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March-April, 1805

Ice on the Missouri River was beginning to break up, signaling the men of the Corps of Discovery that they would soon be able to resume its mission. Sergeant Gass gathered one group of men with tents and several days’ rations and set out for a distant site to build dugout canoes. Others stayed at Fort Mandan making new tow lines for the pirogues. The local Indians continued visiting the fort to have their tools and weapons repaired at the blacksmith forge, paying for the services with corn, beans, and dried meat.

A Hidatsa Indian named One Eye came to the fort to see York for himself because he didn’t believe the stories others had told him about meeting a black man. York, always good-natured, stood still while One Eye tried to rub the color off his skin, even spitting on his fingers and rubbing harder to find a white patch. Laughing at the Indian’s obvious surprise, York removed his cap, bent his head toward One Eye, and invited him to feel his short, kinky, black hair. One Eye reached out tentatively and then broke into a wide smile when his fingers sank into York’s wooly hair. Both men were laughing as they shook hands, and the Indian departed, convinced that York’s color was no hoax.

Sacagawea and her baby were popular with the men and a real novelty for the expedition. But noting that her husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, had developed a haughty attitude, the captains held a meeting with him. Believing that Sacagawea, as interpreter with the Shoshone Indians, would be indispensable to the Corps of Discovery’s mission, he became puffed up with self-importance.

“I do no labor, stand no guard,” he informed the captains.

“Yes, you will,” Lewis replied with the voice of authority. “You will do the same work the soldiers of the Corps of Discovery do.”

Charbonneau scowled and shot back, “No!”

“In that case, you would just be a burden to us,” Clark said brusquely. Lewis stood and looked into Charbonneau’s eyes. “If that’s your answer, take your squaw and leave our camp now.” Then he turned away.

Shocked at the order, Charbonneau took Sacagawea and Pomp and moved back to his Hidatsa village. However, after four days he and his family returned.

“I go, do what you say,” he promised.

The captains agreed, secretly relieved that they would have the Frenchman’s strength and experience as well as his pleasant squaw and her tribal language skills.

Gass and his team had returned with four dugout canoes, and he and Shields were now making a new steering rudder for the keelboat in preparation for its return trip to St. Louis. However, the captains had begun to have second thoughts about resuming their journey with only four dugout canoes.

“I would rather have too many than too few,” Clark admitted. “It won’t cost anything to make one or two more.”

“My conclusion also,” Lewis agreed. “Let’s have the men make two more.”

Fort Mandan was a beehive of activity, with everyone making final preparations for the next leg of the expedition. Two men went to the Northwest Company’s camp to trade wolf pelts for tobacco, while other men made oars and poles for propelling the canoes through treacherous waters, and others shelled corn. Tents and bedding were put out in the open, airing out under the warm spring sun. Ducks, geese, and swans were migrating north, and the Indians set fire to the dry grass to allow new grass to grow for their horses and to attract buffalo. On those days, the air was smoky, but the ever-constant brisk wind helped to sweep away the smoke. Excitement was in the air.

By the end of March, ice floes were coming down the river in great chunks, and dead buffalo began floating down the river as well, evidently drowned as they tried to cross the river on thinning ice. As the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians pulled the dead buffalo carcasses from the icy water, the men of the Corps paused in their own preparations to watch them.

“Look at them!” one man exclaimed.

“That’s amazing!” joined another. “It’s almost like dancing, the way they can jump from floe to floe!”

The Indians worked together to pull the dead buffalos to their side of the river.

“This must be something they do every spring. They are experts at it!” came another admiring comment.

Spring brought joy to the men of the Corps of Discovery, who had survived the most brutal winter any of them had ever experienced. They were healthy except for a few with venereal disease. They sang as they packed their goods, preparing to resume their journey into new territory, ready to conquer whatever lay before them in the West. Few nights passed without a dance.

The first day of April began with lightning, thunder, rain, and hail. After the storm, the men gave their careful attention to preparing the keelboat, pirogues, and dugout canoes for departure. Everything that was being returned to St. Louis—live animals in cages, stuffed animals, pressed plants—was loaded in the keelboat.

Captain Lewis’s copious notes and drawings and Captain Clark’s detailed map of the journey thus far were also packaged and stored aboard the keelboat.

“If we don’t make it back,” Lewis said quietly to Clark, “at least our country will know what we did up to this point.”

Clark smiled with assurance. “We’ll make it back, and we’ll have much, much more to show our country than this load we’re sending back to St. Louis now.”

The captains inspected weapons, ammunition, food, medical supplies, trade goods for the Indians, and tools. Lewis gave last minute instructions to Corporal Warfington who was commanding the keelboat on its return to St. Louis.

“Be on full alert in Teton Sioux territory, and be ready to shoot your way through that stretch of river if you have to,” he said.

“Yes sir, I understand, Captain,” Warfington returned. “We’ll be ready, and if necessary, show them they can’t bully us.”

The keelboat pulled away from Fort Mandan, piloted by Gravelines, who was taking two Indian chiefs to visit President Jefferson. The crew of six soldiers and two French engages waved until they were out of sight. Troublemakers Newman and Reed were aboard the keelboat, being returned to St. Louis. Corporal Warfington also took along several other Indians and trappers as passengers for some portion of the journey downriver.

Captain Clark, with the two heavily loaded pirogues and six dugout canoes, prepared to embark upriver as Captain Lewis made ready to walk the route ashore in search of new species. Clark had distributed goods and provisions in the eight vessels so that in the event of loss, the Corps would still have something of everything. The Corps of Discovery was now twenty-eight soldiers plus Drouillard, Charbonneau, Sacagawea, Pomp, York, and the dog Seaman. Just before pushing off, the Mandan girl, Malawi, appeared with a bundle strapped to her back.

“Ordway!” she called to Captain Lewis.

Lewis looked at her and then his eyes darted to the canoe Ordway commanded.

“Sergeant Ordway!” he called. “Someone is here to see you.”

Ordway climbed out of his canoe and went to Malawi. Their communication consisted of few words and many gestures. Then Ordway turned to Captain Lewis.

“She wants to go with me like Sacagawea goes with Charbonneau,” Ordway explained.

Surprised, Lewis again looked at her. Then he shook his head.

“We can’t do that, Ordway. If we did, every man would soon have his own squaw—and we’ll be lucky to feed ourselves through the mountains. Sacagawea is coming because we need her to translate for us when we reach the Shoshones.”

Ordway looked at the ground, then to Malawi, whose eyes were brimming with tears, her face contorted with disappointment as she realized that it was a negative decision.

“I understand, Captain.” He turned quickly to embrace the young woman, then returned to his canoe and jumped into position, ready to go.

Sacagawea and Pomp were popular among the men of the Corps. Traveling with a baby who gurgled and smiled despite hardships or the weather, provided tender amusement for the men. They enjoyed watching him and playing with him. Usually he was strapped into a wooden carrier on Sacagawea’s back, a placid and sweet papoose.

It became obvious very quickly that Sacagawea would contribute more than simply translation services to the expedition. On the first day, when the party stopped to eat, she knew where to find wild artichokes that mice had collected and buried. She found a sharp stick and dug up a huge pile of the vegetables, showing the men how to cook and eat this welcome addition to their meal.

The two pirogues and six lighter, more maneuverable dugout canoes made their way easily up the Missouri River. The captains intended to leave the pirogues at the Falls of the Missouri River, where Lewis planned to assemble the iron-frame boat that he and President Jefferson had designed, covering it with elk skins. The white pirogue, slightly smaller and more stable than the red pirogue, was the “flagship” of the flotilla. Rowed by six oarsmen, it carried the Corps’ astronomical instruments, medicine, trade goods, journals, notes, and casks of gunpowder. Sacagawea, Pomp, Charbonneau, Drouillard, and the two captains (when one of them wasn’t walking on shore) all traveled in the white pirogue. The flat-bottomed pirogues were clumsy water craft, but experienced crews could easily handle them. The six canoes were round-bottom dugouts hewn from cottonwood trees, fitted with sails, with a crew of four oarsmen. The expedition often made twenty miles a day alongside level and fertile plains that had neither trees nor shrubs, although the bottoms along the shore were timbered. The men could plainly see coal strata in the bluffs along the riverbank. Lewis noted all these features in his journal. As the weather warmed at the end of April, mosquitoes once more became a pesky nuisance.

Each day the captains sent out up to ten hunters to bring in enough meat to feed more than thirty people. The countryside had turned green, and the hunters had found large patches of spring onions which added a pleasing flavor to meat stews. Sometimes strong spring headwinds prevented travel on the river, and so the men had a day now and then in camp, providing time to air out damp items, repair boats, make moccasins and clothing, and cure meat. The captains used that time to record astronomical data and to update maps of the area recently traveled. They also recorded careful notes on the geography, soil, minerals, climate, and native peoples of each region.

Whenever the expedition met a party of Indian hunters, the captains stopped to smoke and talk with them to establish friendly relations. Timber in this area was cottonwood, elm, ash, box alder, and dwarf juniper. Underbrush consisted of swamp willow, redberry, and chokeberry. Magpies, grouse, crows, hawks, and field larks abounded. Bluffs alongside the river still showed strong strata of coal.

Fighting the swift current of the river, the expedition passed high plains and bottoms alive with springtime growth. The men by now had cast off their warm clothing and worked in loincloths because much of their time was spent in the water, pulling the vessels and freeing debris from their path. One day at sunset they saw Indians on horseback who kept their distance from the expedition.

“L-Look at those g-g-guys” Reuben Fields said to his boat mates as he waved to the Indians, hoping for a response.

“They don’t seem interested in talking to us,” Colter commented. “We must look pretty fierce.”

“Nah,” Fields said laughing. “I-It’s the s-s-sight of you in a loincloth that s-s-scares them.” Everyone in the canoe laughed.

As the expedition struggled up the river, the spring grasslands nurtured vast herds of buffalo, elk, and antelope. The grasslands also indirectly supported the coyotes, foxes, wolves, and bears that lived off the hoofed animals. Large swarms of insects hovered above the animals, which brought immense groups of darting birds to feed on the insects. Antelope often crossed the river, and although they were fleet runners, they were weak swimmers and easy to kill in the water. Even Seaman could catch and kill an antelope that ventured into the river.

Keeping pace with the flotilla on shore, Lewis one morning came upon the remains of an Indian hunting camp. Nearby was a scaffold about seven feet high under which lay a body wrapped in a buffalo skin. Near the body was a leather bag containing moccasins, beaver tails, a buffalo-skin scraper, dry roots, and a small quantity of Mandan tobacco. Lewis was interested, but didn’t want to linger in this place sacred to native peoples.

Because the wild animals of the northern plains had seen so few human beings, they were not afraid of the men of the expedition. They showed no alarm when the men approached to inspect them out of curiosity. Lewis came upon a buffalo calf that looked up at him but didn’t run away. At that moment Seaman came bounding up to Lewis, and the calf snorted and darted behind Lewis for protection. The calf followed Lewis until he got back into the boat at the water’s edge. The men discovered that buffalo cows defended their calves only as long as they kept up with the herd; if they fell behind, the cows seldom returned to find them.

While Charbonneau was steering the white pirogue one day, a sudden squall struck the boat, causing him to panic and turn the pirogue sideways to the wind, tilting the boat over so far that it threatened to capsize. Charbonneau, who couldn’t swim, was frozen with fear and cried out to God for mercy. Cruzatte leaped up, shoved Charbonneau aside, turned the pirogue into the wind, and shouted for the crew to pull down the sail. It was a close call because the white pirogue carried all the captains’ official papers and instruments, as well as all the medicine. Only goods and provisions were distributed among the canoes.

“We’d better keep an eye on Charbonneau,” Lewis confided to Clark that evening. “He doesn’t seem to know how to handle the pirogue in a crisis.”

Clark added dryly, “Apparently he doesn’t handle fear well either.”

The Corps of Discovery’s worst enemy was the wind, which was blustery most of the time, sweeping down the open spaces of land. Some days it was so strong that the men stayed in camp because they couldn’t row upstream against it or tow the boats through high, wind-driven waves. Despite being the rainy season of the year, this country was dry, and the wind stirred up great clouds of dust and sand, blowing it into the men’s faces and causing sore, irritated eyes. Sometimes, the only recourse was to pull into a sheltered inlet until the fury of the wind lessened.

One day in late April the expedition pulled into a cove until winds calmed, and Captain Lewis, Sergeant Ordway, and Private Fields crossed the Missouri to go up the Yellowstone River to take and record observations. They set up a camp on the bank of the Yellowstone, about two miles above its mouth.

“Fields, hike up the river for several miles and see what you can learn about it,” Lewis said.

During Fields’ absence, Lewis recorded three astronomical readings at three-hour intervals during the day, showing Ordway his method and purpose. When Fields returned, a buffalo calf had trailed him the last four miles,

“The only thing I found was this strange-looking horn,” he reported, producing a large curving horn of what would prove to be that of a bighorn sheep.

“That’s an ungodly looking thing!” Lewis said, taking the horn to inspect it. “Now all we have to do is find the animal that goes with it. When we do, science will probably name it after you.” He smiled and added, “Maybe something like a Josephus Fieldus goat.”

Fields grinned and self-consciously cracked his knuckles.

After leading the buffalo calf to an area spotted with buffalo dung, an area of possible rescue by a buffalo herd, the three men returned to camp with the horn. Captain Clark was busy with his maps, calculating distances.

“My figures show that the Yellowstone River is 1,888 miles from the mouth of the Missouri,” he said, “and that we have traveled 279 miles since we left Fort Mandan.” Both captains kept meticulous records of everything pertaining to the exploration of the wild and beautiful western lands.

The hunters were eager to test their skill and courage against the most feared animal of the region—the grizzly bear. They had first heard about them from the Indians at Fort Mandan, who said they were gigantic, ferocious, and fearless. They had told the soldiers hair-raising tales about their experiences. Captain Lewis and Drouillard didn’t have long to wait for their first encounter. They were walking on shore when they were suddenly startled by thrashing sounds in the brush behind them. Wheeling around, they found themselves face-to-face with two massive grizzly bears ready to attack them. Reacting instinctively, both men fired quickly but only wounded the grizzlies, which reared up on their hind legs bellowing their rage. As the two men feverishly reloaded their rifles, one of the bears ran away but the other one charged at Lewis just as Drouillard fired again. This time his shot hit the grizzly in the head, and it slumped lifeless to the ground.

Lewis was shaken but safe, and he smiled as he said, “Well, we’ve fought the grizzly, but I can’t say I’d care to repeat the experience. I see why the Indians fear them.” Although Lewis had hunted black bears in the East, he had never seen such fearlessness in a bear. It took four men to haul the meat from the grizzly back to camp.