On November eighth the ocean was sighted. “Great joy in camp,” wrote the usually unemotional Clark. “We are in view of the Ocian, this great Pacific Ocian which we have been so long anxious to see, and the roreing or noise made by the waves brakeing on the rockey shores [as I suppose] may be heard disti[n]ctly.” The estimated distance the explorers had traveled from St. Louis to the ocean was four thousand one hundred miles.
From Sacajawea, by Harold P. Howard. Copyright 1971 by the University of Oklahoma Press, p. 83.
At the Short Narrows of the Columbia River, the water rushed through steep rock walls not more than forty-five yards apart. Travel here was dangerous, but a portage around the rapids was next to impossible because the banks were too difficult to climb. Captain Clark took the riverman, Cruzatte, with him for a walk along the narrow shore to examine the wild water.
“This is a bad stretch,” said Clark.
“We’ve had worse,” said Cruzatte. “It’s not going to be bad as long as we can let the canoes down with ropes. It’s when we have to take them out of the water that it’s misery.”
The canoe in which Cruzatte paddled stern reached some willows, then was caught in a stronger current. The men in it bent to their paddles. Still it swung sharply away from the bank.
“They have gone too far!” shouted Clark.
“Watch out!” someone else yelled.
“Work her in! Work!”
“Make into the shore! Hey—they’ll need a rope!” called Captain Lewis.
The backs of Cruzatte, Gass, Labiche, and Colter were bowed under the strain. The canoe shot from beneath them. It stood up on its stern, then spun like a twig, danced, and lunged through foaming water with the four men clinging to it. It swept in toward the bank, danced, slipped up on a rock, and caught. Cruzatte, Gass, Labiche, and Colter were on the rock. Then, chestdeep in dangerous water, Cruzatte pulled the canoe in close to shore. “Hang on!” Lewis shouted to the other three, then swung a braided elk-skin rope over their heads.
The rope sailed across the water, and Gass was the first to catch it. The four men, chest-deep in the water, braced themselves as the rope jerked taut. Then the dugout was slapped violently across the water and against the shore. Hands waited there to grab them and drag them to safety. Taking up the rope from Captain Lewis, Cruzatte carefully brought the other four canoes through safely, one at a time.
Charbonneau commented on the fast-swirling water, “Looks like a horrid, agitated gut, swelling, boiling, and whirling in every direction.” That evening he brought out his French harp, to the delight of the expedition and the local Chinooks. Cruzatte played his violin in accompaniment until Charbonneau’s wind gave out.
The day after the Short Narrows was also bad because the Columbia passed through hard, rough, black rock, from fifty to one hundred yards wide, swelling and boiling all the time. The men called this the Great Shoot.1 Here the river dropped sixty feet in two miles. Cruzatte admitted the canoes could not make it through and doubted if a man would get through alive. The men began the portage over the rock-strewn shore, along the edges of the cliffs, sweating, panting, chanting, wet with spray, half the time waist-deep in dangerous water, numbed to the hips. They made camp at a flat place that had been used recently as a camp by a tribe of Chinooks. When the men cleared away the dried grass and fish skins, they discovered they were covered with fleas and had to strip and duck in the cold water in order to get the insects off their legs and bodies.2
Across the river was a small encampment of Chinooks. Their lodges were different from any yet seen. They were made of wood with roofs, a door, and gables, like frontier cabins. In the front of each lodge were stacks of salmon.
“Ten thousand pounds,” wrote Captain Clark in his journal that evening, “all dried, baled with twisted grass rope, and probably bound for traffic further down the river. What a smell.”
Moseying near Charbonneau, Reuben Fields said with a teasing glint in his eyes, “Hey, when the wind comes over the water just right, I swear I can smell your boots on the opposite bank.”
“My boots,” replied Charbonneau, squinting his eyes to peer through the slits, “will smell the way you do every day when they have gone through this damn river country. Poulet merde!” He held his nose and walked away, not wishing to enlarge on the subject.
The terrain began to change, and more trees grew along the riverbanks. Mountains, large and glistening white with snow-covered peaks, were seen ahead. The expedition passed ancient burial places where the deac were stacked one upon the other and the whitened skull were placed in a circle on a high platform in the trees On either side of the river channel they saw rocky pal isades, green-mossed and dripping. Waterfalls came down the slopes and fell in a rainbow mist to the river
One morning Pat Gass felt his head after passing under a burial platform beside a falls and said, “I sin cerely hope it is the mountain mist that bedews my to] hair, and not some disintegrating remnants of some one’s great-grandmother.”
A river flowing into the Columbia was named after Baptiste LePage, and another after Pierre Cruzatte. Or the rocks around these rivers lay many sleeping hair seals. Sacajawea pointed them out to Pomp, saying “See, the river people are out there taking a rest.”
One evening a local Chinook stole Charbonneau’ old blue capote and hid it under the roots of a tree to pick up later. Sacajawea found it and took it to Char bonneau. He scolded her for letting his coat get full of muck and wet leaves and crawling with fleas. “Go wash it!” he yelled.
The Chinook tribes they now saw tattooed their face: by putting charcoal under the skin in intricate design: in the belief that it improved their looks.
York was panting for breath when he found Char bonneau. “I’se been looking quite a spell for you,” Yorl said. “There’s this fellow who looks like his face was made permanent blue with huckleberry stain, with you coat rolled under his arm and moving, like he’s expecting to be shot, for the other side of camp.”
“My capote?”
“Did you trade him that coat for something? Man you’se going to need it. The nights are already cold.”
“My femme found it. Damn thieving Chinooks! Hey don’t tell her I know a Chinook swiped it.”
“Why not?”
Charbonneau acted like he did not hear the last question and did not seem in a mood for conversation, so York sauntered on to talk to some of the other mer about the peculiarities of the Chinooks.
“Did you notice how all those squaws look alike? can’t tell one squaw in a family way from another in a similar condition. Do you suppose they all belong to the same ladies’ aid society? Watch! See how they go around sucking in and measuring each other with their eyes? I’ll bet my beaded moccasins and woolen stockings they’re getting ready to unload all at once. Each squaw will have a papoose to carry around to be admired at the same time—almost like what happens back home when the church ladies carry their prize johnnycake in a fancy covered dish to the parsonage for a circle meeting, all holding up their creation for the admiration of all and feeling good for the effort put into making something beautiful.”
The men laughed. Thus reinforced, York went on, “And can you guess the diet of these folks? They eat olives. It’s a kind of pickled acorn, flavorsome enough if you don’t know what they was pickled in, and they eat dogs—that’s why they raise so many inside their villages—and then they have a chaser, which is a kind of watery stew made of fish eyes. Listen to this: I seen one big buck eat fire. Honest! He licked it right off a chunk of pine pitch and snorted a big stream of it eight foot out into the air. I think he eats it on his boiled fish like it was pepper sass.”
The men guffawed and pounded York on the back.
“Them natives is an outfit, all right,” agreed Gibson.
For the next couple of days the expedition was in the valley of the lower Columbia, the home of the warm Chinook wind. The country was one of long slopes, running against the sky. The hills and swales were still green, and the air was warm and moist with rain. Swarms of swans, geese, ducks, cranes, storks, gulls, cormorants, and plover flew overhead. They were a delicious change in diet from the salmon. For a time the canoes drifted smoothly, then suddenly they descended into deep river canyons, and then in a little while they were back on smooth water between rapids again. There were the unique wooden huts of the Chinooks on both sides of the river. The huts always had racks of drying salmon around them, and everywhere the banks of the river were strewn with fish skins, making a sickening stench.3
When the expedition passed by the Hood River inlet, the Chinooks ran from their outside chores into their lodges. All were terrified as though they had never before seen white men. They could not be persuaded to come out, and they never ventured near the expedition’s camp. This tribe was dressed in skins from the shaggy mountain goat. Beside each hut was a wooden box with salmon, halibut heads, and roe, putrefying. Holding her nose, Sacajawea showed Clark the carved goat-horn spoons and wooden dishes, elaborately carved, that lay inside the boxes. She pointed out that this might be a tribal delicacy, comparing it to the Hidatsas’ liking of rotten buffalo flesh. She laughed when Clark made a face and held his stomach. They called to the people as they passed lodges and racks of salmon and other fish, split, dried, and some boxed with oil. Finally Clark left a few gifts near a large cache of dried fish. The odor of decaying fish and rancid oil lay heavily over this village.
Below the Hood River there were abandoned wooden huts, which the captains examined. They were built of split red cedar with a top smoke hole, or roof well, that could be opened for light or shut by an arrangement of sliding boards. The entire hut depended on notching and mortising; no pegs were used. The dead were placed in open wooden boxes, which Bratton found in an area to one side of the abandoned village. Inside, the bones were weathered white. Some of the boxes contained baskets made of spruce and cedar roots woven together. There were bowls beautifully carved with a kind of sea monster. The features were a mixture of bear and shark, with curved lines on the cheeks representing gills, a shark’s tail, and bear’s paws. The men found carvings in stone and baked clay in the grave goods. Sacajawea half believed that the spirits of those people might not wish to be disturbed, so she fought her curiosity to look inside and looked instead inside the forsaken huts. She found a tiny amulet of a human figure, carved from a beryl; the knees were slightly bent and drawn up against the chest, the kneecaps were flattened, and the feet were merged with the base. The head was large in proportion to the body, almost equaling the shoulders in width. The figure lay discarded in a corner, and she found it because its reddish coloring attracted her attention. She squealed with delight and ran out to find some discarded rope or sinew that could be used to tie around the little doll. She found some braided, hairlike twining in another hut and placed the doll around Pomp’s neck. His baby fingers examined it, then he popped it into his mouth, sucking on the feet. Sacajawea belatedly remembered the captains’ policy of not taking anything from any village unless it was especially given as a gift. She knew Captain Lewis would judge her more harshly than Captain Clark.
“Why didn’t you tell me you wanted a toy for the child?” chided Clark.
“I didn’t know until I saw this. It is a gift to him from me.”
“I should have had one of the men make Pomp a doll. Gass could make a toy to amuse the boy. I was not thinking or would have had something made weeks ago.”
“Now he has it,” she said, her face brightening. “I do not have to put it back?”
“It did belong here, and if the former resident came looking for it, what would he think if he found it around your son’s neck?”
“The right size for that child,” she said, holding her breath a moment.
“You believe the child who owned it before grew up and discarded it?”
“Ai.”
Clark was amused and put his arm around her shoulders. “Let your son enjoy it, then.”
Sacajawea was more breathless than after an uphill run. She was weak in the knees. Then it came to her that being with the white men was happiness. Some days were hard, ai, but there was always happiness. And here with Chief Red Hair outlining her eyebrow with one finger gave her more happiness than her heart could contain. It ached. And she thought that this was a pain that only more pain could cure; like some sickness, she’d feel worse before she felt better.
That day the canoes passed by villages of Chinooks who had flatter heads because of the practice of strapping a padded board across the head of every infant.
“It is I’malade!” Sacajawea cried, imitating Charbonneau’s French.
“I don’t like it, either,” agreed Clark.
“Worse even than putting a bone through the nose,” said York.
In the evening they camped upriver from a village that was packing fish into large canoes. The expedition had not seen such long, light craft on the river before. These were tapered at the ends, wide in the middle, and the stern and prow lifted into beaks like a Roman galley. The projecting bows served to repel wave action in rough water and prevented swamping. The canoes were painted red, brown, black, or white, and had carved figures at the bows.4
“Good Lord,” said Lewis, “those craft will carry sixty men and maybe three tons of fish.”
The canoe was paddled with leaf-shaped paddles with a crutch-top handle. The steersman in the bow had a longer paddle.
“They use sails,” remarked Shannon, pointing to a canoe with very thin planks reinforced with strips of wood and sewn at top and bottom. Then he pointed again. “Two canoes lashed together. See, there!” Two canoes were tied and a plank deck was being laid over them.
Not far from the canoes was a platform over a stream. The women there were gaffing and netting the tightly packed fish as they moved upstream.
“These people look too busy to be interested in visiting with us,” said Drouillard.
Around the expedition’s camp the cedar timber grew scant because the ground was too sour and weak for it. Only a few dwarf trees grew between black-mud marshes full of cattails and dwarf elder bushes heavy with bunches of mouth-puckering blackberries.
Before sundown the wind came up and brought in a rank sea smell, along with great marsh hawks and a flock of sandpipers and dippers looking for a tasty mouthful in the stream’s backwater.
“Oh, is that the smell of the Stinking Waters?” asked Sacajawea.
“Janey, the Western Sea can’t be far,” said Lewis, twitching his nose, “but the ocean smell is so mixedwith rotting fish, it is no wonder it is called Stinking Waters. Lord, will I ever smell anything but decaying fish?”
“I am wondering if we’ll ever get to the ocean. Constantly now, I ask myself, what will the terrain be like? What sort of natives live on its shores? Will we meet with a sailing vessel? Lewis, I can hardly wait for the days to pass now until we get a view of that ocean,” said Clark, nudging a little tree toad off a deadfall into the lush ferns.
York brought in a few wild blackberries. Sacajawea went out to gather wapato root from the marshy soil.5
Sacajawea chased a long-toed salamander, colored like the dark mud and with a wide yellow band from the back of its head to the tip of its tail. All of a sudden she stopped. She was face to face with a black bear digging lily bulbs or grubs from the mud. The bear backed a few feet away from her, but continued to dig. Saliva ran from its mouth. Sacajawea turned slowly, and still looking over her shoulder to make certain the bear did not leave, she hurried back to camp to find Captain Clark. “I know a hunter can have a good shot. Wouldn’t fresh bear steaks be good?” She licked her lips and rubbed both hands over her braids, as if wiping off the bear’s grease already.
“I’ll get McNeal and Hall to go after it,” said Clark, his mouth watering.
One crack from a rifle was heard, and before the men had time to argue who had shot it, the two were back in camp with the bear over their shoulders. It was the best meal the expedition had had in days. The men stuffed themselves as though they would not get any meals the next day. About all they could do that evening was sit around the fire and sing and tell stories.
Slowly the Chinooks from across the river came over, inspected the five canoes of the expedition, then sat quietly listening to the white men sing. The captains smoked with the chief and learned that these people smoked dried clover. In fact, the clover patches seemed to be privately owned, and small areas were marked off by grass ropes. The chief explained through Drouillard and with hand signs their fishing habits.
“When spawning time comes, the salmon ready tospawn make their way back to the freshwater streams from which they came, leaping falls and overcoming all obstacles. We have five to seven salmon runs a year.” He held his fingers up. “The fish going upstream are ready for the taking.”
Then he surprised Drouillard by telling his belief in the supernatural power of the salmon. In fact, he taxed Drouillard’s interpretive powers and he was not certain he got the story straight. “The fish allows itself to be taken in our nets, or by our gigs. Its spirit, released by death, returns again and again, provided the proper “are is taken that no offense is given. The salmon live in great houses under the sea. There they assume the same form as you and I and have feasts and potlatches among themselves.” Here, Drouillard shook his head and told the captains he was not sure his interpretation was what the chief meant, but it was some Chinook mythology that they had believed for a long time. “So,” Drouillard went on, “only when they assume salmon form do they sacrifice themselves. And so—it is our custom to return their bones to the sea, just as those dead salmon are seen returning downstream; then they can assume their human form under the sea and can come again to us.”
The chief waved his arms all around. “To throw salmon bones carelessly away would prevent the return of the spirit to the sea and give great offense. The salmon might withhold themselves, and the humans on land would suffer. My village asks you to please return all the bones to the river.” The chief crossed his arms in front of his chest and sat silently a few moments.
Captain Clark noted that this particular group of Chinooks had a cleaner-looking village than most because they did not leave the fish skins, heads, and bones lying around.
Lewis wondered how this village dealt with the villages farther upstream, who were so much more careless with the salmon leftovers and did not appear to honor this myth.
“I think they ignore them,” said Drouillard. “Once they had a smart headman who knew a way to keep the stink down and have a cleaner place for his peopleto live. This village remembers those ideas; the others have forgotten over the years.”
“I would have thought other smart men would have seen the same thing and done something about keeping villages cleaner,” said Clark.
“The rain cleans things up,” said the chief after Drouillard had tried to make the captains’ questions clear to him.
The following evening the wind came down off the snow peaks with a stiffening coldness, and the expedition camped in the protection of a cliff. The wind snapped at their fire and brought rain. Rain fell throughout the next day from low, leaden clouds, which concealed the snow mountain. They ate the bear meat until it was gone, then had wapato stew.
The rain continued. Beneath the grasses the earth was now a level, dark brown floor. The weather was foggy, cold, and raw. The wind grew more violent, and the waves in the wide river became higher. The water became brackish. It was so salty that a few of the men became ill from using it to prepare the dried and pounded salmon, which, after the bear was finished, had again become the mainstay of their diet. No other game was seen anywhere. They searched the water for beaver, but it was too salty.
The tips of the snow peaks dropped lower in the northeast and at last vanished beneath the floor of the earth. The wind stirred the cold sand of the wide valleys and lashed the men’s faces with it. Sacajawea pulled a robe high around Pomp’s face for protection against the biting sand. The valleys were bordered by ridges whose rim lines were scribbled across the sky.
The blankets and robes were continually wet and mildewed, and there was no way to replace them or slow down the growth of mold. After two weeks of this wet weather, even their clothing was rotting away to rags.
If there had been large game, there would have been no time to tan the hides. The shores on each side of the river were steep and rocky, with pinnacles rising up and up. Once the canoes passed over a forest of gigantic submerged tree trunks. One small stream after anothercame tumbling down, free of rock, in cascades of white, frothing water. The north shore was an unbroken battlement of beautiful multicolored rock. None of the men had dreamed of such a magnificent land. But neither had they dreamed of this raw wind, and rain, and penetrating dampness.
“Vicious, beautiful country,” Clark remarked. “Rather think I’m dreaming, or can it be as bad and as beautiful as it seems?”
“Oh, Jésus, worse,” said Charbonneau, sniffing and coughing and shivering, “much worse. We have to keep working to keep from shivering to death.”
The expedition spent the night of November 8 in Gray’s Bay on the north side of the Columbia River. They all felt miserable. Sacajawea sat huddled in a blanket, with Pomp wrapped in a small robe, trying to keep him from fretting. He was too old now to be happy confined to a robe all day. He squirmed and whined and nearly wore his mother out rocking him and singing to him. He wanted to walk or crawl and explore his surroundings as any ten-month-old would.
Wind, rain, cold, and waves were never-ending. The brackish water was bitter, undrinkable. The hills came so close to the shoreline that there was no level ground to sleep on. The baggage had to be piled on a logjam to keep it above the incoming tide. As the tide rolled in, one of the canoes was inundated by a huge breaker. It sank before it could be unloaded. The tide brought in immense trees, two hundred feet long, four to seven feet across, dashing them against the beach. Two other canoes sank during the night from the breakers rolling over them. It was all the men could do to keep the canoes from complete destruction. No one was dry. The men shivered as they worked or ate or rested.
Sometimes it was a case of each man for himself. Some found shelter in rock crevices, others on the hillside among the many varieties of toadstools and mushrooms, none of them looking like an edible variety. Fog shrouded the water, and debris was driven against the shoreline, where precipitous banks alternated with spits, points, and what Clark called “nitches.” Cold rain fell constantly. Drouillard and the captains camped on some logs that had jammed upon the rocks with the tide. Theyerected poles and spread cattail mats on top, umbrellafashion, to keep the rain off. There were no robes, no blankets, no clothing that was not moldy, worn, and soaked.
Shannon worked lashing the baggage down and hardly ate anything. He was sick of fish and talked about hunting large game. There was no game in the area that any of the men could find. By evening Shannon sat on the logjam and shivered. Cruzatte tried to get him up to help lash in the canoes, but he did not seem to hear. Charbonneau offered him his Mackinaw. Shannon just sat in a stupor.
“Hey!” yelled Charbonneau, “something’s wrong with this kid. He shivers, and he does not look right!”
Clark was beside Shannon in a minute, asking him to the shelter. Shannon jerked to his feet and tried to walk, but his feet would not move. His arms jerked in the direction of the shelter. He did not talk.
“He probably has a cold or sore throat,” said Captain Lewis, feeling Shannon’s head and hands. “Lord, feel the boy,” he said to Clark, “he’s not hot, he’s cold!”
They carried Shannon to the shelter and took his wet clothing off. They dried him as best they could, put a pair of woolen socks on his feet, and wrapped him in Charbonneau’s large wool Mackinaw. They then rolled him against the back of Lewis’s big dog to keep the warmth in his body.
Lewis rubbed Shannon’s hands and arms to bring the warmth back into them. Shannon moaned, but he was still shivering. He did not seem able to respond to any questions asked him. By morning he was sleeping and the shivering had stopped. The captains decided to stay another night so that they could be certain Shannon was all right.
When the fog lifted just before noon, there was much hollering in the camp. “That is the Pacific Ocean!” shouted Clark, peering way out beyond a piece of land that jutted into the wide river. “I am certain it is the Stinking Waters. I can feel the big breakers shake the earth under my feet here.”
“I think I can see those breakers rolling in!” shouted Lewis. “We have finally arrived at our destination!”
The men were all smiling despite the rain. Sacaja-wea sneezed and tried her best to keep Pomp amused and warm if not dry.
“Keep wool next to your skin,” Cruzatte advised. “Then you won’t get the shakes the way Shannon did.”
“Keep working. Don’t get chilled,” someone else advised.
“Don’t get chilled,” Charbonneau mumbled. “Everyone in camp is chilled, even the dog. We need wool trousers under these leather ones. That would keep us warm, even if they were wet.”
“Let’s think about getting to the Pacific,” suggested Pat Gass.
The men did think about their destination. They talked about how far they had come to see a fog-covered sea. Shannon woke for a while and let York feed him a few pieces of fresh salmon. Instead of being cold, he was now feverish, and wanted to kick off the blankets piled on him.
Because the men thought they had seen the ocean that day, there was some singing in the camp that night. The singing came from various shelters as the men bedded down. To Sacajawea it sounded like echoes bounding back and forth in the mountains.6
In the morning Shannon was awake, feeling a little better, but still weak and feverish.
“We’ll stay in this miserable place one more day,” announced Captain Lewis. “We’ll build a fire and dry out as much as possible.”
“What will we build a fire with?” asked Charbonneau.
“Everything is soaked,” said Gibson.
“There must be degrees of wetness,” said Clark. “We’ll find driftwood under this logjam that is not as wet as that on top.”
When the fog lifted after midmorning the men could see a Chinook camp across the bay. The cedar plank lodges were quite large, square, and set on top of a swell of ground. There were a few dozen men with rabbit and fox furs draped over their shoulders, napping on reed mats just above the high tide line. They were short and paunchy with broad, flattened heads and muscular arms and legs. They did not rouse from their sleep to acknowledge the waving and shouting from the strangers on the opposite bank.
Later in the afternoon the fog was again a thick shroud and the explorers could not see the large ocean breakers they believed were vibrating the ground under their feet.
Next morning, when the fog had dissipated some, Drouillard signaled the Chinooks. One man idly made hand signs saying, “We cannot bring trade goods over to your side until the tide goes out. You newcomers should make fun of this rain and fog.”
Flocks of gulls swooped in on the flopping salmon washed up on a mud spit in front of the Chinook village. With the least amount of fuss someone would stroll into the cluster of screeching gulls, shoo them out of the way with a wave of hands, and drag the salmon back up to a drying rack. Drouillard guessed the salmon averaged thirty or forty pounds apiece.
“Looks like they can bring in three hundred pounds of food an hour during low tide,” said Drouillard. “No wonder these people aren’t too excited about food gathering.”
Sacajawea sat cross-legged on the sand with Pomp in her lap, watched the Chinooks drag up a dozen large salmon, and then she stood and stated that she would be back. She carried Pomp down through the brush looking for a place to rest and watch the tide go out without miring halfway to her knees in the mud. She found some old rough boards, probably from a collapsed Chinook plank house, and she made a crude lean-to over a large, flat rock. She squatted there with Pomp, half dozing in the shelter.
By late afternoon the tide was out, and she waded across to the village. This was no mountain stream they were camped by, but a big tide-reach nearly half a mile wide. She made hand signs and traded her ratty woolen blanket for two nice-looking, cream-colored goat hides. The hair on the hide was exceptionally thick, and she was pleased with her trade. She pulled out four pairs of outgrown beaded baby moccasins from the robe around Pomp. These people had never seen colored trade beads and were much impressed with the bright colors on the little moccasins. These she traded for two dozen weaseltails. The weasel tails were the largest and finest she had ever seen, of the purest white, adorned with blacktipped tails, faintly stained with pale gold. She hid these away at the bottom of Pomp’s robe. As she was leaving, several Chinook women ran after her, pointing to her belt of blue beads. Sacajawea shook her head no, not for trading, no. The women moved closer to feel and exclaim at the beauty. One woman held out a conical hat made from cedar bark, large enough to keep rain off a man’s shoulders. The woman looked disappointed as Sacajawea walked back across the bay’s shore, not interested in trading her belt for the hat.
Clark had put up the remains of Charbonneau’s old tent across the back of the shelter for more protection against the wind and rain for Shannon, who was now sitting up and talking some. Sacajawea laid one of the goat hides over Shannon’s knees. “Wear this in the rain. It will keep you warm and the rain will fall off it.”
“Hey, Janey, where did you find it?” he said. “It’s better than any of my old, worn blankets. Thanks!”
Charbonneau ambled by to see how Shannon was doing, and when he left, he mumbled something about his femme not bringing him a new robe, and he didn’t even have his Mackinaw to wear, only the heavy, old, musty capote. That night he pulled his tattered buffalo hide over himself and did not even bother to look for more shelter. He snored in the rain.
Sacajawea slept in the shelter with Pomp rolled up in the new goat hide. Clark lay at the edge of the shelter so that he could keep an eye on Shannon.
Sacajawea wanted to sleep, but could not. Her mind kept hearing the wind. They were so close to the sea now that its booming jarred the timbers under her head. The waves sounded like a herd of horses coming on a dead gallop, and whenever she started to doze, it roused her with a scared feeling that she was about to be run over by them. It was much more restful not to sleep at all, so she lay awake and considered her situation.
She was feeling more and more as though she belonged with these white men. They accepted her as one of them. She was learning to speak their tongue. York and even Shannon had dug roots with her. York sometimes carried Pomp. She had acted as an interpreterand was at times treated more like one of the men than like a squaw. She then wondered if these men really had much sense. They gathered wood and set up the camp. This was actually a squaw’s work. Then there was another way of looking at things. She had learned to play Cruzatte’s fiddle some, had fired a rifle, and had sung in public. These were things done only by men. But here, with these people, it made no difference. Life was good here, despite the rain and cold and Charbonneau, who did not bother her overmuch.
She opened her eyes wide and looked at the few inches between herself and Chief Red Hair. Suddenly she longed to fill those few inches and place her body close to his. She wanted to lie secure where he might put his arm over her.
In the darkness the wind blew the elk skin from one of the pegs. Clark refastened it and then, not realizing Sacajawea was awake, wiped her damp face with his handkerchief. He wondered at her endurance and uncomplaining nature. He thought she was learning more of the outgoing ways of the whites, leaving some of the submissive, slavish ways of the squaw behind. He overcame a sudden desire to hold her in his arms and shelter her from the rain. Then he thought, A man’s not clearheaded at night. Night’s like a room; it makes the little things in your head too important.
The first grayish hint of dawn crept over the camp and faded Sacajawea’s thoughts, so that she was no longer sure of them. She wondered if there were a kind of insanity coming from being under a roof of any kind, even a tattered elk skin and cattail mats. I’m too cooped up and cannot look at these thoughts against the real size of things. She lay quiet, feigning sleep until Pomp awoke, cold, wet, and hungry. She dried him as best she could, put the goat hide around his head and back, and moved outside to a dead log to nurse her baby in the fog.
The next day Shannon was well enough for the expedition to leave in the slow, misty rain. The river splashed under them. There was nothing to eat but soggy fish. They made camp early in the afternoon and immediately a few neighboring Chinooks were among them haggling over a few fish they had to trade. These
Chinooks were a sight with vests and breechclouts of woven cedar bark. Before they left they had stolen two blankets, a cooking kettle, some fishing gigs, and several of the men’s moccasins drying near the fire. Clark told them to lay the stolen goods down or he would shoot. He leveled his rifle at them, and they put the goods on the sand and ran.
On November 12, thunder, lightning, and hail were added to the misery of bailing water out of the canoes and wringing out wet clothing and bedding. Then the misery became worse when the rising waves began to threaten their camp and they had to move half a mile inland, leaving their baggage on the rocks to care for itself that night. The canoes were filled with stones and sunk to protect them from the battering waves. The next morning, the local Chinooks had taken some of the baggage and two of the canoes. Drouillard and Lewis had to go into the Chinook camp and demand that these things be returned. Seeing rifles leveled at a couple of the men in their village, the Chinooks sullenly returned the stolen canoes and baggage, including a peace pipe. They all seemed to be well informed on the power of the rifle.
“I don’t see any evidence of rifles in their village,” said Lewis, “but they all seem to know what it will do. This is evidence that someone was here with guns before us. And these people seem to think that if we do not present them with gifts right away, they are free to take whatever they wish. Where do you suppose they learned that?”
“These Chinooks are different from those back up the river,” agreed Drouillard. “Either they’ve forgotten manners, never had any, or were taught some bad habits by someone.”
In the morning one of the local Chinooks came dressed in a sailor’s jacket and trousers and made signs that he had some friends that could speak the white man’s tongue and act as interpreters. This was a new surprise. Clark immediately gave the man a small penknife and asked him to bring the men to the camp. The expedition sat in a circle on the sand waiting for the men who could speak English, wondering if they were white men, or Chinooks who had learned the language. The threemen who came back were Chinooks, dressed in cedar-bark vests and sailor’s trousers. They knew a total of four English words among them; “Damn, Haley” and “Come here,” and used this linguistic gift to cover the theft of a hatchet. A search of their greasy, grimy persons did not restore the hatchet. The captains sent them back to their village and decided to continue to rely on Drouillard as interpreter among these people.
“When we get to the coast do you suppose there will be white men in a camp or on a ship anchored in a bay nearby?” asked Shannon.
“I would bet on it,” said Lewis. “I would guess that there might be some traders from England there with all the things we’ve seen on this river. And maybe there will be ships from China or even Russia.”
“Let’s move on and see what is actually on the coast,” suggested Clark.
The river was nearly five miles wide at this point and very choppy midway across. The riverman, Cruzatte, said it would be best to travel along the shoreline. Even there the waves were so high that the canoes could hardly ride them. Sacajawea was the first to become seasick. Some of the men gently teased her. “The canoes do so much heaving that it causes those inside to do the same!” “Green is not your best color, Janey!”
Then nausea gripped Charbonneau’s stomach. LePage turned greenish and felt ill before some of the other men began to retch from the violent motion of their small canoes. Then the tide, which swelled the river, added to their troubles, and Captain Lewis ordered the canoes to turn in toward the shore. The expedition spent the next day at Point Distress,7 where a large shelter of brush was built on a hillside and a fire burned constantly in the front. They tried to dry out clothing and blankets and robes, even though the rainy mist and fog did not clear up. Sacajawea busied herself mending the men’s moccasins and trousers and shirts with what little good leather was left.
On the night of the fifteenth, the expedition camped in Haley’s Bay8 in huts made from the boards of a deserted Chinook village. The fleas had not deserted, but the huts were dry and that was heaven. The sight outside the next morning was unbelievable. The sun shone, clear and beautiful, and the men with sick colds and chest coughs saw the Pacific roaring up to the sand beach before them. Their joy was near hysteria. They tumbled out of the huts and ran along the sand barefoot. Some ran in the water and splashed those running beside them.9
“Never did I think I could be so miserable, nor so wet for so long,” said Captain Lewis. “That was some trip down the Columbia.” His dog, Scannon, lay contentedly in the warm sun.
“Maybe we’ll sight a ship that will give us all quick passage home,” laughed Captain Clark. “But not today. Look how clear that ocean looks—not a ship, canoe, or even a log on her. There’s water clear to the horizon.”
“Oh, am I glad to be here!” shouted Drouillard. “How about giving me and a couple of the men permission to look around for some kind of game? Maybe we’ll find a camp of Englishmen! Wouldn’t it be something if we had the company of white men instead of Chinooks this day? And it would be something if we had meat instead of fish to offer them.”
“Yes, of course, go,” said Clark, “and please find some meat.”
Suddenly George Gibson was standing out on the beach in his bare feet. It was a rare treat to hear him play his fiddle. He placed it under his chin and played several tunes. Pomp danced around and clapped his hands, finding it hard to stay on his feet in the deep sand. He laughed every time he fell.
Someone yelled, “Hey, Cruzatte, where’s your fiddle?”
Cruzatte pulled it out of one of the packs and rubbed his hand across his whiskered face. He plucked the strings and said, “Oh, well, what the hell, any music is better than none.” He played an accompaniment with Gibson, and then noticed Charbonneau off to one side playing his French harp. Pomp was dancing around the three men and laughing out loud, not only when he fell but when his father, Charbonneau, took a deep breath.
By now the entire expedition danced and cavorted and sang as though they were all children again, with complete abandon. York took Sacajawea’s hand andskipped in a circle with her while he sang loudly, “Praise to the Lord! We’se here!” over and over.
“Hey, get the water out of that music box!” Shannon, feeling quite well, teased Cruzatte.
“It ain’t water,” Cruzatte called, pointing his violin bow at Shannon and wagging it to and fro, “it’s sand you kick up with your feet as you jump around like a hyena. You act like you’re getting rid of fleas!”
Drouillard and a couple of the men came back with two deer slung between them. The outfit welcomed them with a loud cheer. York built a fire with driftwood right away, holding back the really wet pieces until the fire had a good start. The meat was skinned out and put on spits for roasting. “We saw no sign of Englishmen today—we’ll look again tomorrow,” promised Drouillard.