Cameahwait’s Geography Lesson

When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark encountered the Lemhi Shoshone Indians in August 1805 on the Continental Divide, one or the other—or more likely both, but on separate occasions—sat down with Cameahwait, the chief of the tribe’s Lemhi band, to learn as much as possible about the region’s geography. The knowledge they gleaned from Cameahwait and the guide he provided the explorers—Toby—proved crucial to getting across the Rocky Mountains.

Most accounts of the expedition say this meeting took place between Clark and Cameahwait on 20 August 1805, but there is compelling reason to believe that Cameahwait gave the same information to Lewis at a meeting six days earlier, on 14 August 1805. In his journal entry for that day Lewis fills several pages with detailed description of a conversation between him and Cameahwait in which the chief explained routes used by his tribe and others to cross between the salmon country to the west and the buffalo country to the east.

Clark and Lewis were separated from 9 August 1805 through 16 August 1805 and again from 18 August 1805 through 28 August 1805. In the first period, when the Corps of Discovery was ascending the Beaverhead River, Lewis and three others broke off from the main party to scout the territory ahead. Over a remarkably busy week they crossed the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass, made contact with the Shoshones, and returned to the Beaverhead to rendezvous with Clark and the main party on the morning of the 17th. On 18 August 1805, the explorers set up Camp Fortunate, at the headwaters of the Beaverhead. The next day, Clark crossed the Divide to explore the Salmon River as a possible route through the mountains, while Lewis remained at Camp Fortunate until the 24th. The two captains reunited at the Shoshone village on the Lemhi River, on the west slope of the Divide, on the 29th.

When was the Lesson?

All of Lewis’s journal entries for the two periods when he and Clark were separated (9–16 August and 18–28 August) include day-to-day references to Clark’s activities. This means that these entries must have been written retroactively. Long after the expedition’s return, when he was helping Nicholas Biddle with editing the journals, Clark marked off the lengthy description of the meeting with Cameahwait which appears in Lewis’s journal entry for the 14th and wrote between the lines that the meeting occurred on the 20th; he further noted that the geographical information conveyed was “related to Capt. C thro the interpreter,” Sacagawea.^[2]Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, 13 volumes (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001), Vol. 5, p. 94. Biddle, therefore, in his 1814 paraphrase of the journals presents the discussion occurring between Cameahwait and Clark on the 20th. This is also the way it appears in Elliott Coues’s 1893 update of the Biddle edition.^[3]Elliott Coues, ed., The History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, 3 volumes (New York: Dover Publications, 1965; reprint of the 1893 edition), Vol. 2, pp. … Continue reading In the edition of the journals published in 1904, Reubin Gold Thwaites likewise moved this section from Lewis’s entry for the 14th to Clark’s for the 20th and explained why he had done so in footnotes.^[4]Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804–1806, 7 volumes (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1904), pp. 347 and 379. Keeping with modern editorial standards, the 1983–2001 edition of the journals, edited by Gary E. Moulton, retains Cameahwait’s geography lesson in Lewis’s entry for 14 August and relies on footnotes to say that it probably belongs with Clark’s entry for the 20th.^[5]Moulton, Vol. 5, pp. 88–90. (The footnotes—numbers 2 and 16 on pages 94 and 95, respectively, of Volume 5—are easy to miss.) Most secondary sources, including seminal studies by James P. Ronda and John Logan Allen, place the meeting on the 20th and present Clark as Cameahwait’s interlocutor.^[6]James P. Ronda, Lewis and Clark among the Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), p. 151; and John Logan Allen, Passage through the Garden: Lewis and Clark and the Image of the … Continue reading By contrast, Stephen E. Ambrose in his biography of Lewis, Undaunted Courage, renders the scene as occurring between Cameahwait and Lewis on the 14th.^[7]Stephen E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), pp. 271–273.

Two Separate Lessons

So which version is correct? Probably both, for a close reading of the journals strongly suggests that Cameahwait conveyed essentially the same information to Lewis on 14 August and to Clark on 20 August. Lewis was at least as interested as Clark in the chief’s geographical knowledge, and undoubtedly he would have pumped him for it as soon as possible.^[8]Lewis and Cameahwait first discussed geography on13 August 1805, the day they met at the chief’s village on the Lemhi. “Cameahwait informed me that this stream discharged itself into … Continue reading Lewis had George Drouillard with him to translate through Plains Sign Language, and in his entry for the 14th he makes a point of stating that Drouillard “understood perfectly the common language of jesticulation or signs.” While sign language was “liable to error,” Lewis added, “the strong parts of the ideas are seldom mistaken.”

If a discussion did occur on the 14th, Lewis would surely have described it to Clark on the 17th, when they reunited following their first period of separation, and Clark would have been eager for his own first-hand report when he conferred with Cameahwait on the 20th.

In all of his journal entries for the two periods of separation, Lewis is careful to distinguish between what he and Clark were doing on a particular day (e.g., for 13 August, “This morning Capt Clark set out early . . . .”). The geography discussion of the 14th is unequivocally between Lewis and Cameahwait—Lewis consistently relates it in the first person (“I now prevailed on the Chief”; “I soon found”; “he informed me”; etc.). There is no way these first-person references can be to Clark or anyone else besides Lewis. If Cameahwait had talked geography only with Clark, Lewis—following his usual procedure—would have placed that discussion in his entry for the 20th and identified Clark in the third person. Presumably Lewis did not describe Clark’s discussion with Cameahwait because it would have meant repeating the information previously recorded in his entry for the 14th. Or perhaps Clark simply failed to tell Lewis of the discussion. In his own entry for 20 August, Clark cryptically notes, “I endevered to procure as much information from thos people as possible without much Suckcess they being but little acquainted or effecting to be So.”^[9]Moulton, Vol. 5, p. 130. The context makes clear that the “information” he sought was geographical.

Further reinforcing the near certainty that Lewis and Cameahwait discussed geography on the 14th is internal evidence in Lewis’s entry for 20 August; Lewis tells how, when Clark on that day asked for a guide to conduct him down the Salmon River, he was presented Toby, identified as “the old man whom Cameahwait had spoken [of] as a person well acquainted with the country to the North of this river.”^[10]Ibid., p. 128. In Lewis’s entry for the 14th he has Cameahwait saying “there was an old man of his nation a days march below [i.e., downstream of the Shoshone village on the Lemhi] who could probably give me some information of the country to the N. W.”^[11]Ibid., pp. 88–89. This old man who knew of the “country to the N. W.” and Toby, a person “well acquainted with the country to the North,” are almost certainly the same. Lewis’s use of the past tense in his entry for the 20th (“the old man whom Cameahwait had spoken”) points to some earlier discussion. Toby could not have been a day’s march downstream on the same day (the 20th) he was presented to Clark, but he could have been there six days earlier, on the 14th. Perhaps Cameahwait, aware of Lewis’s keen interest in the country to the north and wanting to please his guest, summoned Toby to the Shoshone camp so he could convey his knowledge in person and be available as a guide.