to whether or not he had salt; anyway, “Salt water I view as an evil in as much as it is not helthy.”
Lewis had a better reason than his taste buds for wanting to stay near the coast. There was at least a good chance that a trading vessel would arrive during the winter; if one did, it would solve major supply problems. Clark agreed. He also pointed out that, with elk more abundant on the south shore and deer on the north, the choice was easy: elk were bigger and easier to kill, and their skins were better for clothing.
So the captains made up their own minds, but on this occasion they decided to let everyone participate in the decision. They put it to a vote. They never explained why. Perhaps they felt that, since they were all going to be in this together, they should all have a say; maybe they just wanted to involve everyone so that none would have a right to complain.
The choices were to stay, to proceed to the falls, or to cross to and examine the other side before deciding. Naturally, the third alternative won, overwhelmingly—only Private John Shields voted against it. If the sites on the south side were unsatisfactory, about half the voters wanted to go up to the falls, half to stay at the mouth. York’s vote was counted and recorded. Using Sacagawea’s nickname, Clark noted, “Janey in favour of a place where there is plenty of Potas.”V
This was the first vote ever held in the Pacific Northwest. It was the first time in American history that a black slave had voted, the first time a woman had voted.
•
On November 26, after going upriver for two days to find a shorter crossing, the party crossed to the south shore. They camped on the east bank of the John Day River, and were again pinned down by bad weather. By the 29th, Lewis had had enough. He told Clark he would take their Indian canoe and round Tongue Point to examine the country where the Clatsops said there were elk. He hand-picked the men he wanted with him—Drouillard, of course, along with Privates Reubin Field, Shannon, Colter, and Labiche.
They set out early in the morning, got around the point, and made camp that night near the site of present-day Astoria, Oregon. Lewis sent out the hunters. They returned with four deer and some geese and ducks, a haul as encouraging as it was welcome. Lewis made a short journal entry, providing a bare outline of his activities, as he would do the next two days as well. Clark wrote on the last page of Lewis’s writings, “Capt. Lewis rough notes when he left Capt. Clark near the mouth of Columbia for a few days to examine the S.W. side.”4
Lewis set out at sunrise to explore Youngs Bay (so named by Lieutenant Broughton of Vancouver’s expedition). Finding nothing satisfactory at the outlet of Youngs River, he went up today’s Lewis and Clark River about a mile, and was discouraged. Lewis returned to the bay, hoping to find some Clatsops, “who have tantilized us with there being much game in their neighbourhood,” to ask them where that game was. All about him, they might have answered—there were great numbers of brants, geese, sandhill cranes, and blue herons, and a large variety and immense number of ducks in the bay. But of course Lewis wanted elk. In his field notes that night, he recorded botanical data.
Over the next couple of days, he explored, this time going farther up the Lewis and Clark River, where he found his spot. He told Clark it was on a small bluff rising some thirty feet higher than the high-tide mark, some two hundred feet back from the river, and about three miles up from its mouth. It was near a spring, and there were plenty of big trees that could be used to make shelter and a fort. It was but a few miles to the open ocean, where salt could be made. Best of all, it promised good hunting: Drouillard and another hunter had killed six elk and five deer.
Clark reported that “this was verry Satisfactory information to all the party.” The expedition made ready to move to its winter quarters as soon as the wind would allow it to round the point to get into the bay and then up the river. On December 6 the wind was too high, but the following morning Lewis guided the expedition to the site of what the captains would call Fort Clatsop. Clark took one look and pronounced it a “most eligable Situation.”
* * *
I. With that he rode out of history, but he will never be forgotten as the man who guided the Corps of Discovery over the Bitterroot Mountains.
II. On January 11, 1806, Lewis described the canoe: “she is so light that four men can carry heer on their sholders a mile or more without resting; and will carry three men and from 12 to 15 hundred lbs.”
III. Lieutenant William Broughton of George Vancouver’s 1792 expedition had gone
this far up the Columbia.
IV. “Certain it is they are the best canoe navigators I ever Saw,” Clark wrote.
V. Apparently she meant roots.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Fort Clatsop
December 8, 1805–March 23, 1806
On the morning of December 8, Clark set out to find the best route to the ocean and to find a place for a salt-making camp.I Lewis sent out the hunters and put the remainder of the party to work cutting down trees (probably grand fir) to make huts and a palisade. When Clark returned from a successful reconnaissance three days later, Lewis was still cutting trees. Not until December 14 did he have enough for the men to start splitting logs. They found that the wood split beautifully, even to the width of two feet and more. The first hut they commenced building was a smokehouse; they were finding that the preservation of meat in that rainy climate required extraordinary measures.
The work went slowly. It always rained, sometimes worse than others. On December 16, Clark recorded, “The winds violent. Trees falling in every derection, whorl winds, with gusts of rain Hail & Thunder, this kind of weather lasted all day. Certainly one of the worst days that ever was!”
Many of the men were sick or injured. Some had tumors. Private William Werner had a strained knee. Private Joseph Field had boils. Private George Gibson had dysentery. Sergeant Nathaniel Pryor had a dislocated shoulder. York suffered from “Cholick & gripeing.” And the fleas, picked up from the Indians and inescapable, tormented their nights and prevented a sound sleep.
Entertaining and trading with visiting Indians took time. On December 12, the chief of a neighboring Clatsop village, named Coboway, paid a visit. The captains gave him the usual medal and traded for roots. Lewis purchased two lynx skins, Clark two otter skins. Prices were reasonable one day, outrageous the next. On December 23, Clark purchased a panther skin nearly eight feet long for six small fishhooks, a worn-out file, and some spoiled fish. The next day, a young chief named Cuscalah came with his brother and two women. They wanted to sell a parcel of roots but demanded two files for them, which the captains decided was too high a price.
Cuscalah then offered a woman to each captain, “which we also declined axcpting,” Clark wrote, “which also displeased them. . . . the female part appeared to be highly disgusted at our refuseing of their favours &c.”
Despite the daily interruptions, the work went forward. By December 17, enough of the walls of the huts were up so some of the men could begin filling the chinks between the logs. A week later, they were putting on the roofs. The captains moved into their unfinished hut on December 23; the next day, Private Joseph Field made writing tables for them, and the men moved into their as-yet-unroofed huts.
Fort Clatsop was about fifty feet square. It had two long, facing structures joined on the sides by palisaded walls. There was a main gate at the front and a smaller one at the rear that provided easy access to a spring some thirty yards distant. Between the buildings there was a parade ground about fifty feet by twenty feet. One of the structures was divided into three rooms, or huts, which served as enlisted men’s quarters. The other contained four rooms: one for the captains; one for Charbonneau, Sacagawea, and their son, Jean Baptiste; one to serve as an orderly room; and the fourth the smokehouse.II
At first light on Christmas morning, 1805, the men woke the captains with a volley, a shout, and a song. They exchanged presents—Private Whitehouse gave Captain Clark a pair of moccasins he had made, Private Silas Goodrich gave him a woven basket, Sacagawea gave him two dozen white weasel tails, and Captain Lewis gave him a vest, drawers, and socks. The captains divided the small quantity of tobacco they had left, keeping one part for use with the Indians and dividing the other among the men who smoked. The eight non-smokers each got a handkerchief.
The celebration didn’t last long. It was a wet and disagreeable day, and, as Clark recorded, “We would have Spent this day the nativity of Christ in feasting, had we any thing either to raise our Sperits or even gratify our appetites, our Diner concisted of pore Elk, So much Spoiled that we eate it thro’ mear necessity, Some Spoiled pounded fish and a fiew roots.”
Three days later, the captains decided they could spare a small party of salt-makers. The party left for the camp just south of present-day Seaside, Oregon,III and went to work. On December 29, the Clatsops informed the captains that a whale had foundered on the coast near Tillamook Head. Lewis at once determined to go there by water to get some oil and blubber. He prepared a party to take the canoes to fetch it, but for the next week the wind was too high to risk setting out.
On December 30, the fort was completed. At sunset, the captains told the Clatsops that from now on, when darkness fell, the gates would be shut and they must all get out of the fort. “Those people who are verry foward and disegreeable,” Clark reported, “left the huts with reluctiance.” But on New Year’s Eve, he was happy to record that the Indians were much better behaved. “The Sight of our Sentinal who walks on his post, has made this reform in those people who but yesterday was verry impertenant and disagreeable to all.”
At dawn on New Year’s Day, 1806, the men woke the captains with a volley and shouts of “Happy New Year!” There was no other celebration, and no feast. Lewis wrote that “we were content with eating our boiled Elk and wappetoe [roots], and solacing our thirst with our only bevereage pure water.”
•
During the more than three weeks the party had been building Fort Clatsop, Lewis wrote but two field notes, describing in some detail Steller’s jay. But on January 1, he resumed making daily entries in his journal. He opened with a complaint, that the volley fired by the men to usher in the New Year “was the only mark of rispect which we had it in our power to pay this celebrated day, our repast of this day [was no] better than that of Christmass.”
But after the first sentence, he wrote with a zest that seemed to indicate that a great weight had been lifted from him. It was 1806—he would be home this year. A year wasn’t such a long time.
Evidently not until he began writing about getting home did Lewis realize how much he missed civilization. He had spent 1801–3 living with Thomas Jefferson in the President’s House. His daily conversational fare had ranged from practical politics to the nature of man, from zoology to botany, geography to medicine, literature to history, all in the company of the leading cultural, intellectual, scientific, and political figures in the United States (and not a few from Europe). For two years, he had danced to the best music, dined at the finest table, drunk the choicest wine.
He had spent 1804–5 on the frontier and beyond. His daily conversational fare had been about immediate, practical problems, mostly with enlisted men who had little if any formal education. With Clark he could discuss scientific matters, natural history, geography, and other subjects, but Clark was more a Kentuckian than a Virginian, more a frontier soldier than a polished member of the president’s staff. Even with Clark the flow of the talk had its limits.
Now, with the coming of the New Year, Lewis could dream of returning to Washington, Charlottesville, Philadelphia, civilization. The thought released him from his lethargy. He wrote with enthusiasm about how much he anticipated “the 1st day of January 1807, when in the bosom of our friends we hope to participate in the mirth and hilarity of the day. . . . We shall completely, both mentally and corporally, enjoy the repast which the hand of civilization has prepared for us.” The anticipation was made all the keener by the thought that he would be able to draw on “the recollection of the present” to be the center of attention, telling around the table the story of the crossing of the continent. It was a prospect delicious to dream about.
So, on January 1, 1806, with winter quarters completed, his face and his mind turned east.
•
But first he had to get through the winter. After recording that the men had given him and Clark fresh elk marrowbone and tongue for a New Year’s dinner, and noting his worry about two missing enlisted men who had apparently lo
st their way returning from the salt-making site, and with the fortification completed, he wrote out a detailed order “for the more exact and uniform dicipline and government of the garrison.”
The order was precise. It was based on principles established at U.S. Army frontier fortifications over the past thirty years, principles that had been learned by the experience of living as a platoon-sized party in the midst of potentially hostile Indians. First, as was habitual with the expedition, there would be a sergeant-of-the-guard and three privates always on duty in the orderly room. Second, “the centinel shall be posted, both day and night, on the parade [ground] in front of the commanding offercers quarters.” If at any time the sentinel thought it necessary to go to any other part of the fort “in order the better to inform himself of the desighns or approach of any party of savages, he is not only at liberty, but is hereby required to do so.” It was also his duty to inform the sergeant-of-the-guard of the arrival of any party of Indians, and the sergeant’s duty to report the same to the captains immediately.
Lewis ordered the men “to treat the natives in a friendly manner.” Nor were they “permitted at any time, to abuse, assault or strike them,” unless the natives started a fight. The soldiers were allowed to put out of his room “any native who may become troublesome to him.” If the Indian refused to go, or made trouble, the sergeant-of-the-guard should take over. He was authorized to “imploy such coercive measures (not extending to the taking of life) as shall at his discretion be deemed necessary.”
If an Indian was caught stealing, the sergeant should immediately inform the captains, who would take it from there. In this, as elsewhere, Lewis made certain that the lines of authority and the decision-making power were absolutely fixed.