Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America's Wild Frontier

The crew started to fell huge Grand Fir trees to make their huts and a palisade. The constant cold rain and violent winds were a great obstacle to their work. Many of the men grew ill from exposure and injury. Lewis set some of the men to work making salt by evaporating seawater, to help preserve food on the way back.

Lewis, after the New Year, started again to write in earnest. He noted down the running of the small winter camp and the orders he had given to the men to maintain both discipline and morale. The Clatsop, helpful as they were, didn’t hesitate to steal small, valuable items from the fort whenever they could, or demand Western items like awls or files in exchange for continued friendship. Lewis apparently forgot the lifesaving kindnesses of the Mandans, Shoshone, and Nez Perce when he railed against the Clatsops’ curiosity and sharp business acumen. Lewis believed that, no matter how friendly relations might seem, “there could be no living with the Indians until they had been civilized or cowed” (324).

The cold weather and lack of sunlight caused illnesses among the crew, who were eager to take their leave of the Pacific Coast at the end of March of 1806. They were not suited to the damp, cold climate, could barely start fires, and found little to no game in the area. The Chinook and the Clatsop, in contrast, thrived, seeing the Pacific Northwest as “a bountiful provider, almost paradise” (326).

During the winter, “Lewis described birds, plants, animals” (331) and Indigenous customs in prolific writings while Clark worked on a massive map of the area between Fort Mandan, their first winter fort, and Fort Clatsop. This map, while a momentous and impressive creation, drove home the disappointing reality that even the best route across America “fell far short of Jefferson’s hopes” (333).

Ambrose states that while Lewis’s geographical and naturalist work was important, his ethnography was crucial, since the coastal tribes were decimated by disease and cultural erasure in the coming century. By 1825, the Chinook and the Clatsop would practically cease to exist. Unique cultural customs, like head-flattening, a method of shaping the skull by compressing heads between boards in infancy, were recorded by Lewis. Additionally, the Chinook never wore shoes and only wore clothes from the waist up, to facilitate easier movement in and out of canoes in the river. Their woven hats were so beautifully made that Lewis and Clark commissioned a Clatsop woman to make them for the whole crew, and their canoes were so masterfully designed that they could handle huge waves while carrying up to thirty people.

Lewis, with characteristic tunnel vision, condemned the Clatsop and Chinook for perceived lack of sexual morality (particularly their nudity), petty thievery, and “sharp trading practices” (341) without acknowledging that they certainly would never have survived winter in Fort Clatsop without their help.

The narrative returns to President Jefferson, who in July 1804 received a delegation of fourteen members of the Osage tribe. Jefferson, determined to win their cooperation, used “a combination of bribes and threats” (342) to try to convince them to trade exclusively with American frontiersmen, not British. In the fall, the Osages returned with a high opinion of Jefferson: The visit had been a success.

The commanding general of the US Army at the time, General James Wilkinson, was actually a Spanish spy. He fought in the Revolutionary War and was a decorated war hero, highly regarded by the US government: All the while he had been continually betraying America by sending regular reports to Spain. He reported on Lewis’s expedition, and Spain, believing that Jefferson wished to “descend on their gold and silver mines” (345) in New Mexico via this expedition, sent out four different platoons over two years to capture Lewis and his crew. None succeeded: they didn’t even come close enough to spark gossip between the Native American tribes, who would certainly have told Lewis if Spanish soldiers were in the area looking for Americans.

Meanwhile, a steady trickle of Indigenous people turned up at St. Louis, having been told by Lewis that they would receive a royal welcome and would be sent to Washington to be received by Jefferson with honors. “Jefferson didn’t mind the expense of courting the Indians” (346) and paid for all of them to be transported to him, ensuring that they ate heartily the whole way over.

However sincere his desire to protect and uplift the Indigenous people, Jefferson was instrumental in their eventual misery and deprivation in the next century. His Louisiana Purchase, combined with his publicization of the West as a source of limitless wealth, sparked a rush for land that sent a tide of European immigrants through Indigenous territory. By opening up the West to land purchases, Jefferson ensured the displacement, land theft, and genocide that would take place throughout North America in the coming century, all while welcoming Indigenous people to the White House with open arms.

On their way back, the expedition had the benefit of experience with the terrain, as well as the use of buried caches of supplies they had left along the way. Still, they knew that they would have to cross the Bitterroots once more, a harrowing prospect. Additionally, traveling up the Columbia was much harder than traveling downriver, especially when it came to the rapids and the falls. They had to get to the Nez Perce before May: Twisted Hair had agreed to keep their horses for them, but he planned to travel back across the mountains in May, and if they hadn’t arrived by then, he would let the horses roam free and escape. This time, though, the party anticipated the hunger of the Bitterroots and purchased Indigenous dogs to bring along and eat when the time came. They had eaten dog meat often during the winter and become accustomed to it.

On April 11th, three members of the Chinook tribe “stole Lewis’s dog, Seaman, which sent him into a rage” (355). He ordered men to pursue and kill the Chinook if necessary to retrieve his dog. Seaman was safely returned.

The thefts continued, however, causing mounting tension in the expedition. For the first time, the men beat Indians they caught stealing, and threatened to shoot them if they came back. After some villagers stole a saddle and a robe from the crew’s camp, the normally cool-headed Lewis lost his reason and threatened to burn down their village if the goods were not returned. The stress of expedition was finally eroding Lewis “self-control, not his strongest character trait” (358).

They reached the Nez Perce on May 3rd, and traded medical remedies for food and supplies. Clark’s medical treatments had left a favorable impression on the Nez Perce the previous fall, and on his return he found himself with a line of patients waiting to trade goods for cures. Twisted Hair and two other chiefs, Cut Nose and Broken Arm, informed the expedition that the Bitterroots were still too snowy to climb: They would have to wait until June. For men dreaming of returning home, this was unwelcome news.

Impatient, Lewis decided to head up the Bitterroot Mountains without a Nez Perce guide. On the return trip, “Lewis’s usual good judgment had left him” (370). He seemed willing to accept huge risks for very little reward, like traversing the Bitterroots with no help whatsoever. Although the beginning of the climb was easy and picturesque, the mountain slopes covered in wildflowers, by June 15th “the party found itself in winter conditions” (371) once again. They retreated and camped, sending men back to hire a Nez Perce guide to take them up. After another frustrating delay, on June 23rd, five Nez Perce men returned to lead them up the Bitterroots. Their expert guiding led them to patches of fresh grass in and among the snow, and through hidden safe passages among seemingly impassable bluffs and ravines. With the expertise of the guides, the expedition was able to cross the 156 miles of the Bitterroots in six days, where before it had taken them eleven.

At their old camp, Lewis and Clark made the momentous decision to split the party into two groups to explore the Missouri river area further. Lewis and nine men would go back to the Missouri falls, then head upriver on the Marias to explore that region and see how far north it went. He would regroup back at the mouth of the Marias where it entered the Missouri. Clark, meanwhile, would take the other men, send a group to meet Lewis at the mouth of the Maria, and explore the Yellowstone river. Sergeant Pryor and two privates, meanwhile, were dispatched on a separate mission to take horses as gifts to the Mandan villages. While there, they would dispatch a letter from Lewis to a North West company agent named Henley, whom they had met along the way. This letter promised Henley rich rewards for convincing Sioux chiefs to visit Washington and, more importantly, to desist from attacking white people traveling along the Missouri in their territory. Lewis hoped that Henley would have more success in convincing the Sioux than he did.

This plan showed strong confidence in the competence and skill of their men. However, it also showed a worrying underestimation of the threat of raiding parties of Blackfeet, Hidatsa, and Sioux, as well as a reckless confidence in their ability to wheedle and trick Indigenous people into doing their bidding.

Lewis, nine members of his crew, and the five Nez Perce guides split off from the party on July 3rd. The Nez Perce left Lewis and his crew the next day, after expressing great trepidation about the plan. Despite their expertise and good advice over the Bitterroots, Lewis ignored their warnings about the Blackfeet in the area.

The journey up the Marias was uneventful, until the morning of July 11th, when they discovered that seven of their horses, left to pasture in their vicinity, had disappeared, likely stolen. Although Lewis had wished to meet the Blackfeet, now he worried that if they met, the tribe would steal everything they had.

After being unable to determine their precise latitude on the river due to cloud cover and instrument failure, Lewis decided to turn back in order not to waste time.

On July 26th, Lewis spotted a band of Indigenous people on horseback, apparently watching them from a distance. It looked like about thirty Blackfeet men, who could easily overpower their small group. Lewis decided to stand his ground.

Suspiciously, the Blackfeet approached Lewis and requested tobacco and a pipe. He agreed and also handed out medals, flags, and handkerchiefs. He sat with them and smoked to discuss his wishes for trade, using Drouillard’s sign language to communicate. During this discussion, Lewis made a crucial error: He gave the impression that he had already “organized [the Blackfeet’s] traditional enemies—the Nez Perce, the Shoshones, others—into an American-led alliance” (390) and intended to provide them with rifles.

The next morning, after Lewis’s men and the Blackfeet warriors made camp together, Drouillard caught the Blackfeet attempting to steal their rifles. Two privates chased one of the men down and stabbed him to death. They recovered the rifles, but while they were occupied, other Blackfeet men attempted to steal the rest of their horses. Lewis chased two of them down and shot one man through the belly. The Blackfeet took cover behind a small bluff, and Lewis retreated.

Back at camp, the crew took some of the Blackfeet horses in recompense. They burned all the supplies the Blackfeet had left at camp. In a cruel gesture, Lewis hung one of his gift medals around the neck of the dead Blackfoot warrior, “that they might be informed who we were” (391).

Lewis’s party had to escape the area quickly. They hurried down the Marias, aware that they had just made a mortal enemy of the Blackfeet. The decision to enter this dangerous territory, Ambrose states, “had been a big mistake from the start” (394). Lewis should have listened to the Nez Perce and stayed away.

On the way back to meet with Clark’s party, Lewis went out hunting for elk with another member of the crew. While stalking his prey, Lewis was hit in his left hip by a stray bullet. Fearing that the Blackfeet had found him, he ran back to the rest of the party, slowed by the wound and bleeding. The men made him stay back by the canoes while they went to retrieve the other crew member.

They saw no sign of Blackfeet on the way there and back. Lewis decided that the crew member had shot him by accident, though the man denied it.

Carried on a litter and later in a boat, Lewis met back up with an alarmed Clark, who had to be reassured that the injury would soon heal. Lewis and Clark compared stories from their separate travels: Clark had also lost almost half his horses to theft. At this point, Lewis wrote his final entry from the expedition on August 12th, stating that he found it too difficult to write while recovering and would leave the task of documenting the journey to Clark. Fittingly, he ended the entry with a thorough scientific description of a cherry tree he had seen.

From this point on, the journey to St. Louis and the nearby Mandan villages felt like a pleasure cruise to the men. When they arrived at the Mandan villages, Lewis was disappointed to find that his earlier negotiations had not resulted in peace between the tribes: the Arikaras and Mandans were fighting, and the Hidatsas had sent out another war party to raid the Shoshone villages.

Charbonneau and Sacagawea took their leave of the party. Lewis and Clark paid Charbonneau a little over $500 for his services and the use of his tepee and horse. Sacagawea received nothing. Clark offered to adopt her son and raise him as his own, but she demurred, asking him to wait until Jean-Baptiste had been weaned.

As they neared St. Louis, they were inundated with news from the traders they passed, and they relished catching up with civilization. Along the way, with the help of a French trader, they convinced one of the Mandan chiefs, Big White, to accompany them to Washington. On September 21st, they finally reached St. Louis to the astonishment and celebration of the citizens. They had assumed that the expedition was long lost at this point and that they would never see Lewis and Clark again.