CHAPTER 17
Fighting Grizzlies and the Elements

May, 1805

“Captain Lewis!” Bratton called from outside the captains’ tent at sunrise. “Joseph Fields is mighty sick.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Lewis asked, slipping his shirt on over his head as he fell in step behind Private Bratton.

“He’s burning with fever and running at both ends.”

“Sounds like dysentery. Let’s have a look.”

Huddled under his blanket, shivering and bleary-eyed, Fields lay silent as Lewis put his hand on the private’s forehead and then checked his pulse.

“How do you feel, Fields?”

“Terrible, sir,” he answered softly, his voice barely audible.

“I’ll be right back with something to help you feel better,” Lewis said. “You just rest.”

In a few minutes Lewis returned with Glauber salts and laudanum, his standard treatment for dysentery and fever. He was glad Fields seemed to be an isolated case—he had seen an entire camp stricken before, even with fatalities. He was accustomed to treating common boils, abscesses, and sore eyes from the constantly blowing sand—all uncomfortable, but not a threat to life itself. For boils and abscesses he used poultices, and for sore eyes he used a wash of two parts white zinc sulphate and one part lead acetate.

Despite the sick man among them, the expedition pushed off as soon as possible. The country continued to be level and fertile, with well-timbered bottoms. Bald eagles were numerous in this wild area, nesting high in the trees. Elk and buffalo were also plentiful. The wind was blustery, as usual, and when the first strong gust hit the flotilla, Charbonneau, for the second time, mishandled the white pirogue. The captains, both on shore contrary to their own rules, watched helplessly as the pirogue tipped and water washed over its sides.

“Cut the halyards!” Lewis bellowed into the wind. “Haul in the sails!”

But those in the boat couldn’t hear him. Cruzatte, the best river man in the Corps of Discovery, shouted at Charbonneau to turn the boat into the wind, but Charbonneau was again panic-stricken, fearing for his life in the rushing river. The pirogue filled with water to within inches of the gunnels, and articles from the boat began to float away. As the crew scrambled to regain control of the boat, Sacagawea reached over the side, retrieving most of the threatened articles from the river.

That evening, Clark told Lewis, “I don’t want to trust Charbonneau to steer the white pirogue again. We can’t afford to lose it.”

“I agree,” replied Lewis. “We can’t risk losing our journals, maps, and instruments. Their loss would surely cripple our mission.”

“Janey was the calmest one in the boat. There she was—little Pomp sleeping on her back—and she still was able to pull nearly every item back into the boat. She knew how important they were to us.” Clark was smiling as he recalled the scene.

“Yes, in a just world, Charbonneau would be her property instead of the other way around.”

Early May had turned cold, and one day brought several hours of snow. The canoes and pirogues were always in peril because the river was crooked, the current was strong, and the river banks collapsed into the water without warning. Now, for almost one hundred and sixty miles, the landscape was dominated by high, rugged bluffs. Lewis called this area the “Desert of America” because it was such high, dry country. Dwarf cedar grew among the pine trees on the hills. Beaver were plentiful along this part of the Missouri Rivcr, and their meat was a welcome change—especially the men’s favorite, beaver tail.

From the boats, the hunters spied a grizzly bear lying in the open about three hundred yards from the river. Six men went after the grizzly, which seemed unaware of their presence until they got within forty yards. Four hunters fired while the other two held their guns at ready should more shots be needed. Even though all the first four shots struck the bear, it charged the men! The other two hunters fired, breaking the beast’s shoulder—but it still charged! Unable to reload their guns quickly enough, the hunters fled toward the river, the bear gaining on their every stride. Two of the hunters leaped into the river and the others hid among the thick brush on shore, reloaded their guns, and fired again. Their shots went into body of the huge bear, but they also revealed the men’s hiding place. The bear swung around and headed for their thicket. The men dropped their guns and leaped over a twenty-foot bank into the river. Enraged, the animal plunged into the water after them! Finally, a man on shore shot the monster in the head, and killed it. When they pulled the bear from the river and butchered it, they found that eight balls had penetrated its hulking body.

 

Not long after this episode, the rudder on the red pirogue broke and the expedition had to stop until Shields and Gass could repair it. Drouillard used the lull to shoot a beaver in the river. As usual, Seaman leaped in to retrieve it, but when he dove under the water the wounded beaver bit the dog’s hind leg. Seaman surfaced with the beaver in his jaws and swam ashore, hobbling on three legs toward the hunters, while his fourth leg gushed blood. Lewis examined the leg, applying pressure to stop the bleeding, but the flow didn’t stop because the beaver had bitten through an artery. Lewis tied a piece of buckskin around Seaman’s leg just above the wound to lessen the bleeding, and the men lifted the badly wounded dog onto a blanket and carried him to camp.

It seemed to Lewis that Seaman’s leg would never stop bleeding. While he cut away the fur from the area and stitched the ragged wound, York comforted the dog, crooning softly and petting his head. Lewis had never before treated a wound that bled so much, and he feared that Seaman would die from losing so much blood. Sacagawea made a bed for him in the white pirogue and draped a blanket over a stick frame to shield him from the sun. Lewis worried about infection, but by the next evening Seaman was able to eat a little broth with chopped meat, and on the following morning the dog was able to stand on his three good legs. Sacagawea and York faithfully tended the much-loved dog for days, and after a week Seaman was playful again—much to the delight and relief of everyone.

 

Late one afternoon, Bratton, who had been out hunting, ran to the river shouting, “Bring the pirogue to shore! Hurry!” Bratton was out of breath and very frightened of something.

Its crew swung the white pirogue to shore as Bratton dove from the bank, splashing feverishly to safety in the pirogue.

“What happened?” someone yelled.

Breathless and panting, Bratton shouted, “A grizzly!” He gasped for air and added, “I shot him and he came after me!”

The bear was not behind Bratton, so Lewis took seven men to find it, tracking him by a trail of blood. They found him concealed in very thick brush and shot him in the head. When they dressed the carcass, they found that Bratton had shot him through the lungs. Even such a severe wound did not prevent the bear from chasing Bratton a half-mile and then returning the same distance and digging himself a bed that was two feet deep and five feet long.

“It’s hard to believe that the bear was still alive when we found it!” one man said.

“Such strength and ferocity must be necessary in country like this,” Clark said. But he also knew that the necessity of facing grizzlies was beginning to unnerve the men.

 

On a sunny spring morning a few days later, Lewis climbed a bluff and beheld for the first time the snow-covered Rocky Mountains. His heart skipped a beat at the magnificence and the beauty, but he also viewed the Rockies with foreboding. He could only imagine the hardships and suffering the expedition would experience as they crossed them, for the size of these mountains was on a completely different level of magnitude than the familiar Appalachian Mountains back east.

 

Progress on the Missouri River was slower now because it was filled with seemingly endless bends. In addition, the high bluffs came down to the water’s edge denying the men access to the shore. The shallow river was filled with huge boulders, and strong headwinds slowed travel. For the most part, the men towed the pirogues and canoes with elk-skin tow lines that became weaker because they were constantly wet. Often, the lines broke, usually when the men were guiding a craft around the rocks. These vessels were in great danger of turning broadside, being carried downstream out of control, and overturning. The men were working in the river, combating both slippery mud and sharp rocks that cut and bruised their feet. The captains’ pride knew no bounds as they witnessed the men’s discipline, abilities, and capacity for brutally hard work.

The country on both sides of the river continued level and fertile, and great quantities of buffalo and other wild life were plentiful. Clark and Drouillard killed the biggest grizzly to date. The hunters had learned a great deal of respect for the grizzly, which was more likely to attack than flee when they encountered men. Their formidable appearance and the stubbornness with which they died had weakened the resolve of many of the hunters to face down the grizzly.

The Corps of Discovery came to a stretch of river that again required them to tow the vessels much of the day. Fortunately, the banks were firm and devoid of vegetation, which favored the use of tow ropes. This was rugged country with high hills covered with pine and cedar trees. The expedition passed the base of a cliff where rotten, stinking corpses of buffalo, evidently driven off the cliff by Indians, were piled high. The Indians had taken only what they could carry and left the rest to decay. The men watched a pack of wolves gorging on the putrid meat. They were so stuffed and lethargic that Clark walked up to one and prodded it out of his way.

 

One night, when everyone was sleeping except the guards, a buffalo bull blundered into camp. The four fires burning in the camp confused the buffalo, and the terrified animal began to charge wildly about. Seaman chased it, barking and adding to its terror. Some of the men sat up, dulled by sleep, while others reached for their guns. The bull’s panic increased as the men on the ground began to move, and its hooves came within inches of sleeping bodies. Then it charged the tepee where the captains, Charbonneau, Sacagawea, and Pomp were sleeping, apparently mistaking the tepee for a living, threatening enemy. Just in time, Seaman diverted it from the tepee and chased it out of camp.

“Damn! Don’t these beasts sleep at night?” Hugh Hall asked. “What the hell was he doing wandering around in the middle of the night?”

“Probably looking for a heifer,” John Boley said dryly.

 

As they traveled on, the river became more and more challenging, bringing a terrifying moment to Captain Lewis. The tow rope on the white pirogue broke at a particularly dangerous part of the river, causing the pirogue to swing around, strike a rock, and almost turn over before the quick-acting men were able to save it. When they were again in calm waters, Lewis was so relieved that the white pirogue—and thus the expedition, in his mind—had been saved from disaster that he decided to reward the men.

“Well done, men,” he shouted! “All the work we have done is wrapped up in the contents of that pirogue. If we had lost it, we would have serious problems. Pull over to the shore and let’s celebrate.”

On shore, he raised a jug to salute his team, and then removed the cork and poured drinks for all. The men milled about with their drinks.

“I think Captain Lewis values the white pirogue as much as he values his own life,” Drouillard commented to Ordway.

“Well, he’s put his life and career into this expedition, and the record of it all is in the white pirogue,” Ordway said compassionately.

 

The flotilla passed cliffs that were two- to three-hundred feet high, nearly perpendicular, and shining white in the sun. Falling water had carved fantastic lines in the sandstone that allowed the imagination to see endless images.

“There’s the Virgin Mary,” Labiche cried out reverently, crossing himself.

“Hey! I see George Washington!” Private Whitehouse said excitedly, pointing.

“You could probably see Mary’s Little Lamb if you wanted to,” Shields dryly observed, ending the game.

Lewis wrote in his journal that those cliffs were a remarkable sight where a thousand figures and even buildings could be imagined.

 

A strong wind seemed always to blow downriver, forcing the men to tow the boats, requiring exhausting effort from them. Their elk-skin ropes were worn and prone to break as the men struggled to pull the boats against the current, their bare feet slipping on the muddy riverbanks. Earth and stones falling from the bluffs above added danger to their work. Part of the time, the men waded in water up to their armpits while rocks on the riverbed bruised and cut their feet.

Land on both sides of the Missouri was rolling prairie, bare and desolate. One night they camped at the mouth of a stream they named “Blowing Fly Creek” because the air was filled with swarming flies. Flies infested everything, and members of the expedition had to constantly shoo them out of their food as they ate.

That night, the sentinels raised an alarm because a tree that leaned over the tepee where the captains and Drouillard’s family slept somehow was in flames. Everyone sprang into action, quickly dismantling the tepee and moving it to a safer location. The moment the tepee was out of danger, the entire top of the burning tree crashed to the ground exactly where the tepee had stood. High winds had fanned the fire, blowing in every direction and spraying burning embers over the camp, even damaging the tepee in its new location.

“How do you suppose that happened?” someone wondered aloud.

“That damned wind must have picked up a spark from one of the campfires and blown it into the tree.”

“Day or night, we can’t escape the bloody wind!” was the disgruntled response.

As the team continued up the Missouri, they saw large areas of prickly pears as well as hundreds of stubby pines and dwarf cedars. Fierce wind continued to be an unyielding adversary, and the expedition found itself enveloped in a gigantic cloud of dust and sand that made it impossible to work, cook, eat, or sleep. When the wind finally calmed a little, the landscape as far as the men could see was caked with fine grains of sand. The men washed themselves in the river, where the cool water soothed their skin. Captain Lewis prepared his mixture for sore eyes, and the men were grateful for the medication.

Though it was late May, standing water was still freezing at night here in the high country, sometimes to a thickness of one-third of an inch. When the breeze was in their favor, they hoisted the sails and enjoyed Mother Nature’s assistance on the river. Now they were surrounded by mountains that were very rocky and covered with scrub pine. They sensed foreboding because game had become scarce. There were few bottoms now, with hills coming close to the river on both sides. In this new terrain, the rapids in the river became more and more tempestuous. When they came upon the most violent rapids yet, they doubled their crews and used both tow lines and poles to control their boats.

The Missouri suddenly spread to three times its former width, and the expedition came upon islands covered with cottonwood trees. The land became less forbidding and more fertile, and the river bottoms again bore timber. The expedition encountered an Indian camp that had been abandoned about two weeks, and Lewis counted the remains of one hundred-twenty-six campfires. Sacagawea examined some abandoned moccasins and assured the captains that these had not been Shoshone Indians.

As the Corps of Discovery pressed onward, the current against them became too rapid for oars, and the river was too deep for poles. They had to use tow ropes. The rocky bluffs now rose to a height of two to three hundred feet, often forming grotesque shapes. Huge columns of stone rose from the ground as though the result of a master sculptor’s labor. The Corps of Discovery was witnessing a new part of America that was indeed wondrous to behold. The captains, despite being stunned by the natural beauty, knew they were entering the Rocky Mountains, with its monumental challenges still ahead of them.