One of the first writers to devote special attention to the question of Fort Clatsop’s post-history was Olin D. Wheeler, who visited the site with Coboway’s grandson, Silas B. Smith, in 1900, and wrote briefly of it.
Hospitable people
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Lewis and his four companions crossed over the dividing ridge on the west side of the upper Missouri River basin and the Columbia drainage, then descended a dusty, well-traveled Indian road for some miles down into a “handsome little valley” among the sources of the Columbia River basin.
Looking for a winter camp
by Joseph A. Mussulman
They had sketched out a plan for their fort, but it seemed that finding a level spot at least fifty feet square would be next to impossible.
Full Stomachs to Pheasant Camp
by Joseph A. Mussulman
“we killed a few Pheasants, and I killd a prarie woolf [coyote] which together with the ballance of our horse beef and some crawfish which we obtained in the creek enabled us to make one more hearty meal.
Leaving the Lochsa
by Joseph A. Mussulman
“Several horses Sliped and roled down Steep hills which hurt them verry much The one which Carried my desk & Small trunk Turned over & roled down a mountain for 40 yards & lodged against a tree, broke the Desk…”
The falls of the Missouri comprised the most remarkable of all the “remarkeable points” that Clark described and mapped in conscientious obedience to an order from Thomas Jefferson to take observations “with great pains & accuracy.”
"beautiful to see"
by Joseph A. Mussulman
“These Springs are very beautiful to See, and we think them to be as good to bathe in &c. as any other ever yet found in the United States,” avowed Private Joe Whitehouse.
Multiple perspectives
by Joseph A. Mussulman
The story of Lewis and Clark meeting the Flathead Salish on 4 September 1805 at Ross Hole is told by one expedition member, four Salish Indians, and one western artist.
Last gate of the Rockies
by Joseph A. Mussulman, Robert N. Bergantino
Lewis’s simple, orderly concept of the Rocky Mountains began to crumble. The truth was, this was not the easy portage to the Pacific Ocean they had expected from the beginning. Countless “chains” of mountains still intervened.
Over Lemhi Pass
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Below the summit of today’s Lemhi Pass, Lewis said that he had reached “the most distant fountain of the waters of the mighty Missouri in surch of which we have spent so many toilsome days and wristless nights.”
End of navigable water
by Joseph A. Mussulman
Lewis: “here I halted and examined those streams and readily discovered from their size that it would be vain to attempt the navigation of either any further.”
Expectation v. reality
by Joseph A. Mussulman, Robert N. Bergantino
Clark evidently began compiling a map of the Northern Rockies after meeting with Hugh Heney at Fort Mandan on 18 December 1804, and continued adding information acquired from other traders, as well as from Indians. The reality, he would find, was much different.
Detour at Tower Creek
by Joseph A. Mussulman
The Salmon winds tortuously through a seven-mile-long canyon where the vertical walls at that time crowded the riverbanks so tightly in several places that Clark and his party were compelled to clamber over “four mountains verry Steap high & rockey.”
Due to the many unfortunate events which followed Lewis’s death, in 1809, the Indian vocabularies the captains had carefully collected are now lost, and were never made available to the public.
"Our old guide Toby"
by Charles R. Knowles, John Puckett
Toby, the name used by Lewis and Clark for the Shoshone guide who took them across the Bitterroot Mountains on their journey to the Pacific, was one of the more important, if enigmatic, of the many Native Americans who assisted the explorers on their epic trip.
And the deaths of Potts and Drouillard
by W. Raymond Wood
Manuel Lisa’s men at Fort Raymond not only encouraged the Crows to come trade with them, but they set out parties to trap beaver on their own. It was the latter effort that led to hostilities with the Blackfeet that affected Potts, Drouillard, and Colter.
Winter in the Bitterroots
by Sarah Walker
The same snow that deterred the Corps on both their crossings of K’useyneiskit provides the winter environment for those smaller animals who remain. Underneath the deep snowpack lies the subnivean (undersnow) world.
The enthno-history of a common object
by James P. Ronda
The comments made by Ordway and Gass about Frazer selling his razor for two Spanish dollars can tell us much about the ethno-history of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the native peoples of the Plateau.
Daring botanist
by James L. Reveal
Everywhere Nuttall went he found new and curious plants. Unlike most who came before him, he collected even the unattractive plants. From him, long-leaved sage and white sage, first collected by Lewis, became known to science.
Changes since Lewis and Clark
by Rick Newby
On the Upper Missouri, the changes since the years Lewis and Clark traveled here have been less obvious perhaps, but no less remarkable.
This page was funded in part by a grant from the Montana Cultural Trust.
This site is provided as a public service by the
Lewis and Clark Trail Alliance
with cooperation and funding from the following organizations:
Unless otherwise noted, journal excerpts are from The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by Gary E. Moulton, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001).