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Midsummer 1804

Continuing up the wide Missouri, surrounded by lush countryside, the men noticed that the cliffs alongside the river were beginning to show wide strata of black. Out of curiosity they pulled over to investigate. Within minutes several men called out, “Coal!” to the rest of the expedition. Lewis, noting the discovery in his notebook, ordered the men to dig out a quantity to test in their campfires that evening. They found that the coal burned hot, but with considerably less flame and smoke than they needed to make venison jerky, so they bypassed the coal.

The area abounded with plums, raspberries, and several varieties of apples. As the Corps of Discovery continued, it passed prairie the men thought was the best land they had ever seen, which Lewis duly noted in his journal.

“I think I could make this my permanent home and settle down here,” Hugh McNeal said, rubbing his nose.

“Yeah, but the only problem is there ain’t no women,” William Warner responded.

Each day, hunters in the expedition signaled the boats to come to shore and retrieve the game they had killed and the berries they had picked. At times, the expedition passed bad stretches of the river with shallow water, rocks, and swift current. At such times, the men walked on shore and pulled the keelboat and pirogues with tow ropes.

Problems appeared as some of the men began to be afflicted with boils and others came down with dysentery. Captain Lewis was glad for the basic medical skills he had been taught by his mother and the professors at the University of Pennsylvania. Captain Clark had seen other soldiers suffering from dysentery in the army, and he offered a suggestion to the men. “When you get a drink of water, dip your cup far below the surface of the river to avoid any scum.” Even on the active Missouri, there were stretches where shallow, still water became contaminated during hot weather.

Arriving at the mouth of the Kansas River, the captains decided the expedition would camp several days to rest while Captain Lewis took celestial observations for their records. Private John Thompson, who had experience as a civilian surveyor, assisted the captains with both celestial observations and map making. Some of the men unloaded the white pirogue and turned it upside down for repairs while others put provisions out to air. Others found ash timber and made twenty oars. Drouillard and the hunters killed eight deer.

During the first night in this camp, there was a raid on the whiskey supply. Just after midnight, Private John Collins, on guard duty for the camp, decided to tap a barrel. Enjoying his secret drink in the dark, he tapped it again, and then again. Soon he was drunk. When his friend, Private Hugh Hall, discovered him, he decided to have a drink also. Soon, both men were drunk. At dawn, the sergeant of the guard discovered them and arrested both men.

The supply of whiskey was considered precious by all the men. Not only did each man look forward to his daily ration of one gill, but the captains had planned that part of the whiskey would be an attractive gift to Indian tribes along the journey. The expedition had brought along 120 gallons of whiskey, and when used as planned, it would last 104 days. Although it could be stretched by watering it down, it clearly would not be enough to last to the Pacific Ocean and back again.

Captain Clark immediately drew up court-martial papers, and the trial began just before noon. Sergeant Pryor presided, Private John Potts served as judge advocate, and four privates were members of the court.

“Private Collins, you are charged with the theft of whiskey that belongs to the Corps of Discovery. How do you plead to the charge?” Pryor asked.

“Not guilty.” Collins fidgeted as he considered the significance of a court martial charge on his record.

The court speedily found him guilty.

Pryor intoned solemnly, “The court sentences you to a hundred lashes on your bare back with a rawhide whip.” Collins swallowed hard and shuffled his feet.

Then it was Hall’s turn.

“Guilty,” he pleaded, deciding that pleading ‘not guilty’ was a losing proposition.

Pryor pronounced judgment again as Hall’s eyes darted from man to man on the panel. “Because you were not on guard duty at the time of the offense, the court sentences you to fifty lashes. Court adjourned.”

Captains Lewis and Clark approved the sentences, which were carried out that afternoon after the Corps of Discovery paraded for inspection. The other men had no sympathy for the culprits, and this punishment permitted them to unleash their anger in a controlled and satisfying way. Although the punishment gave the two men wounds that made sleeping uncomfortable for a night or two, the expedition didn’t lose their services. Both were back at work a few hours after their lashing, quiet and contrite.

On the morning of July 4, the captains ordered the bow gun fired and distributed the daily gill of whiskey to each man early in the day as celebration of the twenty-eighth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The day was hot, sweat poured from the men’s bodies, and Robert Frazier collapsed with sunstroke. Captain Lewis bled Frazier and gave him a dose of niter, which relieved his symptoms.

In the river near their camp was an enormous sandbar that was a half mile wide and completely covered with driftwood. The men discovered that the sandbars in this area of the Missouri were the habitat of a bird new to science, which Captain Lewis called the Interior Tern. They were fork-tailed birds that darted and swooped like swallows. The birds were noisy, squawking in a high pitch that in large numbers sounded like frightened pigs. They nested on the sandbars and lived on fish from the river. Their chicks were the same color as the sand, making them very difficult to see. Lewis was always excited when he recorded the description of an unknown species in his journal.

Hunters from the Corps came upon a herd of elk, which leaped into the river to escape them. Seaman, barking wildly, dove into the river in pursuit. He swam quickly to a young elk, broke its neck with one bite of his huge jaws, and returned it to shore. Meanwhile, the hunters shot two other elk in the river, and Seaman retrieved them also. The men laughed when the dog stood proudly on shore with the elk, shaking the water from his fur and wagging his tail as he waited for praise and pats.

“That dog earns his keep!” St. Peter said, flashing what passed as a smile on his sober visage. “Like having extra man in crew. Only he don’t mind getting wet like men do,”

As usual, the boat crews blazed symbols on trees along the river so the hunters on land would know they had passed and could follow them. They also fired their cannon at times as a signal to those away from the main expedition.

The sergeant of the guard came upon Private Alexander Willard asleep on guard duty one night. This was a very serious offense that was punishable by death according to army regulations. The captains constituted the court this time because of the severity of the offense.

“How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?” Captain Clark demanded.

“Guilty of lying down; not guilty of going to sleep,” was the response.

The captains found him guilty on both counts and sentenced him to one hundred lashes each day for four days, beginning that evening at sunset. This offense was among the most serious because it put the entire Corps in jeopardy.

“Them captains is acting awful high and mighty,” Moses Reed groused to Newman. “What gives them the right to beat a man half to death because he can’t stay awake all night?”

“Well, that was a rough sentence, sure enough,” Newman agreed.

One afternoon, a violent thunderstorm struck with startling suddenness while the keelboat was near the upper point of a troublesome sandbar. As the storm increased in ferocity, the opposite shore caved into the river, tossing the keelboat violently in the roaring water, threatening its destruction. The men leaped from the boat into the water instantly, trying to brace the boat against the sandbar to prevent the loss of their largest boat and crucial supplies. It required all the men’s strength and determination, but they saved the keelboat. In less than fifteen minutes, the storm suddenly subsided. Almost immediately the river again became calm and smooth. A gentle wind rose in their favor, and the crew ran up their sails, floating serenely up the river as if nothing had happened.

“We never had weather like this back home!” Private John Shields muttered as the men again stood on the deck, dripping wet, their faces filled with relief.

“I expect we’re going to see a lot more things that are like nothing we ever saw back home,” Captain Lewis agreed.

As July wore on, the Corps of Discovery came to higher plains and had to struggle to handle the boats in the heat, even sometimes stopping for three hours at midday to rest.

In the bottoms, grass often grew to a height of four feet. Lewis documented wild timothy, lambsquarter, cockleburs, grapes, plums, and gooseberries, their plants varying slightly from the familiar strains in the East. Something the Corps was seeing frequently were man-made mounds, which they assumed to be Indian burial grounds.

Finally, the expedition came to the mouth of the River Platte, where the captains chose a campsite they named Camp White Catfish because the ever-whistling Silas Goodrich had caught a large white catfish at that spot. The camp was on a wooded island about ten miles beyond the Platte, at a point that would be convenient for making observations. The men pitched their tents and prepared to stay a few days. The wind blew hard here and raised so much dust that Captain Clark couldn’t work on his map in the captains’ tent. He tried the keelboat, but it rocked too much in the wind. He finally quit until the wind died. Mosquitoes were such a problem that sitting still for even a moment was extremely disagreeable. The men stayed in motion or tossed their mosquito netting over themselves for protection.

The Platte, which trappers in St. Louis had described to Lewis as a “mile wide and an inch deep,” was bursting with animal and plant life. Lewis learned that the Platte was rarely more than four feet deep but was at times as much as three miles wide. At its mouth, it was only three-quarters of a mile wide.

“Drouillard, I was told that three nations of Indians live on the Platte River,” Captain Lewis said. “Take St. Peter with you and see if you can find any of them. If you do, invite them to a council with us.”

While the expedition waited for Drouillard and Cruzatte to return, the men made a flagstaff and raised the United States flag in anticipation of the council with the Indians. While they waited, they put the contents of the boats out to dry, and some of the men dressed skins or made new oars. But Drouillard and Cruzatte returned with disappointing news.

“The chiefs and young men are out on the prairie hunting buffalo,” Drouillard said. “They won’t return for days.”

“We can’t wait for them,” Lewis said, obviously disappointed. “We have to keep moving.” To Clark he muttered, “The first tribe we’ve encountered and we miss them. I hope this doesn’t bode ill for us.”

Drouillard, while out hunting a few days later, came upon three Oto Indians dressing an elk they had killed. Using sign language, he greeted them in a friendly manner. They made him a present of some of the elk meat, and he invited them to return with him to the keelboat. The captains greeted the Otos, gave them a gift of whiskey, and sent Private La Liberte with them to their village to invite their chiefs to the Corps of Discovery’s camp for a council. The men made camp in an open place to wait for the Oto Indians, hoping for a council.

The prairie here was covered with grass a foot high and timber that included willow, cottonwood, elm, sycamore, hickory, walnut, oak, and mulberry. Goodrich whistled as he caught several catfish, and the hunters killed turkeys, geese, and ducks.

“Goodrich, you’re the happiest person I ever met,” John Colter told him.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you whistle all the time,”

“I just like music!” Goodrich explained.

“Then why don’t you sing with Shannon when Cruzatte plays in the evenings?”

“Because I can sing only a three-note range, but I can whistle anything,” Goodrich grinned.

Lewis took latitude and longitude while Clark worked on his map as the expedition waited for the Otos to arrive. Joseph Fields trapped a badger, an animal totally new to the men of the Corps of Discovery, although Cruzatte and the other Frenchmen knew about it. One of the trappers caught a live beaver, which the men found surprisingly easy to tame. Catfish were plentiful, and John Potts caught three very large ones. The captains named the creek in which he caught them Potts Creek.