Fort Mandan to Marias River

ear the mouth of the Knife, in late October of 1804, the expedition settled down for the winter. There they would find plenty of time to consolidate the information they had already gathered, pare down the troupe, and learn what they could about the west from their new neighbors. They were part of a multicultural, multiethnic community, for they were at the international crossroads of the Northern Plains, the commercial center for Indian tribes from far and near, as well as for Spanish, French, and British traders.

It was cold in North Dakota that winter, sometimes more than 40 degrees below zero. Hunting expeditions courted danger, especially if they stayed out overnight. The Indians amazed Lewis and Clark; they dressed lightly and carried only one buffalo skin for a blanket. Members of the Expedition helped the natives hunt for food, repaired tools, and treated frostbite and illnesses. They participated in ceremonial dances and other activities.

Not everything went smoothly. The captains were unable to prevent an Arikara raid on the Mandans, intertribal jealousy among the river tribes, and a bit of commercial jostling. But there were no major flare-ups.

On November 4, an independent trader named Toussaint Charbonneau,(1) who had lived among the Hidatsas for several years, offered the captains his services as an interpreter. He was unpredictable and unreliable — "a man of no particular merit," Lewis was to remark later, though Clark was somewhat more tolerant. Charbonneau's principal asset was the wife he proposed to bring along, Sacagawea. (Her name is also sometimes spelled, and pronounced, Sakakawea or Sacajawea.) She was a young Shoshoni who had been abducted from her tribe by enemy raiders near the Three Forks of the Missouri about four years before. It has been a persistent American legend that she was the expedition's indispensable guide, and as such she has been the subject of more commemorative sculptures and paintings than any other woman in American history.

Her actual role has been much debated, but all the evidence in the expedition's journals indicates that she was never out in front, pointing the way. Yet when the expedition reached her homeland, her recognition of landmarks "cheered the spirits of the party." To be sure, Captain Clark acknowledged her "great service . . . as a pilot" through Shoshoni territory in July of 1806. More typically, it appears, she was often on the lookout for edible plants. At critical times, her mere presence was enough to convince suspicious strangers of the expedition's peaceful motives, and that was of incalculable value. Of equal importance, wherever a Shoshone-speaking person was found, especially among non-Shoshone groups, she was an indispensable link in the chain of translators leading to and from the captains.

Thus, Sacagawea filled the role Joseph Campbell described in his classic study of heroic journeys, The Hero with a Thousand Faces: "a protective figure who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon force she is about to pass."

Near the end of March, the river-ice broke up. The men readied the keelboat for its return to St. Louis, with zoological, botanical, geological, and ethnological specimens and artifacts collected up to that point. Letters, maps, and other reports went to President Jefferson, and Secretary of War Henry Dearborn. Six new dugout canoes, each about thirty feet long and up to three feet wide, were carved from cottonwood logs. At four o'clock on the afternoon of April 7, 1805, the two parties set out in opposite directions.

scending the mighty, muddy Missouri at a rate of up to twenty-five miles on good days, the expedition's journalists remarked on the rolling, treeless Great Plains grasslands, the weather and the river, and always the profusion of game. "We can scarcely cast our eyes in any direction," wrote Lewis,"without perceiving deer Elk Buffaloe or Antelopes."

There were increasingly numerous, and threatening, grizzly bears, which Lewis and Clark usually called "white bears." Bighorn sheep, wolves, coyotes, and beaver were abundant, as were geese, ducks, eagles and swans. The Corps grew fat on the fat of the land.

The high country on either side of the river," they wrote, was "one vast plain, intirely destitute of timber," extending" back as far as the eye can reach." Across these plains swept violent winds, stirring up waves, blowing dust and sand, bringing at times the rain, snow, ice and fog of spring on the high plains. One week after leaving Fort Mandan they passed the highest point on the Missouri River that any Euro-American had ever reached. Confronting strong, shifting winds, collapsing riverbanks, and capricious currents, they proceeded on.

On April 25, ranging ahead of the rest of the party, Lewis and his big, handsome Newfoundland dog, Seaman, along with four of the men, arrived at the mouth of the "Roche Jaune," or Yellowstone River. The Indians had told them about it, and the captains foresaw that it might become, for a short time at least, a key landmark in the geographical, political, and commercial topography of the Northwest.

estward the terrain changed. Central Montana, they noted, was "truly a desert barren country." Clark couldn't imagine that the part of it he could see could ever be settled; it was deficient in water and timber, and was too steep to be tilled. Much of that territory now lies submerged under the waters of the Fort Peck Reservoir, but some of it remains unchanged along the Wild and Scenic Missouri, especially the 40-mile stretch now called the White Cliffs of the Missouri Breaks. "A most romantic appearance," rhapsodized Lewis, as his imagination perceived "a thousand grotesque figures," "the remains or ruins of eligant buildings," and other "seens of visionary inchantment." Lewis also was excited by his first glimpse, on May 26 of the distant Rocky Mountains, feeling "a secret pleasure " in finding himself so near the head of "the heretofore conceived boundless Missouri."

One of Many Scenes of Visionary Enchantment
in the White Cliffs of the Missouri River

To choose the wrong route would consume twice the time it would take to correct the mistake, and would, Lewis declared, not only lose them the whole of the present travel season, but "would probably so dishearten the party that it might defeat the expedition altogether." Most of the men were thoroughly convinced that the river Lewis was to call Maria's, after his cousin, Maria Wood, was the main river, but the captains reasoned differently. In the first place, the one major northern tributary they'd heard of, the one the Indians called "the river that scolds at all others," which they took to be the Milk, was nearly 300 miles behind them. Second, Maria's River was muddy, but a river draining the Rocky Mountains should be clear. Finally, Maria's flowed in from the north, whereas the true Missouri was supposed to turn southwest, toward mountains they already could see. Hunches, however, were insufficient bases for this momentous decision.

Accordingly, the captains sent search parties up both rivers. When the results proved inconclusive, they set out to see for themselves. Clark went forty-five miles up the Missouri, found that it ran swift and true to the west of south, and returned persuaded. Lewis went nearly eighty miles up the Maria's, confirmed that it headed from too much to the north for their route to the Pacific, and made his way back. The captains' findings represented the triumph of field observation over hypothetical image; they corrected their maps and, sure of themselves, chose the true Missouri.

--Harry W. Fritz, 09/1998; rev. 05/2008