CHAPTER 18
The Great Falls of the Missouri

June, 1805

The countryside along the banks of the Missouri River gradually became more level, making towing the boats easier, a blessing to the men whose feet were bruised and battered from rocks on the riverbed. According to what the Mandan Indians had told them, the Corps would soon arrive at the Great Falls of the Missouri, where they planned to assemble the iron-frame boat. With game abundant once more, Lewis began collecting elk hides to cover the iron-frame boat.

Grizzly bears were seen every day now. While hunting, Drouillard and Charbonneau were suddenly charged by a grizzly when they intruded into his territory. Shooting frantically, Charbonneau wounded it—then, his gun empty, the terrified Charbonneau froze as the bear rushed toward him! Drouillard took careful aim and shot the bear in the head just in the nick of time. The animal’s furious charge ended with its lifeless carcass at Charbonneau’s feet. Shaking uncontrollably, still immobilized with fear, Charbonneau stared dumbly at the carcass.

After a moment of silence, Drouillard said sarcastically, “You’re welcome!”

Finally coming to his senses, Charbonneau mumbled, “That monster would have ripped me to shreds.”

“Tell you what, the next time you make some of that buffalo sausage, you can give me an extra portion, and we’ll call it even,” Drouillard grinned.

“Mais oui, boudin blanc. My pleasure.” Then he smiled and added, “But I think you sell my life pretty cheap.”

 

The expedition arrived at a wide fork in the Missouri River. “Make camp here,” Lewis instructed the men, and to Clark he said, “We have to decide which of these two forks is the Missouri. What do you think?”

“I’m surprised the Mandans didn’t tell us about this fork. It could be either one.”

Lewis called to Sergeants Ordway and Gass. “Each of you take a canoe and crew up a different one of these forks and decide which direction it comes from. Be sure to get back by nightfall.”

As the expedition awaited their return, the men dressed skins to make clothing while Lewis and Clark took celestial calculations to fix the location for Clark’s map, still puzzling over the identity of the two wide-flowing forks.

“The north fork is larger than the south fork, and its muddy water is more turbulent,” Lewis noted. “The south fork, on the other hand, is clear and calm.”

“The north fork looks and acts like the Missouri River we have known all these weeks, so the men will think it’s the continuation of the Missouri,” Clark reasoned.

Both leaders studied the water and the terrain. Lewis commented, “ The north fork is so muddy that it must have run a great distance through prairie, which would indicate that it can’t be the true source of the Missouri.” Gesturing, he added, “The south fork is so clear that it must have come directly out of the mountains, don’t you think? It could prove that the true source of the Missouri lies north, in the mountains.”

Positive identification was crucial for the expedition to continue to the west coast. When Ordway and Gass returned with inconclusive information, the captains decided they would each lead a party far enough up the different forks to determine which one was the continuation of the Missouri. Lewis took Pryor, Drouillard, Shields, Windsor, Cruzatte, and Labiche to explore the north fork. Clark selected the Fields brothers, Gass, Shannon, and York to go with him up the south fork. Each team was to travel a day and a half up the fork, and then return to camp.

Clark’s party explored fifty miles up the southern fork and then returned—but when Lewis and his party came to no conclusion, they continued up the northern fork another twenty miles, convinced that it could not be the Missouri because it bore too far north. They built rafts to ride the current back to camp, but it rained all night making the river hazardous, so they walked back to camp.

“The northern fork goes too far north,” Lewis said when his group returned, “so I’m convinced that the southern fork is the Missouri.” Still, the problem hung in the air.

Private Cruzatte (“St. Peter” to the men) was an experienced Missouri River navigator whose knowledge and skill had earned the respect of everyone in the Corps.

“I think the north fork is the Missouri,” he announced to the men, which convinced them.

But Lewis stuck with his opinion that the south fork was the one they needed. He was so certain of it that he named the north fork “Maria’s River” in honor of his teenaged cousin, Miss Maria Wood.

The captains decided that Lewis would lead a team up the south fork until they found the Falls of the Missouri, which would leave no doubt in anyone’s mind—provided they found it. Clark was to follow with the pirogues and canoes the next day. Before Lewis and his party left in search of the falls, the captains decided to hide the large red pirogue in thick brush and undergrowth and prepare a cache for all the heavy baggage they could do without, thereby lightening the loads in the remaining vessels and adding men to their crews. Seven men under Cruzatte, who had experience building caches, dug a huge hole in which to bury the baggage. The men filled the cache with ammunition, axes, beaver traps, blacksmith tools, tents, and superfluous baggage of every kind, totaling about a thousand pounds. Then the captains gave out a dram of whiskey, Cruzatte broke out his fiddle, and the men had a frolic. To commemorate their presence in this place, they branded several trees with Captain Lewis’s branding iron. That evening, Sacagawea was ill, becoming nauseous and unable to hold food down. She thought she had eaten something that disagreed with her and hoped she would feel better the next morning.

At sunrise, Lewis and his party started up the south fork in search of the falls. Before following, the main party with Clark put out all of the merchandise to dry, and John Shields repaired the main spring of the air gun. Although Shields had never served an apprenticeship at any trade, he was so gifted that he even made his own tools, working extremely well in either wood or metal. He was very important to the functioning of the Corps of Discovery because he seemed able to repair anything. With great satisfaction, Lewis felt that he and Clark had done well in selecting the men, except for Reed and Newman.

 

Meanwhile, Lewis and his detachment proceeded up the south fork in search of the Falls of the Missouri. They passed through an open and level plain that continued as far as they could see, populated with great numbers of buffalo, as well as some wolves and antelopes. The prickly pears were so numerous that it required half of their attention to avoid them. Near the river, the level plain was cut by deep ravines.

 

With Clark’s following party, the rapid current made handling the boats difficult, and the men were in the water from morning until night struggling to get the boats upstream. Sacagawea was now very sick, and Captain Clark put her in the covered part of the white pirogue where it was cool. He tried to coax her to take some medicine, but she refused.

 

Farther on up the southern fork, where high cliffs and crags ended the prairie and fronted the river, Captain Lewis had gone ahead to survey the land. There had been a sudden afternoon downpour, creating slippery grass and oozing mud. Suddenly Lewis slipped and nearly fell from a craggy precipice that dropped ninety feet to the river and rocks below. At the last moment, he stopped his fall with his espontoon, and at that same moment heard someone cry out, “Help!!” Windsor had lost his footing and slid to the very edge of the precipice, his right arm and leg dangling over it.

“Your knife!” Lewis shouted. “Take your knife and dig a foothold for your foot!”

Windsor was terrified and slipped a few inches more before he could pull his knife from its sheath and twist his body so he could carve a quick foothold in the cliff. Lewis watched intently, trying to come up with an alternate plan if he failed. Windsor painstakingly gouged out a hole and stuck his left foot in it, scrambling up and over the top—safe and grateful in the wet grass. He lay there for a few moments as Lewis walked over to him.

“It’s a long way down there, lad. I’m mighty glad you didn’t take the short cut.”

“Me, too!” he said with relief.

That night Lewis’s group camped in an old Indian lodge made of sticks and mud, and the next morning they continued up the southern fork of the river. Suddenly, Collins yelled, “Listen! Do you hear a roar? I think I hear the falls!”

Everyone stopped and listened. Sure enough, they heard a faint roar in the distance. The sound increased as they continued, and soon they began to see a spray of mist rising like a column of smoke above the trees.. By noon they reached the deafening roar of the Great Falls of the Missouri River.

“My God! Look at that!” someone yelled over the din.

Shouting over the roar of falling water, George Gibson slapped Captain Lewis’s back, “You were right, Captain! All the rest of us were wrong!”

“Lucky guess!” Lewis yelled back at Gibson with false modesty. He had been certain that the south fork was the correct one all the time.

He immediately sent Joseph Fields back down the river to find Clark’s party and give them the good news.

The falls presented a truly breathtaking scene. The river above the falls was eight-hundred yards wide, of which one-hundred yards formed a smooth sheet of water that fell about eighty feet to the river below. The remaining seven hundred yards of the river fell onto rocks, creating a jumble of rising, swirling spray measuring fifteen or twenty feet before it was caught by the falling water and slammed back upon the rocks. The falls created a spectacular sight of sheer spray that was two-hundred yards wide and eighty feet high, which caught the arching reflections of the sun and created a huge rainbow. The men stared at the scene, enraptured by the beauty and majesty of nature. Lewis climbed a nearby hill to get an even better look. From the hill, he also looked out over an expansive plain that reached from the river to the snow-clad mountains in the south and southwest. He could also see the meandering Missouri cutting its way through the land. What beauty! The falls of the Missouri were actually a series of five large falls spread over a distance of eighteen miles. A second river, which the Indians called the Medicine River, emptied into the Missouri just above the falls.

Fields returned with further news. “Captain Clark and the others have arrived at the foot of a rapid about five miles below and are waiting there for you to come and examine Sacagawea, who is very sick,” he reported.

As Lewis hiked to Clark’s group, he came upon a herd of buffalo and decided to kill one and leave it there so he could camp there and dine on the buffalo on his return trip. The buffalo, shot through the lungs, stood dumbly, stunned and gushing blood from its mouth and nostrils. Watching and waiting for the buffalo to fall, Lewis neglected to reload his rifle. A grizzly, not twenty yards away, suddenly startled him, and without thinking, he raised his empty gun to shoot again. The bear charged! With no tree within three-hundred yards, Lewis turned and ran toward the river. He leaped into the water and went twenty yards, then turned back, intending to use his espontoon against his attacker, which would be in water over its head and at a disadvantage. The grizzly, however, instead of attacking, suddenly wheeled at the river’s edge, and ran back the way it had come, looking behind as if frightened. I’ll be damned! Lewis thought. He couldn’t have been afraid of me, so what was he running from? He would never know.

“Where is Sacagawea?” Lewis asked upon arrival at Clark’s location.

Clark was truly distressed. “If we lose Janey, Meriwether, the baby will die! We’ll have no way to feed Pomp—and no one to translate with the Shoshones for us either.”

Sacagawea lay in pain, drenched in sweat. Lewis gave her thirty drops of laudanum to help her sleep and offered to take Pomp so she could rest. As ill as she was, she wanted to keep Pomp with her. When hunters found a sulfur spring, Lewis decided to try the sulfur water on Sacagawea. He also gave her barks and opium, which quickly produced a stronger pulse. He decided to stay at the lower camp, both to restore Sacagawea to health and to record celestial observations.

Next morning, Captain Clark called the men at the lower camp together. “Sergeant Gass, take six men and cut enough timber to make two wagons,” he instructed. “It’s eighteen miles around the falls, and we can’t portage these canoes that distance on our backs. Look for some big trees to make wheels. We can use the masts from the pirogues as axles and tongues.

While Gass and the carpenters felled trees and built the wagons, Clark and five others went out to mark a portage route around the falls. Meanwhile, Lewis had other men hide the white pirogue among the willows on an island. Then he had them take the canoes out of the river and up a three-mile gradual ascent to a plain, where they could be loaded onto the wagons.

Sacagawea, who was finally improving, walked the area for the first time with Pomp who cooed and smiled at his mother and the men, who enjoyed pausing in their labors to greet them both. Lewis continued the same regimen of medicine for Sacagawea and cautioned both her and Charbonneau about foods she must avoid and foods she should eat for the next few days.

 

When a party of men went out to retrieve the meat from a kill, a grizzly suddenly crashed out of the brush and charged Alexander Willard, who instinctively turned and ran, zigzagging around trees to try to confuse the bear. Colter, Collins, and Howard chased and wounded the bear, only to have it wheel about and turn on them, charging straight for Howard, who dashed headlong into the river. When Colter and Collins ran after it to try rescue Howard, the bear became confused and ran away. Colter and Collins chased it, firing shots into it repeatedly, finally killing it a half mile away.

“Wow! That was close!” a winded Willard said, his heart racing.

“Those big guys don’t take kindly to being shot,” a dripping wet Howard agreed.

When they butchered the beast, they found nine musket balls in its carcass, including one lodged in its heart.

“No wonder the Mandans told us grizzlies were hard to kill!” Collins marveled. “Imagine trying to fight that monster with bows and arrows.”

Back at camp, Sacagawea’s fever returned after she ate some apples and dried fish.

“Why did you allow her to eat such food?” an angry Lewis demanded of Charbonneau. “I told you what she should eat.”

Lewis gave her thirty drops of laudanum, which gave her a tolerable night’s sleep.

 

The carpenters took great pride in building the two wagons and were especially proud of their wooden wheels made from crosscuts of large tree trunks. Clark sketched a map of the area around the falls for the men, having marked the route the wagons would take.

“Sergeant Ordway, I’m leaving you in charge of the camp while the rest of us make the first trip around the falls,” Lewis said. The personable Ordway had become popular among the men. “I’ll leave Goodrich to catch fish for you and York to cut firewood. Of course, Sacagawea and the baby will stay with you also.”

Up on the plain, the men lifted canoes onto the wagons. “All right, men,” Clark called out, “let’s get into harness and make like mules!”

With Shannon braying playfully like a donkey, the men fitted the makeshift harness to their bodies and started the eighteen-mile obstacle course around the falls. Prickly pear plants quickly became a problem on the portage, their thorns painfully piercing the men’s moccasins. They also discovered that great herds of buffalo had trampled the ground so badly after the last rain that their sharp hooves had left it uneven, and by now it had dried that way as though it had been frozen solid, making footing precarious and painful. They hoisted the sail of the largest canoe, which helped the men in harness as long as the wind blew in their favor. During the exhausting journey, one wagon tongue and two wagon wheels broke, forcing the men to stop and make repairs.

They arrived at the end of the portage after dark on the second day, extremely fatigued, and established the upper camp under some shady willows on White Bear Island, named for an albino bear they had seen. Lewis planned to stay there with several men to assemble and cover the iron-framed boat, which was thirty-six feet long, four and a half feet wide, and twenty-six inches deep. It was so light that five men could carry it.

The next morning the still weary men started the return trek to the lower Portage Creek Camp with the empty wagons, arriving very late in the day. They reloaded the wagons before turning in and started out the next morning with their second load. After several miles, one of the wagon tongues broke again, delaying them for a short time. At every halt, the poor fellows in harness dropped to the ground, so utterly exhausted that they fell asleep instantly and had to be wakened to continue the brutal trip. Some were limping from sore feet, and others became faint with the heat—yet no one complained. All were determined to complete this journey to the Pacific Ocean or die in the attempt. When they got within three miles of the upper camp, a violent rainstorm struck and within a few minutes the ground was covered with water. The men trudged on through the rain and arrived at the upper camp soaked and exhausted.

“You men look like the dregs off a slave ship,” Lewis greeted them. “You have sure as hell earned a double ration of whiskey.”

The whiskey revived them before they took to their bedding and slept the sleep of the dead throughout the night. The next day they returned again to the lower camp, where they got new loads ready to start out again the following morning.

 

At the upper White Bear Island Camp, Seaman was in a constant state of agitation with the frequent sightings of bears. Whitehouse and Frazier sewed elk skins onto the iron frame of the collapsible boat, which the men called “The Experiment,” while Gass and Shields fit horizontal bars of wood to it.

The hunters discovered an enormous spring that they estimated to be three to four hundred feet wide, forming a falls into the river.

“Good God, did you ever see a spring that goldarn big?” Shannon marveled.

“Not even close,” Willard agreed. “We don’t have springs that size back in the States. This country is unbelievable.”

The cold water was clear, and the men thought it was the best water they had ever tasted.

 

The next day, Drouillard and his hunting party were struck by a fierce storm of rain, causing them to take refuge under a ledge in a creek bank. The sky darkened, lightning lit up the sky, thunder pierced the air, and the creek rose precipitously.

“We can’t stay here,” Drouillard shouted as the water rose.

When they scrambled from under their ledge, they were accosted by fierce sleet driven so hard by the wind that the men could barely stay on their feet as they continued toward the upper camp, where they arrived shortly before dark. The party with the wagons was already there, and Captain Lewis gave them all a gill of whiskey.

“Damn, the whiskey almost makes it worthwhile,” Drouillard grinned.

“It helps,” Colter agreed, “but I’d trade it for a dry, warm bed.”

 

At the lower Portage Camp, some of the men set out to carry the remaining canoe and the last of the baggage three miles to the top of the staging hill, to be left there until morning. Others made last-minute repairs to the wagons. They broke camp the next morning and all hands set out for the upper camp, deciding to leave some boxes and kegs of pork and flour for another load. They struggled with the heavy load all day. When they camped at the end of the day, another storm struck and it rained all night. The men had to search individually for shelter because they had cached their tents. The rain stopped the next morning, and the weather cleared up. When they reached the upper camp, Clark sent everyone back for the goods they had left on the hill.

York, Sacagawea, Pomp, and Charbonneau, who hadn’t yet seen the falls, wanted to go and see them. Sacagawea begged Charbonneau to ask Captain to go see the great falls. Clark agreed and set out to guide them and show them the natural phenomenon.

 

As the wagon party was returning to the upper camp with the final load, a fierce black cloud in the west promised trouble. The party hurried but had not got halfway before a violent storm of hail hit them. Hugh McNeal was knocked down by a single huge ball of hail, and all the men were bruised. Abandoning the wagon, the men ran for the camp in great confusion. Some of the men arrived with bleeding heads. Soon after they arrived, the storm stopped, leaving more than an inch of hail on the ground.

“My God, this is strange country!” Labiche pronounced. “God only knows what’s going to happen from one minute to the next.”

Clark and his party returned at about the same time. Clark had also seen the storm coming and sought shelter under a ledge in a deep ravine. The violent rain at first wasn’t terribly alarming, but then the extremely violent hailstorm struck, sending a wall of water hurtling down the ravine, driving rocks and anything it encountered before it.

“Get out of here, quick!” Clark shouted at Charbonneau and Sacagawea.

Clark pushed Sacagawea, with Pomp strapped to her back, up the side of the ravine while Charbonneau pulled her from above. When they got to the top, they found York searching frantically for them. He had left them shortly before to pursue some buffalo,

“I thought you had all been washed away,” he said with great relief.

One moment longer and the water rushing down the ravine would have swept them into the river just above the eighty-seven-foot falls, where they would certainly have plunged to their deaths. As it was, they lost their compass, a tomahawk, Charbonneau’s gun and shot pouch, a horn with powder and ball, moccasins, Pomp’s clothes, and their bedding. They set out for the upper camp as quickly as possible because the baby was naked and cold and Sacagawea was just recovering from her severe illness.

The men at the upper camp were safely ensconced under a copse of trees.

“Let’s make some punch with the hail,” Captain Lewis said to try to lighten the mood and ease the tension.

“Let’s measure the biggest hailstone,” Shannon said enthusiastically. “I bet this is a record.”

Lewis measured the largest hailstone at seven inches in circumference and weighed it at three ounces. Then he used some of the hail to make the punch.

The next morning, some of the men went for the abandoned wagon. Two men went to search for the lost compass while four more made new axles and repaired the wagons. The men returned with the wagon and baggage from the hill, and the others brought back the compass—but they found nothing else that had been lost.

 

At the upper camp, Frazier and Whitehouse sewed skins to the iron-framed boat, Gass and Shields shaved bark for wadding, and Joseph Fields made cross braces. They finished the skin covering and put it into the water to toughen before being sewed onto the frame the next day. Twenty-eight elk skins and four buffalo skins were required to cover the boat.

Both mosquitoes and grizzly bears continued to be a constant problem at the upper camp. Lewis made it a policy never to send only one man on any errand, lest he run afoul of a grizzly. The bears didn’t attack the men in the camp, but they prowled close around the camp every night. Seaman patrolled the perimeter of the camp with the sentry at night and gave the men timely notice when the bears were around. Lewis also ordered the men to sleep with their guns within easy reach.