•
On July 16, the exploring party set out, stopping first at the falls where Lewis made a drawing. Then it was out of the river valley and up onto the high plains. To Lewis’s eye, the plains “have somewhat the appearance of an ocean, not a tree nor a shrub to be seen.” He was back in wonderland. “The whole face of the country as far as the eye can reach looks like a well shaved bowlinggreen, in which immence and numerous herds of buffaloe were seen feeding attended by their scarcely less numerous sheepherds the Wolves.”
The enchantment of the place did not prevent Lewis from worrying. His expressed desire to meet the Blackfeet had given way to fear. When he was planning this exploration, he had hoped to have with him some leading Nez Percé men, so that he could make a peace between the Nez Percé and the Blackfeet. That motive was now gone. Further, he had planned to explore with a party of seven; now he was down to four. Finally, what the Nez Percé said about the Blackfeet—“they are a vicious lawless and reather an abandoned set of wretches”—had its effect on Lewis. His conclusion: “I wish to avoid an interview with them if possible,” because he had no doubt that “finding us weak should they happen to be numerous [the Blackfeet] wil most probably attempt to rob us of our arms and baggage.” He vowed to “take every possible precaution to avoid them if possible.”
The ride through wonderland continued. On July 18, “we passed immence herds of buffaloe. . . . in short for about 12 miles it appeared as one herd only the whole plains being covered with them.” Indians never left his mind. At camp that night, on the Marias River, he noted: “I keep a strict lookout every night. I take my tour of watch with the men.”
For three more days, Lewis followed the Marias upstream. On the afternoon of July 21, the river forked into two branches, today’s Cut Bank Creek coming from the north and Two Medicine River flowing from the south. Since Lewis’s whole purpose was to find the northernmost branch of the Marias, he did not hesitate to follow up Cut Bank Creek. But because the Marias had been leading him on an almost straight westward route, he confessed that “the most northern point . . . I now fear will not be as far north as I wished and expected.”
On Tuesday, July 22, Lewis got to within twenty miles of the Rocky Mountains, in sight of the Continental Divide in today’s Glacier National Park. About twenty miles northwest of the modern town of Cut Bank, he set up camp “in a beautifull and extensive bottom of the river,” in a clump of large cottonwoods. From the bluff overhanging the bottom, Lewis could see where the creek came out of the mountains, and it was southwest, not northwest, of his position. He had reached the northernmost point of Cut Bank Creek.
He decided to stay there for a couple of days, to rest the men and horses and to make celestial observations. “I now have lost all hope of the waters of this river ever extending to N Latitude 50 degrees,” he admitted, but he was not one to give up easily: “I still hope and think it more than probable that both white earth river and milk river extend as far north as latd. 50 degrees.”
Arlen Large explains his methods and results:
Lewis measured the sun’s noon altitude on July 23, getting a raw octant reading of 62 degrees 00’ 00”. He didn’t record any conversion of that suspiciously round number into a latitude. Using an 1806 Nautical Almanac and Lewis’s usual method of computation, that octant reading would have produced a latitude of 48 degrees, 10’, or some 30’ too far south.
I think it’s very possible he didn’t compute a latitude here because he wasn’t carrying an 1806 almanac; my surmise is that the expedition’s three almanacs covered 1803, 1804 and 1805 only. His conclusion that Cut Bank Creek didn’t reach as high as 50 degrees probably was based on dead reckoning. Using as a benchmark the previous year’s calculation of 47 degrees, 25’ 17” as the latitude of the Marias-Missouri junction, he could have seen from his compass courses and distances on the way to Cut Bank Creek that it was well short of the 170-odd miles needed to reach the 50th parallel.2
What Lewis needed to know was the time, and that he got from his equal altitudes of the sun. He set his chronometer at high noon. If he could make a sextant measurement of a daytime sun-moon distance, he could figure the time in Greenwich. Then he would know his longitude.
The following day, Drouillard returned from a scouting mission to report that there was much sign of Indians in the area. Lewis’s attempts to make his observations were frustrated by cloud cover, both that day and the next—and the next. The men went out to hunt, without success—a sure sign Indians had been hunting in the area in considerable numbers. The men reported various signs of Indians, some of them large campsites with many, many horses. “We consider ourselves extreemly fortunate in not having met with these people,” Lewis wrote.
He decided he would leave in the morning, July 26, unless the sun came out so that he could make observations. He was “apprehensive that I shall not reach the United States within this season unless I make every exertion in my power which I shall certainly not omit.”
•
The morning of Saturday, July 26, was cloudy. Lewis waited until 9:00 a.m. before giving up, “which I do with much reluctance.” He had the horses caught, and “we set out biding a lasting adieu to this place which I now call camp disappointment.” The party rode south, toward Two Medicine River, which it struck around midday. After eating and grazing the horses, the party resumed its march, with Drouillard ahead in the river bottom, hunting. As the hills closed in on the south bank of the river, Lewis and the Field brothers ascended them to the high plain above, while Drouillard continued to ride down the valley.
When Lewis got to the top and looked about, he was alarmed to see, at the distance of a mile or so, a herd of thirty horses. He brought out his telescope and discovered several Indians sitting their horses, staring intently into the valley. Lewis surmised they were watching Drouillard.
“This was a very unpleasant sight,” Lewis admitted. If there were as many Indians as there were horses, which he assumed would be the case, he was overwhelmingly outnumbered. He thought they were Atsinas or Blackfeet; in either case, “from their known character I expected that we were to have some difficulty with them.” He thought of flight and immediately gave it up. To run was to invite pursuit, and the Indians’ horses looked better than his. Further, if he and the Field brothers ran, Drouillard “would most probably fall a sacrefice.”
Lewis resolved “to make the best of our situation.” He ordered Joseph Field to display the flag which Lewis had brought for just this purpose. When it was unfurled, the party advanced slowly on the Indians, who were running about “in a very confused manner as if much allarmed.”
Suddenly a single Indian broke out of the milling pack and whipped his horse full-speed toward the party. He was probably on a dare, trying to count coup. Lewis dismounted and stood, waiting for the onrushing horse and rider. The Indian was disarmed by Lewis’s reaction. He halted, some hundred yards from the party. Lewis held out his hand. The Indian wheeled his horse around, gave it the whip, and galloped back to his companions.
Lewis could count them by now; there were eight teen-age boys and young men. He suspected there were others hidden behind the bluffs, for there were several other horses saddled. He ordered the Field brothers to advance with him, slowly.
His heart pounded. His life and the lives of his men were at stake. So were his papers, dearer to him even than his life.
He told the Field brothers that, no matter how many Indians there were, he was resolved to resist “to the last extremity prefering death to . . . being deprived of my papers instruments and gun.” He hoped they would form the same resolution. When they nodded a grim-faced assent, Lewis told them to be alert and on their guard.
•
James Ronda writes that Lewis’s words were “filled with more swagger than wisdom.”3 There is a bit of mellow-drama in this mutual pledge to fight to the last breath. And asking the Field brothers to swear was hardly necessary—it was not as if they had a lot of choice. If the In
dians wanted to fight, there would be a fight.
This was the pickle Lewis’s leadership had brought them to. Four men alone (and one of them separated from the rest) in the heart of Blackfoot country had run into a roving band of young Indian braves. Two parties of armed young men, each suspicious of the other, were attempting to occupy the same space at the same time. That always meant trouble.
The red war party outnumbered the white war party by at least two to one, and possibly much more. The natives figured to have reinforcements close at hand; the whites had no reinforcements within two hundred miles.
It was Lewis’s fault. He was the one who had dreamed up this exploration, the one who had decided to make it with a party of four only, the one who had delayed two full days at Camp Disappointment even though he knew that every additional hour in Blackfoot country raised the risks of an unwelcome encounter and that Clark would soon be waiting for him at the Yellowstone, and even though he wanted to get back to St. Louis as soon as possible.
But there were positive possibilities in the situation. If a friendly—or at least a nonviolent—initial contact could be made, Lewis would have a chance to bring these Indians into the American trading empire. That would justify the risks he had taken.
•
When he got to within a hundred yards of the Indians, Lewis had the Field brothers stop while he advanced singly to meet an Indian who had ridden out ahead of his group. The two men met and cautiously shook hands; then both passed on to shake hands with the others in their respective parties.
Lewis dismounted. So did the Indians, who asked for pipes and smoke. Using his limited sign-language skills, Lewis told them that the pipe was with his hunter—down below, in the valley. He proposed that an Indian ride down with Reubin Field to find Drouillard and bring him back. This was done.
Lewis asked who they were. He thought they replied that they were Atsinas, a tribe known to Lewis as “the Minnetares of the North.” Actually, they were Piegans, members of one of the three main divisions of the Blackfeet.
Lewis asked who was the chief; three men stepped forward. Lewis thought they were too young and too many to be chiefs, but he also thought it best to please them. He handed out a medal, a flag, and a handkerchief.
By now Lewis had concluded that there were no more than eight Blackfeet in the immediate area, and he was “convinced that we could mannage that number should they attempt any hostile measures.”
The late-July sun was starting to sink in the west. Lewis proposed that they camp together. That was agreed to. On the way down the steep bluff, they picked up Drouillard, Field, and the Indian. They came to a delightful spot on a bend in the river, a bowl-shaped bottomland with three large cottonwoods in the center and excellent grass. The Blackfeet made a rough dome with willow branches, threw some dressed buffalo skins over it, and invited the whites to join them in the shelter. Drouillard and Lewis accepted; the Field brothers lay near the fire in front of the shelter.
Lewis went to work. With Drouillard flashing the signs, he asked question after question.
The Blackfeet said they were part of a large band that was one day’s march away, near the foot of the mountains. They said there was a whiteman in their band. Another large band of their nation was hunting buffalo on its way to the mouth of Maria’s River where it would be in a few days.
Lewis had no way to judge how much of this was meant to intimidate him, how much was true. If it was all true, it meant he was in the middle of the Blackfeet nation, and that a Canadian trader was living with one band, which meant that they surely had many firearms. This group of eight had two muskets.
Lewis asked about the trading patterns of the Blackfeet. The boys informed him that they rode six days’ easy march to reach a British post on the North Saskatchewan River, and that from the traders there “they obtain arms amunition sperituous liquor blankets &c in exchange for wolves and some beaver skins.”
This was unwelcome news. It reinforced Jefferson’s worst fears: that agents of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company were firmly entrenched on the Northern Plains, and were rapidly extending their monopoly.
But it gave Lewis an opportunity, which he characteristically seized. He told the Blackfeet in great detail how much better a deal they would get from the Americans, once the Americans arrived on the high plains. He gave his peace speech. He said he had come from the rising sun and gone to where the sun set and had made peace between warring nations on both sides of the mountains. He said he had come to their country to invite the Blackfeet to join the American empire. To all of this, as he understood them, “they readily gave their assent.”
The braves were willing to talk the sign language as long as the smoking continued. They were extremely fond of tobacco, so Lewis “plyed them with the pipe untill late at night.” He let them know he had reinforcements in the area, a party of soldiers he would be meeting at the mouth of the Marias. He asked them to send two messengers to the nearby bands of Blackfeet to ask them to meet in three days at the mouth of the Marias River, for a council about peace and trade. Perhaps a few chiefs would be willing to accompany the expedition to St. Louis and go on to visit their new father in Washington.
Lewis concluded by asking the other six warriors to accompany him to the mouth of the Marias, and promised them ten horses and some tobacco if they would do these things.
“To this proposition they made no reply,” Lewis recorded.
•
Lewis had just made a serious political mistake. He had told these youngsters that he had organized their traditional enemies—the Nez Percé, the Shoshones, others—into an American-led alliance. Worse, he had indicated that the Americans intended to supply these enemies with rifles. The Blackfoot monopoly on firearms, based on their exclusive access to British suppliers, would be broken.
As James Ronda puts it, “the clash of empires had come to the Blackfeet.” After more than twenty years of being the bully boys of the high-plains country, they were being challenged, as were their British friends.4
•
Lewis took the first watch. He wrote in his journal, two thousand words about the day. He covered it from start to finish, with frequent interruptions to the narrative. In one paragraph he compared the quality of water in Cut Bank Creek and Two Medicine River. He made an astute ecological observation, here in the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains was the only place that the three major cottonwood species grew together.
Mainly, though, he described what had happened in an after-action report. At half past eleven, he roused Reubin Field. He ordered Field to watch the movements of the Indians and if one of them left camp to awake the party, lest the Indians attempt to steal the detachment’s horses. Then he lay down and immediately fell into a profound sleep.
•
“Damn you! Let go my gun!”
Drouillard’s shout woke Lewis. It was a few moments past first light. Lewis jumped up. He saw Drouillard scuffling with an Indian over a rifle. Lewis reached for his rifle but found it gone. He drew his horse pistol from its holster, looked up, and saw a second Indian running off with his rifle. Lewis ran at him and signaled to him when he turned that he would either lay down that rifle or get shot.
As the Indian started to lay the rifle down, the Field brothers came running up, in a state of the highest excitement. They aimed their rifles at the Indian, but, before they could shoot, Lewis called out to stop them: the Indian was complying with his order.
Drouillard came up, breathless and excited, asking permission to kill the Indian. Lewis forbade it. The party had recovered its rifles, the Indians were falling back.
What happened? Lewis demanded.
The explanation came in a rush of words. Joseph Field had carelessly laid down his rifle beside his sleeping brother at absolutely the worst possible moment, first light. A watching Indian had seized his opportunity to grab it and Reubin Field’s rifle and run off.
At the same instant, Drouillard said, he wok
e to see two Indians stealing his rifle and Lewis’s. He chased the Indian, caught him, and took back his own rifle, while Lewis was recovering his.
The Field brothers, meanwhile, had dashed after the Indian carrying off their rifles. At fifty yards, they caught him and wrestled the rifles out of his hands. Reubin pulled his knife and plunged it into the young warrior’s heart. The Indian, Field later said, “drew but one breath and the wind of his breath followed the knife and he fell dead.”
But Lewis didn’t have an opportunity to hear this report, because, before the brothers finished, he noticed that the Indians were attempting to drive off his horses.
Lewis called out orders: Shoot those Indians if they try to steal our horses! The Field brothers ran after the main party of Indians, who were driving four of their horses up the river. Lewis ran after two men who were driving off the remainder of the horses, including Lewis’s.
He sprinted for some three hundred yards, at which point the Indians had reached the almost vertical bluff. They hid in a niche, a sort of alcove, in the bluff, driving the horses before them.
Lewis, breathless, could pursue no farther. He shouted to them, as he had done several times already, that he would shoot them if they did not give back his horse.
How much if any of this the Blackfeet understood cannot be said. What happened was that an Indian jumped behind a rock and said something to his companion. That man was armed, with a British musket loader. He turned toward Lewis.
Lewis brought his rifle to his shoulder, aimed, and fired. He shot the warrior through the belly.
But the Blackfoot was not finished. He raised himself to his knee, took a quick aim, and fired at Lewis.
“Being bearheaded,” as Lewis commented, “I felt the wind of his bullet very distinctly.”
Since there were two Indians—one badly wounded—and they were armed and behind good shelters, and he wanted to get out of there, and his shot pouch was back at camp so he could not reload, Lewis decided to retreat. He made his way back to camp.