How, then, to cross those mountains? Cameahwait said he had never done it, but there was an old man in his band “who could probably give me some information of the country to the N.W.” He added that “he had understood from the persed nosed Indians who inhabit this river below the rocky mountains that it ran a great way toward the seting sun and finally lost itself in a great lake of water which was illy taisted.”
That sentence linked the continent. For the first time, a white man had a map, however imperfect and imprecise, to connect the great rivers of the western empire. Also for the first time, a white man heard of the Nez Percés, the major tribe living west of the mountains. Cameahwait added that the Nez Percés crossed to the Missouri River buffalo country to hunt each year.III
What route did they use? Lewis asked. It was to the north, the chief answered, “but added that the road was a very bad one as he had been informed by them and that they had suffered excessively with hunger on the rout being obliged to subsist for many days on berries alone as there was no game in that part of the mountains which were broken rockey and so thickly covered with timber that they could scarcely pass.”
Far from being downcast by such a description, Lewis was encouraged. “My rout was instantly settled in my own mind,” he wrote. “I felt perfectly satisfyed, that if the Indians could pass these mountains with their women and Children, that we could also pass them.”
•
This is a wonderful sentence. It shows his complete confidence in himself, Captain Clark, and the men. He is not boasting, or challenging, just being matter-of-fact about it. If they can, we can.
It also shows Lewis’s (and Clark’s) ability to get more out of the men than the men ever thought they could give. Ascending the Missouri in the keelboat, the bitter cold winter at Mandan, the awful labor at the Great Falls portage, the incredible labor getting the canoes up the Jefferson—every time they had such an experience behind them, the men agreed that it had to be the worst, and that they could not possibly endure anything worse. Only to have it get worse.
But well-led men working together can do far more than they ever thought they could. Especially if they are in life-threatening situations—which was exactly where Lewis intended to lead them. He dared to do so because he knew they had more in them than they thought, and he knew how to bring out the best in them.
•
Cameahwait had more information. He said there were no buffalo west of the mountains, that the Indians who lived there subsisted on salmon and roots. He complained about the Spanish policy of never selling guns to Indians, whereas the English sold guns to the Blackfeet, Hidatsas, and other enemies of the Shoshones. With that advantage in firepower, the Plains Indians were continually harassing the Shoshones, who were forced to hide in the interior of the mountains most of the year. But, Cameahwait added, “with his ferce eyes and lank jaws grown meager for the want of food, [such] would not be the case if we had guns, we could then live in the country of buffaloe and eat as our enimies do.”
Here was the opening Lewis sought, here was the opportunity to make promises that would induce Cameahwait to help with the portage over the Continental Divide and to trade for horses that could get the expedition over the Bitterroots on the Nez Percé route. Lewis said that he had already induced the Hidatsas to promise that they would no longer raid against the Shoshones or make war on any of their neighbors (even though he knew that the Hidatsas had sent out a war party that spring), and that, when the expedition got to the Pacific and then returned to the United States, “whitemen would come to them [the Shoshones] with an abundance of guns and every other article necessary to their defence and comfort.”
Since the expedition was now more than three thousand river miles from St. Louis, that was a promise for an uncertain future. He made it anyway.
Lewis told Cameahwait that he wanted the band to cross Lemhi Pass with him in the morning, bringing thirty horses, to meet with Clark and the main party at the forks of Jefferson River and help bring the baggage over the pass and down to the Indian camp on the Lemhi River, where “we would then remain sometime among them and trade with them for horses.”
Cameahwait agreed. He “made a lengthey harrangue to his village,” then told Lewis that everything was settled—they would start in the morning. Lewis was overjoyed. The Shoshone horses, he wrote, were excellent: “Indeed many of them would make a figure on the South side of James River or the land of fine horses.” Even better, they had some surefooted mules. Lewis went to his tepee to sleep in a happy mood; as for the Indians, “they were very merry they danced again this evening untill midnight.”
•
Lewis woke on the morning of Thursday, August 15, “as hungary as a wolf.” The previous day, he had nothing to eat save a scant meal of flour and berries, which had not satisfied him as it “appeared to do my Indian friends.” He had two pounds of flour left. He told McNeal to divide the flour into two equal parts and to cook one half mixed with berries. “On this new fashoned pudding four of us breakfasted, giving a pretty good allowance also to the Chief who declared it the best thing he had taisted for a long time.”
After breakfast, a crisis. The warriors would not move, despite Cameahwait’s urging. Lewis asked after the cause and was told “that some foolish persons among them had suggested the idea that we were in league with the Pahkees [the Shoshone word for Atsinas] and had come on in order to decoy them into an ambuscade where their enemies were waiting to receive them.”
Lewis told Cameahwait that he forgave the warriors their suspicion: “I knew they were not acquainted with whitemen . . . that among whitemen it was considered disgracefull to lye or entrap an enimy by falsehood.” After that stretcher, Lewis threatened that, if the Shoshones did not help with the portage, no white man would come to bring them arms and ammunition.
Then he challenged their manhood, saying, “I still hope that there were some among them that were not affraid to die.” The challenge “touched on the right string; to doubt the bravery of a savage is at once to put him on his metal.”
Cameahwait mounted his horse and gave a speech to his people, saying he would go with the white men to convince himself of the truth of what Lewis said. He added that he hoped some at least of the warriors would join him. Six mounted their horses. The small party set out, even though “several of the old women were crying and imploring the great sperit to protect their warriors as if they were going to inevitable distruction.”
The Indians rode on anyway, and soon enough another half-dozen men and three women joined them, making all together a party of sixteen Indians and four white men. Lewis was struck by the “capricious disposition of those people who never act but from the impulse of the moment. they were now very cheerfull and gay, and two hours ago they looked as sirly as so many imps of satturn.”
They crossed Lemhi Pass and descended to Shoshone Cove, where they camped on the creekIV and had their second meal of the day: “I now cooked and among six of us eat the remaining pound of flour stired in a little boiling water.” The Shoshones, save Cameahwait and an unnamed warrior, had nothing to eat that day.
The next morning, August 16, Lewis sent Drouillard and Shields out to kill some meat. He asked Cameahwait to keep his young men in camp so that they would not alarm the game. That was a mistake, for it reawakened the suspicions of the Shoshones. They feared the white men were trying to make contact with the Blackfeet, so two parties of warriors set out on each side of the valley to spy on Drouillard and Shields.
Lewis, McNeal, and the remainder of the Shoshones followed. After about an hour, “when we saw one of the spies comeing up the level plain under whip, the chief pawsed a little and seemed somewhat concerned. I felt a good deel so myself.” Lewis’s fear was that by “some unfortunate accedent” the Blackfeet really were in the neighborhood. But when the scout arrived, breathless, he had good news—Drouillard had killed a deer.
“In an instant they all gave their horses the whip.” Lewis was riding double
with a young warrior. The Indian was whipping the horse “at every jump for a mile fearing he should loose a part of the feast. . . . As I was without tirrups . . . the jostling was disagreeable.” Lewis reined in his horse and forbade the young man to use the lash. The Indian jumped off and ran on foot at full speed for a whole mile.
At the site of the kill, “the seen when I arrived was such that had I not have had a pretty keen appetite myself I am confident I should not have taisted any part of the vension. . . . each [Indian] had a peice of some discription and all eating most ravenously. Some were eating the kidnies the melt [the spleen] and liver and the blood running from the corners of their mouths, others were in a similar situation with the paunch and guts. . . . one of the last [to arrive] had provided himself with about nine feet of the small guts one end of which he was chewing on while with his hands he was squezzing the contents out at the other. I really did not untill now think that human nature ever presented itself in a shape so nearly allyed to the brute creation. I viewed these poor starved divils with pity and compassion.”
However heartfelt, his pity and compassion did not extend far enough for him to note that, if the Indians appeared savage with the blood running down their cheeks, they had taken only the parts of the deer Drouillard had thrown away when he dressed the kill. They had not touched the meat.
Lewis saved a hindquarter for himself and his men and gave the balance to Cameahwait to divide among his people. They devoured it without bothering to start a fire to cook it. The party then moved on. Soon word came that Drouillard had killed a second deer. “Here nearly the same seene was encored.” Lewis started a fire to cook his meat; Drouillard came in with a third deer, of which Lewis saved a quarter and gave the rest to the Indians, who were finally full and thus “in a good humour.” Shields then killed a pronghorn; the problem of food was solved for that day.
As the party approached the forks, where Lewis had told the Indians they would meet Clark, Cameahwait insisted on halting. With much ceremony, he put tippets such as the Shoshones were wearing around the necks of the white men. Lewis realized that the chief’s suspicions were still strong, that he wanted to make the white men look like Indians in case it was Blackfeet and not Clark waiting at the forks. Realizing this, Lewis took off his cocked hat and put it on Cameahwait. The men followed his example, “and we were son completely metamorphosed.”
The entire party moved downstream to the forks. Lewis had a warrior carry the flag, so that “our own party should know who we were.” But when they got to within a couple of miles of the forks, “I discovered to my mortification” that Clark had not arrived.
“I now scarcely new what to do,” Lewis confessed, “and feared every moment when they would halt altogether.”
Desperate, he gave Cameahwait his rifle and told him that if the Blackfeet were around he could use it to defend himself, “that for my own part I was not affraid to die and if I deceived him he might make what uce of the gun he thought proper or in other words that he might shoot me.” Lewis had his men give up their rifles too, “which seemed to inspire them [the Indians] with more confidence.”
This bold move bought Lewis enough time to think of a plan. Recalling that he had left a note for Clark at the forks, “I now had recource to a stratagem in which I thought myself justifyed by the occasion, but which I must confess set a little awkward.” He sent Drouillard, accompanied by a warrior, to pick up the note. When Drouillard returned with the note and the warrior’s confirmation that he had picked it up at the forks, Lewis told Cameahwait that Clark had written it and that it said he, Clark, was just below, coming on, and that Lewis should wait for him at the forks.
Lewis had told a lie that the Indians would never discover, but he was by no means through the crisis. Though his confidence in Clark was very great, in truth he did not know where Clark was. Clark might very well have found navigation impossible and be in camp many miles below, waiting for Lewis.
Lewis came up with another “stratagem.” He told Cameahwait that in the morning he would send Drouillard ahead to meet Clark, and proposed that a warrior accompany Drouillard to see the truth of his words. Lewis, Shields, and McNeal would remain with the main party of the Shoshones. “This plan was readily adopted and one of the young men offered his services; I promised him a knife and some beads as a reward for his confidence in us.”
He was taking a huge gamble. Several of the warriors were already complaining of Cameahwait’s exposing them to danger unnecessarily “and said that we told different stories.” The Indians held the rifles. If Clark was not coming up the Jefferson, they could easily kill the white men, and almost certainly would, although the only fear Lewis expressed was that the Indians “would immediately disperse and secrete themselves in the mountains.”
He could hardly bear to think about it. At the least, “we should be disappointed in obtaining horses, which would vastly retart and increase the labour of our voyage and I feared might so discourage the men as to defeat the expedition altogether.”
To hold the Shoshones, Lewis told them that Sacagawea was with Clark, and that there was also a man with Clark “who was black and had short curling hair.” The Indians expressed great eagerness to see such a curiosity.
Nevertheless, that night Lewis wrote in his journal, “my mind was in reality quite as gloomy . . . as the most affrighted indian but I affected cheerfullness.” He lay down to sleep, Cameahwait beside him. “I slept but little as might be well expected, my mind dwelling on the state of the expedition which I have ever held in equal estimation with my own existence, and the fait of which appeared at this moment to depend in a great measure upon the caprice of a few savages who are ever as fickle as the wind.”
•
In the morning, Lewis sent Drouillard and the warrior off at first light. The leftover meat from the previous day provided a scant breakfast. At about 9:00 a.m., an Indian who had gone down the creek for a mile or so returned and reported “that the whitemen were coming.” The Shoshones “all appeared transported with joy.” Lewis confessed, “I felt quite as much gratifyed at this information as the Indians appeared to be.”
Shortly thereafter, Clark arrived, accompanied by Charbonneau and Sacagawea. Cameahwait gave Clark the national hug and festooned his hair with shells. In the midst of the excitement, one of the Shoshone women recognized Sacagawea. Her name, Jumping Fish, she had acquired on the day Sacagawea was taken prisoner, because of the way she had jumped through a stream in escaping the Hidatsas.2 The reunited teens hugged and cried and talked, all at once.
Lewis had a camp set up just below the forks.V He had a canopy formed from one of the large sails. At 4:00 p.m., he called a conference. Dispensing with Drouillard and the sign language, he decided to use a translation chain that ran from Sacagawea, speaking Shoshone to the Indians and translating it into Hidatsa, to Charbonneau, who translated her Hidatsa into French, to Private Francis Labiche, who translated from French to English.
Scarcely had they begun the cumbersome process when Sacagawea began to stare at Cameahwait. Suddenly recognizing him as her brother, “she jumped up, ran & embraced him, & threw her blanket over him and cried profusely.”3
What a piece of luck that was. No novelist would dare invent such a scene. As James Ronda writes, “the stars had danced for Lewis and Clark.”4
Lewis wrote that the reunion was “really affecting.” He wrote not a word to indicate that he was surprised by the show of so much emotion from Sacagawea, whom he had characterized a couple of weeks earlier as someone who never showed the slightest emotion.
When Sacagawea recovered herself, the council began—although it was frequently interrupted by her tears. The captains expanded on what Lewis had already told Cameahwait. They explained “the objects which had brought us into this distant part of the country,” in the process making it appear that the number-one object was to help the Shoshones by finding a more direct way to bring arms to them. In the process, “we made them sensible of their depe
ndance on the will of our government for every species of merchandize as well for their defence & comfort.” But this could not be accomplished without Shoshone horses, or without a guide to take them over the Nez Percé trail.
In reply, Cameahwait “declared his wish to serve us in every rispect; that he was sorry to find that it must yet be some time before they could be furnished with firearms but said they could live as they had done heretofore untill we brought them as we had promised.” Though he had insufficient horses to carry the baggage over Lemhi Pass, he would return to his village in the morning and encourage his band to come and help.
Charles M. Russell, Lewis and Clark Expedition. Meeting the Shoshones; to the right, Sacagawea is hugging her childhood friend Jumping Fish. (From the collection of Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa)
The captains were satisfied—indeed, they could hardly have dared hope for so much cooperation. They asked Cameahwait to indicate who were the lesser chiefs among his men. He pointed to two others. The captains gave Cameahwait a medal with Jefferson’s likeness on one side and the clasped hands of an Indian and a white man on the other, and gave a smaller medal with George Washington’s likeness to the two inferior chiefs. Next they presented Cameahwait with a uniform coat, a pair of scarlet leggings, a carrot of tobacco, and some geegaws. The lesser chiefs got a shirt, leggings, a handkerchief, a knife, and some tobacco. The captains distributed paint, awls, knives, beads, mirrors, and other items to the remaining Indians.
“Every article about us appeared to excite astonishment in ther minds,” Lewis wrote: the appearance of the men, their arms, the canoes, York, “the segacity of my dog”—all were objects of admiration. Lewis shot his air gun, which the Indians immediately pronounced “great medicine.”