The Little Sioux River

Today, slicing cleanly between Iowa (left of river) and Nebraska (right), the Missouri River is kept tidily groomed for river commerce. But when the expedition passed this way late in the summer of 1804–and again during the first week in September 1806–the river was broad and brawny. Not long after getting underway on the morning of 8 August 1804, according to Sergeant Ordway, they “passd a part of the River Choked up with logs & Snags. So that we found it difficult to pass through with Safety.” Sometimes it held driftwood, sawyers and snags big enough to damage hulls, and sometimes it formed sandbars that defied forward progress and put boats and boatmen at the current’s mercy.

A highlight of 8 August was a profusion of feathers floating like a froth on the water. The feathers went on for three miles “in such quantities as to cover pretty generally sixty or seventy yards of the breadth of the river.” Finally, wrote Lewis, they came upon a flock of birds (see American White Pelican) on a sandbar, “the number of which would if estimated appear almost in credible; they appeared to cover several acres of ground.” As the birds took flight at his approach, Lewis brought one down with his gun. He described the specimen meticulously, adding information form one of the reference books he carried: “They are a bird of clime [They] remain on the coast of Floriday and the borders of the Gulph of mexico &amp even the lower portion of the Mississippi during the winter and in the Spring . . . [They] visit this country and that farther north ofr the purpose of raising their young.”

Ever alert to the soundscapes around him, Lewis noted in a postscript to his bird tale that “the green insect known in the U’ States by the name of the sawyer or chittediddle [a.k.a. katydid] was first heard to cry on the 27th of July.”

From Discovering Lewis & Clark from the Air
Photography by Jim Wark
Text by Joseph Mussulman
Reproduced by permission of Mountain Press