CHAPTER 6
Springtime on the Missouri River

May, 1804

When George Drouillard arrived at Fort Dubois from St. Louis with seven additional French oarsmen, Captain Clark saw the opportunity for a trial run to St. Charles, twenty-one miles above the junction of the two mighty rivers. He directed a full loading of the keelboat and manned it with twenty oarsmen, strengthened now by the addition of the seven French engages.

Spring rains were tapering off as a small group of settlers gathered at river’s edge to watch the expedition leave Fort Dubois. They cheered, and the men responded with exuberant waves, excited to be leaving Fort Duboise at last. From here on, except for stopping at St. Charles to pick up Captain Lewis, the only people the expedition expected to see as they traveled up the Missouri River were Indians and occasional trappers.

“We’re a company of goldarned Daniel Boones!” shouted George Shannon exuberantly as they pushed off.

“J-J-Just like C-Christopher C-Columbus!” stuttered Reuben Fields.

 

St. Charles, a village of more than 400 people, stretched for a mile along the riverbank. As the Corps of Discovery approached, curious French and Indian residents came to greet the expedition, a rare event for this community. That evening, after a dinner of roast venison and fried fish, there was fiddle-playing and dancing as the locals honored the Corps. The men spent a very agreeable evening dancing with the local ladies. William Bratton and Silas Goodrich were accomplished dancers who were in great demand as dancing partners.

The next day, Captain Lewis arrived from St. Louis, gleefully greeting all the men, who gathered around him. Smiling broadly, Clark clapped him on the back, “Well, Meriwether, I think we are at last ready to embark on our historic journey! Everything is in order. We have made adjustments in loading the boats, and I can think of nothing else we need to do.”

“Excellent, excellent!” Captain Lewis smiled, his eyes alive with excitement.

“I’ll send two men to fetch the four horses that I brought from St. Louis for the hunters.”

“I’ve sent the Fields brothers to the Daniel Boone settlement upstream to buy corn and butter,” Clark added.

Next morning, they pushed off aboard the keelboat and two pirogues. Excitement and confidence filled the men of the Corps of Discovery—a confidence that Lewis and Clark hoped would support them through the toils, dangers, and suffering ahead. The first five miles of the river ran alongside level and fertile prairie; then rugged woodland began. The pirogues, commanded by Corporal Warfington, were manned by the French engages, experts with the craft. The men of the Corps of Discovery made up the crew of the keelboat. They were supervised by three sergeants: one at the helm, another at mid-ship, and the final in the bow. The sergeant at the helm steered while tending the compass. The sergeant at mid-ship commanded the guard, managed the sails, supervised the men at oars, and served as sergeant of the guard at night. The sergeant in the bow was charged with keeping a lookout for other craft in the river as well as spotting Indian camps or parties on shore.

As they approached Boone’s settlement, Clark called out, “Put into shore to pick up the Fields brothers!” It seemed that all the people at this small settlement were flocking to the riverbank, surrounding the blond-haired Fields brothers, and shouting greetings to the boats.

“G-Give us a hand, C-Captain Clark!” Reuben Fields called out. The foodstuffs the brothers had purchased were stacked on the wooden dock. Two men leaped from the keelboat and helped load the barrels aboard; then the boats were off again amid shouts from the onlookers.

Later that day, the expedition passed a large cave called “The Tavern,” which the men had heard about at Fort Dubois. The mouth of the cave was one-hundred-twenty feet wide and twenty feet high. A huge rock nearby had been painted with unusual signs and images that both the Indians and the local French revered. A mile further, the group passed the mouth of the Little Osage River.

Camping that night, the captains inspected the men’s weapons and ammunition and divided the Corps of Discovery into five messes. Every evening, upon making camp, Sergeant Ordway was to distribute the day’s rations to each mess. The men in each mess were to cook it all and save a portion for the next day because no cooking would be permitted until camp the next night. Every day, Drouillard and his hunters would go out on horseback and return with their game. When they returned with bear or deer, Ordway would not issue lard or meat in order to conserve rations.

The captains established a daily routine. The expedition departed at first light each morning, weather permitting. When they camped at night, the Sergeant of the Guard would immediately post sentinels—one near the boats and the other a distance from the river. At each change of guard during the night, the two sentinels being relieved would reconnoiter the area around the camp at a distance of one-hundred-fifty paces and inspect the vessels to confirm security. Warfington and Drouillard were exempted from guard duty because Warfington had the responsibility of the pirogues and their lading, and Drouillard led the hunters and handled special duties ashore for the captains.

 

Captain Lewis had a close call as he walked alone along the shore. He had climbed a cliff, lost his footing, and slid three hundred feet down the face of the cliff before stopping his fall with his espontoon, a spear-like staff with a crosspiece that could be used as a rifle support. Twenty feet more and he would have been lost in the river.

“I always thought it was old fashioned of you to carry that espontoon,” Clark remarked when he learned of the incident. “Now I’m wishing I’d brought one myself. “I’m sure glad I had it,” Lewis responded with a smile.

That evening as the group set up camp, two Indians emerged from a stand of trees, one raising his hand in greeting. The second young brave carried a deer across his shoulders. “For you,” he said laying the deer on the ground.

Captain Clark stepped forward, smiling and reached out to shake hands. “Thank you! Will you sit with us a while?” The cook fires had not yet been lighted, so the men sat in a companionable circle, passing a jug of whiskey, as was their custom. When the visitors rose to leave, Lewis presented them with a full jug, thanking them and wishing them well.

“That may be a good omen for us,” John Shields remarked.

 

Because Privates Francoise Labiche and Pierre Cruzatte had been up the Missouri before and were also the best boatmen in the Corps of Discovery, Captain Clark ordered them to alternate manning the portside bow oar. The man not on portside bow duty would be the bowman, whose tasks included warding off floating debris with one of the iron-tipped pushing poles, calling out warnings about danger ahead, and watching for sandbars and whirlpools.

Cruzatte was half French and half Omaha Indian, a small, wiry man, blind in one eye, with eyebrows that grew together in one heavy line across his forehead. The men of the expedition had begun calling him “St. Peter” because his appearance gave the impression of impending doom. However, he was not a sad or negative person. He chewed tobacco and often challenged the other tobacco chewers to a distance-spitting contest—lively games that he usually won. When he became excited he spoke only in his native French, and his English was heavily accented. The same was true of Labiche, but his ability to speak several Indian languages brought valuable assets to the expedition.

Thunderstorms seemed to be daily occurrences during May. When a favorable wind was at their backs, the boat crews ran up their sails; otherwise, they had to row, pole the boats, or tow them from shore. The work of moving the huge keelboat upriver against the strong current of the Missouri was exhausting. The pirogues were a little easier because they rode higher in the water. The pirogues were also more maneuverable when turning away from floating obstacles in the river. To help dodge obstacles, the pirogue crews had only to lean to one side or the other, whereas the entire keelboat crew had to rush to one side or the other of their boat again and again. The young men of the crew turned it into a jolly sport.

“This is like riding a wild horse,” Patrick Gass laughed.

“Yeah, mate. Only we can’t get off this ornery horse,” Hugh McNeal added, rubbing his nose—a habit of his.

 

The Missouri was at its springtime high—almost at flood stage—and the obstacles the boats encountered often included whole trees that had been uprooted when the riverbank caved in. Thousands of tree branches swirled in the muddy river and clumped together to form barriers that impeded the expedition. Men stood at the bows of the boats with their steel-tipped poles to fend off such dangers. Sandbars shifted in the river. Whirlpools and eddies were too numerous to count. Because the current was stronger in the middle of the river, the crews stayed closer to the shore, even though caving riverbanks presented danger. The expedition was finding that the Missouri River was more difficult to navigate than the Mississippi, but budding trees and springtime blossoms provided an air of freshness and rebirth to each day, spurring the men’s enthusiasm.

Clark usually rode in the keelboat because he enjoyed being with the men. Lewis often preferred being alone, so he walked on shore to examine plants, soil conditions, animals, and minerals—some of the main objectives of the expedition. He might cover thirty miles on foot in a day, making his way back to the river to rejoin the evening encampment.

At a particularly treacherous stretch of the river, the crews encountered “The Devil’s Race Ground,” which Lewis had been warned about when he was in St. Louis. The shallow current here was very swift and changed directions constantly. The expedition entered it slowly, tentatively. Things went smoothly at first, but then the tricky current suddenly whipped the keelboat about, threatening to overturn the boat, men, and supplies.

“Quick, men!” Sergeant Floyd shouted, leaping over the side of the keelboat. All hands except the helmsman immediately followed him, attached a rope to the stern, and managed to straighten the heavy, awkward boat.

“That was almost a catastrophe!” Sergeant Floyd exclaimed with relief to Captain Clark.

“Probably the first of many,” Clark said. “That was quick thinking, Sergeant. We need to all stay alert like that.”

As the group sailed past La Charette, the last small settlement of white people on the Missouri, John Colter remarked, clearly relishing the challenge, “From here on, it is just us and the river.”

Captain Lewis, standing beside him, agreed. “In the most literal sense, it is now ‘All for one and one for all’. We have only each other from now on.”